Five years later

By David Heinzmann

First of all, my apologies. I was supposed to post a couple days ago but I’m still getting used to this new schedule and I’ve been traveling around a bit—a family wedding in Peoria over the weekend, and now I’m sitting on the banks of the Pelican River near Rhinelander, Wisconsin, drinking the brown liquor, smoking cigars and staring into the embers of a fire while the intoxicating smell of DEET provides some comfort against the mosquitoes swarming in the moonlight.

So I’m a little out of touch with the news and this will be a bit of a holiday post.

If you’ve been following the Blagojevich trial closely, you may have already treated yourself to the audio from the wiretaps—they’re well worth it. If not, you really should spend some times playing around here.


Meanwhile, a couple of years ago my colleague Steve Mills and I wrote about a Lake County murder case in which DNA testing appeared to clear a father with a criminal past who was charged with murdering his 8-year-old daughter and her friend on Mothers Day 2005. When we wrote the story, Lake County prosecutors dismissed the finding, saying that semen found on the girl could have come from her playing in the woods in a spot where unknown people may have had sex. Lawyers for the accused father, Jerry Hobbs, said that was crazy, but the man has remained in jail for another two years awaiting trial.

Well, the source of the semen is no longer unknown. It matched a Marine who was a friend of the family of the second girl murdered. The Marine, is being held in Virgina currently on unrelated abduction charges. Lake County prosecutors still aren’t saying much, other than that the investigation is finally being reopened—years after they learned that DNA didn’t match Hobbs.


This is an extraordinary case, especially coming so close on the heels of an arrest in the eerily similar Riley Fox case down in Will County.

The Mayhem Roundup

By David Heinzmann

I was sitting at the Tribune’s city desk the other day with my boss, working on a story I was writing, when the editor next to us hung up the phone and said, more or less, you’re not going to believe this.

Mayor Daley just told a reporter he was going to stick a gun up a reporter’s "butt" and pull the trigger. And it’s on tape.

City Hall reporters apparently huddled around their tape recorders for several minutes after the mayor’s press conference listening over and over again in a bit of disbelief. Did he really say that? Is it really possible?

So then Saturday afternoon a cop called me as I was driving home from the Niles library’s The Big Read event (where I’d appeared with fellow Outfitters Libby Hellman and Newsman Gruley, as well as friends of the Outfit, Sam Reaves, Bob Goldsborough and Luisa Buehler). You should ask whether he committed a crime, the cop said.

Certain forms of intimidation are against the law, after all, and when a person of such authority is waving a gun in the air, well…

Except it was a press conference and everybody in the room has a strong presumption the gun was unloaded and, um, it was Daley.

Anyway, this is a measure of how much the cops in this city can’t stand the mayor of this city. What’s worse, the Daley sideshow happened on the day after an off-duty Chicago police officer was murdered when four knuckleheads tried to rob him of his motorcycle at gunpoint in front of his father’s house and across the street from the park the cop has pledged to rid of gang violence. Cops believed Daley was trying to make political hay out of a police officer's death in his effort to see a gun ban in the city upheld.

It’s an absolutely awful story told amazingly here by my colleague, Annie Sweenie. By coincidence she had interviewed Thomas Wortham IV a week before about his efforts to take back Cole Park from the gangbangers encroaching from different neighborhoods.

One of the strange realities of newspaper journalism is that sometimes we do our best work writing about the most tragic circumstances.

At this point, I’m reminded of Laura’s post a few days ago about what a hell of a summer it’s going to be with all these trials—Burge (the police torturer), Blago (our most recent indicted governor) and Drew Peterson (our collective offering to the Tabloid TV gods)—unfolding.

They’re picking the Burge jury starting today and USA vs. Blagojevich is right around the corner.

When I used to work Sundays in the newsroom I’d invariably get assigned to write the “mayhem roundup,” which was a shortish story combining all of the shootings and crime that we couldn't fit into the paper on their own into one tidy story. The mayhem story was a reflection of the fact that there was just too much death and destruction in the city day after day to write a story about each tragedy.

This summer is really shaping up into a Mount Olympus of mayhem roundups. There’s just too much to pay attention to. All the trials Laura mentioned, plus a murder rate creeping back up – seems like there’s a car found with three bound, gagged and executed bodies in it every other day—plus the daily dramas of the Daley Show, plus a bunch of juicy political races, including U.S Senate and governor. (Hey, everybody, Scott Lee Cohen is back! Running for guv, and this time he’s got former Gangster Disciples honcho “Wallace Gator” Bradley on his side!)

