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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about him Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good evening new from the best selling author of Wrecking Crew. During the early morning hours of July seventeenth, nineteen eighty three, fatigue became a factor for the young couple from central Illinois who spent their day under the hot sun at Marriott's Great America Amusement Park north of Chicago. On their drive home, the tired teenagers pulled to the shoulder of
Interstate fifty five to get a RESTful sleep. As the teen slept inside their car under the moon and the stars, a dangerous force of evil lurked in the shadows parking directly behind them. The summer of nineteen eighty three was like no other for Joliet, Illinois, a hard working, rough and tough, blue collar industrial city an hour's drive southwest
of Chicago. This was one of the hottest summers on record for Joliet, and an elusive serial killing madman kept piling up the body count as he showed no signs of being caught. One overnight killing spree claimed five victims, including members of the Will County Sheriff's office. The following month brought more bloodshed, a quadruple murder inside a small
Joliette shop best known for its pottery classes. The plague of sensialsts violence spark the controversial New York City based Guardian Angels to mobilize foot patrols, and Juliet generating more unwanted news media attention for the community. Even the National Inquirer produced its own sensational peace, labeling Juliet Terror Town. USA residents shuddered with horror. Determined detectives worked in overdrive
trying to find an overlook clue or two. Finally, when an arrest seemed to come out of nowhere, area citizens breathed a sigh of relief. Authorities linked the so called stone cold killing machine to a chilling count of fourteen homicides plus three women who miraculously survived their agonizing encounters, But with multiple murder trials on horizon, it remained anyone's guests.
Whether Milton Johnson, whose family nicknamed him Biggin short for Big One, was guilty of mass murder and if so, would he die by means of lethal injection the Illinois Department of Corrections. The book that we're featuring this evening is Terror Town USA, The Untold Story of Joliet's notorious serial killer, with my special guest, journalist and author John Ferrick. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview, John Ferrick, Thanks for.
Having me on again. Dan, It's a great opportunity to be back.
Thank you so much. We haven't heard from you since your best selling and incredible Wrecking Crew, and you're back with Terror Town USA. Congratulations. Let's get to summer of eighty three and you talk about this very very unusual time, summer of nineteen eighty three and Joliet, Illinois and you were ten years old. Tell us a little bit about that time and this turning point in your life and why.
Well, the one thing, the one thing that really set out about the summer of n teen eighty three was that it was just unbearably hot. Obviously, all summers in the Midwest, especially around Chicago, are hot to begin with, but that year was just incredibly brutal. And then on top of that, we had this unbelievable senseless killing spree that just seemed to come out of nowhere, and and it just really frightened and terrorized, you know, the entire community.
These were not these were obviously not you know, gang related or drug related homicides. These were you know, mass murders. You know, two to three to four sometimes five people were getting killed at one time, and it just seemed like all the victims were these crimes were just happening out of nowhere, and uh and and yearly were were random. That's the way it seems. So you know, as a ten year old kid, you know, I was I think I was a paper boy at that point in time,
ten eleven and twelve. I pretty much passed the newspapers and uh. And there was another person in my neighbor two. It was like two or three of us that split up the routes, and there was there happened to be uh, one murder that happened just about five or six houses up the street from where I lived, right on the Vio Road, and it was an eighty two year old widow.
And that was just I mean incredibly shocking because I had a grandmother, grandparents, well they were both alive at that point in time, that lived just two other streets over from me, you know, so to have uh, you know, a widow, a woman in her eighties who lived alone, just murdered five or six houses up the street from you, you know, and none to hear about it, you know, read about on the paper, but then also kind of hear a second hand, I mean, which was true as
far as some of the facts that she was found you know, in her in her living room chair, you know, beaten to death at the time. And you know, at that point in time, Dan, I mean, nobody knew who the killer was, so it was you know again right, another murder had happened, and you know, and of all people, it's a eighty two year old woman that lives by yourself. I mean, that just was scary for everybody. It certainly was scary for me being a ten year old kid
just trying to make sense out of life. And you know, you know, yeah, I paid attention to you know, Major League Baseball, Chicago White Sox, Cargo Cubs, and my little league team that I played with, and then you have all this going on in your neighborhood and around the city. It was pretty pretty mortifying.
You talk about ten years later, you were a sophomore in college studying journalism at Eastern Illinois University. Summer of nineteen ninety three, returned to Juliet as a newspaper reporting reporter intern, and so you got to hear the stories from veteran journalists about that summer of eighty three and the terror and the ensuing murder trials. Tell us what happened after college and how you came to meet Frank ser Cervenik and the idea of about this book.
Well, yeah, as yeah, as you pointed out, I spent the summer of eighty three back at back in my hometown working for the local newspaper and uh and obviously again that was pre internet day, so uh, I mean, newspapers were still very very strong, and you know, that was pretty much deep place, uh, you know, for uh, for information. We had a really good newspaper at that time.
So so it was really worthwhile and I you know, picked up a lot of you know, intelligence just from uh, just from hearing the stories and working with several of these veteran reporters. And editors and photographers who had been around ten, fifteen, twenty five years, you know, when they talked about Milton Johnson and just you know how uh how scary of the time that it was in Joliette.
You know, the previous uh, you know, previous decade. It's always interesting again to kind of learn each town's you know, you know, some their most shocking crimes. And then you know, the summer of eighty three was always on a lot of people's minds. I eventually moved on UH after college. I worked in South Bend, Indiana for a while. I came back to the Chicago suburbs. I was in Green Bay, Wisconsin, out in Omaha, Nebraska, and then back to Wisconsin again.
