As the interview progressed, Wilson asked Larry if he had ever been married. He said he was divorced, and his ex-wife, Cathy Bishop, lived in Galesburg. Larry’s best friend, Dan Hosmer, also live in Galesburg. Then, maybe to show police he had nothing against black people, Larry said he had a friend named Harry Cannon, who was a black man. (Cannon was Larry’s crack supplier.) He said he last saw Harry a month earlier.
As he did the previous day, Wilson asked Larry, when had he lived in Racine. He said he had lived there for three or four months in the spring of 1999. Between 1999 and 2002, he went back occasionally to see his sister, Monica.
At the end of the interview, Wilson asked Larry if he would still be willing to let police look through his house and his truck. He agreed, so police drove him to his mother’s job to get the keys to his house from her. Then they took him to his house, where he signed a consent form to allow the search.
As the crime lab officers arrived to take photos of Larry’s house and collect possible evidence, Wilson went to look into Larry’s truck, but it was locked. Larry said his mother had the keys, but he gave Wilson permission to unlock it with a slim jim so the lab officers could process it.
After the search Wilson brought Larry to the courthouse for his first court appearance on the charge of aggravated unlawful restraint. Larry was released on $10,000 bond.
The next day PCSO deputy Doug O’Neill was notified by PCSO detective Dave Hoyle that investigators were searching Larry’s house on West Starr Court; they needed him to respond to process the scene.
When O’Neill arrived, the investigators told him that Larry had been arrested on a warrant for unlawful restraint. They also told him that Larry’s victim said she had been sexually assaulted.
As O’Neill walked around Larry’s apartment, Detective Cy Taylor pointed out some interesting items like a large flesh-colored dildo wrapped in a blue towel by the bed, a black bra in a laundry basket, and three shoes without shoelaces. O’Neill noticed tan or brown stains on the white sheet on the box spring, which was under the mattress. There was also a hitter pipe and a green leafy substance on the coffee table. In one corner of the room, O’Neill saw a copy of the Peoria Journal Star newspaper dated February 7, 2004. In the local section, there was an article about the death of Barbara Williams. O’Neill photographed the newspaper and the rest of the house before he went outside.
As O’Neill took pictures of the outside and inside of Larry’s truck, Detective Pat Kennedy, who was looking through it, found an advertisement for Camel cigarettes in the side panel of the passenger-side door. O’Neill also took swabbings from the steering wheel, gas pedal, driver’s-side door handle, brake pedal, and from the passenger-side door.
O’Neill collected two black floor mats, hairs and fibers from those floor mats, a dirty white towel, with pink flowers, that had red bloodlike stains on it, four pairs of gloves and four single gloves, as well as garbage and some personal items. He took those items and other items from Larry’s house back to the lab for processing.
At the lab Deputy Scott Gamboe examined the items that had been taken from Larry’s apartment before placing them into evidence. He noted that the laces were missing from two Brahma hiking boots. He also observed brownish stains on the fitted sheet and on the inside of a hooded gray sweatshirt. Also inside the sweatshirt were two strands of Chore Boy, a coarse scrubbing pad, often used to smoke crack cocaine.
Gamboe also saw a whitish stain and a darker stain on a green towel, and dark stains on two white bath towels and a red towel that had come from Larry’s apartment. When he examined a pair of leather work gloves, which had Velcro closures, he saw a grayish mass of what appeared to be fibers or hair. He also found what looked to be hairs stuck to the dildo.
4
Typically, serial killers prey on prostitutes and women addicted to drugs because they’re vulnerable and available. No one takes a second look or gives a second thought to a man in a car picking up a woman in an area where all too many women walk the streets plying their trade.
And usually when a prostitute turns up missing, no one files a missing persons report. Think about it. Another prostitute won’t report it, because she probably figures the police won’t even listen to her. And the families of the women often don’t know their relatives are missing, because they don’t hear from them on a regular basis.
Even the women who escape the clutches of their would-be murderers don’t go to the police. For one thing, they don’t think the police will believe them or even care about what happened to them. For another, as in the case of Vickie Bomar, the women often have warrants out for their arrests and are afraid to go to the police because they don’t want to go to jail.
And sometimes serial killers prey on prostitutes because they think they’re doing police a favor by getting rid of women they consider worthless, although that didn’t seem to be the case with Larry.
But the reality is, none of these women deserve to die—no matter how they might live their lives. Despite the perceptions and misconceptions about the women who use drugs and turn to prostitution to feed their habits, the truth is they are daughters, and sisters, and mothers, and aunts, and cousins.
None of the Peoria serial killer’s victims intended to live their lives high on crack and having sex with who-knows-how-many strangers. They had had jobs and families. They went to church and school. Sure, they had a couple drinks now and then and probably smoked some weed, but that was it—in the beginning. But as time progressed, they suffered tragedies; they got mixed up with the wrong people. They turned to harder drugs, such as crack cocaine or heroin, to dull the pain. They sold their bodies, shoplifted, mugged, and even stole from family members to get the drugs they needed to survive. And the years of addiction took their toll.
They were raped, beaten up, and made to feel worthless. They wanted to find peace, but all they found were places to get high and escape from the world. They lived wherever they could—in shelters, on the streets, with friends, with family. They tried to get off the streets, but they got caught up in the never-ending cycle of using, getting clean, taking up old habits, using again, getting locked up, getting clean….
That’s what happened to Brenda Erving.
By all accounts, Brenda Erving was a good person, a beautiful person. She loved her family, and her family loved her. She was a happy little girl who liked to go out and play and have fun. She went to Manual High School in Peoria, where she excelled in her classes. Brenda was funny—the type of person who enjoyed making people laugh.
But she had a hard life.
When Brenda was young, Cynthia, her baby sister, suffered from cancer. Cynthia passed away when she was just seven years old. Her death affected the entire family, but Brenda took it particularly hard.
“When Brenda was a kid, she was a lot of fun. She was very sweet,” said Laverne Young, Brenda’s aunt. Laverne’s brother William Young Jr. married Brenda’s mother when Brenda was just two years old.
“I stayed at their house a lot when Brenda’s baby sister came out of the hospital,” Laverne said. “Sometimes my brother would get a code blue to go to the hospital because they thought Cynthia was going to die. They thought she was going to die six times before she passed. And when they would go to the hospital, I’d go to the house and stay with Brenda and the other kids. And sometimes she’d stay overnight with me.”
Brenda’s life just seemed to be mired in tragedy. Her mom, Lee, who passed away a few years after Brenda died, was a diabetic and an amputee. It had hurt Brenda to watch her mother suffer the way she did.
Then, when Brenda was thirty-five, her sister Antoinette passed away. One minute Antoinette was joking and talking with her husband, and the next minute