Chicago Crime, Criminals & Victims
by Richard C. Lindberg
 Shattered
Sense of Innocence: The Chicago Child Murders of 1955
Published
in hardcover by Southern Illinois University Press in
October 2006.
In the 1950s, our perfect sense of order was
forever changed by the heinous abduction-murders of three
grammar school youths who had journeyed into the heart
of downtown Chicago for the very first time in their young
lives. Anton and John Schuessler and their friend Robert
Peterson intended to see a Walt Disney movie, but they
never made it back to the sheltered safety of the far
Northwest Side, where their Depression-era parents tried
to carve out a better life in an area of the city considered
"crime free."
Co-authored with Gloria Jean Sykes, the book documents the largest
Chicago police homicide investigation up to that time; the jurisdictional
rivalries, bureaucratic bungling and politics-as-usual attitude that
underscored the failures of law enforcement to catch the killer in
1955. Shattered Sense of Innocence takes the reader
on a guided tour of the city as it appeared in the less than idyllic
1950s; the human side of the tragedy, and the final resolution of
the crime four decades later. It is the story of the determined efforts
of ATF Agent James Delorto and his personal quest to bring closure
to the decades-old mystery, and the inner workings of Chicago's treacherous
"horse mafia" forever linked to the Schuessler-Peterson case and several
other high-profile unsolved murder cases in the Windy City the authors
recount in the book.
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 Return
to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places
in Chicago, Nashville,
TN: Cumberland House, Published July 1999. 471 pages.
Described by columnist Richard Roeper of the
Chicago Sun-Times as "the definitive roadmap of Chicago's
dark history." Inspired by Andrew Roth's Infamous
Manhattan, the book was a local best seller on
AMAZON.com from January-April 2000. The unusual cover
photo sparked all kinds of questions and debate among
readers. Just who was that dead man in quiet repose on
the sidewalk? The solution to the mystery and other puzzling
crimes are revealed in Rich's 2001 sequel, Return
Again to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Even
More Infamous Places in Chicago.
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Return Again to the Scene
of the Crime: A Guide to Even More Infamous Places
in Chicago, Nashville,
TN: Cumberland House. Published August 2001. 451 pages.
Chosen as a Chicago Tribune Editor's Choice
for October 14, 2001. Author and journalist Rick Kogan,
host of the "Sunday Papers" on WGN Radio called it "Absolutely
fabulous...if you love Chicago history on any level, not
just the history of crime, it's history of architecture
and history of the city." The sequel to Rich's 1999 crime
travel guide probes the dark, unexplored corners of the
city notorious with emphasis on the many bizarre and off-beat
criminal cases lost to history but resurrected in this
one timely volume. Lavishly illustrated with maps, diagrams
and photos.
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To Serve & Collect: Chicago Politics
and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot To the
Summerdale Scandal, 1855-1960. Westport,
CT: Praeger Publishing. 1991. Republished in paperback
by Southern Illinois University Press in 1998. 366 pages.
Four years of solitary research went into the preparation
of this book (begun as a graduate thesis at Northeastern
Illinois University). Lindberg's engrossing history of
the Chicago Police Department, its moments of shame and
valor, and the litany of scandal spread across 100 years,
was the first volume to be published on the subject since
John Flinn & John Wilke's History of the Chicago Police
(sold by subscription to fatten the coffers of the Policeman's
Benevolent Association) appeared in 1887.
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Chicago Ragtime: Another Look at
Chicago, 1880-1920, South
Bend, IN: Icarus Press, 1985. 282 pages. Republished in
trade paperback as Chicago by Gaslight: A History
of the Chicago Netherworld, 1880-1920, by Academy
Chicago, 1996. This colorful and engrossing
look back at the dark side of Chicago during the Gilded
Age was praised by the late, great journalist and book
author Herman Kogan for its "prodigious amount of research
and its host of new and delicious details."
The hardcover edition of Chicago Ragtime is long out of print, but the author has a limited number of copies available for purchase. Price: $20.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Send check or money order to P.O. Box 31343, Chicago, IL 60631
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CONTRIBUTING WRITER (Encyclopedias & Anthologies)
- American National Biography, American Council of Learned Societies
and Oxford University Press, 1999.
- The Encyclopedia of Major League Team Histories,
New York, NY: Carroll & Graf, 1993, Trade paper.
- The Encyclopedia of World Crime, Wilmette,
IL: Crime Books Inc., 1990.
- The Ballplayers, New York, NY: William Morrow,
1990. Hard cover.
- A Kid's Guide to Chicago, G.T. Nelson, Inc.,
1980. Trade paper.
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