← Somebody Knows Something
Somebody Knows Something
S2E3: The Girl In The Grass (1976)
00:31:31
On the morning of June 22, 1976, 16-year-old Lori Jean Bolger left a summer driver’s ed class at Larkin High School to walk home to South Elgin, Illinois. She planned to meet friends to swim, but she never made it. Less than two hours after she left...
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- [00:00]
Detective Chris Hall
Limu Emu and Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual, but now we want you to feel it. Cue the Emu music. Limu Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth.
- [00:17]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Customize and save. We save.
- [00:21]
Detective Chris Hall
That may have been too much feeling.
- [00:22]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts this podcast is based on information sourced primarily from police and media reports, but certain names and other identifying details may have been changed or altered for privacy and security reasons. While the events and cases discussed are based on real investigations, some aspects may be simplified for time and for narrative purposes. Voice actors have been used to read.
- [00:58]
Detective Chris Hall
From statements or documents.
- [01:00]
Detective Andrew Houghton
All information presented is intended solely to.
- [01:04]
Detective Chris Hall
Inform and raise awareness.
- [01:06]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Hosts may discuss theories regarding the cases examined in this podcast, but such discussions are not intended to and should not.
- [01:16]
Detective Chris Hall
Be considered by the listener to be legal.
- [01:20]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Conclusions all persons discussed are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Listener discretion is advised. This is Chief Anna Lally. Welcome to Somebody Knows Something, a podcast from the Elgin Police Department's Cold Case Unit. In this podcast we will shed new light on cold cases in the City of Elgin by sharing untold details and by encouraging anyone with information to come forward. You will come along with real cold case detectives as they investigate active cold cases in real time and seek justice for the victims and closure for their families. We believe that the Elgin Police Department and our community can work together to bring closure to cold cases because we know that in these cases, somebody Knows something. Hello and welcome to Somebody Knows Something, the Elgin Police Department Cold Case Podcast. My name is Detective Andrew Houghton and.
- [02:20]
Detective Chris Hall
I'm Detective Chris Hall. Last episode we discussed the murder of Maynard Chester Hawley, a US Air Force veteran who was working on his overnight shift at the Yellow Cab Company in downtown Elgin in February of 1975 when he was shot multiple times. For this episode, we move forward to 1976 for a case that has generated probably more interest and media attention than any other case from the 1970s here in Elgin, the murder of 16 year old Larkin High School student Lori Jean Bolger. Lori Jean Bulger was born on April 23, 1960 to James and Jan Bolger, who lived in South Belgian, Illinois. Both of Laurie's parents were Navy veterans. James served in Korea and Jan also served in the Navy as a communications officer for four years. Laurie was the couple's third child after her big sister Keena, who was born in 1957 and her older brother Larry, who was born in 1958. He, like his parents, later served in the United States Navy for 20 years after graduating high school just weeks before Laurie's murder. Lori also had a little brother, Terry, who was just 12 years old when his big sister was murdered.
- [03:33]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Laurie was pretty well liked, and there's really no other way to put it, she was cool. According to numerous friends, Laurie attended Larkin High School here in Elgin and was attending a summer driver's ed course in June of 1976. The reason she had to take that class over the summer was also tragic. Laurie's father James had been very ill, so Laurie was spending a lot of time with him and her family. Then on June 13, 1976, just nine days before Laurie's murder, her father passed away. Sixteen year old Laurie attended her father's funeral just just a few days before our own death.
- [04:06]
Detective Chris Hall
Since we started this unit in 2024, we have spoken with a number of people who were related to the victims in our cases or who were involved in our cold cases in some way. As you can imagine, talking about loved ones who have been murdered is extremely difficult for friends and family members even decades after a homicide. So we want our listeners to remember that these victims are real people who impacted many people's lives. We want to thank all the people who have been spoken to by us, whether if it's included in our episodes or not. Your stories help keep these cases alive and help us tell the victims stories in a way that keeps them in the forefront as we search for answers in each of these cases.
