Editorial: A cop's extraordinary commitment to 'right this wrong'

In a year when police officers have felt devalued and unappreciated, it's refreshing to hear a story like Mike Nelson's.

A Mount Prospect kid who grew up to be a Mount Prospect cop. And not just any cop. One who took on a cold case early on his career and to this day works every angle that comes up, holding out hope that someday his efforts will pay off.

Daily Herald staff writer Dann Gire wrote about Nelson in a story Sunday about the 40th anniversary of the disappearance of a 14-year-old Mount Prospect girl. Though it seems clear who killed Barbara Glueckert - a man in his 20s with a history of sexually assaulting young girls - her body was never found.

Nelson was a 14-year-old kid himself when Barbara Glueckert went missing. They lived two blocks apart. They were classmates at St. Raymond's Catholic School. He saw her two days before registering for Prospect High School.

And when he joined the police department in 1989, he took on the case of the girl he knew, the girl who went to a concert and never came home. As Gire wrote, for Nelson it was personal.

And, also as Gire reported, the Glueckert case remains open because her body was never found and the man who people believe killed her was killed himself in 2004 by drug dealers in Colorado in what police called a drug deal gone bad.

Nelson believes he knows where the killer disposed of Barbara Glueckert's body - a section of land in St. Charles Township in Kane County. He hopes with new technology the area can be scanned for a grave at some point in the near future. He already has unsuccessfully dug up locations with backhoes and bulldozers.

He says he can't let it go. He wants to solve the case once and for all to give the Glueckert family closure.

"Once the person responsible for Barbara's death was gone, people said, 'That's it,' " Nelson said. "No, that's not it. The Glueckerts wanted to have their daughter back. (Both parents have since died.) They told me that. They wanted to all be buried together. It's been disappointing for me not to do that for them. All I'm trying to do is right this wrong."

Nelson said he has had help from caring people along the way in the last 27 years.

And the Glueckerts - now just her two brothers - have had a caring man in the Mount Prospect police station all that time as well, someone they can count on to do what's right by Barbara.

That kind of commitment is not common, it's extraordinary.