Category Archives: Crime reporting

Prostitution in the capital city

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This piece is based on my first police ride-along on a prostitution detail. What an eye-opener it was.

Police use new approach to root out prostitution / Often-ignored problem fought with stings, outreach
June 15, 2003

He had a proposition for the pony-tailed woman in jean shorts and a T-shirt who’d been standing on the corner of Eighth and Enterprise streets Tuesday night.

He could drum up work for her if she agreed to give him $10 from every trick.

“What if I only make $10?” she asked, making eye contact with men who drove slowly past, several of whom circled back.

He’d let her keep it, he said, boasting that he’s good to all his girls.

A customer pulled up to the corner then, and she jumped in his car, promising she’d return in 30 minutes with $10 for him.

The alleged pimp – a 24-year-old man wearing a hockey-style jersey – strolled to a picnic table in the park nearby, lit a cigarette and waited.

Little did he know, the woman wasn’t a hooker at all. She was a decoy working undercover on a prostitution sting with a team of Springfield police officers. Her “customer” actually was another undercover officer.

Police, armed with two-way radios and binoculars, had watched the conversation take place. While the decoy and her “customer” waited a few blocks away, officers broke out law books to look up definitions for pimping and pandering. Pimping arrests are rare, they said, and they wanted to make sure this one held up.

Thirty minutes later, the woman returned and handed the man a $10 bill. In seconds, five marked Springfield police cars swooped in and surrounded him.

Robert D. Brown of the 1500 block of East Brown Street was taken to jail. Police said they also found drug paraphernalia in his possession.

“You’ve really got to be an actor to do this,” police Sgt. Bill Neale noted after congratulating the decoy and other officers on a job well-done. He oversees many of the highly organized, and potentially dangerous, prostitution stings, which rely on officers to volunteer as decoys.

“It takes a special kind of person to get out there and do this. We want to have fun, but you have to stay sharp. You have to keep your wits about you,” Neale said.

Prostitution, primarily a drug-driven crime, is a nuisance that has ripple effects throughout the community, according to local police and social workers.

But it’s a problem that largely is “ignored and forgotten,” according to Jody Clark, an outreach coordinator with PORA (Positive Options, Referrals and Alternatives), which helps women who have a history of prostitution and exploitation by providing a safe residence for them, treatment programs, counseling, outreach, education and referrals.

“Not only do we see their lifestyles, we see the addictions that pull them into the lifestyles,” Clark said. “I’d say almost 100 percent of our women and men who are prostitutes are addicted to drugs, and most of the time it’s crack. Addiction is very powerful.”

Springfield police have adopted a new approach to combating the prostitution problem. It includes a combination of stings, which tend to have a highly visible yet temporary effect; neighborhood involvement; cooperation with PORA; and police interviews with arrested hookers to glean such information as where they live and work, where they turn tricks, why they prostitute, whether they’ve been arrested before and who they associate with.

“With prostitutes, you arrest them tonight and they’re back on the streets tomorrow. They’re not doing it for fun; they’re doing it out of necessity,” said assistant police chief Bill Pittman.

“We’re trying to deal with the whole problem instead of just the symptoms. We’re looking at these women and saying, ‘Why are they doing this here?’ In Springfield, it’s most likely because it’s easy to get the money – and significant amounts of money in some cases – to support a pretty serious drug problem.”

Police have scheduled 10 stings from May through August. Two already have taken place, including the one Tuesday night that netted five arrests. The other, May 29, resulted in four arrests. Charges typically range from prostitution and soliciting a sex act to pimping and drug offenses.

Pittman said the department has a list of about 40 known prostitutes, a quarter of whom are working at any given time.

Neighborhoods in which prostitutes are most active, according to police, are those along the North and South Grand avenue corridors; the area around Iles Park, which is not far from South Grand; Enterprise Street around Eighth and Ninth streets; and parts of an area known as Old Aristocracy Hill, a neighborhood bounded by Second and Ninth streets and Capitol and South Grand avenues.

“We see the worst of the worst,” said one resident of the southern part of Old Aristocracy Hill. The woman asked that her name not be used for fear of retribution by several pimps who live and work nearby. The pimps regularly try to intimidate and threaten residents by following them, banging on their doors and invading their homes, she said.

