Between the Vermilion and Illinois rivers, 100
miles southwest of Chicago, is the glacier-born wilderness of caves,
forests and canyons called Starved Rock State Park. There, according to
Indian legend, a band of Illinois was besieged by an enemy tribe.
Driven to the highest cliffs, they fought bravely until the last
starved Illinois perished. There too, last week, along the
snow-carpeted trails that weave into the panorama of canyons and frozen
waterfalls, wandered three vacationing women. And there they died at
the hands of a killer or killers who raped two of them and savagely
bludgeoned the faces of all three until they were unrecognizable.The women were middle-aged friends who had driven to the rustic Starved
Rock Lodge on the same day they disappeared. They were respected
matrons in the upper-middle-class Chicago suburb of Riverside. Frances
Murphy, 47, wife of a vice president and general counsel of
the Borg-Warner Corp., had four children, and, like her two friends,
was a dedicated community leader and an active member of Riverside's
Presbyterian Church. Mildred Lindquist, 50, wife of a vice president of
Chicago's Harris Trust & Savings Bank, had two children. Lillian
Getting, 50, wife of an Illinois Bell Telephone Co. official, had three
children.A Beautiful Afternoon. The three-day vacation trip was a special outing,
particularly for Lillian Getting, who had spent long days and nights
nursing her heart-patient husband through a tough recuperation period.
With her husband well on the mend, she got into Frankie Murphy's Ford
station wagon and set out with her friends for Starved Rock. They were
prepared for a tranquil time: Mildred Lindquist brought her copy of A
Field Guide to the Birds; Lillian Getting took a novel, The Lincoln
Lords; they had their knitting, a pair of binoculars and a 35-mm.
camera.After they checked in at the lodge and had lunch, the three friends went
out for a hike. Janitor Emil Boehn was carrying wood into the lodge as
they left. “It's a beautiful afternoon for a hike,” said one of the
women. “Yes, ma'am,” replied Boehn. The women walked to a slippery,
narrow canyon trail, wound their way past ravines with 20-ft. drops,
came to the dead end of a canyon whose walls rise 80 ft. on three
sides, framing a frozen waterfall. They were about a mile from the
lodge.A Bloodied Log. Lillian Oetting had promised to telephone her husband
that night. When she failed to call, George Oetting tried to reach her.
Nobody at the lodge seemed to question the fact that the women's beds
had not been occupied. “Sometimes,” says a waitress, “women get
together in another room and play bridge and talk all night.” Next day
Oetting again tried vainly to call his wife. Then he called the police.It was another day before a search party found the bodies, lying side by
side in a cave in the canyon. Twine had been tied on the wrists of two
of the women. The binoculars were broken, the camera dented. A
four-inch snowfall had obliterated any trace of tracks. Nearby was a
bloodied, yardlong log, about four inches thick.
