Jena Schuch: ‘She always had a smile’
April26
Jena Schuch’s death at first was though to be an accident. That’s what her boyfriend told police. He claimed she mishandled a .12-gauge shotgun and killed herself. After a two-month investigation, Springfield police arrested Schuch’s boyfriend for murder.
Schuch, a 28-year-old mother of two, had only been living in Springfield for six months. I talked to her mom and friends to find out more about her and what her life in Springfield and back home in Michigan had been like.
‘She always had a smile’ / Boyfriend charged with Springfield woman’s murder
Nov. 9, 2003Jena Schuch came to Springfield in March hoping for a fresh start.
Eight months later, family and friends are mourning her death, shocked that her boyfriend, Phillip Peterson, is in Sangamon County jail charged with murdering the 28-year-old woman on Sept. 13.
Peterson has maintained Schuch’s death was an accident caused when she mishandled a shotgun inside the garage apartment they shared in the 1800 block of South Wirt Street. However, those who knew her said Schuch was a skilled hunter who learned how to handle a gun properly when she was 12 years old.
“I would really like to see him face to face and say, ‘Look me in the eye and tell me what happened.’ There’s just a part of me that wants to do that so bad,” said Schuch’s mother Sue Gustafson. “I have a lot of questions the more I stop and think about things. My mind keeps saying why would you do that? There is no [...] Read the rest of this entry »
$10,000 engagement ring left in cab
April26
Eric Culbertson and Krista Saputo were nice enough to tell me the story of how they went to Chicago for a romantic weekend, during which Culbertson was to pop the question to Krista. Trouble was, he accidentally lost the engagement ring — the $10,000 engagement ring — in a taxi.
Word of the fumbled proposal spread around the Windy City and eventually got back to Springfield. The Chicago Tribune and the Sharon Osbourne Show also found out about it. My editor asked me to find the couple and see if they would tell me their story.
‘I fumbled’ - fiance / $10,000 engagement ring is left in cab
Sept. 16, 2003Suite at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, complete with a view of Lake Michigan: $300.
Romantic dinner for two at the Bandera Restaurant, perfect for popping the question: $150.
Losing the $10,000 engagement ring in a taxi on the way: priceless.
Chicago seemed like the ideal backdrop for Eric Culbertson to ask Krista Saputo to marry him this past weekend.
Instead, their unforgettable evening turned into a nightmare when Culbertson discovered the engagement ring he’d purchased two weeks earlier apparently had fallen out of his wallet when he paid the cabbie who drove the couple to a restaurant 10 minutes from their hotel.
“I fumbled. I was on the one-yard line, and I fumbled,” Culbertson said Monday. “I couldn’t begin to explain all the emotions I had.”
Culbertson, 28, and Saputo, 29, ran into each other about a year [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Prostitution in the capital city
April26
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, 2003He 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 [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Springfield Cobras: Off-the-street fighters
April26
I met some great kids in 2003 when photographer T.J. Salsman and I documented the Springfield Housing Authority’s Cobras boxing team, an after-school boxing program for youths looking for something productive to do or a safe, suitable outlet for their aggression.
The resulting story appeared in the Feb. 28, 2003, issue of Heartland Magazine in The State Journal-Register.
Off the street fighters / The Springfield Cobras boxing team offers structure and discipline to young people at risk
Feb. 28, 2003Nine-year-old Keith Treadwell knows what it takes to become a good boxer.
“Practice,” said the Butler Elementary student, who is a member of the Springfield Cobras youth boxing team. “I practice here. I practice at my house. Sometimes I’ll be in bed at night and I practice.”
Any secret moves up his sleeve?
“There’s no secret to boxing!” he said, incredulous that someone would ask such a silly question. “You just have to have good punches and upper cuts and hooks.”
And with that, the boy with the sweet face who prefers to sit alone quietly if he loses a match smacked his gloved fists together and headed for the boxing ring, where his sparring partner waited.
Treadwell is one of about 23 kids who box for the Cobras, a team sponsored by the Springfield Housing Authority. The youngest boxer is 6 and the oldest is 23.
With a shoestring budget, a few dedicated volunteers and a lot of spirit, the team is taking impressionable youths off the [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Snow rollers appear in rural Springfield
April26
I was working the night shift in February 2003 when the newsroom phones started ringing. Readers wanted to know if we knew anything about the odd-looking snow balls dotting the landscape in the rural areas around Springfield. Photographer T.J. Salsman and I set out to see for ourselves what people were talking about. Turns out they are a weather phenomenon known as “snow rollers.”
Wind causes snow ‘rollers’
Feb. 12, 2003“Creepy” and “weird” were how some people described a Tuesday night weather phenomenon in which large snowballs formed in fields, yards and parking lots without human help.