And then four years ago, dan is when I returned back to UH, back to Juliet my hometown, to UH to work as a reporter and editor for the for the Jolia Patch, which is the main news organization where an online only uh you know, news outlet and uh and uh so I was kind of getting my feet while I just kind of you know, re reacclimating with
a lot of people in town. Yeah, four years ago, right around this time last or yeah, four years ago in the summer of seventeen, and uh, and I wound up going out for lunch with one of the one of the premier lawyers in the area, Frank Servignac. It's a hard name to say and spell. I still have a hard time spelling it, even though he's you know,
he's training it a well known lawyer. But anyway, but Frank, Frank and his firm went out for lunch with me, you know, and and we were just talking, you know, that day, and he knew a little bit about some of the other books I had written over the years, and and he just you know, pointed out that there had never been a book ever written about Milton Johnson and uh, you know, in the summer Summer of Tear
from nineteen eighty three. And what was also interesting too, was that one of his law partners, Stephen White, who's who's in the seventies now. But but Steve was one of the key prosecutors on the Milton Johnson cases. And uh, and again Frank was just the opinion that, you know, nobody's ever written a book about, you know, Milton Johnson, even though he's probably one of America's in North America's most notorious serial killers, but yet there's there's very little
known about him, and uh so I gave this. I kind of always had this case, to be honest with you, Dan, you know, on my unofficial little sheet of keep a sheep. It just kind of keep a sheet in my head as far as of you know, here's four or five possible book to at least think about, uh you know,
for my next project. And when I returned to Illinois from Wisconsin four years ago after doing the Steven Avia book on Wrecking Crew, you know, I wanted to try to find something back in this area here around the Chicago land, uh you know, Joliet area. For me, it's always been easier to do books, you know, in a town or a state or an area that I'm familiar with.
I do get requests, you know, every few months, somebody will send me something, you know about a case in Tennessee or Seattle or California, and I just don't pursue those from the standpoint that, yeah, I'm not if I'm not really familiar with that town or that area, I really don't think, you know, I'm the right person to be writing that kind of book. Uh So, uh So, I really want to write books only about areas that I'm familiar with or have access to a lot of
key key people. And uh so so when you mentioned, uh, yeah, this this uh this story with Milton Johnson, I really thought that, yeah, that could be uh you know, that that has strong potential. And and I felt the fact too, that that there had never been any any true crime book really done on Milton Johnson. That in of itself was a strong reason to uh to pursue the research and uh, you know, and see where see where things would lead. I knew I had a lot ahead of
me though, too. I mean, I knew if I undertook this project, it was going to take several years. It wasn't going to be a you know, a three month project or something like that. I'd have to put in the you know, the time and effort. But uh, you know, but but if I did that, I also felt there would be a good chance that it would be ah, you know, well researched book, book product.
In the end, you talk about that research and this is pre internet days, this occurred obviously you're doing your research was more difficult. Tell us about some of that difficult research and why was so difficult?
Well, I mean, again, the thing about Milton Johnson is similar to a lot of the other notorious serial killers. Oftentimes, you know, there's the there's the cases or the crimes that they're convicted of, but then there's the other cases that the police you know, had them as the prime suspect or there was strong evidence physical or circumstantial. You know that you know that for different reasons, oftentimes just for legal reasons, but that they may not be prosecuted for.
And to do the Milton Johnson book, I wanted to you know, really step back and analyze and in all the cases that that he was a suspect and and and really try to look at the evidence and and see if it if it matched with the police and
the prosecutor's furious were making this book a little difficult. Yeah, Like we said, Uh, there just isn't a whole lot that you could easily find by you know, just you know, going to the Internet or to do research on on Google or you know even a you know, even even a different true crime blog here or there, you know, or even news organizations. So one of the best places for me was was there's a little uh there's a
little office annexed that the wil County government. Wilt County's the main county, uh for for it's one of the biggest counties here in the state of Illinois after Chicago.
But but Wilt County is where Juliet's Joliet's at and uh the county has a has a little office building on the west side of town where they keep all their old archives, you know, going back to the eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds, and and so so I wound up, you know, working something out where I would go over Wednesday for about two to three hours in the morning, from like nine to noon, for for several months, and they pulled out these big boxes that probably weighed
about and I don't know, eighty to one hundred pounds each, and there was probably about three or four of them. And those inside those boxes then contained you know, all the old trial transcripts, some the some but not you know, not most of the police reports, but court exhibits, and
then a lot of appeals documents. And that's kind of where I started my research as far as to kind of get an idea of, you know, who are some of the key people that were involved in these you know, in this case, in these cases I should say plural, who were some of the key witnesses, And then just to try to get a better idea of you know, who I'm dealing with as far as you know, police officers, prosecutors, witnesses, you know, and of course Milton Johnson and and so
that was really very very hell helpul and you know, and then I would go through and try to figure out, Okay, these are the documents that I want to pay for, you know, to make copies of. And you know, these other documents here are interesting to read, but really I could tell ahead of time these are going to be you know, boring or now you know, there's you know, they're dealing with appeals that really are you know, not
much interest to true crime readers or even myself. So you know, so those documents, you know, really we weren't worth my time to copy. So once I figured out kind of what were the key documents that I needed to get my hands on from there, then it made it a lot easier to kind of figure out what other cases that I needed to research and pursue as well.
In your research, you come across February fifteenth and nineteen seventy, very important date in everyone's and everybody's history involved with this, but especially Milton Johnson. And you talk about a person named Lee Chandler and this is an alias, but Mary West his girlfriend drove to Pilcher Park and they were dating these two people, and so they have an encounter with this person. Tell us what he says to this woman and what he says to this young team and what happens as a result.