“We’re very, very frightened of them. They know who you are, what you drive and when you leave. They’re very terrifying,” she said.

“The danger with prostitution really is the pimps and the drugs. We get used condoms and used needles on our properties. It’s not nice when you try to come home in the evening and the only entrance to your driveway is blocked because a trick is being turned,” she said.

Prostitutes often walk the streets in the broad daylight, sometimes starting about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and continuing through the night, she said, though the activity tapers off in the winter.

“There have been times when we’ve had to call police up to 20 times a night. One night I saw seven girls out working. Isn’t that amazing? They know how to walk down the street and not look like they’re prostitutes, and they know who to look for, and they have hiding spots where they go when the police arrive.”

The woman added that people cruising for prostitutes are a nuisance, too.

“A huge problem is that these girls are very popular. They’re off the street as much as they’re on the street. They come and go and come and go. When you come through here and don’t see one, it’s probably because they’re working. Wait 15 minutes and they’ll be back,” she said.

Crack cocaine overwhelmingly is the drug of choice of prostitutes. Officials told of a woman who lives 30 miles away, drives to Springfield once a week and turns enough tricks to afford a week’s supply of crack.

Police said highly addictive methamphetamine also is showing up more in the city now, and some prostitutes are beginning to use it.

Referrals to PORA, which can help prostitutes get drug treatment and other assistance, is a key to the police department’s approach.

“We know these gals aren’t going to go away forever. We don’t care about what PORA has on these girls. But we want to make sure they have what we have,” Pittman said, noting that PORA is better equipped than the police to deal with prostitutes’ addictions, depression or other issues that can cause an arrest to become a crisis situation.

Clark of PORA agreed. She spends most of her time distributing condoms to prostitutes, teaching them about HIV and talking to them at shelters, in bars, on the streets and in jail.

She said most prostitutes have problems besides addiction – grief and childhood issues, sexual abuse, homelessness, the loss of children due to their lifestyles, legal problems and mental illness.

All those issues make prostitution a problem that affects the entire community, she said.

“People have to know this is taking place. … We know we have a homeless problem, we have people who are starving, we have a drug problem, and we do have a prostitution problem. We see it every single day,” she said.

Penalties for prostitution vary, according to Mark Silberman with the Sangamon County state’s attorney’s office. It is a misdemeanor, but multiple prior charges can cause it to be upgraded to a felony.

The misdemeanor is punishable by up to a day less than a year in jail.

The law requires that people arrested for prostitution be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The state’s attorney’s office also requires they go through a drug and alcohol evaluation.

The penalty for the felony charge is one to three years in prison, with the possibility of probation or conditional discharge. Silberman said the state’s attorney’s office actively seeks to prosecute people arrested for prostitution, but other officials said they believe it’s rare to find anyone serving time for the offense.

For now, residents such as the one on Old Aristocracy Hill say they’ll continue to call police whenever they see prostitution activity in their neighborhoods.

But, the woman said, are the laws strong enough to have any effect?

“I think (the police details) are great, and they work that night, but the girls come right back the next night. And there is very little the police can do because of the way the laws are written,” she said.

“Proving prostitution is darned near impossible, and proving pimping and solicitation is darned near impossible. There’s not a lot of point in it. I think the police department does what it can, but it has to be terribly frustrating to do a job where you’re basically set up to fail by virtue of the way the laws are written.”

Cabdriver’s throat slashed

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Richard Cartwright was tougher than I would have been in the same situation. Of course, I’ve discovered over the years that most cabdrivers are, indeed, a tough breed. A robber slashed Cartwright’s throat with a serrated steak knife during a struggle, leaving a large scar.

I was able to track down and speak with Cartwright after the incident. The result was this piece:

Cabdriver recovering from stab wounds / Throat slashed during struggle with robber
Thursday, March 28, 2002

Driving a cab can be dangerous, and Richard Cartwright has the wounds to prove it.

Cartwright, 40, was robbed and slashed across the throat with a serrated steak knife about 4:30 a.m. last Thursday.

