The Killers I have known...pt 1

I was reading one of my favorite blogs recently,

actually a post about 'Jack the Ripper'

and I was flooded with memories

about murder that touched my own life.

In this case..I never met the killer..

worse..

I knew one of the victims.

He was one of my my son's best friends.

We had lived in Bellevue NE..for the most part...

since the early 70s..

in August 1983,

with the local economy in the 'toilet'

and with 6 children..

my husband and I made a bold choice

to move to a small town in Iowa,

closer to his family.

Our oldest child pitched a fit.

He didn't want to move..again...

plus, he had a paper route and he had

to find someone else to take the route...

so he convinced his friend Danny

to take over the route.

Danny had gone with him often enough

that he pretty much knew the route already.

So we moved...to Goldfield Iowa..

the kids began to settle in and make friends..
we really were enjoying 'small town' life after living 

in a city environment for so many years.

Our son got another paper route...

and for the first time ever...he was allowed

to deliver the Sunday papers without having someone help him.
(His dad or his uncle had ALWAYS drove him to deliver
papers on Wednesdays and Sundays..because there were so
many of them..and they were twice the size of the
other weekday newspapers.)

All in all...

Life was good!

In mid-September we got a call from Danny's parents

asking if we'd seen him...

goodness no..we lived a couple hours away...how would

he get to Goldfield anyway???

He'd disappeared from the paper route he'd taken over

from our son...and they were hoping he'd 

just run away .

A few days later, we got a call from our son's principal..

the FBI had come to talk to our son.

So..my husband rushed to the school..

what in the world was going on????

They questioned our son...

did anyone ever try to 'lure' him into their home while delivering papers,

was he ever uneasy about delivering papers to a particular house,

did anyone have anything against him,

(the boys looked remarkably similar...size, build, coloring...even hair style)

did his dad or mom ever touch him inappropriately,

did we like Danny,

the questions went on and on for almost an hour.

A day or two later...Sarpy County Sheriff's 

department officials showed up at our front door.

...more questions.

Since our son had the route for more than a year

and Danny had it for just over a month,

they were sure that...somehow...

there must be 'some' connection to our son.

It was pretty awful and very scary.

A day or two later..

Danny was found and it wasn't

good  news.

Our lives were forever changed.
We no longer felt so safe...even in
'small town america'.

We had learned so much from the
FBI and Sheriff's Department
about what they had found while searching for
clues to Danny's disappearance.

On the paper route they found
17 convicted felons...several for
child molestation.
And the details we learned from Danny's parents..
which were unknown to the public at that time..
gave us nightmares.
Even worse..at that point in time..the killer was
still on the loose.

It was hard to imagine that someone we knew
so well, for so long,
was taken in such a brutal and senseless manner...
after reading about Jack the Ripper..
and seeing all of the senseless crime on daily news...
it makes me sad the things people do
to one another.
And...it really seems to be getting worse.