Well, he again, it's Wruary, it's really cold. I think it was in the in the teams that singles didges are in the teens at the time. And and he's coming from the opposite direction. So the roads through the forest are you know, pretty much one way roads, you know, and there's a little area in there for cars to pull off and park, you know, go for a walks,
that kind of stuff. And he was coming from the opposite direction, and he started by asking them, you know, innocent question, you know, he if he was like going the wrong way, and uh and uh. So he's really not you know, threatening or really doing anything that that scares them at all of en And and then he comes back later a minute, a couple of minutes later.
So and then this time when he comes back out, he's gotta he's got a gun with him and and uh and he orders uh the girl, the teenage girl that get in the back seat, and he makes her boyfriend, you know, lay on the floor in the front seat of the car, and he proceeds to uh, you know, commit just a violent attack against her, raping her savagely while the boyfriend you know is helpless in the front feet of the vehicle at the time. And it just, uh, it's just a really uh, I mean, just scary encounter,
you know for this, you know, this teenage couple. The last thing they ever expected was just you know, somebody to come out of nowhere in the late at night. And uh, you know, and uh you know, their their lives are in line, and uh, you know, he's beating her, he breaks her jaw and uh and you know, at one point in time, he goes back to his vehicle, you know, and has her boyfriend get out of the vehicle. For like a couple of months or so, and I remember he kind of goes through a series of questions
with the boyfriend. He asks, like, you know, his he you know, have you been cooperative. You know, have you
been doing what I asked that kind of stuff. And then and then he makes a comment to him about, you know, wanting the doors of the vehicle to be left open, you know while he's going to shoot them both, uh, you know, and uh and the boyfriend's just going to run into the woods and uh you know and just uh miraculously, yeah, he survived and uh you know, and nobody was was shot and killed that night then, Dan, So, uh that was really, you know, just a chilling night.
And I remember the Julia police were quoted in the Herald News the following day after the arrest was made, you know, just the detective said that was like the worst you know, beating a sexual assault case that he had ever he had ever encountered.
You mentioned you write that he wanted to shoot both of them at the same time. That's what he had told the boyfriend, that he'd want to shoot him with one bullet and shoot both of them at the same time. And so that's what he had asked him to get into position for. And also that how did they find out that he was the perpetrator? Tell us how they found that out?
Well, he and guessing he must have panicked, you know, when the boyfriend ran into the woods and he's going to drive you know, the you know, his victim, the girl that he had just beaten and an assaulted. Uh, he's going to drive her up to uh to the hospital. The it's over across hospital at the time, and uh it was just a couple of miles away if that, and uh so it's gonna be you know, witness identification.
You know, she's all you know, she's gonna identify him as the as the salent, and so is the you know, the boyfriend. And the boyfriend ran into the woods, he got to uh got to a phone and I'm trying to remember it was a motel or a hotel or just something there, but you know, he got somewhere where he was able to get somebody to call the police. And uh so the police were able to respond to this crime very very quickly, and uh you know and basically Milton Johnson was arrested, you know, on the same
night that this that this crime happened. And uh, it took me a while, but I eventually found, yeah, the old the original newspaper articles on the on the crime, and uh that's that's one of the challenges to sometimes stand you know, when you go back on the case that forty or fifty years old. I mean I did talk to a couple of different police officers that were involved, you know, are people that knew some of the details
of this case. But ultimately, you know, the best source for the information was the old newspaper articles as far as you know, what was you know, what was factual and what what actually did did happen? And I heard different stories about the Milton Johnson arrest, but the fact is, yeah, it happened on the night that this this terrible, awful crime that happened out at the Pilcher Park Woods And
just for perspective, this crime just really terrorized the community. So, I mean Pilter Park for a number of years then had a bad reputation as far as you know, people were just scared to go there at nighttime, you know, because of this violent, you know, late night attack that happened out there.
You right, also that he burned her with the cigarette lighter on her private parts, just that more to the torture that he was inflicted upon her. You talk about this trial and their boyfriend Lee testified at this trial and he was sentenced to twenty five to thirty five years. Tell us how it happens that he is paroled in thirteen years.
Well, that's uh, that's interesting of itself and just for people to kind of have a better unerting too. I did find there were a lot of articles about just generally in Illinois that the state was facing a prison overcrowding, you know, or overcrowding of this prison population. So I don't, I don't, I can't say definitively that was the reason he ultimately didn't serve the twenty five to thirty five
years that he was sens to. But it's interesting. I tried to spend some time in the book actually chronicling, you know, his prison reports, you know, and I did have some success. And again those were documents of all places that I found at that little Well County, you know, government archives, building, a lot of a lot of his prison reports were in the appeal documents. So that so that was really valuable to find and and so he did.
It seemed like by and large, despite that crime, and despite the fact that he felt that he was being railroaded, you know, or that you know that the sentence that he got was unjust. He did buy and large behave you know, and conformed to the rules and regulations of the Illinois prison system when he was in Pontiac, Illinois, at the Pontiac Correctional Center, which is about eighty miles or so from Juliet And And while he was there,
although he did, he wasn't a perfect inmate. And I do document a number of issues that he had, but by and large, longdry state in prison, the better he behaved and the more privileges it seemed like he was acquiring. And I also found it interesting that it seemed like, yeah, it seemed like he made, you know, connections with a lot of the higher ups or the people in prison that had power, you know, to to help him out
her you know. And and there was certainly one one woman in particular that I mentioned that she seemed to give him a lot of leeway, you know, And and she gave him a two or three times where she, you know, gave him good, good behavior and that just constantly would just reduce the minimum sentence that he needed to serve. So even though nobody back in Juliet and Well County was ever expecting him to return, you know, to the community in the summer of nineteen eighty three.
