H.H. Holmes a hotel theme; will Speck, Gacy someday get similar treatment?

Reading a Chicago Tribune report of the Acme Hotel Company’s plans to convert rooms in their River North facility into something paying homage to one of Chicago’s early serial killers is putting creepy thoughts into my mind.

HOLMES: Eventually executed for his crimes

Such as will the day come when enough time has passed that someone will think they can make money off of housing paying memory to Richard Speck? Or John Gacy?

BOTH OF THOSE men committed excessively violent crimes, and I’m sure there will be people out there who will try to claim I am sick and twisted for even suggesting such a thought?

The Richard Speck apartment complex? The John Gacy suite at a luxury hotel?

Personally, the very thought turns me ill. I don’t think I’d want to stay in such a facility – even if it is something someday being done up in a gaudy manner as the Acme Hotel’s rooms that will contain items remembering people of the crimes Holmes committed back during the Columbian Exposition of 1893 – the World’s Fair held in Chicago to pay tribute to the 400^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus.

Back from the days when Columbus was the “man who sailed the ocean blue and discovered America,” rather than the modern image some try to present of him as a slave trader who was the worst possible thing that ever could happen to the native peoples of this continent.

HOLMES WAS A man who confessed to killing some 27 people, even though only nine of those slayings were confirmed – and some of the people to whom Holmes said he killed actually turned up alive.

Book could become a Leo DiCaprio film

What the crime spree had as a theme was that it occurred during the World’s Fair, with many of the slayings taking place in what was described in the news coverage of the day as the “Murder Castle” at 63^rd and Wallace streets that Holmes (also known as Herman Webster Mudgett) built for himself.

It was a rooming house where fairgoers stayed, and some of them never checked out – so to speak.

Reports of the era say the facility had trap doors, hidden passageways, padding to muffle sounds and even a crematorium on the premises. So as to get rid of the evidence.

NOW, THE ACME Hotel is offering up suites next week through Halloween. For $229 a night, one can stay in a place with Holmes memorabilia and news clippings on hand, and even pictures of Holmes himself appearing to peer in at you from an outside window.

Murder Castle was long ago demolished

Kind of creepy, ain’t it?

But it really seems like so much time has passed (125 years since the Columbian Exposition) that the name H.H. Holmes doesn’t readily ring a mental bell for many people.

Unless, that is, if they have read the book “Devil in the White City,” which is a novel published 15 years ago that was set in Chicago during the World’s Fair and is a fictionalized account of the things that Holmes is said to have done.

Will these long-deceased criminals … 

DOES THIS MEAN that some time around the year 2100, someone will want to think it would somehow be “cool” to have something paying homage to Speck and his bloody night of killing eight student nurses (he got caught because a ninth nurse hid under the bed, and he lost count), or to the nearly three dozen young men whom Gacy was executed for by lethal injection back in 1994?

I’m sure that if someone had tried to say a “Murder Castle” theme, even if just for Halloween, would be a novel idea back around 1910, I’m sure the bulk of Chicagoans would be repulsed.

… someday become entertainmen themes?

But I can’t think of anybody who was alive in Chicago back in the 1890s would still be with us in this realm of existence. So the hotel can get away with passing off this Halloween holiday suite as a homage to a novel

All I can say is if that is what happens to the memory of Speck or Gacy or anybody else who has committed a string of crimes, I’d find it horrid. It is my “scary” thought for Halloween this year.

  -30-

It’s becoming hard to ignore Jodi Arias. That’s a shame, because she’s ignorable

Stumbling around the television this past weekend I had to go out of my way to ignore the CNN Headline News channel – one of those outlets that is treating Jodi Arias as though she’s somehow someone interesting.



ARIAS: Reknowned for less than nothing

Arias is a young woman facing criminal charges out in Phoenix, Ariz., for the shooting death of her boyfriend.

HER TRIAL HAS been ongoing since January, and that cable news channel has tried to give us every single moment of what really is a tedious criminal case. A non-story, when you think about it realistically.

So what happened when the case finally wrapped up and it went to a jury?

That jury deliberated for less than an hour on Friday, then quit for the day. They’re scheduled to resume deliberations on Monday.

