Maggie Thompson, the murder victim in my Executed Today post from yesterday, reminds me so much of Kathleen Shea who was never found. The girls were almost the same age and both of them vanished without a trace, like “the sidewalk might have opened and swallowed” them. Both times it was during their school lunch break (Maggie was walking home to eat; Kathleen had finished her meal and was walking back to school). Both of them stopped to talk to neighbors while en route. Kathleen disappeared in Pennsylvania, Maggie in the bordering state of Ohio. And, though we may never know for certain, I think Kathleen’s fate was probably much the same as poor little Maggie’s.
Obviously, the two cases aren’t related: they occurred some 70 years apart, and Maggie’s killer was caught and suffered the supreme penalty. I’m just saying, these kinds of crimes are timeless. Homicide committed by juveniles (Maggie’s killer, Otto Lueth, was only sixteen) is not rare or new either. I get annoyed when people talk about how “the youth of today are out of control” (Aristotle said the same thing about the youth of 3rd century BC) and also “how bad crime these days” and how “in this day and age, you have to be extra careful.” The good old days were terrible.
The Charley Project Blog 