The fact is, by by getting a lot of these good behaviors, you know, ninety days office sentence here, another ninety days here, and another ninety days there, these were starting to add up and it made it, you know, a lot easier. So I think by the fifth or sixth times that he went up for parole, even though he was constantly rejected the first few times, Dan, you know, based on the severity, you know, the seriousness of the crime,
and you know, and that sort of stuff. The fact is he was ultimately paroled in the March of nineteen eighty three.
He also made a friendship in there from somebody that was from the outside that had interaction with the kitchen staff where he was assigned. And this person would write him and they began a relationship of sorts, especially at the beginning with through the correspondence, but later on she
factors into this story near the end as well. You talk about him released in March, and you also write about all of the parole hearings and the work towards him getting his parole, and despite not having any employment opportunities or prospects, he was still paroled now. In June seventeenth, nineteen eighty three, you take us to this Silver Cross Hospital and Teresa McKean and she's just leaving this hospital and what does she encounter.
Well, she was, yeah, she was working that night, and it was late at night, around midnight or so I take eleven thirty, the midnight twelve thirty, and she just goes back to her car, you know, and is just going to make a you know, four to five mile drive home en Route six, which is a two lane, two lane highway that runs right past the Silver Cross Hospital and over by the EJ and E railroad tracks too.
But she just gets in her vehicle and starts to drive home, and then on her way home, a pickup truck kind of pulls alongside of her while she's still driving because again there's no real stoplights or stop you
stop signs in this area. It's just fifty mile an hour speed limit out there, and she's thinking this vehicle is going to pass her, and and instead the next thing she notices is that there's glass shattering from her window, you know, And turns out it was somebody shooting at her vehicle from that other vehicle that vehicle then pulls the truck pulls way way way up ahead of her, you know, and is eventually able to fire several more shots at her vehicle, missing thankfully. But but yeah, she's
terrified and is able to to make it home. Actually she lived just a few miles up the road there then, and and she gets a hold of the uh the police and uh and Illinois State of Police actually came out to investigate that crime. But but she, h, yeah, it was She's very lucky that that she she survived and wasn't wasn't her. But that's kind of that's really like the first major crime that happened in the summer of nineteen eighty three that that didn't and it didn't
lead to a to a murder. But that was kind of the them o, you know, for you know, for the person that was going around causing this terror of the late night crime. He seemed to be scouting out for his victim, paying on women, you know, and it's kind of a dark it's a dark knight on a lonely road and uh, and this Teresa McKean seemed seemed to be a potential perfect victim for this, for this late night psychopath.
You right, that she thought there might have been another person in the truck, and in fact, she when she reported it to police, he said that there was two people in the truck, and the police went with that that there was two people in the truck. Then Milton Johnson was stopped. But because of that possible that there was two people in the truck, Milton was stopped by an officer. What happens when Milton has stopped.
And yeah, he's he's found on the side of the road and I think he had the hood up on the pickup truck at the time, and uh, you know, the officer you know, took his identification and uh you know, and you know, spoke with him. But uh, again working off of the uh you know, what the woman had with what Teresa mckeenath said about you know, two people, she was you know, she thought there might have been two people in the vehicle. It does not lead to
an arresting for Milton Johnson. And I'm thinking, in hindsight, you know, if they would have brought her to the scene or or you know, or or I should see even that's the scene, but just if they would have, you know, did a little more thorough questioning. Maybe, I mean, she would have had a chance to identify this this this guy. But but I think you know, the state trooper that was working that night, he was working out for the premise, you know that based on what she
told him. You know that two people were in a truck and one of them was shooting at her. He just happened to see this guy parked on the side of the road with his hood up. And Milton Johnson did not, do, you know, to draw attention to himself or you know, or act like he was evolved in that shooting. So so the officer, you know, let him go and and he was not not taken in the custody and not arrested that night.
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to ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire. Now, we were talking about this failed opportunity to be able to stop Milton Johnson before this murder spree took off. A week later on June twenty fourth, nineteen eighty three, and we talk about these two sisters, the Blum sisters, Norah Lahmann and her sister, Oh jeez, I've forgotten her name here. So anyway, we're talking about Nora and her sister, Vita Bloom pardon me, and what
happens at their their home. They lived side by side by from each other. What happens one day who finds these sisters and discovers the whore.
This is, you know, just an unbelievable example as far as just how close the crimes you know, hit to, you know, to the community, especially to the local police that had to investigate it. So so Pete hass And he was a sergeant at the wil County Sheriff's Office in one of the key you know, investigators in charge of the detective unit. He and his wife, Jean, they had about a seventy acre property on Rossland Avenue, right
on the outskirts of the city of Joliet. So at that point in time, there was about seven or eight houses along Roscelin Avenue. Most of the people that live out there at that point in time, you know, had horses, you know, and were really involved in, you know, in farming too. And the newspaper carrier pulled into their driveway on a Saturday morning sometime shortly after six or six thirty, and I told them that looked like there was smoke
coming from from one of their neighbors houses. So Jean and Pete, you know, got dressed really quick and uh and uh and Jean wound up going to uh t Zita's house and uh. And then Pete went to the house where the fire was at, which was Norris House and uh. And then also at the same time too, you know, fire trucks from the East Aliat Volunteer Fire Department. We're also on their way getting out to the getting
out to the house. And and Pete, uh, you know, Pete was one of the persons and that found and he found both of the sisters in the house.
And uh.