The veteran cabdriver now has numerous stitches on the left side of his neck and on his right hand. Though he has returned to work, he finds himself coping with a new wariness of the people to whom he gives rides each night.

“It’s scary. I get real edgy,” said Cartwright, who works for Lincoln Yellow Cab, often pulling a 12-hour shift from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. “I’m just real shook up. It’s going to take a while to get over it.”

The ordeal began when Cartwright was dispatched to Denny’s, 2599 Wabash Ave., to pick up a man who allegedly could not speak English. A woman who works at the restaurant called the cab company on the man’s behalf, saying he needed to go to Glenwood and South Grand avenues.

The man got into Cartwright’s cab and directed him to various destinations. Cartwright said the man couldn’t seem to make up his mind and eventually had Cartwright drive him to the 3000 block of South State Street.

There, the man reached up around Cartwright and cut his throat with the steak knife. Authorities said the man probably got the knife at Denny’s. The cut went from Cartwright’s left ear to beneath his jaw, narrowly missing his jugular vein.

Cartwright struggled with the assailant and somehow wound up being pulled into the backseat, he said. He grabbed for the knife and was cut on the right hand.

The man reached into Cartwright’s jacket pocket and stole his money, as well as the keys from the ignition.

The robbery didn’t bother Cartwright so much as the coldness of the attacker, who wouldn’t even leave the cab keys behind so the bleeding man could drive himself to the hospital.

“He got out and just stood there for some reason. I don’t know if he was trying to terrify me or what,” Cartwright said. “I begged him for the keys. He just casually walked away.”

The whole thing took less than three minutes. After the attacker left, Cartwright was able to contact the cab dispatcher, who then called 911.

The cut on his neck is about six inches long, and the stitches already have been removed. His right hand has several wounds, including a gash that runs approximately across the middle knuckle of all four of his fingers and a deep cut on his palm.

“I was afraid he was going to cut my throat. That’s why I grabbed the knife,” he said. “I knew it was a robbery, but he couldn’t speak English. He couldn’t even say give me your money. He was pretty strong, but somehow I got away from him.”

There is a chance that damage was done to the nerves in Cartwright’s hand and neck. If that is the case, he will require further surgery. Cartwright, who is divorced and has five children under the age of 14, does not have health insurance.

Sangamon County chief deputy Tony Sacco said the department’s investigation of the incident continues. The suspect was described as Hispanic, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, 145 to 150 pounds, with short black hair. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeve blue shirt.

The attack has angered other local cabdrivers, who refer to Cartwright as family, and the owner of Lincoln Yellow Cab is trying to come up with new ways to protect them, particularly since the robber apparently rode in two other cabs that night prior to the attack.

“Anything I can do to protect the drivers, I’m going to do it,” said Vick Antonacci, who’s been in the cab business for 45 years. “It worries me very much. I’m very concerned about the drivers’ welfare out there.”

Antonacci said he is working to design a wire mesh cage that would fit around the driver’s seat in cabs and protect them from knife attacks. Most of the Lincoln Yellow cabs have been fitted with bullet-proof, Plexiglass shields that separate the front and back seats.

A few of the cabs do not have the shield, Antonacci said, because they prevent the driver’s seat from being reclined or pushed back, causing discomfort for larger drivers.

The cab Cartwright was driving the night of the attack was a van and it did not have a shield.

Double-murder/suicide in Carlinville

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This is one of the first major crime stories I wrote. I will never forget seeing from Interstate 55 the black smoke curling into the sky from the home George Setzekorn set on fire 10 minutes after the school bus dropped off his 14-year-old daughter there.

3 die in Carlinville / Double murder, suicide suspected; house set afire
Wednesday, April 24, 2002

CARLINVILLE – George Setzekorn wanted his ex-wife back and resented her parents for allowing her to live with them, authorities said, speculating that is what prompted the man to set the couple’s house on fire, shoot and kill his ex-sister-in-law and then kill himself with the same gun Tuesday afternoon.

Dead are Setzekorn, 53, of Centralia, who also goes by the name George Young; his former sister-in-law, Janie Goesmann, 45; and a third person found in the basement of the burning home of Neal and Margaret House. That body was believed to be that of Setzekorn’s 14-year-old daughter, Skylar Young.

