Latest news with #Kresol
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Yahoo
The murder of Dick Tebbetts: Child predator strikes Rockford
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) – Rockford's history is rich with stories of how the city grew from humble beginnings along the banks of the Rock River to a bustling manufacturing epicenter. There are also tales of violence and horror, like the all-too-real story about how a child predator abducted and killed a 7-year-old old newsboy more than 120 years ago. In 1903, a 7-year-old Dick Tebbetts, who went by Dickie and Richie, was a fixture in downtown Rockford. The diminutive boy had a full-time gig peddling the Rockford Daily Republic on the streets and made fast friends with everyone he met. 'Back in 1903, the child labor laws were pretty lax,' said Midway Village Marketing Director Luke Fredrickson. 'And you could probably make a little living as a child if you were really ambitious getting your newspapers sold.' And Dickie Tebbetts was ambitious. He was one of eight children who lived in a shanty in downtown Rockford. He use most of the money he earned to help his single mother pay bills. 'He was better than the other newsboys because he would sell those papers and come back at lunchtime and get more, which the other newsboys didn't do,' said author Kathi Kresol, who wrote about Dick Tebbetts in her book, 'Murder & Mayhem in Rockford, Illinois.' Dickie sold papers for two years at Rockford's train stations and busy downtown intersections, interacting with hundreds of people every day. Then, on June 22, 1903, he didn't come home. 'He had picked up the papers in the morning, but he never came back for that noon run,' Kresol said. Hundreds of Rockford residents searched for the missing newsboy. Sadly, a week later, the community was brought to its knees. Dickie was found dead. 'He was a victim of a homicide,' Kresol said. 'And it was bad.' The body of little Dickie Tebbetts was found in northwest Rockford, in a field that in 1903 was known as Driving Park. He'd been savagely beaten and slashed to death with a knife. 'When they found his body, they had his bag of papers that he had picked up,' Kresol said. 'He had money left there. And there was a bag of candy.' Police questioned dozens of people, mostly transients that came to Rockford by train, a process that eventually led to a 40-year-old man named Emil Waltz. Waltz would later arrested for attacking young boys in Beloit and Janesville, Wisconsin, both of whom escaped. But, a little boy in Detroit wasn't so lucky. Waltz confessed to killing him in the same manner Dickie Tebbetts died. 'So, they think Emil Waltz lured [Dick Tebbetts] with candy,' Kresol said. Emil Waltz was not charged with Dickie's death, but police believe he was the killer. The career criminal was convicted of killing the Detroit boy, and while serving his sentence in Marquette, Michigan, he took his own life. During a fight with a prison guard, Waltz took a makeshift knife, or shiv, and stabbed himself in the abdomen. 'And he died there on the floor of the prison,' Kresol said. Kresol added that while the story of Dickie Tebbetts is a tragic one, it has the power to uplift. 'This little boy doesn't need to be remembered as much for the way died as the way he lived,' she said. 'He had all kinds of things going against him. But he maintained his good humor and carried himself with a sense of grace and accomplishment. He was poor, one of the invisible, unfortunately. But even a few pennies made him happy. And when he went missing, Rockford rose up.' Dickie Tebbetts is buried at Rockford's Greenwood Cemetery, in the same grave as his grandparents. He doesn't have his own grave marker; Kresol hopes to organize an effort to purchase him a tombstone. 'He was one of ours,' Kresol said. 'And that's what I want people to remember about him.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Yahoo
Burned in a barrel: How Rockford police solved 1965 murder of 11-year-old Susan Brady
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) – In 1966, the Rockford community was shaken when charred human bone fragments were found on the far-west side of the city. Nearly 60 years later, a local author says the case still haunts those who remember it. 'The pieces [of bone] were big enough that they could tell they came from a young, adolescent child,' said Kathi Kresol, author of the book, Detectives soon realized they had likely found what was left of an 11-year-old Rockford girl who went missing a few months earlier. 'On Dec. 20, 1965, little Susan Brady and her best friend went to her best friend, Cecilia's house,' Kresol said. Cecilia and Susan were classmates and decided to play together after school at Cecilia's Irving Avenue home. 'They went to school together at St. Patrick Catholic School there on School Street,' Kresol said. 'And they walked to the little girl's house, and they hung out for few hours.' After that, Cecilia walked Susan part of the way toward her home on nearby North Day Avenue. The girls separated a few minutes later but Susan never made it home. When her parents still hadn't found her by bedtime, they called police. The search for Susan Brady was on. 'And then it led to more and more as the days passed,' Kresol added. The search for Susan Brady started with police and among members of St. Patrick Catholic Church, were her family attended. Before long, residents from throughout Rockford joined the effort to find the missing 11-year-old. 'There were hundreds of people who were eventually searching for this little girl in that area,' Kresol said. 'And they had airplanes flying overhead, people out calling her name walking through different parks.' But there was no sign of Susan Brady and things started looking very bleak for her mother, Norma, and father, James, who was a reporter for The Rockford Labor News. 