galoshes blog

By Gavin Murphy

(Coroner’s Inquest)

One afternoon during my first few days at City News Bureau I was sent to a coroner’s inquest where a jury of community members was to hear testimony about a fatal police shooting. The deceased was a young – 20 something – white man.

He was allegedly smoking a joint with some others in the alley behind a bar on Chicago’s North Side when the cops showed, maybe undercover, including a sheriff’s deputy. During the bust, the deputy had the guy on the ground and was holding a gun at the back of his head. The deputy was at the hearing and didn’t show much emotion as testimony described what he had stated happened.

The guy on the ground suddenly jerked his head and the deputy’s weapon accidentally discharged at point blank range.

I can’t remember how long the jury – several older men – deliberated, but it agreed that the shooting was accidental. 

There were some of the victims’s family members present, immigrants from Eastern Europe, I think from what was then called Yugoslavia. I approached the family, notebook in hand, trying to think of what to ask them. Every question that came to mind seemed too trivial – What kind of person was the deceased? Where did he work?

The mother was right there in front of me, sobbing, being supported by others. I was supposed to ask something. Maybe, just, did she have anything she wanted to say? Finally, did she think justice had been served?

Her eyes met mine. She understood who I was – a reporter – and she was waiting for whatever it was I would blurt out. I identified myself and managed to say something like “I’m sorry for your loss – can I ask you a couple of questions…”

The confused expression on her tear-streaked face told me she didn’t understand English very well. I stood there for an awkward instant holding my pen as the rest of the room cleared out and family members shepherded the grieving mother away.

A note about interviewing relatives, friends, and others associated with tragic deaths: at CNB you were expected to do this as a routine thing. Call the grieving family and ask them a bunch of very personal questions. This obviously was a hard thing to do, and often was greeted with hostility. Many would say they didn’t want a story written and you would have to tell them that there was going to be a story because what had happened, unfortunately, to their relative was “news.”

I had learned that what was very upsetting to victims’ relatives were inaccuracies in a story about the victim – spelling the name incorrectly, getting their age wrong etc. So I found the best approach for me was to initiate an interview with fact checking. “I just want to make sure I have your son’s name correctly because, to be honest, police reports often get details wrong (they do) … can you verify his age?” These were simple questions for a grieving person in shock to answer. From there it was easier to ask where did he go to school? What grade was he in? 

Oh, he was on the football team… And he has a scholarship to play in college…

If you were lucky, you, the reporter, became the outlet the family member needed at that moment to tell the world about their son or daughter, brother or sister.

(Arson Fire)

Several times I was dispatched from “late central” to cover fires. 

This might take place after a blaze was bad enough to surpass a “2–11” when an extra alarm was declared and additional units were requested. (If a 4-11 or 5-11 was declared you were definitely on your way to the scene.)

One time it was an apartment building where a displaced resident I interviewed told me they had seen a shadowy figure firebomb the place with a Molotov cocktail tossed through a living room window.

Several residents died, most likely by smoke inhalation, with the firefighters assembling the victims’ bodies side-by-side on the sidewalk, about a half dozen in all. There were bare feet sticking out of body bags. The scene was ghastly, with noxious smoke billowing and firefighters shouting. I wondered how the firefighters were able to cope with seeing what they saw.

Another time I was wrapping up my overnight shift when reports came about an industrial accident involving fumes from toxic chemicals. I was dispatched by cab to the scene and then to the hospital where I interviewed survivors. Several workers were killed.

I don’t think I put in for any overtime.

The thing about covering the overnight police beat was you gradually turned into a zombie, sleep deprived, socially on the fringe, chronicling the ghoulish events that happened night after night, tracking the bodycount before dawn finally arrived and the vampires retreated.

(And your already bad handwriting got worse as the night wore on.)

A “floater” in police parlance:

(Near North Murder)

One very early morning I was dispatched to a swank Near North Side address where investigators were on the scene of a homicide. I got past the doorman and into the elevator by flashing my press pass. 

I found a uniformed cop guarding a door on one of the upper floors. He let me step inside the doorway so I could see what was happening inside. Several homicide dicks were on their knees in the center of the living room, moving something rigid. After a minute I realized it was a body post rigor mortis. 

One of the detectives was chanting something about “homicide” – a strange raspy refrain to release some of the tension in the room I guess, an attempt to suppress the horror that these guys had to treat as routine. 

He noticed me in the room and barked “who the hell is that?” 

I was so startled I leapt backwards out the door and into the hallway, where I remained, talking to the uniformed cop.

He was willing to give me some details about the investigation thus far as he had nothing better to do and was probably glad to be talking to me and not have to hang around inside the putrid apartment with the detectives and the stiff. 

As I had already surmised – Sherlock like – given that the body was being handled like a piece of lumber, the murder – a stabbing – likely occurred hours before. The cops were looking for a suspect, someone who apparently knew the victim. In that sense it was a “domestic” incident, but because of the fancy address would get more attention than it would’ve otherwise.