It was a really bizarre, just horrifying situation. So there was a small little fire that had been set in the in the back bedroom of the house. It was a ranch house at that point in time. And and he found both of the sisters. Their bodies were in the in the bedroom and they were already dead, and you know, and they were you know, burned, uh, you know,
well beyond recognition by that point in time. And uh and the crime name was just really creepy and just just really uh, you know, just the sick and uh he and the other walkin shurance officers and in the in the in the in the Australia fireman, you know, they found the bodies were staffed on top of each other, so they had been and put in into a into a sexual position, into a sixty nine position, and uh and both the women were already murdered, they were already
dead by the time that they were set on fire. So so whoever was setting the fire was really trying to uh just you know, desecrate their their bodies and just uh and just really you know, just uh, I'm not even sure what the words are to describe it, but just it was. It was just a really sickening scene.
And for you know, for these two women who really had no enemies at all the world, it just really defied logic as far as how in you know, who in the world would would target them, you know and pick them out for such a brutal, torture type of crime. And so to go back to the other house then where Gene House. Went to the first house, she found that that the door, the back door had been ripped
off by by by such just sheer force. So whoever uh you know broke into the house just basically shoved the door so hard, with such great force, it might that they they even though the door had a little a little uh little lack across the top. Uh one of those just little ones. I remember my grandma used to have one of these two where just uh, you just put a little bolt on one side and then slid the slid the uh other part across across the way.
But but so whoever, uh, whoever committed these crimes first went to uh to uh to Zita Bloom's house and uh and there was blood on the walls and blood on the floor, so it was it was apparent that she had been attacked, you know, and whether she was
killed there or just knocked out or capacitated. But whoever did this, you know, clearly started at her house and then took her to her sister's house and continued with the carnage and uh and in the rest of the bloodshed place over at at Norris uh Norris's house, which is where the two sisters bodies were both found.
Now while police are investigating this horror scene, you talk about July first, and Eric Johnson and his wife Terry Lynn tell us about this disappearance.
Well, this one was another mystery at the time. We had the first weekend in July. So what kind of shaffofs already busy try and solve this, this double murder involving the Bloom sisters which just came out of nowhere and just again shocked the conscious of the community. But the wife of Eric Johnson and then the husband of a woman named The woman's name was Anna Chancellor, but
her husband kind of Chancellor. They both disappeared on that first that first Friday night in July of nineteen eighty three, and uh it took a few days ultimately for the authorities to uh to find the two. They eventually realized that that Kenny Kenny Chancellor's UH vehicle, his wife's vehicle was found that night and there was left parked on some really rural railroad tracks out several miles outside of Juliet.
But but kind of right on the county line for will County and Cook County and Cook County, is you know, the county where Chicago's at. But but but the vehicles found right inside of, right inside of you know, the Cook County area, and it there wasn't really apparent as far as you know, you know, where these two had had wound up. The police wound up checking a lot of the area hotels and motels to see maybe if if Kenny Chancellor had checked into one of the hotels
something like that. And and meanwhile, again Eric Eric Johnson, He's got like two real small kids, and one of his kids was gonna have a birthday that weekend that they had a big birthday party planned, and you know, he's wondering, you know, where his wife sat, why she didn't come home. She worked at at a White Hant pantry convenience store at the time as this happened. And uh, and she had you know, she had a lot of friends, and you know, was known to frequent a lot of
the different local bars just to hang out. So the police went to a lot of these places as well, just trying to figure out, you know, had she been there, did they see her, was she with anybody, you know that sort of stuff. And and eventually, uh, sadly, the the two bodies of of Terry Lyn Johnson and kind of Chancellor are both going to be found within a couple of days of each other out in the in the drainage that really had really tall weeds, you know,
and the bodies weren't easy to find. It took again several days for the police and family members and you know, the searchers just to try to you know, find them. But again they were working. They were checking the area down mainly where the car was found. They figured that was probably the best place to be searching. And the scariest thing of all out of this was when they eventually did the autopsies for the two of them, they found that they were both shot. They died of a
bullet wound. But again but it was it was almost prophetic to that nineteen seventy crime that did not turn into a double murder, but in this case it did. The two were the two died of a single bullet that went through both of their bodies. And in one of the newspaper articles I saw, you know, referred to it that way that it was one shot, two killed, you know, in h you know, in the senseless crime spree.
And again just these these two were out there. They were out parking that night, so they were you know, they were married to different people, but but they you know, they got together and were spending time with each other, and somebody, you know, this, this killer just lurked out of the shadows that night on a Friday night and just came upon them and shot them dead and then dragged their bodies, you know, several hundred you know, one
hundred hundred yards to different locations and just left them out in the in the sweltering heat, you know, just with the you know, where the maggots in the in the insects. You know, we're gonna, you know, do their thing.
Unfortunately, you write about a very important character in the story, and Shoemaker. She's nineteen years old and she attends a party and she left the party to go on a walk with her friend and the truck whizzes by. What does she see and what does she decide to do? And what is the description of the men in that truck?
Well, first, yeah, she was when the first happened. She again, she and her friend kind of duck down in the weeds and and you know, they they thought this whoever was driving this vehicle, maybe out to get them or find them and h and later than they came to the belief that maybe it was just somebody at one of the parties that they were at, or her friend of theirs, that was just kind of trying to play a prank on them, you know, knowing that they had left the party and went for a walk, so they
decided to go back and get their own vehicle and see, you know, the bravely although you know, I were in their shoes, but they wound up going out to try to see if they could you know, tail or you know, followed this vehicle to see if they could get a
better idea of who it is, you know. And this goes on for several minutes and over several you know, a few mile area just kind of at that point in time, this was a very rural you know, farm farming, uh farming region just right outside of outside of Juliette, Illinois.