Yet anytime I tried turning to the Headline News channel for a quickie summary of weekend news, all I stumbled across was “Jodi Arias Watch” – with endless, and breathless, commentary meant to pass the time until the moment we get the verdict.

WHICH MIGHT MAKE sense if the jury had been sequestered and was actually deliberating during the weekend hours. As if we might literally learn at any second what the verdict is.

But we’re not! Anyone with sense would use this weekend to take a break from the endless babble we’ve been subjected to about a “story” that really isn’t of any interest outside of the Phoenix area.

I know that goes contrary to the news judgment being espoused by these television programs that like to turn trivia into something pretending to be significance. That really is what is at work with this particular story – which I have gone out of my way to ignore because I just don’t see the point of it.

As a reporter-type person for the past quarter century, I have covered countless criminal cases. Trials of all sorts! Which means I understand that some cases get tremendous amounts of coverage, while others are lucky to get a three-paragraph brief written about them when the verdict is reached.

OR SOMETIMES, ONLY when the lengthy prison sentence is imposed.

I honestly believe this Arias case falls into the latter category. I certainly don’t see anything about it that makes it worth the blow-by-blow coverage that places like CNN or Inside Edition are giving it.

For those of you who don’t know, this case amounts to a domestic dispute that got out of hand.

Arias was dating a man named Travis Alexander, who ultimately decided he wanted out of the relationship. They broke up (it seems that he dumped her).

DEPENDING ON WHO one wants to believe, she killed him because she didn’t like being dumped. Although there are others who would say he was beating her, and that she finally got fed up and defended herself with a firearm.

Which must make this case confusing for the conservative ideologues. On the one hand, the “law and order” types probably like the idea of the death penalty being administered against Arias.

But then again, many of them are the types who also want to believe that more access to firearms means that people (particularly defenseless women) will be able to protect themselves.

As I see it, neither Arias nor the victim are any kind of celebrity (like Football Hall of Fame member O.J. Simpson), nor is there anything particularly unusual about the tactic used by Arias (she’s not Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband’s penis when she got fed up with his abuse of her).

NOR COULD ONE make the juvenile determination that she’s some sort of babe who will provide a titillation factor that will attract viewers (which was supposedly the reason that the “Casey Anthony case” in Florida was a BIG story).

This is nothing more than a domestic dispute. Outside of the Phoenix area (where it can be argued that this is a local crime story), what possible reason could there be for paying attention to this case?

PACINO (as Corleone): Stuck like the rest of us

Yes, I am venting several months’ worth of contempt because the coverage I have stumbled across has never managed to give me any reason to pay attention to this case. Because I sense for the next few days, there are going to be significant sections of my cable television package that I’m going to have to avoid watching unless I want to be burdened even more with this trivial mass.

Which makes me feel like Al Pacino’s aging version of “Michael Corleone” from Godfather III; as in the one line that gets quoted as much as anything from the other two films – “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

  -30-

Are we chasing people away from neighborhoods, or eliminating them?

I'm trying to figure which story I stumbled across this weekend is the most tragic.

I think it is the subject material for the Chicago Sun-Times' columnist Mark Brown, who wrote this weekend about 46th Ward Alderman James Cappleman.

HE REPRESENTS THE Uptown neighborhood in the City Council, which historically had developed a reputation as a place where the down-and-out of our society wound up living because they didn't have any other options.

That image bothers Cappleman, who appararently would prefer it if his north lakefront ward had something more along the line of a youthful or hip reputation such as something like Lake View, if not quite Lincoln Park.

To that end, Cappleman has informed the Salvation Army -- which often sends outreach trucks into the neighborhood to help distribute food to the needy -- that they're no longer welcome in Uptown.

Cappleman seems to think homeless people are deliberately making a special trip to Uptown just to take advantage of the trucks; whose purpose is to let people know of the wide range of services they can find if they visit a Salvation Army facility. Although he tries to tone down his rhetoric a bit in response.

AS THE SUN-TIMES reported, Cappleman is giving the Salvation Army one month to find another location to send their trucks. He doesn't seem to care where they send them, so long as they're not within the 46th Ward.

Salvation Army officials say they will comply. They're not looking to pick a fight.

But I'm not sure what will be accomplished by this move, other than some homeless individuals getting even less than they already have. Because I don't see them leaving the area, just because Cappleman thinks they're a blemish on his home neighborhood.