Skylar was seen getting off the school bus at the House residence about 10 minutes before the fire was reported.

Setzekorn’s ex-wife, Patricia Young, was not injured. The parents of Goesmann and Young, Neal, 78, and Margaret, 74, House were treated for smoke inhalation and released.

The Houses were taken to Carlinville Area Hospital, where they were treated for smoke inhalation. Stone said Goesmann’s husband and three children were not home at the time of the shooting.

The ordeal began at 3:38 p.m., when authorities received a report of a fire at the House residence, which is on Illinois 108 just east of Carlinville.

According to Carlinville Police Chief Steven Stone, an ambulance responding to the fire was waiting to make a turn near Boente’s Shell at Center and South streets when rescue personnel heard gun shots.

They searched the area and found Goesmann lying in the back yard of a house at 115 S. Center St. She had been shot in the head.

About that time, Setzekorn was seen running toward his car, which was parked near the Shell station. He got into it, pointed a gun at his head and shot himself, Stone said.

Goesmann and Setzekorn were taken to Carlinville Area Hospital about 4 p.m., where they died in the emergency room, a hospital official said.

Stone said evidence led authorities to believe Setzekorn set the House residence on fire. Patricia Young was living with her parents and was unharmed Tuesday. Stone was unsure how many children she had had with Setzekorn, but a family portrait showed them with two children.

“We have reason to believe this shooter had set the fire because he’d made threats before to cause trouble for Janie’s folks,” he said, adding that an order of protection had been filed to keep Setzekorn from his former family.

Setzekorn had a prior criminal record: Stone said he shot and killed another ex-wife, in northern Illinois about 15 years ago.

“It makes me wonder why he was out walking around,” Stone said.

Stone was unsure how long Setzekorn and Young had been divorced.

“I know it was since at least ’97 because that’s when it first came to our attention that he was a problem,” he said. “From what I understand, he wanted her back, and the family was helping her out, and he didn’t like that. He wanted her to be desperate and come back to him.”

Despite the order of protection being in place, Stone said the police had no record of Setzekorn causing trouble – beyond threats – prior to Tuesday.

“He never had a violation that we could hang our hat on,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen the man. I’ve only seen his picture.”

Goesmann was a registered nurse at Carlinville Area Hospital, where she worked primarily in the emergency room, said Art Knippel, the hospital’s director of administrative services.

Knippel was not sure what year Goesmann started working at the hospital but said she’d worked there for several years and had many friends.

It was the same emergency room where Goesmann was pronounced dead Tuesday.

Mayor Brad Demuzio, 37, cannot remember a murder happening in Carlinville since he was a child. The community was celebrated as a great place to live in the 1993 book “The 100 Best Small Towns in America” by Norm Crampton.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Demuzio said after hearing the news of the shootings.

A clerk who was working Tuesday night in Boente’s Shell station across the street from Janie Goesmann’s house said customers were coming in and talking about the shootings.

The clerk, who started work at 4 p.m., said he did not witness the shootings but had heard a passerby’s report of a man with a gunshot wound being pulled from a car. The car was on the street between the house and the Shell station on the corner of Center and South streets.

A patron of Rookie’s Tavern on the square, who asked to not be identified, said, “It’s a shock.”

“We’re a very small community. Everybody here is considered very close,” he said. “It touches everybody when this kind of thing happens. Everybody feels sorrow for the family. We wish them all well.”

Body found in refrigerator

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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, 2002

A 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, 2002

When 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, 2002

A 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.

Van’s IGA destroyed by fire

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I was working the night shift Aug. 23, 2001, and was on my way to a meeting in Enos Park when I heard some police scanner traffic about a fire on South Grand. Something about the tone of the dispatcher’s voice prompted me to head to South Grand to see what was going on.

As I got closer to South Grand, I began to see black smoke in the sky. By the time I parked and walked toward the Van’s IGA, a longtime neighborhood grocery store, large flames were shooting from the windows and firefighters were everywhere.

