IL IL - Valerie Percy, 21, Kenilworth, 18 September 1966

Valerie Percy never attended stewardess school. She went straight to Cornell and was two days away from grad school when she died.

Perhaps TK did take more risk (in his mind) and commit crimes in person when he was younger but began bombing when he was older, more cautious and had considered alternatives.

I still think there's a great chance, given what the Chicago investigator has said, that LE screwed up or allowed the screwing up of the the crime scene during its early hours to the extent that the prosecution of anyone for this crime would be impossible.

If the connections between LE and the press weren't so tight, stories of such cases would be big stories indeed. But the press need LE for stories so they won't trash the latter when such is otherwise deserved. I have a feeling Kenilworth PD wished this one had gone away by New Year's '67.

"She was found Sunday at 5 a.m. We got there Monday morning and it was 24 hours old, and we get to the crime scene and there was none, no crime scene, the room where she was murdered was completely renovated. You cannot conduct a homicide investigation like this," - Joe Dileonardi, former Chicago Police Superintendent.

Imagine how bizarre that scene must have been, five thirty a.m. on a sleepy fall Sunday. The end of the graveyard shift or the beginning of the day shift on the slowest day of the week in a town that hasn't had a murder in its 70-year history.

Cops from that crew (how many could have been on duty on that day and at that time in a town of just 3,000?) walk in on that horrific scene. I think the first cop to arrive was 24 years old.

Granted a lot of movers and shakers from the corporate world lived in the town but how long did it take them to realize the father of the victim and owner of the home might be their senator in a matter or weeks?

Meanwhile, he picks up the phone and calls his buddies at the Chicago P.D. in a matter of minutes, if he hadn't already done so by the time the second squad car arrived. However, they too were just changing over, or had already changed over, to the slowest shift of the week.

Those city guys, working class cops, walk into a multi-millionaire's north shore lakeside estate (when a million bucks was still a million bucks), and not just any millionaire but one who's the Republican candidate for the Senate, and into a case over which they actually have no jurisdiction. The family is asked to move into the master bedroom, but who knows where this intruder had been before Mrs. Percy awakened, and what kind of evidence he left behind?

The state police perhaps also are called in immediately by Mr. Percy. Instant clusterf*** of investigators, albeit most of them from the B team or are there as a favor on their days off, are crawling over the joint by mid morning.

The Kenilworth Chief was off duty. There may be no case like it in the history of American crime.

Yes, Valerie's case is similar to the Jon Benet Ramsey case in that things weren't handled well at the beginning, hampering all efforts thereafter.

Has the KPD been approached on the TK theory? If so, he is still alive get his fingerprints and do a comparison. Put this to bed or not.
I know when I approached KPD YEARS ago the Chief of Police then put me in contact with the Illinois State Police Special Investigation Division. I don't even know if that department still exists. But two investigators interviewed me for almost 2 hours and followed up on my lead. But my suspect was already dead and they could not find his fingerprints on file (another long story) so a comparison could not be made. But like I said that was back in the early 90's and maybe they don't have all the records anymore and it was given back to KPD.
So I would push for a fingerprint comparison to be made.

It would appear KPD has discussed the theory with a recent poster here. I am told they have tons of files, if not evidence, at the station. Given Val's family is extremely wealthy, I wonder if they've hired any private investigators on this one.

Glad to see this thread take off again. AKWILKS and Dreamnine, your theories are very interesting. I've often thought that the Valerie Percy and Bricca cases were connected. Your blog is very interesting, Dreamnine. I have to say I did a double take at the very beginning when you talked about your former babysitter being from Lima, Ohio. That's where I'm from! I had to read it several times to make sure I saw it right..lol!

It seems to me, reports of the alarm going off several times that morning were reported. Does anyone remember how and why that was?

Mrs. Hohf is still listed as living next door to the Percy's former lot. She turns 90 next month.

And Senator Percy (ex-Senator Percy?) will be 92 in September.

My thanks to everyone who has taken an interest in this case, and for starting the thread back in 2004.

Off -topic, but here's an interesting (I thought) video of Senator Percy in 1958: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/percy_charles.html

I don't know a great deal about American politics, but I find that liberals and conservative politicians - when they're moderate, and not on the extremes of their parties - tend to get the best work done.

Although it could be argued that Percy was very liberal for a Republican, he does come across as quite right-wing in this early interview.