More than one motorist paused to look at clusters of the snowballs - known in the eastern United States as “rollers” - that formed as strong gusts of wind from the west blew across snow that was already on the ground.
“It looks like a Mars landscape at night,” said Stacy Bowman, who noticed the unusual snowballs about 8 p.m. in fields west of Bradforton Road as she drove home from Springfield.
“At first I thought they were just clumps of sod being turned over in the field,” she said. “Then I thought maybe some kids were out, but I didn’t see any footprints around.”
The “rollers,” which were more log-shaped than round, left yards of trails behind them where newly fallen snow had rolled and picked up the snow on the ground.
Melissa Byrd, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Lincoln, said the agency received numerous reports [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Cabdriver’s throat slashed
April26
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, 2002Driving 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 [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Ugly fabric contest
April26
How does one begin to write about an ugly fabric contest? That was my challenge for a March 2002 assignment.
Photographer T.J. Salsman and I headed to the contest site, unsure what we’d find. The result was a light feature for the next day’s newspaper.
Sew what? / Guild challenge makes fashion sense of ugly fabric
Thursday, March 28, 2002It comes with the territory.
People who love to sew eventually find themselves with yards and yards of ugly fabric - cuts of material that seemed like a good idea at the time but lost their luster through the years. (Some might consider paisley a good example.)
When those unsightly textiles pile up, an “ugly fabric contest” can be a seamstress’ best friend.
Twenty-two women from the Lincolnland chapter of the American Sewing Guild rose to the challenge of turning a scrap of ugly fabric into something wearable or usable. Their creations were modeled at the chapter’s annual meeting and style show Wednesday night.
“We all have stashes, and we all have fabric in our stashes that we think, ‘Why did we buy that? ‘” said Nancy Ward.
The contest started in December, when members of the chapter were asked to bring a piece of what they considered ugly fabric that was at least one yard and seal it in a brown paper bag. The members selected a bag and were challenged to create something from the surprise fabric inside.
Frances Metcalf, who taught home economics in Riverton for 10 years, [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Carl Madison makes no apologies
April26
In April 2002 I was asked to write a profile of Carl Madison, the well-known and sometimes controversial leader of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP. Carl has since moved to Ohio, but he still keeps up on race issues in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.
No apologies / Criticism part of local NAACP head Madison’s job
Sunday, April 14, 2002Civil rights activist Dick Gregory once said that when black people need help, they call on two things - Jesus Christ and the NAACP.
In Springfield, when people call on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, they get Carl Madison.
For the last five years, Madison, 37, has led the local chapter and brought attention to a variety of issues, including alleged gender bias in the fire department, alleged racial discrimination in the police department, alternative education for expelled students and recruitment of more minority teachers for Springfield schools.
It’s a job that has brought both challenges and criticism, enough so that Madison jokes that’s the reason he went out and bought a golden retriever puppy, to make sure he had a friend.
“It’s had its ups and downs. Everybody says being branch president is a tough job,” Madison says, sliding open his patio door to let 8-month-old Max into the yard for an afternoon romp.
When he began as NAACP president, Madison received two or three calls a day from people seeking help. He estimates he now receives about 25.
Some are from victims [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Double-murder/suicide in Carlinville
April26
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, 2002CARLINVILLE - 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 [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Body found in refrigerator
April26
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 [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Van’s IGA destroyed by fire
April26
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, 2001Hundreds 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 [...] Read the rest of this entry »
The fight for Enos Park
April26
In 2001, about two months after I started working at The State Journal-Register, my editor asked me and a few other reporters to work on a package of stories about the struggling, historic Enos Park neighborhood just north of downtown Springfield.
I was the lead reporter and worked for about six months with photographer Kristen Schmid-Schurter documenting the neighborhood, its people, its challenges and its future.
We talked to a lot of residents, determined to preserve their neighborhood from criminals and absentee landlords and make it a safe, attractive place for people to raise families and grow old. We also investigated the number of boarded-up homes in the neighborhood, the police department’s attention to the area, the neighborhood association’s no-holds-barred approach and the history of Enos Park.
The result was a week-long series (Dec. 16-23, 2001) called “The Fight for Enos Park.”
Life in Enos Park / Putting the neighborhood back together
Buddy and Dawn Smith always thought their ideal neighborhood would be a small, modern, middle-class subdivision. Instead, they found their dream home in the heart of Springfield’s Enos Park neighborhood.
“I look over there (at the subdivision) now and I don’t even feel the same way,” Dawn said as she relaxed in her spacious two-story Victorian home in the 1100 block of North Fourth Street. “I look over at those houses and I think, ‘Those aren’t even in the same league as my house.’ ”
Just two blocks from the Smiths, another young [...] Read the rest of this entry »