If anything, Cappleman may well be giving us a perfect example of why people are suspicious of efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The "dreaded" (to some people) concept of "gentrification.

ALL TOO OFTEN, it comes across as an effort to chase people out of a neighborhood so that someone else can come in and enjoy its benefits.

And Uptown does have its benefits -- most particularly that eastern boundary also known as the Lake Michigan shoreline. Get the kind of people who pay significant types of money to live in places like Lake View or Rogers Park.

As for the individuals who get chased out, there are too many political people who seem to take the attitude that it just doesn't matter. Where they wind up is somebody else's problem -- as in they will then have to figure out a way to chase those individuals away to someplace even further out-of-sight.

Which is what too many of us think of someone like William Strickland, a 72-year-old resident of the Brainerd neighborhood (that's South Side, to those of you whose knowledge of Chicago doesn't stretch south of Soldier Field) who died early Saturday.

STRICKLAND WAS A man being kept alive by kidney dialysis treatments -- which keep his blood clean of the toxins that the rest of us dispose of through our functioning kidneys.

On Saturday, he was shot to death outside his home. Police told the Chicago Tribune they suspect someone was trying to rob him.

Not only did Strickland's family hear the gunfire, so did the driver of the shuttle bus that was waiting for him to come outside so he could be taken to his dialysis treatment.

This one hits home for me because my mother was kept alive by dialysis treatments, and she used to have a similar transport pick her up early three times a week so she could live a little longer.

SHE USED TO worry about taking a slip on the ice in the early morning hours. Being shot was something that would have gone beyond her imagination.

Yet it happened, most likely because someone thought he could get a couple of bucks from an old man.

There are those of us who get all worked up over criminal acts where the body count extends into the dozens. Yet to me, it is those who single out the most vulnerable who are truly venal.

Perhaps even more so than the current activity taking place in Uptown!

-30-




  

Political people all ‘talk’ these days about Connecticut. But will they learn?

One of many at half-staff

I’m having a hard time getting all worked up over the tragedy that occurred last week in Newtown, Conn.

Honestly. I hear all the political people at every conceivable level of government going out of their way to make statements about how horrific it is to have in excess of two dozen people (most of them young children) dead, and my initial reaction in every case is to think that the political people are being shameless in their efforts to gain themselves some favorable attention.

SOME MAY TAKE comfort in the idea that a government official who lives nowhere near Connecticut and has no votes to gain from the locals whose lives are directly impacted by the actions at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But I see it as tacky, if not overkill.

A part of me wants to tell every politician who feels the need to build up their good will by drawing attention to the suffering of others to “stifle” themselves. Who said the “Archie Bunker” character didn’t have some redeeming value?

I’ve seen so many flags flown at half-staff, sat through several “moments of silence” prior to government board meetings, and heard several of the candidates wishing to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr., in Congress make their own appeals to remember the deceased in Connecticut.

I EVEN HEARD a clergy member start off a Cook County Board meeting this week with a reference to the Dec. 14 tragedy. “Today, we pray that we never see a day like last Friday,” said Monsignor Dan Mayall of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral.

I fully agree. I hope we never see such a day again, as well. Then again, I’m honest enough to realize we probably will.

To the point where the name “Sandy Hook” is going to recede in our collective memories as a label that we know bears some significance – something “bad” happened there.

But we’ll probably have to look it up to retain the specifics. Just like “Aurora, Colo.,” “Columbine High School,” and “Hubbard Woods Elementary School.”

I THREW THAT last label in on purpose.

DANN: Too many similarities

Because it was at the school in suburban Winnetka that my mind initially revisited when I first heard last week of what happened in Connecticut.

For back in 1988, that was the school entered by Laurie Dann, a nice, sweet Jewish girl from the North Shore suburbs who – it turns out – was mentally unstable.

Her problems, however, were overlooked, and her actions rose to the point of entering that school building, walking into a second grade classroom and firing her weapons.

LATER IN THE day, she shot at another man she encountered, before she ultimately shot herself to death. Although her “reign” continued for days as packages started arriving at various places, loaded with edibles that had been laced with arsenic or other poisons – all put in the mail by Dann.

