The singular statement behind pursuit of long-unsolved cases
I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but there is some statement of higher meaning in the tenacious resolve that results in a long-dormant murder case being solved.
We have occasion to see that determination periodically.
We saw it in 2015, when the application of new DNA technology led to an arrest in the 1985 rape and murder of Glen Ellyn 15-year-old Kristy Wasselman.
We saw it in 2012, when an investigation into the 1991 shooting death of Loretta Tabak-Bodtke in Arlington Heights led to a separate review of the 1973 death of Noreena Kumeta and eventually an arrest and murder conviction.
We saw it in the 2020 arrest of a suspect in the killing 21 years earlier of Young Kamila in Des Plaines, in the answers found a year ago in a weed-draped automobile pulled out of the Fox River near Elgin after 23-year-old Karen Schepers disappeared in 1983 and, perhaps most famously, in the 2003 arrests of two suspects in the deaths of seven people at a Palatine Brown’s Chicken restaurant.
And we see it this week in the case of an infant known only as Jacob Hope whose body was found behind a Round Lake Beach grocery store Aug. 26, 2001, wrapped in a bag left in a dumpster.
The circumstances leading to solutions in the cases vary. Some are the result of persistent efforts by police department cold-case units. Some come because new technologies lead investigators to take a new look at an old case. The Brown’s answer emerged because a witness who could no longer bear the secret of what she knew approached police.
No matter the break that leads to them, these resolutions usually produce a response that particularly bears considering by those of us for whom the original tragedy is at best a faint memory of a news story read or seen many years earlier.
“We feel like our sister can finally rest in peace after 45 years. She went to the grave with a terrible secret,” said Kumeta’s sister Donna Haggerton after the sentencing of her killer.
“What an amazing day,” said Sandra Wasselman after the sentencing of her daughter’s killer in 2018. “I can go home today and try to be a real person, whatever that is. It’s a joyful day and a very sad day. We will always miss Kristy.”
In other, less poignant, words, families and survivors never forget the pain of such losses. Fortunately, police departments and investigators understand that. The persistence that they show in pursuing such cases is a special service to help the Wasselmans and others “try to be a real person” again.
That is an admirable objective. But there is also that “higher meaning” I mentioned earlier. It, too, is almost always evident in the comments of investigators who take on such cases. Round Lake Beach Police Chief Ryan Rodriguez pointed to it in expressing his pride in the detectives and investigators who appear to have discovered what happened in Jacob Hope’s short, sad life.
“Jacob Hope deserved answers, dignity and justice,” he said in a news release. “Today’s arrest represents an important step toward accountability for this innocent child.”
In other, also less poignant words, there is something like sacred purity in such respect for human life, in the insistence that 15-year-old girls, mass murder victims and a newborn child whom almost no one knew be remembered when the ceaseless whitewashing of time seems determined to wipe them from public memory.
However it is described, it begs our witness at such times, and, of course, our gratitude.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is a 2025 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year and is available at eckhartzpress.com.