- [04:47]
Detective Andrew Houghton
For this case, we were able to sit down with Lori's older sister Keena to talk about Lori. It was difficult for her to remember her sister, but Keena agreed to talk to us because she wants people to remember Lori and she still wants justice for her sister. Keena asked us not to use her voice, but she described a lot of things about Lori to us.
- [05:05]
Detective Chris Hall
Keena told us that Lori was larger than life and that everyone wanted to be around her. She was cool, she was fun, loved by her family. Lori's mom Jan worked at Leewards back in the 1970s in Elgin. She often brought home home crafts from the store and that needed to be assembled for display. Laurie, Keena and Jan would sit in her family home together and assemble Christmas ornaments and other crafts and Laurie loved it.
- [05:32]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Laurie also just loved Christmas. She looked forward to the holidays every year. Kena recalled one time when Laurie was maybe three and she saw that her neighbor had Put out her Christmas lights already. Little Laurie became very upset that it was already Christmas and no one had told her. She's afraid that she had already missed it. And the family had to assure her that it was not quite Christmas yet and she had not missed her favorite holiday.
- [05:53]
Detective Chris Hall
Yeah. Andrew Keena also told us that Laurie loved their family traditions. For Christmas. The family would all drive up and spend part of the holidays with Lori's grandparents in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Lori spent some summers up there too. Keena told us that it was one of Laurie's favorite places in the whole world. Keena also explained how deeply Lori's murder impacted her whole family. It was a combination of tragedies. That whole summer, Laurie and Keena had spent days at Heinz VA Hospital in Chicago with their father so that he wasn't alone as his health declined. Then he unfortunately passed away. Nine days later, Lori was murdered. And on her brother Larry's birthday, July 25, 1976. And the family held another funeral for 16 year old Laurie. You know, Andrew, another thing that Kyna said that really resonated with me was that her brother Larry sat up all night outside the family's house that night after Lori's murder, he wanted to make sure that no one else came to hurt his family. His father had died and he was the man of the house. So we sat up to protect his mom, his sister, and his little brother. I mean, it just really hits you that when you think about the impact of something like this, the whole family is affected.
- [07:09]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Yeah, for sure. I think that whenever you meet with families or friends in these cases, the raw emotion is still there, even decades later. Keena told us that her mom was one of the strongest people she ever met. She lost her husband, she lost her daughter, and then she lost her son before she passed away. But she held the whole family together, even that whole summer and for years after that. Keena also said that Lori, as a young child, told the family when she grew up she wanted to be a judge, but she never got the chance to do that. She never got the chance to have a life after 16. Who knows what she would have become? Keena wonders what Laurie's life would have been if someone hadn't taken it from her that summer in 1976. And now, 49 years later, she still wants to know who robbed her sister of that life. Keena also recently shared with us that the Larkin High school yearbook for 1977 included a memorial page for Laurie with a poem that was written in her memory. Laurie, Lori's loss was felt throughout her school by her teachers and classmates. And so we thought it would be fitting to include that poem here in.
- [08:11]
Detective Chris Hall
This episode In Memoriam.
- [08:15]
Detective Andrew Houghton
One of life's hardest tasks is to be liked by all. And to acquire such a feat, you must talk tall. Laurie Bolger was such a person, we all know. Just knowing her and her ways gave us a glow, such an air of freedom and yet refined. Yes, Laurie Bolger was one of a special kind, so special that even God decided it best that Laurie should with him at last rest. She will be missed by us all who were left behind, but her memories will stay for eternal time. Lori Bulger died June 22, 1976.
- [08:59]
Detective Chris Hall
Well, we've given our listeners some insight into who Lori was and how her death impacted her family. Now we want to talk about what happened on June 22, 1976. There are a number of newspaper articles about the case, including ones which released a rough timeline for that morning. Now, Andrew, let's walk through that timeline.
- [09:20]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Okay, so June 22, 1976. It was a Tuesday. It was a warmer day with some rain in the morning, and newspaper articles from that day document it was in the low 70s. We know Laurie attended her driver's ed class from approximately 8am to 9am at Larkin High School, and after class, she planned to walk back to South Elgin and go meet some friends at a local swimming hole called the quarry, right around 10:30am and for our listeners who.