It’s like a stimulus package for the news business. So buy a newspaper, grab a cup of coffee and a donut, and read all about it.

One postscript: last time, I blogged about heading off on my annual fishing trip in northern Wisconsin. Praise the Maker, I got no speeding tickets this time. The actual fishing was godawful, but no matter, I gained five pounds in beer and venison weight, and thoroughly enjoyed both books on tape that I checked out of the library. Michael Connelly’s The Closers on the way up, and then le Carre’s Mission Song on the way back. Actually, I’m not finished with the second one, so I’m still driving around town listening to it here and there. The narration by an actor named David Oyelowo, is really out of this world.

Is It the [bleeping] Language that Increases our Indignation Toward that [bleeping] Rod Blagojevich?

by Barbara D'Amato



Lawrence Velvel, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law and Professor of Law, wrote an interesting blog recently about our governor. It also has a bit to do with Chicagoisms and by extension Chicago fiction writing.

Quoting Professor Velvel:

‘I suggest that Fitzgerald and the FBI agents were really outraged by the language they heard (just as a lot of people, even Republicans, were outraged by the language they heard Nixon use on the Watergate tapes). Bleep this and bleep that obviously means "fuck this" and "fuck that." Around the country, most people don't punctuate every other sentence with fuck this, fuck that, fuck him, he's a fuckin' asshole, etc., etc. Nor do they like it when they hear people talk like that. But in Chicago that is how a lot of people regularly talk. (Not everyone in Chicago speaks like Obama, you know.) Many of us who grew up there learned to talk like that, and, when we've lived elsewhere, have learned that people elsewhere dislike and won't listen to the views (no matter how intelligent) of someone who speaks in a way that is par for the course in Chicago. (You may remember that people used to react badly to a southern accent (which they considered a sign of stupidity) or to a Brooklyn accent or speech. The same is true of the Chicago style of speaking that I am discussing here.)

‘That this is one typical Chicago style of speech is only the more clear because it is well recognized that, as has sometimes been discussed here, some very famous Chicago writers combine very bad language, language from the streets of Chicago, with their otherwise high falutin' writing. Think Mamet. Think Terkel. Think Bellow.

‘One might say, "Well, Fitzgerald grew up as a poor kid in New York City. The language there is pretty bad, so he should be used to it." Here is one writer who begs to differ, and I know others who differ also. Though rough, the typical language of New York is not as rough as the language of Chicago. As someone knowledgeable about the speech pattern in both cities recently said to me, "Chicago is cruder." Yes it is. Much cruder as a general matter, and the crudeness often extends to the highly educated. It is one Chicago style. (It would be interesting, incidentally, to see a comparison by professional linguists of the styles of speech in Chicago and New York.)

‘(I note that Fitzgerald has lived in Chicago for a few years, so perhaps one could argue he should be prepared for or inured to the Chicago style. But on the other hand, there are those who think he is prissy and straight arrowish, and could never become used to such talk.)

‘So I think that even the ex New Yorker, Fitzgerald, was not prepared for the kind of language that was heard on the tapes (just as people weren't prepared for Nixon on tape). And I cannot help thinking that, in addition to not wanting the Senate seat to be sold before they acted, the Federal officials acted in major part because they were taken aback by the kind of language used.

‘You know, it might behoove Blagojevich not only to put on the stand a parade of witnesses who are knowledgeable about what has gone on in politics for scores of years in this country, but also linguistic experts who are familiar with and knowledgeable about the style of Chicago speech typified in the tapes of Blagojevich and, to a lesser extent, present in the works of some of the great Chicago writers. And maybe Blagojevich's counsel should seek to cross examine Fitzgerald himself and some of his staff about their reactions to Blagojevich's style of speech and what effect this had on them. But wouldn't it be a hoot if a Chicago federal trial judge were to deny efforts by Blagojevich to introduce evidence of the "widespreadness" in Chicago of Blagojevich's style of speech, and to deny examination of Fitzgerald and company by Blagojevich's lawyers, with the ruling of denial being encapsulated in a two word Chicagoesque ruling, "Fuck that." What, you say that can't happen? Well, I can dream, can't I?’


This ends the Velvel quotation.

I think that part of people’s indignation at Nixon’s or Blagojevich’s use of bleepable words is outrage at what they see as hypocrisy. These people campaign as if they are holier than the rest of us. The tapes sound far less than holy.

All of this is not to minimize Blagojevich’s hideous behavior. I mean, threatening to take funds away from Children’s Hospital if he isn’t paid off? The Blagojegrinch!

But what do you think of this view of Chicago talk? Hey! Whaddaya think? I’m bleeping talkina you!