Photographer Kristen Schmid-Schurter and I stayed at the scene several hours and documented what was happening as firefighters battled the blaze. Store employees and neighbors could not believe what they were seeing.

Van’s IGA destroyed by fire / East side loses neighborhood grocery store
Friday, Aug. 24, 2001

Hundreds of Springfield residents watched in disbelief Thursday evening as a treasured neighborhood grocery store went up in flames.

Van’s IGA at 1230 South Grand Ave. E. was destroyed in the blaze, which began about 6:15 p.m. while eight to 10 employees and customers were inside.

All who were inside made it out of the building unhurt, but one Springfield firefighter was taken to St. John’s Hospital with minor injuries he suffered while battling the fire.

The fire apparently started in the back part of the roughly 20,000-square-foot building, according to Springfield Fire Department spokesman Greg Bestudik. Investigators were at the scene late Thursday, trying to determine the exact cause of the fire.

Anthony Milford, 15, a stock clerk who worked at the store about two months, was in the building when the fire began. He said he had swept to the back of one aisle and was shaking out his dust mop when he saw smoke coming through some vents above the meat counter.

“I dropped the mop and told Jean (Milford’s boss),” he said. “She threw me the keys and said, ‘Lock the front door.’ Then we all just ran out.”

A customer who was in the store when the fire began, who asked that his name not be used, said his aunt had sent him to Van’s shortly after 6 p.m. for soda, Kool Aid and some other items. He said he didn’t notice smoke in the building while he shopped for about 10 minutes.

“I was in there paying for the stuff,” the customer said. “Then a checker told me to get out of the store. I saw a fire. I dropped everything and took off. I even left my $20 bill on the counter.”

The store’s owner, Gary G. Van Hise of Riverton, was not at the scene when the fire began, but he arrived soon after. He watched helplessly from the southeast side of the property as firefighters tried to bring the blaze under control.

Van Hise, who has owned the store for seven years, said he was relieved everybody got out safely.

“It’s just an old building,” he said, declining to speculate on what may have started the fire.

When firefighters first arrived, smoke was billowing out the rear of the building. Battalion Chief Tom Faulkner said the first firefighters to arrive tried to battle the fire from inside the building for about 20 minutes.

“It erupted into a big ball of flames,” he said. Because of the heat and the threat of the roof falling in, firefighters worked from the outside.

Bestudik, who also was fighting the fire, said large ventilation fans on the roof fanned the flames.

“We tried to make entry. It was just way too hot,” he said. “This fire had a way far advanced head start on us.”

Adding to the challenge was a lack of water pressure coming from nearby hydrants. City Water Light and Power workers were able to boost the pressure in the area for firefighters, which Bestudik said helped a lot.

“That’s just the way it is with older mains,” he said. “We can only get so much water out of the pipe.”

The fire burned strong for three hours. It took firefighters about an hour and a half to get the blaze under control.

Large flames shot through the roof, and a series of explosions caused many bystanders to gasp and take several steps back from where they had been standing.

Two aerial trucks were at the scene, as well as six engines and other vehicles. Firefighters poured water into the building through the roof and in through a rear door.

The front of the building was built of brick. Two additions appear to have been built onto the structure, one of which was made of cinderblock and the other of wood. All the windows of the structure were broken out. Several plastic signs on the front of the building were damaged from the heat.

An orange glow inside the structure could be seen through the smoke that billowed out from the roof and exterior doors, windows and vents of the building.

About 30 firefighters were on the scene, and Bestudik said many would stay until this morning to keep an eye on the fire, which gutted the building and destroyed on all its contents.

Two firefighters had minor injuries, Faulkner said. Jay Lovelace, 44, was one of the first on the scene, and he injured his leg while laying a hose line out. He was taken to St. John’s Hospital and was treated and released. He later returned to the scene of the fire and was walking on crutches.

Bill Kruger, 41, pulled a muscle while he was inside the building fighting the fire. He did not immediately seek medical attention, Faulkner said.

Because of the intensity and duration of the fire, a five-person team from the American Red Cross arrived at the scene about 9 p.m. to provide water and snacks for firefighters. The workers also helped evacuate families from three houses in the 1400 block of Loveland Avenue whose houses either abutted or were very close to Van’s.