- [09:47]
Detective Chris Hall
Are not familiar with the Elgin area, Elgin and South Elgin are two separate towns. Back in 1976, many students from South Elgin attended Larkin High School on the southwest corner of McLean Boulevard and Larkin Avenue on the west side of Elgin. McLean Boulevard runs south for several miles into South Elgin, crossing Sundown Road and Spring street in South Elgin as it continues south through the Fox Valley. The day that Lori was murdered, she told friends that she was planning to walk to a quarry with a small beach to hang out and swim with other friends. That location was also to the east along Illinois Route 31 into South Elgin and is approximately three and a half miles from Larkin High School.
- [10:28]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Walking south along McLean Boulevard, Lori passed under Illinois Route 20, and she also passed Elgin Community College, which is situated on the west side of McLean Boulevard just south of the highway. As she walked, several people saw her walking, Right, Chris?
- [10:43]
Detective Chris Hall
Yeah, that's true. She was waved down by lots of people that she knew. Lori was wearing a fairly distinctive shirt, and several passersbyers saw her walking south along McLean Boulevard between Illinois Route 20 and Bose Road. Between approximately 9:10 to 9:15am that included one of her driver, Zed's teachers, and other witnesses who clearly recognized Lori walking along the roadway. She reportedly even waved at some of these people. After approximately 9:15am Though she vanished. She was gone. If Lori had continued south and made it past Bowes Road, she likely would have turned east onto Spring street to head home and grab a swimsuit before meeting friends at the quarry. But she never made it. Instead, sometime around 10:30am and again, these are approximated times, a man driving on Randall Road about a half a mile to the west saw a woman lying in a field on the east side of the roadway. He believed that she was sunbathing and continued on his way. But we believe that he actually saw Lori's body.
- [11:51]
Detective Andrew Houghton
The location where the man saw a girl lying in the grass was on a property called the Elgin Estates Sewage Treatment Plant. Basically, back in 1976, a vast area of Elgin was still cornfields and just being developed. There was a gravel turnabout just south of Bowes Road on the east side of Randall Road, just southeast of the address where Walmart is located today. Lori's body was found on that property. There really seems to be no reason why Laurie would go west. Everywhere she was going was to the east, her house was to the east, and the quarry was to the east. And we believe she would have had to go to her house first before going to meet her friends. So it's unlikely that she walked to the location where she was found.
- [12:30]
Detective Chris Hall
And so it appears that sometime between approximately 9:15am and and 10:30am Someone killed Lori and dumped her body in the grass at the sewage treatment plant. Again, these times are estimates, but we know when she left high school at 9am and we know when she was ultimately discovered.
- [12:48]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Lori's body was discovered and identified just before 11:30am when two workers for the sewage treatment plant arrived for some routine maintenance of the property. They checked several other properties that morning and even stopped for coffee before coming up to elgin right before 11:30 in a pickup truck to check the site. The last thing those two men expected to find that June morning was the body of a young girl.
- [13:11]
Detective Chris Hall
Upon finding Lori's body, the men jumped back into their truck and drove to a nearby gas station to call the sheriff's department. Both the Kane County Sheriff's Office and the Elgin Police Department responded quickly to the scene, and the Elgin Police Department later took over the investigation. Back in those days, it simply took some time to figure out who had jurisdiction over the property.
- [13:33]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Police released to the newspaper that Lori had been severely beaten about her head, including that she had suffered at least eight cuts to her forehead and a fractured skull. Police also told the media that Lori's pants had been pulled down and her sweater pushed up. And they told the media that her purse was located later along Big Timber Road north of the crime scene. I have to say that's one thing that's really different from things these days. In these old cases a lot of information was provided to the press. If this case happened today, I think we would certainly silo off some of that information. But that's not how things were done 40 plus years ago. Frankly, a lot of information about this case is already in the public sphere.
