Quote:
Originally Posted by Deserterer
I was a little kid living a few miles away when this happened. I probably found out years later when I was a teen reading the paper. They say this is one of the "best-known" Illinois murders and it may be among older people but I know people my age who lived even closer to it who never heard about it.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...906-story.html
Fifty years later, it remains one of Illinois’ best-known and most mysterious unsolved killings.
Valerie Jean Percy, 21, was found beaten and stabbed to death in her bed Sept. 18, 1966, in her family's Kenilworth mansion. It was the first homicide in the history of the North Shore suburb.
Percy was the daughter of Chicago-area business executive and then-Republican U.S. Senate candidate Charles "Chuck" Percy. She had just graduated from Cornell University and came home to work on her father’s election campaign. |
A terribly tragic event. Senator Percy went on despite this family tragedy to be elected to the Senate.
It took place during a time when violent crime was rising in America.
Richard Nixon went on to campaign for the presidency in 1968 partly on the theme that we needed "law and order" in America because crime was running rampant. It was an effective campaign theme. Crime would actually increase in America every year until 1994 when it began to decline again.
My guess is that the murderer has long since passed on. Maybe he was in prison for something else and this crime could never be linked to him.
When I hear about this kind of awful thing, I think about the awful loss. A young woman who had much to give this world had her life snuffed out. I think of all the suffering her family must have endured. The 1960's was a tough time for many people. There was violence at home. There was violence abroad in terms of the Vietnam War. No one should miss those times.
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