Clarence Moore, who lives in one of the evacuated houses, said his mother called him from work to tell him the store was on fire and that he should get his belongings out of the house.

The rear of Moore’s house shares a wall with the grocery building. He ran inside to bring out a suitcase full of clothing and a bag of golf clubs. He said he was not sure if the wall his house shares with the store is a firewall.

“My cousin, who’s a firefighter, told me it wasn’t hot,” he said. “There was a lot of smoke inside when I went in. By the third trip in, there really was not that much smoke. The firefighters were concerned about our house catching on fire. They turned their water hoses and concentrated on the back of our house.”

Moore’s grandmother, Blanche Taborn, lives next door and also was evacuated.

Mary Ogle with the Red Cross said Taborn was with her relatives nearby.

“We worked with her to make sure she had her medication with her, and she did,” Ogle said. “We’re working with the other two families that are still there. Right now we’re taking care of their emergency needs – making sure they have shelter, food vouchers for tomorrow and toiletries to get them through the night.”

None of the nearby structures was damaged, firefighters said.

Traffic was blocked much of Thursday night on South Grand from 11th Street to 15th Street. Police also blocked off parts of Brown and Pine streets and Loveland Avenue.

Bystanders said they could not believe the store, which had stood since about 1915 and been operated as Castor’s Supermarket, Kent’s IGA and Mr. B’s IGA, was destroyed.

“I was headed over here to get something to eat for supper,” a woman said. “I said, ‘Oh man! Mr. B’s is on fire!’ I just can’t believe it.”

Blaze guts Springfield grocery / Neighbors lose more than just a food store: ‘They were family’

Some loyal customers of Van’s IGA on South Grand Avenue cried as they watched a fire roll through the grocery store Thursday night.

Some approached store owner Gary Van Hise to offer words of support.

Others simply stared in disbelief as firefighters struggled to bring the blaze under control.

Rebecca Houston and her 9-year-old daughter, Steffany, watched from behind a line of police tape as thick, black smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the air.

“I’ve been coming here for 30 years. I’ve lived in this neighborhood since the store was Castor’s,” she said. “Anytime you needed anything, you could go to the IGA.”

Van’s IGA was one of Springfield’s few remaining neighborhood grocery stores. The building was gutted in the fire, and VanHise said he was unsure whether he would rebuild.

The building has a long history in Springfield and changed ownership numerous times.

The store originally opened May 15, 1915, as Castor’s Grocery Store. Owned by William F. Castor, the store was operated by three generations of the Castor family until it was sold in 1972 to Bob Kent. The store became Kent’s IGA.

From 1977 until 1994, the store was owned by Art Bennett, who changed the name to Mr. B’s. Van Hise then bought the business and changed the name to Van’s IGA.

With Van’s IGA gone, many residents of this east-central part of Springfield find themselves without convenient access to a grocery store. Many of Van’s customers do not have vehicles, and others who are older do not like to fight the crowds and traffic at Springfield’s larger grocery stores.

Besides selling affordable produce, meat, penny candy and other merchandise, the store also cashed payroll checks, took utility payments and made grocery deliveries to Springfield residents.

The store employed as many as 20 to 25 people.

Houston said the fire left a void that will be felt throughout the community.

“It’s going to mean a lot of people are going to Shop ‘n Save or Save-A-Lot, which is a great distance from here,” Houston said. “A lot of people will have to get cabs to get to the store. It’s a shame. This is widespread devastation here, especially for this neighborhood.”

Marqueta Stewart lives in the Van’s neighborhood also. Her sister works at the store and was inside working when the fire started. She and the other employees and customers got out of the store uninjured.

Stewart said she was at home and realized something was wrong when she heard fire truck sirens. She looked out her back door, saw the lights and went to see what was wrong.

Stewart said she often stopped in at the store in the morning on her way to work. “I always grab chips or a snack and say hi to everybody. They were like a family.”

Wiping tears from her eyes, Stewart said people kept asking her why she was crying.

“I just can’t believe it’s gone,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll probably get up and say, ‘I gotta run over to the IGA’ without even thinking.”