- [14:10]
Detective Chris Hall
Yes, but sometimes the information is inaccurate. For example, an article from the Morris Daily Herald the day after Laurie's murder. Authorities said that it appeared that Laurie had died five to six hours before she was discovered. But we know that simply not true. She left her driver's ed class at 9am, was likely seen lying in the field around 10.30am and she was discovered at 11.27am so some information that was publicly released is just totally inaccurate.
- [14:41]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Yeah, that's true.
- [14:42]
Detective Chris Hall
And one thing that's certainly accurate and heavily reported is that four men were identified and arrested for Lori's murder in the weeks after her death.
- [15:02]
Detective Andrew Houghton
In September of 1976, the Kane County State's Attorney's office indicted four men for charges related to Lori's murder. They were a 16 year old boy whose name we will not release due to the age of the time, and three adult men, 18 year old Robert Iktari, 21 year old James Martin and 22 year old Gary Miller.
- [15:21]
Detective Chris Hall
Essentially, in the days after Lori's murder, another jurisdiction came across these four guys in a car. They observed a bloody object in the car and questioned them believing that it could be related to Lori's case. Because as you can imagine, the murder of a young, pretty high school student was a big deal in the area. While the men were initially charged, they were charged based on the blood type found in their vehicle and some other factors at that time. As we said in the prior episode, blood typing was a way that police attempted to link people to a crime scene. When it came to blood evidence anyway, the blood type was the same as Laurie's. And so these guys got charged in September of 1976.
- [16:00]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Obviously our listeners know this case went cold. So these guys were not the offenders in Lori's case, right?
- [16:06]
Detective Chris Hall
That's correct. Alibi witnesses, polygraphs, other witnesses, and even Forensic evidence cleared these guys. DNA in the 1990s also confirmed that the blood in their vehicle was not Lori's, and no forensic evidence had ever linked Lori to their car or them to Lori. The cases against these men were simply dismissed in December of 1976, and no one had been charged in her case since then. Similar to Maynard's case, where we visited the scene of his murder, we decided that it would be helpful to travel the route that Lori walked and visit the site where she was found. So on a sunny day this summer, a day not so different from the day that Lori was murdered, we retraced her final steps and then drove to the site where Lori was found. On June 22, 1976, Andrew and I drove south of McLean Boulevard from Larkin High School and then over to the site of the old sewage plant. We parked along the shoulder of Randall Road, got out of the car, and trudged through the weeds and grass and woods to find the actual spot where Lori's body was found.
- [17:20]
Detective Andrew Houghton
So the gravel turned about is still here. She would have been found right about where we're standing. It just kind of comes out of nowhere. She was just to the east of here. You can't even see the highway from here anymore. There's so many trees, it's so dense, but it really just opens right up. And all of a sudden, bam, here's the gravel road.
- [17:45]
Detective Chris Hall
Definitely seemed like whoever is responsible getting rid of her in a hurry. You're just gonna dump her in the middle of a field where everybody could see her in broad daylight. Not exactly trying to hide as you.
- [18:00]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Stand here on this road that has grown over, but it's still here. You can't see it from the roadway. You would never know this existed if you were driving down Randall Road. But 49 years ago, you've been able to see the roadway from here. I mean, people could see her lying in the grass from the roadway. So it's just crazy that it's kind of hidden away back in here.
- [18:22]
Detective Chris Hall
You know, it's a shame hearing from Lori's family. And she had so many aspirations to be independent, grow up, get her own driver's license, be able to go places independently, be her own person. It's like it's just immediately cut short.
- [18:50]
Detective Andrew Houghton
In the months after Lori's murder, the Daily Courier News ran a series of stories about the case. Like we said, this was a big deal. The Daily Courier noted that there were a number of other attacks in Elgin in 1975 and 1976. So obviously, the media picked up on that fact and they ran a bunch of articles about that. The thinking was that perhaps these other cases were somehow related to Laurie's case.