'After the Christmas season, the Bradys said they wanted to leave their Christmas tree up because they wanted to have Christmas with Susan when she returned,' Kresol said. Then came a major break. As news started to spread about the disappearance, several young girls who walked home in Susan's neighborhood told police they had been approached by a man in green Cadillac around the time she vanished. He offered to give them a ride but they all declined. 'It really creeped them out because after they said, 'no,' they would start walking and he would follow them very slowly in his car,' said Kresol. Investigators got another break when learned that a local man sold a green 1961 Cadillac, quit his job and left town right after Susan went missing. 'They followed him and found out he was now staying in San Diego,' Kresol said. The man was 25-year-old landscaper and factory worker, Russell Charles Dewey. Police then learned that at the time of Susan's disappearance, Dewey was staying at his grandparents' home on West State Street in Rockford. As the investigation ramped up, detectives made a trip to the far-west side property to speak with owners. Nobody was home, but there, behind the house, they located the burn barrel containing what the FBI later identified as human bones. 'And somehow, Russ Dewey, who was staying in California with his mother, got word, so he went and told his mother,' Kresol said. What he shared with his mother though, didn't exactly track with what was being uncovered by police. 'He goes to his mother and says he had hit a girl with his car,' Kresol said. Dewey turned himself in to police on Valentine's Day 1966. He claims that after accidentally hitting Susan with his Cadillac near St. Patrick Church, he scooped her up and headed toward Rockford Memorial Hospital, but the little girl died on the way. Dewey told police that he decided to cremate Susan behind his grandparents' house because he was scared, largely because he didn't have car insurance. 'He burned her all that night and the next day,' Kresol said. And if burning the body of an 11-year-old girl in a 55-gallon drum isn't horrific enough, detectives uncovered more evidence that showed Susan Brady died a very ghastly and very violent death. A sledgehammer with blood and hair on it found in the garage of his grandparents' home was what authorities said Dewey used to bludgeon Susan to death. At trial, prosecutors told the jury that Russell Dewey had been hunting for young girls near St. Patrick Church, hoping to lure them into his car. The panel of three men and three women heard how he kidnapped Susan near the corner of School Street and Albert Avenue and brutally killed her. It took jurors only 47 minutes to find Dewey guilty. He was sentenced to 20 to 50 years behind bars. After prison officials deemed Dewey a model prisoner, he was paroled in 1987. 'He was released from prison, and Rockford was devastated,' Kresol said. Russell Dewey moved to Arkansas after his release. He died in 2009. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rockford Public Library's ‘DigiLibrary' hits the road March 10
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) – A tool to help the Rockford Public Library make its services more accessible to the community will go live Monday, March 10. Officials say the 'DigiLibrary' will bring lifelong learning opportunities to the city. 'We're going to be going throughout, all over the city, offering computer courses,' ' said RPL Manager of Digital Services Kathi Kresol. The courses, Kresol added, are part of a bigger goal. 'What we are really bringing is access,' she added. 'We are bringing access to the internet. We can pull up in to a neighborhood [and] set up some tables with some Chromebooks. People can come check their email with us.' The DigiLibrary is a 2024 Ford Transit van that has been outfitted as a state-of-the art internet hotspot. 'We will also be partnering with several places like the Brooke Road Community Center and the Northwest Community Center and offering computer classes in those neighborhoods,' Kresol said. In addition to internet access, the DigiLibrary provides access to instruction and access to devices. The service includes three dozen Chromebooks that will be used for classes and for Rockford residents to check out with their library card. 'Access to the internet, access to the devices and access to how to use that all,' Kresol said. Rockford leaders say the service is a prime example of how things continue to evolve. It also helps put an exclamation point on RPL's role as a 21st century library. 'If someone's having trouble with transportation, the DigiLibrary can come to them,' Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara said in a previous report. 'If a kid is playing at a park, the DigiLibrary can come to them. If there's a senior who may need to learn how to communicate with a younger relative in a different community via their phone and wants to learn how to do FaceTime, they can do it here.' The van was donated by SiFi Networks, the company that's in the process of building a citywide fiberoptic internet network in Rockford. 'Closing the digital divide is very important to us, and we are thrilled to have partnered with the Rockford Public Library with our donation of the DigiLibrary and its tech to create a sustained impact throughout the city, bringing connectivity to the hands of those that are challenged to connect. We look forward to seeing it around the city providing a vital service,' a company spokesperson said Thursday in an email to Eyewitness News. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
