In Part 32,
Rosemary (not her real name) turned back the clock to a fall day in 1982, when
she was 14 and was ambushed by another teenager, who attempted to rape her at
knifepoint in the woods off Fox Road. She will never forget his face—or his
camouflage clothing.
His facial
features were so imprinted on her brain that police had a composite drawing
made from her description. After that, she picked his photo out of a police
lineup book, so the next step was to make an in-person identification of him at
his high school.
Police
accompanied her there, and sure enough, the stocky blond youth was a dead
ringer for the teen in the police sketch and in the photo book. As soon as he
saw Rosemary and the detective, he bolted. “He seemed to recognize me, and he
started to run towards the exit, but they caught him and arrested him right
there in front of everyone,” she said. “They asked him why he tried to run,”
she recalled. “He said he was nervous because he had been questioned in the
past.”
* * * * * * *
To truly
appreciate the context of this young man’s arrest, one must rewind to the fall
of 1982, when Sixteen Acres was terrorized by a rash of rapes—five of them,
along with two other attacks—in the wooded areas around Grayson Drive, Fox
Road, and the North Branch Parkway.
In fact, a
little more than two months before Rosemary’s incident, on September 17, 1982,
a 26-year-old woman was raped on the same spot Rosemary was assaulted. The
culprit was described as blond, “husky,” and wearing a jogging suit. Was it the same guy? I guess a
better question is: how could it not be? It’s hard to avoid this conclusion.
On October 26,
during the height of the period of fear and anger in the neighborhood that
autumn, police held a meeting at Mary Lynch School (pictured below) to update
residents after taking over 30 calls a day for information the previous week.
More than 500 people showed up, and police reiterated the description that had
first been published in the Springfield newspapers on October 7: a blond or
dirty blond-haired youth in his late teens or early 20s, muscular or stocky
build, 5-8 to 6 feet tall, 150-180 pounds.
The four officers at the meeting were quick to dispel rumors that there had been as many as a dozen rapes in the neighborhood and that one of the victims was murdered.
On heightened
alert, parents had been driving their children to and from school, and many
women had stopped jogging and walking alone. Families were doubting that it was
safe for kids to go out on Halloween. Men and teens were vowing to catch the
culprit and give him the beating of his life.
“The rapist
better hope the police get to him first,” remarked one teenager, who said his
name was Mark to a Springfield Daily News reporter. He pointed to two other
youths walking along the woods next to the school—one was carrying a chain.
“Everyone around here is prepared,” he continued.
Police told the
crowd that they had declined to be specific about the incidents for fear of
hampering the investigation, and they refused to comment about a report that
they had entered a new phase in the case—one in which they were bringing
victims into headquarters to identify suspects.
Police and the school’s
Parent Teacher Organization had arranged this meeting partly because they were
concerned about a vigilante mentality developing, and that someone could get
hurt in the act of grabbing a youth they thought might be the perpetrator. In
late October, a teen who bore a general resemblance to the description of the
rapist was bothering two young girls near Mary Lynch School, which is on North
Branch Parkway across from the southern end of Fox Road. A group of 20 men,
including one armed with a shotgun, surrounded him.
“The kid
deserved to be arrested, but he wasn’t the one we were looking for,” said a
detective who was at the scene.
This incident
leads me to wonder—is it possible that Rosemary had picked the photo of THAT
TEENAGER from the lineup book? The one she recognized must have done SOMETHING
in the past to appear in the photo array. Did she describe someone who
resembled boy who was surrounded—and then confirm that he was her assailant?
This is conjecture on my part. Maybe she had described another known creep
police had in mind. But if the teen Rosemary had pointed out was the one who
had harassed the two girls, were police giving him a second look as a possible
rapist?
How did they
originally discount this boy as a suspect in the attacks? Did he have a sound
alibi for some of the rapes and assaults?
Then came the
shocker: on October 28, 1982, police arrested a dark-haired 19-year-old for
several of the rapes, but it was now clear to them there had been two rapists
out there, and one was still on the loose.
This became
painfully clear exactly a month later with the attack on Rosemary.
It was a chilly
Sunday afternoon—1:00 p.m. to be exact. Rosemary remembers because the guy
asked her the time. “No phones back then, but I had a new watch my father had
just given me,” she said. Her watch was the last thing she saw before he
grabbed her, put a knife to her throat, and her nightmare began.
“I’m wondering
why I was the only one to go to court against him,” said Rosemary. But maybe
his other victim(s) couldn’t make a positive identification or was daunted by
the whole legal process, which, unfortunately, is incredibly exhausting and
humiliating for sexual assault victims. It demoralized Rosemary enough where
she stopped going to the hearings.
“I had to
retell what happened over and over and very explicitly,” she said. “But worst
of all was him staring me down the entire time. It made me so uneasy. I
couldn’t continue on. If it were now, no question, I would just stare right
back at him. I was so intimidated then by him and the entire thing. I remember
crying to my parents that he must know where we live and that he could easily
come back and get me. I didn’t feel safe. I went to Duggan School then and I
had to walk to and from school every day.”
She had
attended a couple of court sessions, but without her further testimony the case
languished. “What’s difficult for me most is my own disappointment for not
following through in court,” she said. “I’m a strong-minded person and very
tough on myself.”
More than 33
years later she certainly has her regrets—that she didn’t scratch his face, for
example, because he would have had a hard time telling police what caused the
wound. Rosemary doesn’t remember what his explanation was when investigators
found a camouflage jacket and pants in his room—the same clothes that she
described him wearing that day. This kind of garb was not that common in 1982.
Any defense attorney would struggle with that one, except to say that it’s not
against the law to own this outfit, and it doesn’t put the teen on the corner
of Grayson Drive and Fox Road when this attack went down—except it really does,
doesn’t it? It’s just too much of a coincidence.
His getup,
however unconventional, didn’t raise alarm bells with Rosemary at first. “I
guess I may have found his clothing odd,” she said. “I guess maybe I considered
it a military outfit when I first saw him. But then after he did what he did, I
realized he was just trying to hide himself in the woods.” Fortunately, she was
wearing a very noticeable deep red-maroon sweater with jeans. “I’m guessing
that color stood out in the woods, especially in November with barely any
leaves on the trees.”
She is thankful
that was the case because two motorists noticed him pinning her down and they
gave chase—to no avail, but at least they stopped the assault.
Aside from her
description of his appearance and outfit, the other damning evidence was his
panic when he saw Rosemary and the detective in school. This is not the normal
reaction of an innocent person—a look of recognition and then a sprint to the
door.
* * * * * * *
At times I feel
conflicted about prying all this unpleasantness open when everyone else had put
it away a long time ago. Am I being selfish? Irresponsible? Even damaging? What
if Rosemary made a misidentification? And, after all, my linking two vicious assaults
on Fox Road in 1982 to the unsolved murder of 15-year-old Tammy Lynds (pictured
below) across the street 12 years later is purely an exercise in speculation.
It’s not even enough to build a theory on, let alone a police inquiry.
But Rosemary assures me that it’s not overwhelming for her to share her 1982 ordeal. She is no longer the intimidated girl of 14 and can now tell her story matter-of factly, and she believes the attack’s possible tie to Tammy’s slaying is worth at least a look. She can’t change history, but she if she can help move the wheels of justice forward, she will continue to do what she can. “It is what it is,” she said, “but I truly want her murder solved and the person caught.”
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