The weekend of November 25 and 26, 2017 mark the 50th and 64th anniversaries of two police officers featured on this blog: Robert Lawrence Tatman and Richard Stanley Burchfield. Both Tatman and Burchfield were killed in the line of duty. Both were shot. Both were young husbands. Both were young fathers. Robert Lawrence Tatman Champaign […]
The cold case of Albert Edwin Seaburg
September 1, 2016 By
The cold case of Albert Edwin Seaburg (March 4, 1926 – Sept 4, 1997) is Case of the Month for September. Albert E. Seaburg (71) was murdered while traveling through Florida. His home state was Illinois. The Florida authorities believe that he was shot during a robbery. He was found dead in his Best Inn […]
Case of the Month: Barbara and Patricia Grimes
February 1, 2016 By
Case of the Month: Barbara and Patricia Grimes left their home on December 28, 1956, to watch the Elvis Presley movie “Love me tender” in a theater close to their Chicago home. They had $2.50 with them. Barbara Jeanne was 15 years old and her sister Patricia Kathleen was 13. They never returned home. The […]
The 1966 cold case of Valerie Percy
November 18, 2015 By
The 1966 cold case of Valerie Percy: on September 18, 1966, Valerie Percy (21) was murdered in her parental home in Kenilworth, Illinois, by an unknown intruder. Her case remains cold. Valerie was the daughter of former senator Charles Percy and Jeanne Valerie Dickerson. Jeanne passed away in 1947. Percy remarried Loraine Diane Guyer in […]
The cold case of Maria Ridulph
December 12, 2012 By
On Dec 3, 1957, Maria Ridulph (7) vanished from a small-town street corner in Sycamore, IL, while playing in the snow. Arrested in July 2011 and sentenced in December 2012 for her murder was Jack McCullough, formerly known as John Tessier. McCullough was released from prison on April 15, 2016. Charges against him were dismissed on April […]
Joseph Halpern Part 3 by Silvia Pettem
March 5, 2012 By
Joseph’s nephew had started his search for his uncle, Joseph Halpern, missing since 1933, by contacting the sheriffs’ offices in the four Colorado counties that border Rocky Mountain National Park. The nephew asked about unidentified remains that might be identifiable with DNA comparisons. In 2009, when the NamUs System was inaugurated, the nephew, as a […]
Joseph Halpern Part 2 by Silvia Pettem
March 5, 2012 By
For six days in August 1933, park authorities searched drainages and followed all possible trails for the missing 22-year-old hiker, Joseph Halpern. Authorities also checked the registers on Taylor and nearby peaks, but none showed Joseph’s signature––a customary procedure for climbers, once they reach a summit. Perhaps trying to be encouraging, a writer for the […]
Joseph Halpern Part 1 by Silvia Pettem
March 5, 2012 By
In the summer of 1933, twenty-two-year-old Cook County, Illinois, resident Joseph Halpern was vacationing in Rocky Mountain National Park with his parents and Samuel Garrick, a college friend. The motorists had driven Joseph’s Ford sedan and had stopped in the Black Hills and at Yellowstone National Park on their way west. Even though the country […]
