History is awesome regardless of topic.
The legends and superstitions surrounding ships and the sailors who manned them are centuries old and worldwide, but it is not necessary for you to live on an ocean shore to share or appreciate those stories. Chicago is on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan, one of the “Great Lakes” of North America. The label … Read more
I originally published this story as a three-part blog on Chicago Now which no longer exists. It has given me the opportunity to combine them into one cohesive story with additions and corrections from the original. For decades the residents of Justice, Illinois, and curiosity seekers from elsewhere wondered about the grave marker that was … Read more
It is funny how a twist of fate can affect everything. Nathan Leopold Jr.’s birthdate is coming up on November 19th (2 days) and most crime history buffs are aware that he was arrested and charged along with his partner in crime Richard Loeb with the murder of Loeb’s cousin, Bobby Franks. They committed this … Read more
I was born in Chicago ten years after this murder took place. My mother was about the girls’ ages when they were murdered, and she lived in the Back of the Yards neighborhood that bordered the McKinley Park neighborhood where the girls lived. I remember how protective my mother was with us, but I didn’t … Read more
Many people have never heard the name, Charles Leroy Melquist. It seems to be a name lost to history, but could it hold the key to solving the oldest current cold case in Chicago history? I had become seriously interested in the murders of Barbara and Patricia Grimes after I had left my career in … Read more
Charles Ford Heath is a name that few remember when discussing the “Crime of the Century” On May 21, 1924, 14 year old Bobby Franks did not come home from the Harvard School for Boys in Chicago’s elite Kenwood Neighborhood. Nathan Leopold, 19 and Richard Loeb, 18 were extremely intelligent sons of wealthy Chicagoans and … Read more
As a book lover myself I was drawn to the story of Otto Funk, the most prolific book thief in Chicago history. As most great stories, I had come across this one by sheer happenstance as I was researching an unrelated story concerning the Chicago Public Library. It contains all the elements of a great … Read more
On February 18th, sometime before the Pandemic, I was pondering what to write about and discovered that Italian Physicist Alessandro Volta was born February 18, 1745. Volta is credited with inventing the first chemical battery and separating and identifying the odorless gas, methane. You can probably deduce by his name that the term to describe … Read more