And they eventually, uh wind up you know, going back and catching up with some some guy friends of nurse and telling them about this, and and lo and behold, then this truck just comes streaking past them, you know, and squeals the tires and you know, continues onward, but they are least able to get a good description in the guy, you know, and he looked at them, probably like twenty five to thirty five. He was, uh, you know, had a had an afro hairstyle at the time, was
African American and uh. And he was driving a dark colored pickup truck at the time.
And uh.
And eventually, again, you know, they and their boyfriends or you know, guy friends wound up going out and try to follow this vehicle, uh, you know a little bit more and actually have a close encounter on one of the roads where they they they're coming over a hill or cresting over a hill, you know, and this vehicles just kind of parked on the side of the road her you know, kind of on the side there where it's almost they have to kind of swerve to avoid
hitting him. But uh, there're the girls smart enough to at least write down the license plates of the vehicle, you know, and uh and and she eventually is going to call it into the sheriff's office, you know, that either that weekend or the following weekend. It's sometime in the near future. But again, since there really wasn't any crime that had happened that night, and I'm sure the Sheriff's office, you know, was short staffed and only had a few people on and you know, didn't really know
of anything going on. I could see how a tip like that, although well intentioned, may have kind of fallen to the cracks and really wasn't, you know, put it at the very very very top, you know, of the things that we need to investigate at the worldcoming Sheriff's office at that time.
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A week later, the following weekend, this is July sixteenth, nineteen eighty three. You have a Denise Foley. He's a veteran US Army valling Tiers safety patrol. He works at the Will County Sheriff's office in Joliet, and he's partnered with an officer, Stephen Mayer, who's twenty two years old and his father is Edward Mayer. The third a sergeant at Will County Police Department or Sheriff's department.
Part me.
Now, that's July sixteenth, nineteen eighty three. Richard Paulin they call them Dewey, thirty three years old and Kathy Norwoods who's twenty five years old, are parked in their little Chavette And this is in Lamont, a little population five thousand, and Will County Sheriff Pat Lombardo is on patrol. Can you take it from there? What happens to these this couple and what does Pat Lombardo able to do or how is he involved?
Well, it's this and it's going to be the most complex and and the senseless crime out of all the ones from that summer. It's it sounds on a rural, rural stretch of an area that that we call Homer Township, and it's generally in the same same same general area where this where this previous week weekends encounter had happened with Anne Shuemaker, you know, where she saw a vehicle truck that was kind of following her and troll trolling around,
you know, the rural parts of Homer Township. But on the on the weekend of the sixteenth and seventeenth, it's about three to three thirty in the morning, and uh and by the time Deputy pat Lombardo gets to the scene, he's going to come upon the Wolf County Sheriff's Office auxiliary car that's gonna be parked on the side of the road. There. He's going to see the little red Chevette parked kind of on the entrance to the far
kind of off in the grass. And there's also be a seird vehicle that's going to be about another quarter to a half a mile down the road. That's a van, and that vehicle had crashed into the into the into the bean field over there, and the driver of that
vehicle was dead. The passenger she was shot and shot in the shoulder and miraculously was not life wasn't in danger as far as just even though she was wounded, but she was able to run to one of the farmhouses covered in blood, you know, screaming hysterically about what had happened. And so that's spurred even more, you know, police to descend on the scene. But the the two Well County Sheriffs Auxiliary officers, Dennis Fully aged fifty, and
then Stephen Mayer twenty two. Stephen Mayer was shot several times and and and he was sound dead in the ditch on the side of the road there not that far from where the red chavette is. Dennis Foley was able to survive at that point in time. He was able to use his uh, his his his his police radio, you know, and even though he was shot in the mouth and shot in the hip, shot in the abdomen, he was able to at least make radio contact to let will kind of shows off a snow that you know,
something something terrible had happened. And and then the two people that were driving that little red chavette, Kathy Norwood, she was found dead, fatally shot. She was found right outside of the vehicle and in Deweiy Poland was shot. Uh he was shot dead inside the back seat.
Of his own vehicle.
So at that point in time, four fatalities and and two survivors. And unfortunately, Denis fully died one month later from uh, from the injuries that he had sustained at the at the shooting there. So we had five five fatalities.
And you write about underneath auxiliary Deputy Stephen Meyer's body was what and what did they get garner from that information?
That was one of the first major clues at least to emerge, and it was it was a fishing real receipt that was made out from a from a local shop that was called Walts Tackle, Tackle and based shop. But uh, but the receipt at least was made out, it had a name on it and uh it was made out to a guy named Sam Myers M. Y E. R. S. And Uh, Sam was in his fifties at that point
in time, but the receipt was really fresh. So so the police didn't think this was just something that they had just come across out in the middle of the field, you know, just while they were investigating all these the multiple homicides out there. And so the police initially started to look at Sam Myers as you know, being a you know, being a prime suspect for these killings, and uh and realized that he was, like I said, in
his fifties, and he had a ironclad alibi. He and his wife and some other family members had made a long trip down the Mississippi for several days as part of a family vacation. And plus he didn't match the description that Dennis Foley, you know, the officer who was shot but survived. At that point in time, he was able to give a good description of what the shooter you know, had looked like. And and there was nothing at all like Sam Myers. So the uh, the police
kind of worked off of Sam Myers. But then, uh, when once they realized that he wasn't couldn't be the you know, the killer, they they uh they kind of uh you know, backed off and kind of had had to start from scratch. But they at least had the uh, you know, they had the information that something somehow connected him or at least uh, you know, perhaps his vehicle to this to this crime scene. Otherwise that receipt, you know, wouldn't have ended up underneath the Stevie uh Stephen Mayer's uh.
