Wednesday, October 5, 2022

I Really Do Not Have Time to Hunt This Down...

It is not relevant to the project and I fear that I know the answer.

Chicago, Ill. (1955)

10/16/1955: Police were still uncertain whether a street gang murdered three young boys, ages 14, 13, and 11 or if “one or more sex perverts” were the murderers.  The description of the boys as “nude, mutilated,” clothes ripped off them, and tape binding their eyes and mouths. would suggest more strongly the latter.  The murderer later told others that he picked them up when they were hitchhiking.

In September 1995, a jury convicted the murderer based on his detailed boasting of his boasting to several people, one of whom burned the stables where the murders took place to destroy any evidence.  There was circumstantial evidence that he might have murdered two teenaged girls some months later.

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: rape

Weapon: strangle[1]



[1] "Painstaking Hunt Started In Chicago For Killer Of Boys," [Red Bluff, Cal.] Red Bluff Tehama County Daily News, Oct. 20, 1955, 1; Cheryl Eddy, " The Hideous Chicago Triple Child Murder That Was Finally Solved ... After 40 Years," Gizmodo, Sep. 2, 2015.

9/16/07 New York Times:

Mr. Hansen was convicted in 1995, but the Illinois Appellate Court overturned the conviction five years later after determining that the jury should not have heard evidence that Mr. Hansen had cruised the streets, picking up boys for sexual relations.

Mr. Hansen went on trial again in 2002 and, after deliberating a little more than two hours, a jury found him guilty again. Mr. Hansen was sentenced to 200 to 300 years in prison.

Why would a court rule that cruising the streets "for boys for sexual relations," was an inappropriate piece of evidence in a case where rape of little boys was pretty clearly a goal and where the defendant had boasted to his friends of what he did?  I fear that it was not PC to expose Hansen's deviance.  If anyone wants to search for the decision, I would find it interesting.

2 comments:

  1. We can blame this on Alfred Kinsey, the Sex doctor. He was instrumental in having sex crime punishment reduced because it was his thesis that the difference between the imprisoned sex criminals and the upstanding men in society was the former had not been caught.
    Of course since Jeffrey Epstein and the "Lolita Express", Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, that isn't such a slander any more.

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  2. I live in the Chicago area, and I remember this case. (From 1995, not from 1955!) As Gizmodo's story noted, this case involved wealthy horse owner Silas Jayne. He wasn't the murderer, but the murderer worked for him and he decided to cover it up (burning the stable, as noted).

    Jayne was rich, powerful, influential, ruthless, and scary evil. Several people knew, but no one talked until he was safely dead.

    As to the appellate decision, I don't know how to find it.

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