- [19:13]
Detective Chris Hall
Yeah, there had to be some type of correlation. The Daily Courier noted that there were multiple hit and run incidents in both 1975 and 1976 involving younger females around Elgin. And there were multiple incidents in 1976 where women were attacked from behind and beaten with a blunt instrument in areas along the west side of Elgin. That included a 17 year old woman beaten from behind on January 21st and a woman attacked in a laundromat also on the west side on January 23.
- [19:43]
Detective Andrew Houghton
The media also picked up stories about several females who had an unknown man throw bleach in their face or squirt some sort of oily substance or paint on them as they walked along a roadway or rode bicycles. Again on the west side of Elgin or near downtown. One of those victims was actually a Larkin High School student who was heading home from driver's ed class just around noon, six days before Laurie was murdered. While we cannot confirm if these various incidents are related to Laurie's case, police released that there were several similarities to her case. The following information appeared in the Daily Courier in the weeks after Lori's murder.
- [20:16]
Detective Chris Hall
Following our stories of similar attacks.
- [20:19]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Most of the victims were attacked on.
- [20:21]
Detective Chris Hall
The southwest side of Elgin. All were approached from behind.
- [20:25]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Those girls who were struck with a.
- [20:27]
Detective Chris Hall
Hammer like object were hit just above the right ear. There are other similarities which tend to link the attacks. Police say they are not releasing further information on similarities and as to not affect the investigation. These are the similarities between the Lori Bulger murder and other attacks. Lori Bulger was a teenage girl. She was on the southwest side of Elgin.
- [20:49]
Detective Andrew Houghton
She was alone and she was struck.
- [20:51]
Detective Chris Hall
In the face and head right above the ear. But there is one important exception.
- [20:57]
Detective Andrew Houghton
This attack was fatal.
- [21:01]
Detective Chris Hall
Haley Caller, 1976 soon after the article appeared, local area media reported something else. The press believed that they had identified a potential suspect in Lori's case.
- [21:21]
Detective Andrew Houghton
The man that media quickly latched onto was 33 year old William Charles Reinbold. Reinbold had been arrested in one of the paint attacks in August of 1976. And so media believed that he could potentially be involved in Laurie's case as well. So where is William Reinbold now? Well, he's currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a murder very similar to Laurie's. The 1988 murder of Mary Clark on December 26th.
- [21:49]
Detective Chris Hall
Mary Clark was a 21 year old woman who lived in Farmington, Illinois. And just one day after Christmas, she went to the local laundromat to wash some clothing. William Reinbold, who was also living in Farmington, went to the same laundromat that day, too.
- [22:03]
Detective Andrew Houghton
When Mary's husband returned to pick her up, he observed blood. But Mary was nowhere to be found. Her body was later discovered in a garbage dump area near Galesburg, Illinois.
- [22:14]
Detective Chris Hall
Blood evidence, witnesses and other evidence linked Reinbold to Mary's murder, and he was convicted in 1989. After multiple appeals, he was convicted again, and he is currently sitting in the Western Illinois Correctional center, where he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
- [22:31]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Mary and Laurie's cases were not the only cases where William Reinbold's name popped up back in the 1970s or the 1980s. In fact, on April 1, 1970, Reinbold, who was 17 at the time, spotted a 30 year old woman named Ann Ward walking on the west side of Elgin. As she walked back to the Elgin Mental Health center where she worked as a nurse, Reinbold approached her, grabbed her from behind near the property and pushed her into a culvert, attempted to remove her clothing and stabbed her 45 times in the head, face and neck with a 2 inch pocket knife. He then fled the scene.
- [23:05]
Detective Chris Hall
Ann climbed out from the culvert up to the roadway and waved down a passerby who stopped and helped her reach an area hospital. Reinbold was later identified, charged as an adult and convicted in that case, but only served five years in the Illinois Department of Corrections. He was released on May 21, 1975, and moved right back to Elgin. Laurie was murdered just a little over a year after his release.
