The Sylvia Likens Death House in Indianapolis was demolished today. Another piece of morbid history melts away…
Home Of Infamous 1965 Torture Death Demolished
Interestingly, my photo of the death house is my most popular image on Flickr:
So how about that woman arrested for the murder of the 9-year-old girl in sleepy little Tracy, California? Allegedly, she not only murdered the girl, she also raped her with a foreign object. You’d think after doing something so horrendous (not to mention potentially embarrassing) you’d take a little more care to hide the evidence? Instead, the suitcase bobs up out of the rice field, like something out of Deliverance. (And yes, I am proud of myself that I was able to namecheck Deliverance two days in a row!) This will be an interesting case to follow…
I have been away on vacation in the mystical, magical south (South Carolina & Georgia, to be precise) and I thought for sure that when I returned yesterday, I’d find that U.K. reality star Jade Goody would have died in my absence. To my amazement, I found that she was gasping but somehow still alive last night. However, a few hours later, her battle with cervical cancer ended. I’m sad and disappointed as Jade’s death marks the death of an obsession, and there just don’t seem to be any other exhibitionists dying right now. Patrick Swayze is on his last legs too, but you don’t see him doing a reality show about it. Pity. We need more celebrities like Jade to fulfill our morbid voyeuristic impulses!
Rest In Peace, controversial one.
So, a woman sees some garbage bags sitting beside her garage, and asks her husband to check on them… and he finds a dismembered body! If this had happened to me, I would have found some dog poop or rotten chow mein or something.
Here’s the story, from the Chicago Tribune:
Authorities today will try to identify the man whose dismembered body was found in four garbage bags in an Oak Park alley Wednesday morning.
The remains, described only as belonging to an Hispanic man in his 30s, were at the Cook County medical examiner’s office this morning, where officials also will try to determine a cause of death, an office spokesman said.
The grisly discovery was made around 9:15 a.m. when resident Harriet Hawkins pulled out of her garage to go to work and noticed the black plastic garbage bags a few inches outside of the main door of the garage. She phoned her husband and asked him to check on them.
About an hour later, she hadn’t heard from him and called again, prompting her husband, Warren Udelson, to walk to the garage in the alley behind their home in the 1000 block of Clarence Avenue in Oak Park. He opened one of the bulky bags, which was lined with other bags, took out a knife and cut through the layers.
“Finally, I get to a brown sock,” said Udelson, an unemployed engineer. “I looked a little farther and saw a foot inside it and I said, ‘That’s all I need to see.’ I called the police.”
Udelson had found one part of an entire body that had been dismembered and placed in the garbage bags.
Police said interviews in the neighborhood led investigators to believe the bags were dumped sometime between 9:30 p.m. Tuesday and 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Oak Park spokesman David Powers said, “The initial indication is that [the slaying and dismemberment] did not occur in Oak Park.”
Hawkins and Udelson said the incident had not shaken their opinion that Oak Park is safe.
Oak Park police had no new information this morning.
Here’s a fascinating article about the modern epidemic of parents fatally forgetting their children in cars. Turns out it’s a side-effect of our lizard brains. Who’d a thunk? Anyway, the article certainly brings to light the fact that this could happen to ANYONE given the right circumstances, and vividly portrays the guilt and torment that the parents must live with for the rest of their lives. Highly recommended.