Two Chicago-area private detectives believe they know how to solve a baffling unsolved murder -- the 1986 strangulation of an unidentified young woman found in a cornfield just outside the tiny village of Summerfield.
But only one of them -- or perhaps neither one -- can be right.
Furnished with a copy of an FBI profile of the killer, a list of the victim's possessions found near her body, a dozen color photographs of her clothing and jewelry and news clippings, Don C. Haworth, of Chicago, and Susan Carlson, of Evanston, were asked by the News-Democrat for their theories of how the victim ended up in the field.
Key to their findings was trying to determine the young woman's circumstances. Was she running from something? Or, as some police investigators believe, was she a hitchhiking prostitute?
The case has experienced a revival of police interest following the exhumation in June of the victim's remains, which were sent to a nationally known anthropologist to see whether bones could somehow lead to an identification.
Haworth, an investigator for 30 years, runs Chicagoland Detective Services Inc. and once employed Carlson. He said the victim -- estimated to be about 5 feet tall, to weigh 100 to 110 pounds and to be between ages 19 and 24 -- probably was hitchhiking and may have met a stranger in a bar. She had brown eyes and brown, curly hair.
Because a partial print of a relatively small, narrow, pointed Western-style boot print was found at the scene, Haworth theorized that the killer may have been a migrant worker. He said the workers, many of whom are from Mexico, favor this style.
Carlson, who runs Carlson Investigations Inc., has worked as an investigator for eight years, including four as a licensed private eye, had a different theory. She said the victim's possessions, particularly several small, sample-like toiletry items sometimes given out at shelters, pointed to a battered woman who may have been on the run from an abuser.
The killer's knifing mutilation of the victim's pelvic area had particular significance to Carlson. "The fact that he didn't mutilate the face has to do with the sex organs and giving birth," she said, adding, "I can see the battered woman syndrome because she could have been pregnant, and maybe the killer was her husband. Maybe she had an abortion of his baby. Or maybe he had wanted her to get pregnant and she had never wanted to be a mom."
The autopsy, done shortly after the body was found Sept. 6, 1986, by a farmer harvesting corn, does not state whether the victim was pregnant or had given birth.
While the fact that the victim was never identified makes finding a killer next to impossible, police interviewed three men about the murder, including a middle-aged man who served time in Germany for strangling a woman when he was in the military. He also served time in Illinois for raping a neighbor woman in Lebanon. A Missouri man, who served time for strangling a prostitute and cutting off her breasts with a knife, was questioned in Spain where the crime occurred. Both men recently told reporters that they had nothing to do with the death of the woman found in the cornfield.
The third suspect, now deceased, was cleared after a search of his van a few days after the body was found failed to connect him to the murder.
However, even thin leads eventually can snare a murderer, as Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz learned after a parking ticket led New York City cops to his door three decades ago.
Reporters trying to determine whether there was any significance concerning two particularly odd items found with the victims -- a pair of child-sized pantaloons and a flat spool of nylon fishing line -- offered a theory to the lead police investigator based on coincidence and connected loosely to a local amateur theater.
In the fall of 1986, the Looking Glass Theater in Lebanon, less than five miles from where the body was found, staged the Broadway musical "Annie." Could the pantaloons be connected to a child's costume? Belleville attorney Don Urban, a member of the theater's board of directors, was quick to point out however, that no person connected to the playhouse is missing.
And the nylon or monofilament fishing line? Could that have been connected to another nearby theater production at McKendree College in Lebanon?
Transparent fishing line is sometimes used to stage theatrical effects, including making objects appear to rise on their own, said David Braidlow, who taught drama there at the time.
Braidlow said that it is "very possible" that there were hangers-on, perhaps romantic companions of drama students, whose abrupt disappearance might not have raised a public concern. He said also that students and their friends were sometimes asked to bring odd items of clothing from home because the department couldn't afford real costumes.
But it was a Tom Stoppard play titled "After Magritte," that Braidlow said was in production in the fall on 1986, that caused him to offer his own fishing line connection.
Braidlow, now a college teacher in Indiana, explained that the play required that a lamp rise from a table and disappear above and then reappear. He said a length of nylon fishing line, invisible from the audience, was used to create this effect.
"It's a bit thin, but it's an interesting theory," said St. Clair County Sheriff's Department Lt. Steve Johnson, who heads the official probe.
"We check out all plausible, credible leads," he said. Johnson declined to state whether the fishing line and pantaloon angle was plausible or credible.
People scanning the News-Democrat's list of the victim's possessions that appears on the graphic on Page A1 and online might want to keep in mind that the FBI profiler ruled out initial speculation that she was a prostitute because a streetwise prostitute would not have been taken by surprise and would have fought back. The Summerfield victim's body lacked defensive wounds or any injuries connected to a battering.
The profile also suggested the killer did not know the victim and probably had killed other victims in a similar manner. There was no effort to hide evidence.
However, the report stated it is probable that the killer removed all identification.
The victim, who had extensive dental work including a three-tooth bridge, appeared Caucasian, possibly of Eastern European origin, said Richard Jantz, a nationally noted anthropologist at the University of Tennessee. Jantz saw two photographs of the victim's face as she was found in the cornfield, probably within 24 hours of death.
After exhumation, the St. Clair County coroner's office transported the Summerfield woman's remains to the university for an anthropological examination that might yield clues to her identity.
But the examination won't be conducted for several months, Jantz said, because the embalmed remains are still covered with flesh that must thoroughly decay.
"There's not much we can do with fleshed remains," Jantz said. "We need bones."
