Clark Howard - Loves Blood: The Shocking True Story of a Teenager Who Would Do Anything for the Older Man She Loved :/ Even Kill Her Whole Family

Clark Howard

To the memory
of a good friend
and a special lady,

ELEANOR SULLIVAN

The tentacles of a murder reach out to touch many people, some in a consuming embrace, others with barely a brush. However brief the contact may be, no one forgets it. The people, events, and conversations depicted in the triple murder about which this book is written have been reconstructed from comprehensive research, which is described to the reader as the story progresses. Much of what is related came from public records and the investigative files of the dedicated police officers who solved the case, while other information was gleaned from the memories of people who stood anywhere from the very center of the tragic crime to its farthest fringe. Some details, such as confidential therapy sessions between one of the principals and her psychologist, have obviously had to come solely from the patient, although in some instances the information could be corroborated through outside sources. As with any work of nonfiction, there are times when, in the interest of logic and continuity, the author has been required to interpret and even extrapolate the known facts. Also, to safeguard the privacy and whereabouts of certain individuals, the author has changed their names and other identifying characteristics. But essentially, the following story is, I believe, as true and complete as it will ever be told.

In this book, the reader is going to be introduced to the details of one of the strangest and most senseless multiple murders on record. It is a crime that was rooted in love and lust, a crime that was swept along by sexual energy in its broadest range.

Because the crime is nearly two decades old, and because one of the principals is telling her story for the first time, it has been necessary, in the first part of the book, to structure the story in a way that takes the reader back and forth in time. Some of the details in this section came from the principal herself; some have been corroborated by research, some not. Interspersed are sections designated with the authors initialsC.H.which are personal recollections as well as a chronology of the extensive research done. Gradually, all of it comes togetherthe principals story, the known facts, the perversity of the people who advanced the murdersto create the first complete picture of a crime that did not have to happen.

By the time the reader reaches the second part of the book, which narrates the trial, an opinion will probably have been formed about the woman whose story this book essentially is. That opinion may or may not be changed by the trial and its aftermath. But whether or not ones opinion changes, at least the reader, having decided what to believeand what not towill have had, for the first time, the benefit of many heretofore unknown aspects of the story, including facts never brought out at this long and very strange trial.

And that, after all, is what a book like this is all about.

I was in Chicago doing some final research on a book that I would eventually call Six Against the Rock, about the big escape attempt at Alcatraz in 1946. I had been snaking all over the country interviewing old-time outlaws who had been on the Rock during the siege.

It had been a long, tiring research trip and I drove on up to Chicago for a couple of days of rest and to put all my notes in order. Thats what I told myself. The truth of the matter was, Chicago periodically drew me back to its concrete bosom. I hadnt lived there for nearly twenty years, but every once in a while I had to go back and prowl its lower West Side streets like a specter in a graveyard. Maybe it was because between the ages of eight and fourteen I had spent a hundred years on those streets searching for an ex-convict father who was already dead; or because my mother had overdosed on heroin there; or because my earliest real friends had been street kids like myself and had all been sucked into the sump of killings, crime, prison, drugs, alcoholand I had not. My only time had been done in a euphemistically named state training school for boysread reformatory and my only killing had been sanctioned by the Marine Corps. I had long ago made my own break from my own prison, and it had been successful. The other kids hadnt escaped. Maybe that was what drew me back now and then. Wondering: why me?

I was dug in at a little hotel on Rush Street, just across the river from the Loop, the first time I saw Patricia Columbos picture. It was in the Tribune and showed a pretty but strained nineteen-year-old girl with a jungle of streaked dark blondish hair entering a funeral home with a handsome man referred to only as her unidentified escort.

The Tribune story was written by a reporter named Mitchell Locin. A nice piece of writing, I thought.

She summoned the strength to kneel at the three casketsher entire family.

Patricia Columbo was the only one left of the Frank Columbos of Elk Grove Village, a family that was described as ideal neighbors.

The nineteen-year-old entered the Galewood Funeral Home, 1857 North Harlem Avenue, and greeted relatives, friends, and acquaintances with a weak smile. Asked if she was ready to go into the chapel, she said quietly, I dont want to, but I have to.

She knelt at the matching slate gray coffins that held the remains of her father, Frank, forty-three; her mother, Mary, forty; and her brother, Michael, thirteen.

The three were slain sometime last Tuesday in their home at 55 East Brantwood, but their bodies were not discovered by police until Friday afternoon. Authorities say they had been bludgeoned, stabbed as many as forty or fifty times, shot in the head, and had their throats slit. Mrs. Columbo was raped.

Patty looks like Mike, murmured one relative watching the grim procession proceed from casket to casket.

I dont know. I dont know, muttered many of the men.

The Rev. J. Ward Morrison, pastor of the Queen of the Rosary Catholic Church in Elk Grove Village, said he knew of no occasion that was sadder in his thirty-two years in the priesthood. The Columbos had attended his church for eleven years.

Meanwhile, police continued their search for the killers.

Elk Grove Village investigators were stationed inside and outside the chapel, checking with acquaintances for any strangers that may have been present.

The latest theory is that a gang of professional home invaders may have been high on narcotics when their robbery turned into the torture and killing spree.

Home invaders? When had insanity like that begun? Burglars I knew went into homes to steal, not slaughter. And they never used drugs while they were working.

Later that evening, I caught a television news update on the story:

bodies were discovered late Friday afternoon on a routine police call regarding a missing automobile. The cause of death of the three victims, which was not immediately apparent, has now been determined as gunshot wounds to the head, although all three also had their throats cut and-were badly mutilated about the body. Investigating officers told reporters that the interior of the home looked like a slaughterhouse at Chicagos South Side stockyards. Widespread speculation among law enforcement personnel is that the killings are the result of a home invasion type of crime such as the Manson cult began in 1969, and the murders of Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonalds family a year later. Such crimes are becoming less and less uncommon in America, having been reported in recent years in Oklahoma, Georgia, California, Virginia, and Texas