A NAMELESS BODY
The woman’s nude body was lying a few feet from a large tree in a grassy area covered with leaves on the right side of the dirt road just over a steep rise. She was lying on her back with her arms extended up from her body. Her legs were slightly apart and extended, but it didn’t appear her body had been “posed.” There was a black-and-tan striped shoelace or bootlace around her neck. Police couldn’t figure out if there were two laces or one lace that had been wrapped around her neck twice. There were leaves on the left side of her head and maggot eggs on her face, genitals, and the other openings on her body.
Police also found empty shopping bags and facial tissues near the woman’s body, which they collected as evidence. About a hundred feet away from her body in the shoulder-length grass next to the road and near a bean field, police found a white tennis shoe with blue striping on it. A short distance away, police discovered the other tennis shoe in a thicket. It appeared that someone had tossed each shoe separately into the brush from the road because police didn’t find any evidence that anyone had trampled on the scrub in the area.
The woman’s body was sealed and photographed, then recovered by employees of a local funeral parlor. Detectives finished up a little after two-thirty in the morning. They went back to the Peoria Police Department (PPD) to try and identify the body. They looked through mug shots and missing persons reports, but they couldn’t figure out who she was.
Also by Linda Rosencrance
Ripper
An Act of Murder
Murder at Morses Pond
BONE CRUSHER
LINDA ROSENCRANCE
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2010 by Linda Rosencrance
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Pinnacle and the P logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-2605-0
For Steven C., my once and, I hope, future friend.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my agent Janet Benrey, of Benrey Literary Agency, for her friendship and support. I’d also like to thank my editors at Kensington, Michaela Hamilton and Richard Ember, who I’m sure breathed a sigh of relief when I finally finished.
I’d also like to thank Peoria County sheriff Michael McCoy, Tazewell County sheriff Robert Huston, Lieutenant Mark Greskoviak, of the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office, members of the task force that investigated the murders and ultimately apprehended Larry Bright, Peoria County state’s attorney Kevin Lyons, and Seth Uphoff and Paulette Fair, of the state’s attorney’s office.
I would also like to thank the nice lady at the Creve Coeur, Illinois, Police Department who helped this frazzled writer track down some information at the eleventh hour, and the nice gentleman at the Tazewell County Coroner’s Office who helped me verify that information.
To my friends, who have had to put up with one canceled social engagement after another—sorry.
And finally a shout-out to Marc J. Schiller, who is doing his best to make me understand the importance of a good outline. I’m trying.
We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.
—Ted Bundy, serial killer
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Photographic Insert
PROLOGUE
Peoria, Illinois, was incorporated as a village on March 11, 1835. When it was incorporated on April 21, 1845, as a city, it ended the village president form of government and began the mayoral system. Peoria’s first mayor was William Hale.
Peoria (named after the Peoria Indian tribe) is the largest city on the Illinois River, and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois. As of 2007, it had a population of approximately 144,000. It sits midway between Chicago and St. Louis.
In 1830, John Hamlin constructed the flour mill on Kickapoo Creek—and so began the city’s first industry. In 1837, E. F. Nowland started another big industry, the pork industry. Over the years a number of industries have cropped up in Peoria, including carriage factories, pottery makers, breweries, wholesale warehousing, casting foundries, glucose factories, ice harvesting, farm machinery manufacturing, and furniture making.
Peoria won the All-America City Award three times, in 1953, 1966, and 1989. In 2007, Forbes ranked Peoria number forty-seven out of the largest 150 metropolitan areas in its annual “Best Places for Business and Careers.” Forbes evaluated the city on the cost of doing business, cost of living, entertainment opportunities, and income growth. In 2009, Peoria was ranked sixteenth best city with a population of a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand in the “U.S. Next Cities List,” compiled by Next Generation Consulting.
And who hasn’t heard the famous question: Will it play in Peoria? The phrase originated during the days of vaudeville in the early 1920s and 1930s. At that time Peoria was one of the most important places in the country for vaudeville acts to perform. Because Peoria was considered the “typical” American town, new live acts and shows were booked into theaters in Peoria to test the reactions of audiences. If an act did well in Peoria, vaudeville companies knew that it would work throughout the nation.
Today Peoria is still used as a test market by advertisers trying to determine how popular products and ideas will fare around the country.
Peoria also has everything its residents could want: affordable housing, great schools and colleges, excellent medical facilities, shopping, arts and entertainment, and many recreational areas. But despite its growth, Peoria still exudes Midwestern friendliness and warmth.
But there’s a seedy side to Peoria—a side inhabited by prostitutes and drug addicts and those who prey on them. A side of the city where a thirtysomething mama’s boy could go seemingly unnoticed on a fifteen-month killing spree.
1
He didn’t want to do it again.
He