Greetings from the Midwest

Maybe it's because of Halloween. Maybe it's the studious John Callaway series on Leopold and Loeb on PBS. Maybe it's because when you can't sleep, it's just natural to think about things that go bump in the night.

But it occurs to me that Chicago has had more than our share of horrific characters, monsters in losers' clothing. Leopold and Loeb were our first "crime of the century," self-anointed geniuses who "thrill killed" a child to see if they could get away with it. And even with antiquated forensics, they were caught right away. (What a pair of depraved dumb asses.) Then Richard Speck, the bogeyman of my girlhood, who killed 8 student nurses in their home. Pockmarked and chainsmoking, even with his cuffs on, he looked like the perfect villain. As an adult, I look at him with horrified contempt. He was a failure at everything he did, except mass murder. And most recently, the Killer Clown, John Gacy. A predator who understood that many parents were ashamed of their gay sons, and therefore didn't go looking for them, Gacy gave these poor boys a home -- in his crawlspace.

I love Chicago. It's the most beautiful, most alive, most livable city I've ever seen. But we have a darkside that's as inky black as it can get. (I didn't even mention Al Capone and that unfortunate Valentine's Day incident in the garage.)