“Oh,” the cop said, “the guy’s dog is dead too.”

The killer had also stabbed the victim’s dog, a Shih Tzu, or some similar small breed – and placed its body on top of the deceased’s.

I hurried to a find a payphone and relay these morbid details to rewrite.

(Plane Crash)

In late May of 1979, we were vacationing in California, driving to Yosemite in a rental car, determined to find a hotel after roughing it for a couple of nights backpacking in Sequoia National Park.

The news came on the radio, something about FAA investigators trying to determine why an engine fell off of a DC-10, causing the plane to crash at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The crash had taken place a couple of days earlier, when we had been out of touch in the wilderness. 

Then came the last line of the report: “Two hundred and seventy three people died in the crash, the deadliest in US aviation history.” 

I almost drove off the road. I immediately realized had I been in Chicago I no doubt would have been called on to help cover such a huge and terrible story in some way, maybe even dispatched to the grisly scene. 

We got to Yosemite and were lucky to get a room at the Ahwahnee Hotel, probably the grandest of all national park lodges. I had never heard of it before and it must have been a lot cheaper then because I was still only making maybe $100 or so per week at CNB and didn’t yet even have a credit card, though I think Cynthia did.

(Gacy)

I was still at CNB when the John Wayne Gacy story broke but my participation was pretty much limited to calling the Cook County Morgue and obtaining the names of some of the notorious serial killer’s 33 victims as they were identified by the medical examiner.

My mother had told a story about when she was a reporter at CNB in the 1940s being at the morgue and having to count the bullet holes in a corpse. I was sent to the morgue a couple of times as a way station before being sent to other assignments. I maybe saw a couple of toe tags wheeled by on gurneys but I was never in the refrigerated place where the cadavers awaiting autopsy and other bodies were stored.

For years many CNB stories sent out over the wire ended with the sentence: ‘The body was taken to the Cook County Morgue.’ At some point I recall the name being changed to the Fishbein Institute. Then bodies were ‘taken to the Fishbein Institute.’

It didn’t sound the same.

(Elizabeth Taylor)

CNB reporters often were sent to cover events that the bigger new organizations didn’t want to bother sending one of their own people to.

I was sent to cover an appearance by Elizabeth Taylor, who was attending a fundraiser for her then husband Sen. John Warner. I wasn’t even expected to file a story, just be there in case something happened, like if she fell down and injured herself. 

She was a middle aged woman by then. Still beautiful with the famous violet eyes. 

I remember being conspicuously underdressed because I had reported for work with no idea I would spend a couple of hours standing within a few feet of Elizabeth Taylor at a fancy reception at the Palmer House. 

I think she and her husband thought I was part of a security detail.

(Chop Shop)

An inexperienced young reporter can sometimes try too hard to make a story more than it is. Once some investigators tasked with busting auto thieves invited me to accompany them on a “chop shop” raid. 

A chop shop is the place where thieves take stolen cars to be disassembled so the parts can be sold, a lucrative business and likely less challenging than trying to fence a stolen vehicle as such.

That the cops were inviting me along told me, even as a newbie reporter, that they were looking for publicity. Most cops were distrustful of most reporters, even contemptuous.

We went out into the night with a warrant to enter a garage behind a bungalow someplace on the Northwest Side. No one appeared to be there and the place was dark. We gained entry and the cops searched the place, but didn’t seem to come up with much. There were car parts here and there that could’ve been pilfered or not. 

I wrote a story trying to imbue some sense of drama. After all, there could’ve have been bad guys, armed and dangerous, and mayhem could’ve ensued. I thought later that the cops maybe knew that no one would be there. Then again, maybe some arrests were eventually made.

(Shakespeare Station Homicide)

I was often assigned to base myself for the day in the Shakespeare District police station.

By now I was working “mid watch” after being liberated from the graveyard shift.

The cops and investigators working out of this antiquated facility (since closed) were pretty old school. They especially didn’t like young reporters with longish hair. 

CNB reporters were allowed to use the PAX phones, the internal police phone system, but if you were tying up the line when one of these guys (I don’t recall any women) wanted to use it, they wouldn’t hesitate to get in your face. They also didn’t like being your answering service when the office called to bother you about something. 

“City News!” the burly homicide detective would shout. You would quickly grab the line before he slammed it down.

It’s important to understand that prior to the turbulence of 1968, the cops and reporters in Chicago for the most part got along. But after the media’s reporting about what some called a “police riot” during that year’s chaotic Democratic convention, that cordial relationship was over.

When interacting with hardboiled and sometimes racist cops, it was hard to not come off sounding like a clueless kid right out of college when, in fact, that’s exactly what you were. And there was no denying these cops were dealing with some really disgusting crimes.

I recall one particularly shocking homicide that took place in the district, the strangling and alleged sexual molestation of a five-year-old boy. It was a case that I inadvertently would be following for the next year, from reporting about the crime when it happened to covering the case when the accused killer was prosecuted in court.