You right about ray Tu Sick he's going fishing, and what does he find.
He's, uh, it's the it's the very next day, and he's on his way down to the King Key River and uh. And he's driving on the old knows, the old historic round sixty six. It's now just called about fifty three. But he's driving, driving, has a way to go fishing, and he thinks that he sees, you know, we'll look at him like an arm, you know, in the median in the grassy median of the four lane
highway here. Whether it's divine intervention or who knows what, but he decides he pulls over, backs up his car, you know, and goes back there. And he finds this, uh, this woman that had been you know, viciously beaten and and assaulted and and she had been stabbed as well. And she reads in the middle of the road there
then and she's cleaning, clinging to life. And so he thinks really fast, notices another vehicle that's coming coming down the road, and he flags down that that individual guy named David Simms, who worked at the Illinois I think you'd correct center. And so the two of these two guys, these two guys who had never ever met each other, you know, are now on the side of the road. They found this woman who's planing to life and UH.
They put her in one of their vehicles and the other person that speeds in the town to the nearest town and they're able to get her to UH to the Wilmington rescue UH unit and UH and get her to the hospital and Joliet where she's the doctors just do a miraculous job saving her life and UH and nursing her back to UH to help and she's eventually able able to uh to recover from from her injuries. But but she has survived this brutal attack. She was assaulted, sexually assaulted.
And.
Her boyfriend. She witnessed her boyfriend being fatally shot right
in front of her eyes. The two of them had parked on the side of the road and UH and just uh, we're really tired that night and just decided to go to sleep, and then lo and behold somebody, a stranger just taps on the window and no sooner do they wake up from the sleep, but several several gunshots blast into the front seat of the vehicle and Tony Hacketts you know, killed killed instantly, and the assailant then took took his girlfriend, you know, abducted her and
and kidnapped her and uh and sexually assaulted her over the next several hours inside of his vehicle, which which again was a dark colored pickup truck. And she was able to get a really good description of the vehicle as well as the uh, the rapist killer. Mm hmmm.
However, this reign of terror is not over. And so there was the ceramics shop in Lamont, Illinois. And uh, there's the owner of the and some people coming by, patrons of the shop coming by. Can you tell us what happens briefly at this ceramics shop?
Right?
And yeah, in the ceramics shop there were two ceramic shops. The one in LaMotte was the one that the mother and son had just recently purchased. So her son was living right above the one in LaMotte. But the mother, Marilyn bears she was just in the process of eventually closing down her shop in Juliet, Illinois. And I'm about thirty.
And this one was another crime that defied logic. It was a Saturday, late Saturday morning writer sometime around noon, and the store owner as well as three of her customers, all women between the ages of late twenties, late thirties, and then one customer was seventy five years old. All four of them were found dead inside the Greenware by
Mary Ceramic shop on East Castree and Joliette. And they were all all fatally stabbed several times, about a dozen times each, with a really long night that some sheriff's deputies told me, you know, might have been like a machete type of instrument. But and then one of the women, the Anna Ryan, the seventy five year old woman, she was also shot. And the purses of all these women were stolen as well. I shouldn't say all of them, but three of the three of the purses were stolen,
and you know, by the perpetrator. And again this crime, just this one deviated from the other crimes because all the other crimes were happening usually late at night or you know, during the overnight hours, but this one happened again late morning, you know, or around lunchtime on a Saturday on August twentieth of nineteen in eighty three.
Tell us how this whole thing ends in terms of his arrest and and what was it? What was it what were the things that led to this arrest of Milton Johnson.
Well, within a couple of weeks of the ceramic shop killings, again with the quadruple murders of these four defenseless women, the Illinois State Police at least went back out to the to the to the property of of Sam Myers again where the receipt had had fallen at the crime scene out in the Homer township, and they at least wanted to ask more questions about the pickup truck that that Sam Myers owned, and they wound up going out there, and this time they asked the questions of Milton Johnson.
And they had done some research real life who he was. I realized he had just gone out of prison a few months earlier. And so they at least we're now starting to realize, Hey, maybe we have this all wrong. You know, we've you know, still looking at Sam Myers. Maybe it's Milton Johnson who's driving around and his dad's pickup truck this whole time. Right, he asked him a
few questions. They don't really they at least put him on the spot as far as just asking them, you know, about like who he thinks could have done these types of crimes, you know, over the summer of nineteen eighty three. And you know, and and they asked him about the truck, you know, does he use it, you know how often?
And he at least acknowledges that he does. But what's really interesting about this crime and uh, and what happened after this interview is as that truck then goes off the grid and and it's taken off the streets of Joliet, never to be seen from ever again. For that matter, chill several months later, you know, when when some of the other world kind of sheriffs and us togethers are able to also piece things together, also realized they built Johnson.
Fit's the pattern, you know, as far as the violence, a lot of these crimes things committing are very similar to the nineteen seventy Pilcher Park rape. And uh, they're able to eventually figure out that that this pickup truck is being stashed away, it's being hidden you know, in uh, in a in about two or three miles away from from where he is his dad lived, and it's it was being hidden in the garage in somebody's uh and
somebody else's property. Even though this truck again was was uh you know, it was one of the main vehicles used used by the Johnson you know, Myers household. This thing had been taken off the streets for now seven or eight months and it was hidden in this scarach.
So the police impound the vehicle and uh and eventually what they're able to do is find, among other things, they're actually able to find a receipt that was that that linked back to the purchase of a stuffed animal that the two teenagers, the girl that was found uh left for dead on the side of the road right and and her boyfriend who was fatally shot and his body was stretched across the front seat of his of his car. There was at the time he was found dead.