People forget about Kenndy's anti-commie speeches, too. They come off as pretty right-wing but they weren't for those times. Socially, Percy was a huge break from Republicans of the past, here. His stances were new, and they ruffled a lot of feathers in '64 during his unsuccessful run for Governor, a time when the right meant Birchers. Mark Kirk won his first Senate seat in Percy's old district last fall and was said to be running on Percy's old platform. It's no big deal today but in the mid 60s it was pretty bold for a Republican, something quite new. Socially, some of Percy's in-laws were quite liberal and of course civil rights was happening then. He may have been able to do it in part because in '64 his party was hammered so throughly when supporting a conservative presidential nominee.

There is a photo of the family, purportedly taken in 1964, that has glass doors in the background. I was wondering if these were the doors through which the intruder passed that fateful morning. But I can't find the picture on the web. They have it at the Kenilworth Historical Society. However, from such an angle, a picture window on the back of the house also would have been visible. But one isn't.

These have been posted before but not together. Just thought I'd do so for anyone wanting a side by side comparison of changes that were made to the house after it was sold in late '67.

Thanks to all who commented, and all who are interested in solving this case.

I did communicate most of this info to the Kenilworth PD, but my guess is they don't have the manpower, money, time or expertise to truly follow through.

If anyone reading this has contacts within the Illinois State Police, or the Chicago FBI, or other interested law enforcement and/or media, you have my permission to copy any and all of my work, writing, pictures and anything else to send to them. Please do.

Winward1,
The Percy family at one time had a private investigator who was working on the case. I don't know if they still do. I had some information sent to Senator Percy via new reporter YEARS ago and Senator Percy wrote me back a thank you and said he would pass it on to his private investigator and he would contact me. Never heard from anyone.

AKWILKS said:

If you read what I posted above, I include a LOT of material on TK's younger days, and what he himself calls the key moment in his lonely and frustrated life, when after a failed bid for a sex change operation, he decides instead of killing himself he will "REALLY kill everyone I hate." This is in early September 1966.

Click to expand...

You make a convincing case for TK being the killer with your posts above.
Very convincing indeed, at least to this amateur sleuther!

I hope the authorities will be pursuing this. If there is DNA evidence, they need to compare that with TK's profile, which I assume they already have. I know that "closure" is an overused word, but it would be good for Mr. Percy to finally know who killed his daughter. I'm sure the families of the other victims would also want to know who was responsible, even after this passage of time.

In a story a few years back, a then current spokesperson for Kenilworth PD said all evidence had been gone through and subjected to the latest testing technology offers.

The same story, for ostensibly the first time, quotes an original investigator as saying the police work inside the first 36 hours in this case was shockingly poor, unbelievable really, old days and old investigative techniques aside. It really, in itself, was criminal. At the very least people should have been canned for it, without delay.

I don't know where the rest of original investigators are. But living or dead, they should be raked over the coals, as should the press, which otherwise was all over this story, out there on the front lawn (and annoying the neighbors from what I've been told by them) but failed to get to the bottom of what was going on and what apparently many people knew (investigators from five agencies were in on it.)

Meanwhile, the SunTimes was writing baseless, if not preposterous, rubbish about it five years later and winning prizes for it. Ironically, if Charles Percy was serving in elected office from IL at that point he could take part of the blame for it, but he wasn't. He was just a citizen for another six weeks or so.

Of course, he called in the big wigs because he knew the local cops were out of their league. If it had happened at another time on another day perhaps things would have been different. But all of the first stringers at all of the agencies were off Sunday. So Percy's efforts were in vain. Whoever screwed this up had more than a full 24 hours to do it and they apparently did it completely.

The guys who work for the department now were not personally responsible for what went on then. But they really should come clean, the best that they can now, about this case. There's no one to protect anymore. The guys who screwed up the Ramsey case had to answer for it in their own time. Kenilworth PD wouldn't have to do that now. The fact that they have not answered, one way or another, to what that former Chicago investigator has said is really pathetic.

Anyone else notice that the story of the purported killer in this case, and Mrs. Percy's purported comment that there was some resemblance to the Bubes' sketch suspect only he had "bushier hair," is a carbon copy of the story that inspired the Fugitive?

From Wikipedia:

The Fugitive (TV series)

Inspirations and influence

The series was conceived by Roy Huggins and produced by Quinn Martin. It is popularly believed that the series was based in part on the real-life story of Sam Sheppard, an Ohio doctor accused of murdering his wife. Although convicted and imprisoned, Sheppard claimed that his wife had been murdered by a "bushy-haired man". Huggins denied basing the series on Sheppard.