- [23:31]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Reinbold stayed in Elgin until the spring of 1977, when he moved south to Harrisburg, Illinois, where he promptly became the suspect in the disappearance of a 15 year old girl named Bethann Hedrick in the summer of 1977. In an odd coincidence, Chaos Divers, the group who helped us locate Karen Sheepers, well, they're also from Harrisburg.
- [23:49]
Detective Chris Hall
Yeah, that's a strange coincidence. Reinbold was also last seen with Bethann, allegedly heading to the Saline County Fair before she disappeared. He was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, similar to Thomas Erlacher in Barbara Gluecard's case, which we will also discuss in our next episode. But he was subsequently released. Reinbold quickly moved to Yuba City, California. And then In December of 1977, Bethann's body was found in a rural field near Harrisburg. Neither Reinbold nor anyone else has ever been charged in her case.
- [24:24]
Detective Andrew Houghton
After moving to California. Reinbold was arrested multiple times between 1978 and 1980. Let's run through a few of them because they all involve young girls and some are similar to his Elgin cases that he was either arrested for or was suspected of.
- [24:39]
Detective Chris Hall
Okay, so let's start in 1978 when Reinbold entered a Sears and squirted motor oil on a young female clerk. He was arrested in that incident.
- [24:48]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Yeah. And that's similar to the cases we had in 75 and 76 here.
- [24:52]
Detective Chris Hall
Yep.
- [24:52]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Then in 1979, he was hanging around Yuba City High School and he broke into a student's car and stole her purse.
- [24:59]
Detective Chris Hall
So he was hanging around a high school, again, similar to Lori's case.
- [25:03]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Yep. And that same year, he was stopped about a half a block away from a woman's house after she called police saying a man was chasing her down the street. He was not arrested, but he was named in that case because the police stopped him nearby.
- [25:15]
Detective Chris Hall
In 1980, Reinbold was at a shopping mall when he squirted some kind of liquid in the shape of a number 20 on a girl. And then there was two physical attacks where he was either arrested or listed as a suspect.
- [25:27]
Detective Andrew Houghton
The first case was a case in Lake Tahoe. On August 31st of 1980, a 21 year old girl named Diane Rodriguez was walking along the roadway near Lake Tahoe when an unidentified person crept up behind her and beat her over the head with a blunt object. Diane later told the police that she was walking up a hill, and then the next thing she remembered, she was laying in the woods with pain in her head and blood coming out of her ears. She stumbled back to the roadway for help and survived despite suffering massive head trauma. Police pretty quickly determined Reinbold was camping nearby and had left to ride his motorcycle alone during the time frame that Diane was attacked. While he was listed as a suspect in her case, he was never charged in that incident.
- [26:06]
Detective Chris Hall
Then a month later, Reimbull was arrested in Yuba City for chasing a young woman named Debbie Chessy through a parking lot and beating her on the head with a tire iron. After being questioned, he was released again, and no formal charges appear to have ever been filed in that case.
- [26:23]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Sometime around 1981, William Reinbold moved back to Illinois with his wife and settled in a small farming community in western central Illinois called Farmington. He again popped up in contacts with police in the early and mid-1980s, both in Illinois and in nearby Iowa, including the disappearance of yet another girl. 17 year old Kimberly McClasky disappeared from outside of London Mills, Illinois in 1983. Her body was later found in 1989, but she was not identified until 2006. Reinbold remains a suspect in her case as well. Then, on December 26, 1988, he murdered Mary Clark and dumped her body near Galesburg, Illinois.
- [27:00]
Detective Chris Hall
All in all, Reinhold was someone who media and police looked at seriously as a suspect in numerous cases in Illinois, Iowa and California between 1970 and 1988. Obviously, he was charged and convicted for stabbing and Ward in 1970 and murdering Mary Clark in 1988. But he has also been considered a suspect in the murder of Laurie Bulger, the murder of Beth Ann Hedrick, and the disappearance of Kimberly McClasky, and also the attacks on both Diane Rodriguez and Debbie Chessy, as well as numerous other cases. William Reinbold has maintained his innocence in all the cases we've discussed, including Mary's murder, and has never been charged in Laurie's case.
