The story of Paulleen Godoy, a homeless prostitute with no family locally, will always stick with me.
Paulleen was murdered and her body stashed in a nonfunctioning refrigerator on the city’s near west side in August 2002. It took local authorities weeks to track down her next of kin, a grandmother who lived in Washington state and could not come to Springfield to retrieve Godoy’s ashes or pay for a funeral.
Through Paulleen’s story I met a local woman named Margaret Best, a somewhat eccentric person who often took pity on those who live on the fringe of society. Margie quietly offered to pay for the funeral expenses to give Paulleen a proper funeral and burial. I went to the funeral, where several of Paulleen’s friends and acquaintances — prostitutes, homeless people and social service workers — showed up to pay their respects. There were flowers, a minister and a burial services for Paulleen’s ashes, thanks to Margie.
Margie lived alone, never married and had no children. She stepped forward an untold number of times with similar offers of money to pay for a funeral or at least make sure a lonely person had flowers at their funeral.
Margie died on Jan. 22, 2009. There were more people at Paulleen’s funeral than there were at Margie’s. I think she would have wanted it that way.
These are the stories I wrote about Paulleen’s murder:
Body found in refrigerator / Call brings police to garage on West Washington Street
Monday, Aug. 19, 2002A badly decomposed body was found early Sunday inside a refrigerator in a West Washington Street garage, and authorities said the person might have been dead a month or more.
Authorities said the gender, race and approximate age of the person could not be determined because of the advanced decomposition. It also could not be determined whether there were wounds to the body.
Sangamon County Sheriff Neil Williamson said deputies received a call that there was a dead body in a refrigerator in a garage behind an apartment house at 814 W. Washington St. Deputies who went to the address at approximately 6 a.m. found the remains and alerted the Springfield Police Department.
Williamson said the two agencies are conducting a joint investigation of the death. Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone said an autopsy was scheduled for today.
Williamson said the person apparently had been dead for some time.
“It appeared the body may have been there perhaps a month or so. It’s hard to say,” he said. “We have a lot more questions than we have answers right now. We’re moving backward in the investigation to try to backtrack to the people we need to talk to.”
It was not clear whether the body had been in the refrigerator much of the time or was placed there recently. Detectives were searching Sunday afternoon for a woman who was wanted for questioning in connection with the investigation.
The garage in which the body was found is on the east side of an alley that runs between Glenwood and State streets. Deputies taped off an area of driveway and overgrown yard behind the multi-unit apartment house.
There is another house just south of the apartment complex that has a front entry on the alley. The property where the body was found also is behind several homes on Glenwood Street.
A large, blue trash receptacle was inside the taped-off area. On Sunday, a parked patrol officer was guarding the crime scene.
A man who lives in an apartment building west of where the body was found said he first noticed police in the neighborhood around 7 a.m. when he was getting ready for church, but he said had no idea why they were there.
“I’ve been smelling something for a while, but I thought it was garbage. Obviously, I was wrong,” the neighbor said, adding that he did not know who owns the property where the body was found or who lives there.
“It’s a pretty good neighborhood,” the man said. “At least, that’s what I thought.”
No one answered the door at any of the apartments at 814 W. Washington St.
Another resident who lives nearby on Glenwood Street said several homes in the area have been converted into apartments, causing the neighborhood to become more transient.
He said people often use the alley where the body was found to get through the neighborhood.
The man also said the residents of a house at the corner of Washington and Glenwood were evicted recently. A wet mattress and other belongings were heaped in a pile near the sidewalk in front of the house Sunday.
Families await word from missing relatives / Body found in refrigerator raised fears
Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2002When Linda Persinger read in the news two weeks ago that a badly decomposed body had been found inside a refrigerator on West Washington Street, she immediately feared it was that of her nephew, Duane Grant.
Grant turned 28 on Aug. 25. His family has not seen or heard from him since late November. Though he has an alcohol problem, according to his family, they say he has never wandered off for months at a time.
While the body in the refrigerator was not Grant’s, that has done little to allay his family’s worst fears.
“I thought, ‘That’s going to be my nephew. That’s going to be my nephew they pull out of that refrigerator,’” Persinger said, bursting into tears. “When you put something like that in the paper about somebody being found in a refrigerator, you don’t know what I went through. It was a relief when I found out it wasn’t Duane. I prayed to God that wasn’t my nephew.”
Persinger was not the only person who had fears about the body in the refrigerator, which turned out to be that of a Springfield woman named Paulleen Godoy. Authorities received numerous calls from people wondering if the body could have been that of a missing loved one.
As of last week, the Springfield Police Department had between 30 and 40 people on its missing persons list.
Missing persons remain on the list indefinitely until they are found or until someone calls police to say they’ve returned home.
“The number fluctuates daily as those who are missing come home and others are reported missing,” said police department spokesman Sgt. Kevin Keen.
The problem with reporting adults as missing, Keen said, is that adults are free to come and go as they please.
“We still treat every missing report as a valid and legitimate missing person. We actively pursue them,” he said. “We don’t list an adult as missing unless foul play is suspected or they have a diminished mental capacity.”