Without going into all the gruesome details, the five year old victim had disappeared while playing with his sister in their yard and his body later was found in a trash can. He wasn’t a rich kid but the circumstances were so terrible that the cops went into high gear to find the killer.

I was at the Shakespeare station being largely ignored as usual, or worse, glared at, by the cops. Every hour or so I would muster the courage to enter the office of the lead area homicide investigator and ask if there was any progress in the murder investigation of the five year old, trying my best to show some swagger and confidence, like one of the few older reporters who still had a rapport built over years with the detectives. 

Nothing.

Later that afternoon – it was June and stuffy and I don’t recall much in the way of air conditioning – I was still claiming my seat at a desk where I could be close to the phones and try to observe what was going on without actually getting in the way. The lead homicide detective suddenly emerged from somewhere in the vicinity of his office with another investigator. They flanked a handcuffed man. He was a scrawny, middle-aged looking, white guy. He didn’t appear to be a menacing criminal but the way the cops gripped his arms and the grim look on their faces as they hustled him quickly across the room and away to wherever, left me with a chill.

I looked around for any of the investigators on the case to ask what, if anything, was happening. But they all seemed to have disappeared. I really wish I could say I got the scoop that day. That I got a coveted “atta boy” from editor Paul Zimbrakos, but it was not to be. Somebody at the Sun Times I think, who wasn’t even at the station, got the scoop: A suspect had been arrested for the murder.

The ultimate objective of an apprentice reporter at City News was to be given one of the primary “beats” to cover, ranging from chasing the politicians around city hall, to haunting the state office building and also the criminal court beat. I spent my final weeks at CNB filling in for vacationing reporters on these beats, most memorably the criminal court.

The press room at Cook County Criminal Court was famous in its own right, used as a setting in movies, including the screwball comedy His Girl Friday. Filling in for the regular reporter I would again encounter the accused murderer I had glimpsed a year earlier that afternoon in the Shakespeare station. He had pleaded not guilty and testified that homicide investigators that day had coerced him into signing a confession. I heard the victim’s mother tearfully testify. I listened to the public defender’s seemingly half-hearted defense and watch the judge try to stay awake as the wheel of justice slowly turned.

After a four day trial the accused was convicted of murder and aggravated kidnapping.  

During my short stint in the Criminal Court I covered other cases, including the trial of a 17 year old accused of the “execution style” killing of a Korean immigrant in a robbery and the trial of an escapee from Leavenworth who was convicted of shooting and killing a moonlighting police officer during a bank robbery.

Not long after, I left CNB to cover commodity markets at the Chicago Board of Trade for Reuters. 

Postscript: My uncle Jim asked me once if I wanted to “take a ride to get some cigarettes.” This turned out to mean driving all way to Indiana because the tax there was so much lower than in Chicago. The round trip took hours as we inevitably kept getting stopped at the innumerable railroad crossings lacing the Southwest Side and near suburbs. 

I wondered why we just didn’t get on an interstate highway and blast across the state line, cop the smokes and blast back. I eventually learned uncle Jim for some time was assigned to the traffic division of the Chicago Police Department. He must have seen some terrible things because he would not drive on freeways such as the Dan Ryan Expressway (some white cops had an expression for the DR I won’t repeat here). 

But the errand really wasn’t only about saving a few bucks on a couple cartons of cigarettes. It was about the journey. Despite his experiences as a traffic cop, my uncle liked to drive and it was a way to do something while spending some time with me. 

When I was working Midwatch Central in the press room at Police Headquarters my uncle often was downstairs (or was it upstairs?) answering 911-calls. That was his job for the final years of his career and it was another stressful gig. He took me there once and I got to see the dispatchers in operation. Needless to say it was a busy, noisy place. 

Sometimes, on our lunch hour, he would take me to the employee cafeteria at the Conrad Hilton on Michigan Avenue where the cops ate for free. Because I was with him I ate for free too. It was a big noisy cafeteria with lots of people walking around with trays. The food was good and the price certainly was right.

We usually didn’t talk too much but we were comfortable enough together. Though he certainly considered me a clueless kid he treated me like an adult. I think he respected my modest achievements, like getting through college and now hanging on to a job. It was a different relationship than I had with my father – his older brother. In that relationship I would pretty much always be a kid. 

We didn’t have much family nearby when I was growing up but as a young man I was lucky to form relationships with both my uncles, though each had very different personalities. 

A few times I did a pub crawl with my uncle Jim. We would go from tavern to tavern in and around his Southwest Side neighborhood drinking 50 cent glasses of Old Style beer and maybe watching a ball game, though I really had little interest in who won. He was known in all these places and would never let me pay for a drink. 

As the night wore on, the place would get more crowded and louder. I can still remember him sitting at the bar, cigarette in hand, sipping his beer. Something had happened to him as a young kid – he had swallowed and choked on a coin was one version – so his one eye was cocked. But he could see me. He could, in fact, see through me.

GM                                                     7/2026