- [27:48]
Detective Andrew Houghton
So this is where we're going to ask for your help. If anyone knew William Reinbold or worked with him at the Carman Company located at 1225 Davis Road here in Elgin in the summer of 1976, please contact us. Any information we can get about his time here in Elgin would be helpful for this case. Also, if you or anyone you know has information about Bethann Hedrick's case or Kimberly McClasky's disappearance, please contact us and we can put you in touch with the appropriate law enforcement agency for any of the cases we've described in this episode.
- [28:20]
Detective Chris Hall
We are also asking that people remember Lori and get involved in her case. If you have any knowledge of her case, please contact us. This case, like many others, involves witnesses and people from nearly 50 years ago, so tracking down all those original people is quite tough. If you attended Lori's driver's Ed class, knew her well, or were originally interviewed in her case, please contact us. Similarly, if you were ever a victim of an unknown perpetrator who threw oil or bleach on you as you walked on the west side of el Belgian in 1975 and 1976, please reach out to us as well. We would like to talk to anyone who could have any information related to this cold case homicide investigation. From the summer of 1976.
- [29:10]
Detective Andrew Houghton
The Bulger family suffered tragedy after tragedy. James died just days before Lori's murder, and in 2004, her brother Larry, a 20 year United States Navy veteran, also died, never knowing for sure who killed his sister. Then in 2022, Lori's mother, Jan also died, again never receiving justice for her daughter's. Murder. This family is just one example of numerous families in our case files who were rocked by violence in our community. While we know that closing a case like Lori's will never truly bring closure to a family, they still deserve justice. And so does Lori.
- [29:46]
Detective Chris Hall
Two days after her murder, the Chicago Tribune ran an article about Lori Jean Bulger, which included a quote from her aunt. Lori had just attended her father's funeral days before her own murder and watched as the family buried him in the shade of a tree for his final resting place. Laurie, who loved to be in the sunshine, had this reflection in that moment.
- [30:07]
Detective Andrew Houghton
When I die, you'll have to find a grave out in the sun. The grave that Laurie described came much sooner than anyone anticipated, and she now rests in a plot not far from her father in a sunny spot in Mount Hope Cemetery, waiting for the day that her murderer is identified. Next episode we jump forward just two short months to late August of 1976 to discuss a case that has links not only to Elgin but also season one of our podcast. On August 21, 1976, 14 year old Barbara Gluecard attended a concert in Huntley, Illinois. She was never seen again. The only suspect in her case, Thomas Erlacher, lived in Elgin at the time and he lived in the exact apartment unit as Karen Sheepers from season one. In fact, Thomas moved out just before Karen moved in in 1978. Join us next episode as we discuss Barbara's case and continue our journey through the cold cases of Elgin 1970s. Here on somebody Knows Something. If you or anyone you know has information about this case or any other cold case in Elgin, please contact the Elgin Police Department Cold case email@coldcasetipselginil.gov or the cold case tip line at 847 289-COLD. You can also review cold case information on the Elgin Police Department's Transparency Hub by going to elginil.gov and navigating to the Elgin Police Department's Transparency Hub, where every cold case, homicide and missing person's case is listed with photographs and information about each case.
- [32:01]
Detective Chris Hall
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- [32:06]
Detective Andrew Houghton
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Detective Chris Hall
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Detective Andrew Houghton
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Detective Chris Hall
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Detective Andrew Houghton
Your first order with code.
- [32:28]
Detective Chris Hall
Indulge 20 at checkout.
- [32:31]
Detective Andrew Houghton
This is the story of the One.
- [32:32]
Detective Chris Hall
As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility he knows keeping the line up.
- [32:37]
Detective Andrew Houghton
And running is a tough top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger, because when.
- [32:42]
Detective Chris Hall
A drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll.
- [32:50]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Have everything in place and running like clockwork.
- [32:52]
Detective Chris Hall
Call 1-800-granger.
- [32:53]
Detective Andrew Houghton
Click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.