GRACE NOTES
Journal Entry #417
The first time I noticed the Lovelorn Killer was the day he disappeared. No one knew at the time that Katherine Duffy would be his last victim. The newspapers—they were still a thing back then—they ran a picture of her alongside the other women that he killed, and I couldn’t stop staring at their faces. They were everywhere. They watched us while riding the L. They looked out from the glass pane of metal newsstands. They sat on my mother’s round kitchen table next to her tea and peanut buttered toast. I was twenty-one back then, but when I saw these women, I felt they could be me. Average looks. Shoulder-length dark hair, parted in the middle. Living in ordinary homes in nice neighborhoods.
I went to the library and started reading everything I could about them, including the letters he sent them after their deaths. The lovelorn letter for Josephine had arrived at the Sun-Times before anyone found her body, so it took another year and a second woman’s death for anyone to connect the letter with Josephine’s murder. The intern who found it had showed it to her boss who’d told her to get rid of it, but she’d stuck it in a drawer and kept it anyway. When the second one came in the following year, for Denise Marklund, the Sun-Times turned both of them over to the police. Of course, they also ran them. You can read the text online now and see pictures of the actual letters. They’re hand-printed in nondescript black ink on ordinary white paper, not fancy stationery. If written to a woman by her lover, it would be sweet. Instead, they showed how long the killer stalked the women before he strangled them to death. He knew where they worked, the color car they drove, and whether they had curtains on their windows. These ladies walked around with an invisible noose around their necks for days, maybe weeks, and never even knew it. This guy was thorough. Check out the letter he wrote to Denise Marklund:
My dearest one,
When I woke this morning, I thought immediately of you and wished I could turn to see you lying there, your legs drawn up, arms folded protectively over your chest. Your messy hair spreads over your cheek, wild and free, not like the severe ponytail you wear for the rest of the world. The first time I saw you, I noticed your adorable habit of tucking that stray bit of hair behind your left ear—that one curl that refuses to behave, no matter how buttoned-up you are. If we were together now, I’d undo those buttons with my teeth, let your hair go wild across the pillow.
I was hesitant at first to make a move. You smiled at me that day, but then I’ve seen you smile at everyone. So I waited and observed you. I saw how you looked up, expectant, when someone new came in. I knew then you were waiting for the sign, for someone to set you free from that clunky computer and plastic nametag. You changed your hair—oh, those new red highlights!—and you put on that gold nail polish. It’s like you knew I keep a gold coin in my pocket at all times, just for luck.
We are lucky, my darling, to have found each other. We are kismet. We are destiny. We are stars who orbit each other, visible only as distant light to those on earth.
—Mr. Lovelorn
I read all the letters. I read the news stories and the false leads and the mounting frustration as the killer took one victim, then another, then another, and the police could do nothing to stop him. But then a curious thing happened—the Lovelorn Killer stopped himself. He murdered Katherine Duffy on Halloween night and subsequently vanished into the ether. Law enforcement says he’s probably locked up for some other crime, and they just don’t know it’s him because he left no traceable DNA at the murder scenes. Or maybe he’s dead. With each passing year, the Lovelorn Killer recedes into history and people shrug at the mention of his name. Looks like he’s gone for good.
Last fall, I started doing something a little crazy, even by Grave Digger standards. I went to the victim’s houses. It started when Josephine Harvey’s home came up for sale, and I went to the open house. I stood in one of her closets and wondered if he’d stood in that exact same spot, waiting for her with his ropes. I got this idea that I could walk his steps back in time and maybe find him there, the place where he’d vanished twenty years ago. I went to Denise Marklund’s place in Irving Park and saw the same lace curtains hanging in the front window. I went to Lisa Sheffield’s and saw all the bushes around the house had been torn out and replaced with flat grass—nowhere to hide.
On Halloween, I went to Katherine Duffy’s neighborhood in Norwood Park. There were shrieking kids and grinning jack-o’-lanterns and empty candy wrappers stuck to the street. The lights were on in her old house and I saw a blond woman with black-cat ears dancing around inside. I moved closer to the hedges so I could watch her without being seen. Had he been surprised how easy it was to spy like this? I swear I could almost feel him there with me. Hear his excited breathing.
I’ve now walked everywhere the Lovelorn Killer has been, and while I did not find him, I feel he’s out there, still alive. I think the cops just don’t see him because he blends right in. Twenty years ago, I looked at the photos of his victims and was struck by how much they looked like me. Now I know his secret: he looks like me too. He might be my neighbor. Or yours. And he’s been watching and waiting all this time for someone to figure it out.