Police place more emphasis on looking for people who are considered “missing critical,” which includes children who have disappeared, people who might have met with foul play and those who are suicidal or who suffer from diminished mental capacity.
If police need to, they might ask television and radio stations to broadcast a description of the person. The police department also can make use of its “City Watch” system, which is a computer program that allows officers to call everyone in the area where the person was last seen.
For Persinger, the hope that police will find her nephew fades a little each day. She filed a missing persons report with police in February, but she hasn’t heard anything from authorities since then.
Police say there at least two outstanding warrants for Grant’s arrest, which could account for his disappearance. But Persinger said Grant never could stay away from his family for long and often came around for money.
“We still have his tax forms that he’s not come around to fill out. He would have gotten back a thousand bucks,” Persinger said.
In the meantime, she’s been checking homeless shelters and talking to people Grant knows. Most have been little help. In fact, she said, one person told her Grant is dead.
Grant is 5 feet 9 inches, 160 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. His last known address was the 200 block of Sangamon Avenue.
His family said they last saw him Nov. 30 at Big R, 2804 N. Dirksen Parkway. His sister gave him a ride to a cafe on North Grand Avenue, where he was supposed to have a job interview that day.
Funeral fund set up for victim / Body found in refrigerator one month ago
Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2002A fund has been set up for donations to pay for a funeral service, burial site and headstone for a Springfield woman whose remains were found in a refrigerator one month ago.
No family members have come forth to claim the now-cremated remains of Paulleen Godoy, a 31-year-old prostitute who police believe was murdered. Authorities have had difficulty locating Godoy’s grandmother, who was last known to live in Eugene, Ore., or her ex-husband and daughter, who are believed to live somewhere in the Southwest.
Donations can be made to the Paulleen Godoy Memorial Fund at any branch of Marine Bank.
“Really, the purpose is to get her in the ground and get her a headstone,” said Paul Carlson, a retired counselor who knew Godoy because she and other street people used to stop in at his former office on South Eighth Street seeking food, money and other types of assistance.
Services will be announced but tentatively are set for later this month. Kirlin-Egan and Butler Funeral Home will handle the arrangements, Carlson said.
“She thought she was such an insignificant person. She really believed that. It wasn’t part of her game,” Carlson said. “She just really thought of herself as a nonentity in this world.”
Authorities had to use an enhanced fingerprinting process to positively identify Godoy, whose badly decomposed body was found early Aug. 18 stuffed into a refrigerator in a garage behind an apartment house in the 800 block of West Washington Street.
Authorities have refused to say how she was killed.
Robert Reynolds, 35, of the 900 block of North Eighth Street remains jailed on $50,000 bond for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender. Police have not called Reynolds a suspect in the Godoy murder, but they have said they wanted to talk to him as part of their investigation.
Reynolds reportedly lived in the house in front of the litter-strewn garage where Godoy’s body was found.
Springfield police said Tuesday they have no developments to report regarding their investigation of the murder.
Carlson said that Godoy, whose street name was “Spooky” and was called Paula by those who knew her, arrived in Springfield in either 1995 or 1996 on a bus from Florida after she had gotten into some kind of trouble there. He first met her in 1997 when he found her sleeping in the back of a van that was parked behind his office on Eighth Street.
Carlson said prostitutes, who have been known to frequent that area, often stopped in at his office seeking food or other types of help.
“I always told them if it’s cold outside, you can come in and have a cup of coffee as long as you don’t disrupt anything going on inside,” he said, adding that Godoy, who was homeless, made his office into her base of operation as far as getting phone messages from family members and leaving important documents there for safekeeping.
He said Godoy sometimes talked about her personal life with his office workers, and she once mentioned that her mother died of a heroin overdose when Godoy was 13. She went to live with her grandmother, eventually took up with a man named Fernando Godoy and gave birth to a daughter named Monica. Godoy apparently had no contact with her biological father, though she did attempt to contact him once while she was living in Springfield, Carlson said.
Godoy’s daughter was believed to be about 13 in 1998 and lived with her father, who may be American Indian and living on a reservation. Carlson said a girl named Monica called his office once looking for Godoy and left a phone number with a 602 area code but couldn’t be reached after that.
Godoy’s drug of choice was cocaine, though she was known to use many types of illegal substances, Carlson said.
“In her heart, I think she really wanted out of where she was at. But the demon that is cocaine had her,” he said. “She was like a sweet 13-year-old kid. She was very needy. There were moments when you got to see through the veil and see the real person.”
Carlson said he last saw Godoy in August 2001, but she called him on the telephone about once a month after that. Then the phone calls stopped.
“Paula was always scamming somebody. ‘Can I borrow 10 bucks? I’ll pay you back tonight.’ Writing bad checks. That’s how she lived her life, literally day to day,” he said. “And she had an interesting sense of humor. When she was straight, she was very funny.”
Carlson said he believes Godoy deserves a proper burial.
“My wish for Paula is that she is at peace now because she was always struggling to survive,” he said.