He was found clutching uh, this Tasmanian devil on Looney Tunes from Bugs Bunny cartoons. But he was he was he was clutching this this big brown Tasmanian devil toy. He was using it actually as a pillow, you know, when he was sleeping on the front seat of of the of his car. And so he had bought this see bought this uh, this Tasbanian devil for his girlfriend at the Great America Six Flags Amusement Park that where
they had spent their previous previous day. And and at the time that this crime had happened, not only did the killer, you know, take take the girlfriend hostage, but he he made he also reached into the boyfriend's uh you know, pockets, you know, and uh you know, and took the wallet from from him and uh, you know, it's almost a person everything that was. That was another commonality a lot of these crimes that purses or wallets
were all often taken from the victims as well. But uh, but but again back to your question, Dan, Yeah, they found this was a really incredible piece of evidence, uh that that really helped seal the deal as far as
proving that Milton Johnson was the murderer. But but this, uh, this, this receipt from the Great America for this for the Tasmanian Devil toy was found eight months after the crimes happened, you know, at the inside the the seat of the uh of the uh of the pickup truck that had been stashed away and hidden at at Ernest Omer's property in Blackpoyt, Illinois.
Mm hmm. You read about that. They when they finally arrest him and then charge him. They go ahead with the Tony Hackett murder and Tanya Little this and alias. But she is the one that I did him, and she is the one that had to withstand cross examination. And we haven't even got into the trial antics of Milton Johnson as well, asking him to be his own attorney.
And this is in a death penalty case. So Tanya was quite convincing in this trial, despite at first the defense tried to say that she didn't identify him or misidentified him because she didn't notice the goatee that Milton Johnson was sporting. So but by overcame that at they overcame that at trial.
Yeah, she was very courageous and very believable. And again at the time that you have taken you know, at the time she was abducted in the middle of the night, you know, she just witnessed her boyfriend being shot four or five times right in front of her eyes, you know, and she heard this, you know deep. You know I should say, low, low, growlly voice, you know, telling her to crawl on the ground. You know, don't look up, don't look at me. You know, I'm going to kill you.
You know, and so she was able to make some quick glancing, you know, looks at him while he was driving. But again, it's the middle of the night. You know, she's not able to in the in the truck is pitch black, it's dark, and so she's obviously not going to be able to see anything and everything. She's trying to remember what she can. And I'm thinking, if the person's driving, they're looking face, you know, they're looking forward,
you're looking at the side of their face. So if somebody has a goatee, yeah, you might not be able to see that. And and just all these small things too, where Milton Johnson was very angry at his sentencing, saying that she didn't you know that that she said he was wearing low top shoes and he said he always wear high tops. That may be true, but uh, but
but the fact is she she did. She was very convincing as far as uh, you know, and she went to great lengths before she wanted to ever identify a person as being her rapist, because she wanted to make sure that she identified the person. Uh, you know, that she was identifying the correct person who did this, and uh, and so she was she looked at you know, hundreds of mugshots at different points of time, and was eventually able to go in person to the Will County Jail,
you know, and view a photo lineup. And and she was convinced after she saw the the lineup and heard the people repeat the phrases as far as the ones that she was told that night uh as she was getting into the pickup truck. Uh. And she was convinced that without any doubt that Milton Johnson was the person who did this to her and her and her boyfriend Tony Hackett.
Mm hmm. Prosecutor Petka sought the death penalty. And we mentioned just in the introduction about that there was a first trial what was the and there was a second trial for the August twentieth, nineteen eighty three Ceramics shop slayings. In both trials, what was the verdict in terms of the sentence.
In terms of the sense. Both of the cases ended up with the death penalty for Formilon Johnson. So that one death penalty for the murder of Tony Hackett and then another four death sentences for the Sramic shop murders, which were you know, the victims being you know, the women that were killed at the seramic shop in angeliatt side.
The prosecutor chose not to prosecute for the other five murders, not wanting to imperil the original sentences, yes and convictions, worried about an appeal possibly remotely bringing back all of those convictions and putting those back on appeal as well.
Our time is up now, John, but I've wanted to urge people to continue with this Terrortown, USA, to find out more of what happens at this trial, because we would need another hour to be able to go through everything that happens in this remarkable trials and the first trial and the second trial and all the decisions that happen as a result afterward, and we don't want to
give away the ending. So I want to thank you very much for John for coming on and talking about terror Town, USA, the untold story of Joliet's notorious serial killer. For those that might want to take a look at this, I know this is a wild blue press release. Could you tell us about your Amazon page or website tell us how they might find out more about this book and others?
Sure, Dan again, John Ferrick dot com, j Ohn F.
B R.
A k dot com. I have an author's page there and enlist all my books there as well. Wild Blue Press dot com again is where you can find this book, Taryotwon USA, and you know in several of my other previous books, including A Wrecking Crew, which is the story about Stephen Avery and attorney Kathleen Sellner's efforts to try to overturn his conviction, the case made famous in the
Netflix series From Making a Murder. Yes, and again, the easiest place to be asked with you just for people to go to look for Tarrytown USA is just just go to Amazon dot com right now. It's available in paperback and also ebook and and I'm hoping here the next several weeks that will also have an audiobook version as well for people, since I know those are very popular and several of my previous books have done real well as far as with the audiobook Bormant as well.
Absolutely looking forward to that. Thank you so much, John Ferick. Terror Town USA, the untold story of Juliet's notorious serial killer. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, John Ferrick.
Thanks again Dan for having me here. A great night.
Thank you, Good night,