Did misogyny, inept police work and more let a suburban killer evade justice?

When Chris Loudon became a Lisle police detective, the job came with an assignment: Try to solve three cold cases.

One was the rape of an elderly woman in the early 1990s. The other was a murder of an elderly woman, again in the 1990s. He solved those in 2014 and 2017.

And then he dived into the coldest of all: the murder of Woodridge resident Pamela Maurer. The 15-year-old girl's body had been found along the side of a road in Lisle in January 1976, one day after she went missing.

She had been stabbed to death, and there was a semen stain inside her jeans, although a coroner at the time did not rule she had been assaulted.

“Everyone (at Lisle PD) kind of considered that unsolvable,” Loudon said.

But Loudon wondered if new technology could take the DNA from that stain and find a suspect.

Not only did he find the man who killed her, but he and fellow investigators stumbled onto what he believes was a serial killer, Bruce Lindahl.

All this and more are detailed in “The Box,” a television documentary now available on the Topic streaming service. It became available in the United States June 8, after a run in Great Britain last year.

<h3 class="leadin">So much more:

The title refers to a box of evidence Loudon received from another police department. It contained hundreds of photographs of teenage girls and young women, all taken by Lindahl. It made him believe he wasn't looking at just one murder.

The series tells how Loudon got a forensic genealogy company to compare the DNA from the jeans to DNA samples people had submitted to businesses such as 23andme.com and Ancestry.com. That firm found familial matches. Using that family tree, the investigators found four brothers, two of whom had lived in Downers Grove around the time of Maurer's murder. From there, they began looking through other cases in which Lindahl had been involved.

A picture emerged of a young, charismatic man who could charm women, but who also had a violent temper.

The “smooth-talking” Lindahl, according to a friend interviewed for the show, was fond of showing his friends slideshows of the “chicks” he had met. The two men met at a skydiving business; eventually the man sold his house to Lindahl. The house is where at least two Aurora women allege Lindahl raped them, after abducting them.

That friend happened to be an Aurora police officer - and Loudon confronted the man about that.

More details are given about the Maurer case than were revealed when authorities announced they'd solved it in January 2020. And while a lot of what's shown in the series is stock footage of people and places in the 1970s, there are current interviews with women Lindahl assaulted, and classmates of his at Downers Grove North High School.

Lindahl died in April 1981, while murdering an 18-year-old man in Naperville. In the struggle, Lindahl was stabbed in a femoral artery and bled to death at the scene.

Shockingly, Loudon said, the evidence collected from that crime has disappeared. And a Lindahl relative refused to give DNA, which is why he sought permission to exhume Lindahl's body. He wanted to get DNA from his bones.

The scene in which they pry open the casket is not for the faint of heart - it's the real deal, not a re-enactment.

In the show and in an interview with us, Loudon also lays blame on local police back then for not believing women when they reported they had been raped by Lindahl, or families who reported young women missing.

“They felt like no one cared,” he said.

He also said police seem to have ignored things - such as coming across Lindahl when they were talking to people in an area where Maurer lived.

A police report shows Lindahl told them he had met Maurer, via a girlfriend. “How did they (cops back then) look themselves in the mirror, knowing they did a half-assed job?” he said. “Bruce Lindahl should have been caught way earlier.”

If he had, maybe Debra Colliander of Aurora would still be alive. She told police in June 1980 that Lindahl had abducted her at a strip mall, took her to his home and raped her. When he fell asleep, she ran out, naked, to get help. Two weeks before Lindahl's trial, Colliander disappeared. The charges were dropped. Eventually, one of her legs was found in a farm field.

Loudon believes Lindahl may have murdered Elizabeth Drews, 17, of Downers Grove in 1977; Deborah McCall, 19, of Downers Grove, in 1979; Kathy Halle, 19, of North Aurora in 1979; Susan Jabczynski, 21, of Aurora in 1980; and two others, whom he said he is not allowed to name.

“I believe there is way more than nine,” he said.

<h3 class="leadin">Why do the show?

Given Lindahl died 42 years ago, why bother doing the show?

“My goal is somebody will call (police) and say, 'Hey, I know where she (McCall) is,'” Loudon said. And he also hopes it sends a message to still-living criminals.

“I don't want any bad guy to think he is in the clear because we have given up.”

Juneteenth on wheels

The Aurora Police Department kicked off the city's Juneteenth celebrations Wednesday by unveiling a specially decorated squad commemorating the holiday.

It was the brainchild of Officer William Whitfield, who is chairman of the city's African American Heritage Advisory Board. He said he hopes it will “break barriers between the black community and our officers.”

The decorations resemble traditional African kente cloth, with a Juneteenth flag design over it. The rear door features the Pan-African flag.

The decorations will stay on for two weeks. You can see the car and meet several of the city's Black police officers at a grocery giveaway Friday, at celebrations Saturday and Sunday throughout the city and at a flag-raising ceremony and the Aurora Juneteenth Youth Summit, both on Monday.

Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas, were told by a Union Army general that they had been freed two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

Voices told her to plea?

A former Elgin woman who claimed voices in her head told her to plead guilty to the attempted murder of a woman she found sleeping in an ex-boyfriend's home won't be allowed to withdraw her admissions.

A state appeals court this week rejected Chavez Odio's bid to have her plea deal thrown out on the basis that her mental illness left her incapable of understanding the legal proceedings.

Odio, 34, is serving a 28-year sentence on arson and attempted murder charges. Authorities say she went to her ex-boyfriend's Roselle townhouse in July 2017 and began taking items inside. When a woman staying there confronted her, authorities say, Odio stabbed her six or seven times, tried to suffocate her with a plastic bag and then set the home on fire.

In her appeal, Odio said an angry male voice in her head told her to plead guilty shortly before she accepted the deal. She also said she suffered a panic attack in court during her plea hearing, leaving her unable to knowingly waive her right to a trial.

Appellate justices acknowledged Odio's history of mental illness but said transcripts from her plea hearing and a subsequent mental health evaluation contradict her claims.

Odio is not eligible for parole until May 2041.

Help retired officer

People have started a GoFundMe.com account to help a retired St. Charles police officer who has ALS.

The account, started a week ago, aims to raise $40,000 to help pay for an accessible van and house modifications for Chris Grove.

Grove retired in 2021, intending to take care of his mother and enjoy watching his nieces and nephews grow up, the page states. He was diagnosed with the incurable neurological disease this year.

To donate, visit “Support Chris In His Battle With ALS” at gofundme.com.