Laurie’s mindset on that fateful day (I was a reporter-type for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago that day) was bent on a killing spree on so many fronts. Perhaps we should feel fortunately that she failed so badly.

I know some people are going to try to claim that these incidents have nothing in common.

Laurie only killed one student (while wounding about a half-dozen others), while in Connecticut, the body count of children is 20!

BUT THE SPIRIT is the same – a person with alleged mental instabilities walking into a school with firearms and deciding that children whom s/he had no personal tie to were somehow worthy targets.

The fact that Adam Lanza appears to have had access to a larger arsenal of weapons than Laurie Dann did doesn’t really make it any different. That is just quibbling over details.

Listening to political people try to speak about the issue in recent days has caused me to hear many officials talk about the need for greater restrictions on people with potential mental problems.

Particularly when it comes to their ability to obtain a firearm legally.

YET I RECALL the exact same talk occurring in the months following Dann.

Maybe I’m getting old. But it seems like all the handwringing we went through 24 years ago is resurrecting itself these days. The cynic wonders if we learned nothing from what happened in suburban Winnetka – assuming, that is, there is anything we could learn that could prevent such tragic incidents from occurring.

Which makes it seem like all the political posturing might be well-meaning rhetoric, but ultimately all for naught. More evidence that "talk is cheap" when it comes from a government official.

  -30-

Weeding out Hudson fans who would do anything to rule “guilty” for her

Every criminal case has its own unique characteristics when it finally gets to court, and they’re usually more bizarre than anything that television can come up with in its attempts to portray courtroom drama.

Although I have to admit that reading about the preliminary actions leading up to the trial of a man facing criminal charges for the slayings of relatives of actor Jennifer Hudson has struck me as odd.

ALTHOUGH IT ALSO gives me a sense of déjà vu, because I recall the time I was called for jury duty at the Criminal Courts building. Because that was for a case with its own unique set of questions.

What prosecutors and defense attorneys are trying to do is find a pool of people who are, not quite ignorant, but not so inclined to be biased that they will give knee-jerk reactions in favor of one side.

In this case, the attorneys don’t want a jury of 12 fans of Jennifer Hudson who would be so eager to get on her good side that they’d rule “guilty” to any charge that gets put forth against William Balfour – the man whom prosecutors say killed Hudson’s mother and brother.

That’s why jurors are being asked if they have ever seen the films starring Hudson, or read the book about her, or have seen her on television or might be delusional enough to think that Weight Watchers’ diet program can give them Hudson’s body – just because she endorses their products.

SUCH QUESTIONS ARE unique to this case, and have gotten this jury selection process news coverage whereas most trials don’t get covered until opening arguments take place.

But it isn’t unique to try to weed people out. Because I still remember the day in September 2005 that I did jury duty and wound up being questioned by prosecutors and defense attorneys – before they ultimately settled on other people and let me go.

In that particular case, the attorneys were eager to weed out people with specialized medical knowledge, or anybody who might have close ties to medical people or might have enough contact with them that they would have picked up some of the medical knowledge for themselves.

For that particular case was an attempted murder. The neighborhood grocery store owner (who was working the cash register at the time) was shot, but survived.

ALTHOUGH HE DIDN’T come through the robbery attempt unscathed. The bullet wounds caused serious damage to his body and he now only breathes because of significant amounts of equipment to which he is attached.

Prosecutors were planning on making great hay out of his current physical condition and had plans to go into detail about his medical treatments.

So why no doctors? Prosecutors had plans to provide jurors with just enough information about the medical condition so that it could be interpreted their way. Attorneys weren’t really interested in anybody who knew anything on their own and might come to different conclusions than the legal people wanted them to reach.

I didn’t have any medical knowledge, other than the little trivial tidbits that I have picked up in some two-plus decades of being a reporter-type person. But I still didn’t get picked, although I didn’t get all concerned about learning an exact reason for why I didn’t wind up losing a couple of weeks of my life to a jury (which can happen in criminal cases).

IT HAS ME wondering how many people tried to get out of being picked for this jury just by claiming to have seen the film “Dreamgirls?” That certainly would be a unique reason for getting bounced from the jury pool.

And considering how “big” a star everyone likes to think Hudson is, it will be interesting to see a pool of people picked because they don’t have a clue who she is.

  -30-