http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconn...WART_S1.articleA daughter's search for answers
March 30, 2008
By MATT HANLEY mhanley@scn1.com
With any luck, when you die, it will all end peacefully.
In your last moments, you will be surrounded by loved ones. Your long life will be celebrated and your passing will be mourned.
About THE COLD TRAIL series
The 1974 death of 19-year-old Betty Stewart is the final installment of a six-month series on area cold cases.
Other deaths profiled in The Cold Trail include:
• Nanette Hartman, 14, of Aurora, who was stabbed 62 times in 1965. Call Aurora police at (630) 801-6712 or CrimeStoppers at (630) 892-1000.
• Kathy Halle, 19, of North Aurora, who was strangled in 1979. Her body was found along the Fox River a month after she was reported missing. Call North Aurora police at (630) 897-8705 with information
• Kathryn Pollock, 64, of Aurora, who was beaten to death in her home in 1983. Call Aurora police at (630) 801-6742 or CrimeStoppers at (630) 892-1000 with information.
• Cameron Felix, 23, of Aurora, who was shot to death while in a car in 2000. Call Kane County detectives at (630) 208-3325 with information.
• Five cashiers and night watchmen who were killed between December 1963 and September 1964 in cases that might be connected. John Wyatt, 20, was killed at Clark Oil in Aurora; Edward Gardner, 72, was killed at Globe Lumber in unincorporated Aurora; Leonard Robinson, 63, was killed at Lyon Metal in Montgomery; and Claron Simpson, 53, and Hans Portier, 52, were killed at Stoner Manufacturing in Aurora. Call CrimeStoppers with information.
Hopefully, you will not die like Betty Lorraine Stewart: 19 years old. Pregnant. Hands and feet tied. Fished out of a shallow spot in the Fox River.
Because if you were to die like Betty Stewart, you would become less a person and more a piece of evidence. You would be photographed and prodded. You would be dissected by both knives and gossip. Your internal organs would become lab experiments, and your private life would become public property.
And worse than all that, if you were to die like Betty Stewart did in November 1974, you would be forgotten. With no clear answers, the investigation could lag, then your case could get shelved until it is finally forgotten by detectives with more immediate crises.
And perhaps what's still worse -- if you have the misfortune of dying like Betty Stewart did -- is that even people who wouldn't remember you, would be haunted by your death. Although they were toddlers when you died, little girls would dream about you, they'd wonder what you might have said or done.
And these girls would become women who ache. It would be a burrowing pain that causes doubt, skepticism, maybe even a little paranoia. They would double check the locks one more time. They'd doubt the people who love them. They would always be just a little lost, a bit disconnected.
Like Lori Lorang.
"I didn't feel like I knew her, yet she was my mom," said Lorang, Stewart's daughter. "I just want to know the truth."
'The body is covered'
The following information comes from the Kendall County coroner's report on the death of Betty Lorraine Stewart, born Jan. 26, 1955. The file, a single manila envelope, is stored at the county morgue, tucked among stories of car crashes and grain elevator accidents.
It started as an investigation into the death of an unidentified body found in the Fox River on Nov. 11, 1974.
According to the report, Paul Anderson, a well-known muskrat trapper, was driving on Route 25 when he found a body in a shallow part of the river. Pictures in the file show Oswego Fire Department employees wearing yellow gloves lifting the nude woman out of the river. She is looking up, her mouth slightly open. She looks muddy and asleep.
According to the report, the woman was taken to a local funeral parlor for examination.
"The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished white female," the medical examiner documented in a typed report. "The arms and feet are bound together by multicolor strips of cloth. The body is covered with considerable amount of river sludge and mud."
(The police told the newspaper that in addition to the binding on her feet and mouth, her mouth was gagged.)
"Since the victim is unidentified the hands were removed at the wrists and given to the crime lab for fingerprinting," the report said. "The body is opened in the usual Y-shaped incision."
The medical examiner measured the baby inside: 27-inches long. She was 5- to 6-months pregnant.
The woman's brain was removed, weighed, measured, studied. No signs of trauma.
Then, the report was interrupted: a man identified the woman as his wife, Betty Stewart.
She had been missing since she walked away from an argument with her husband Oct. 26. It wasn't unusual for them to fight, or for Stewart to wander away or for her to return days later. So she wasn't reported missing until Nov. 1.
But these facts didn't answer the most important question -- What happened? -- so a coroner's inquest was convened.
Five men were called to McKeown Funeral Home and paid $24 each for their time. They listened to Deputy Coroner William Dunn question David Goins, the chief deputy of the Kendall County sheriff's department.
Dunn: Is it possible for an individual to tie his or her hands and feet themselves?
Goins: Yes it is possible.
Dunn: Would it be possible for her to tie her own feet and then her own hands and get into the river herself?
Goins: I would say the possibility would be there, yes. You could tie your feet first and then by using your teeth, you could tie your hands together. The knots in this particular tying of the hands, the knots were toward the body on the top side, not underneath.
Dunn: Was the clothing ever found?
Goins: No. The clothing nor her jewelry were never found.
No time was marked, but the inquest probably lasted less than half an hour. No other witnesses were called, and no family members were present. No questions were asked about suspects, or toxicology samples, or why a woman might tie her own hands and feet, then throw herself in the river. Those were questions for the police.
The six men deliberated and made their ruling: "Due to the insufficient evidence, the jury feels further investigation should be made to determine what caused her death."
'I'm going to find my mother'
The little girl was on her tricycle. She pointed her tiny three-wheeler toward the end of her driveway and began pedaling.
"Where are you going, Lori?"
"I'm going to find my mother."
If only it was that easy. Just peddle out and bring mom back to fill all the holes in your life.
For years, Lori Lorang thought the story about the tricycle was a dream. It wasn't until she got older some relatives confirmed: yes, you really did that.
That's what happens when you don't know your mom: you're betrayed by even your own memories. You can't quite figure out: is that a true story about my mom? Or is that just how someone wants to remember her?
Lorang was just 3 -- her sister, 1 -- when Betty Stewart's body washed up in Kendall County. At the time, they understood only that she was gone. Everyone spared the details. But, of course, over the years, the story dripped out. Mostly, the wrong story.
Relatives said Stewart was stabbed 30 times -- the coroner's inquest shows this isn't true. They implied Stewart's husband -- Lorang's father -- was involved. Police questioned him, but never charged anyone.
So in 1995, Lorang began her own investigation.
She started in the coroner's office, reading the reports, studying the pictures of Oswego firefighters holding her mother's dead body. She felt...indifferent. This woman -- her mother -- was a stranger.
"From the pictures I've seen, that doesn't look like my mom," she said. "It sounds kind of callous. Maybe you can block it out and pretend like it's not her."
Lorang tracked down the men who served on the coroner's jury. They were all over the country, but they still remembered the case. They were pleasant, but not particularly helpful.
She called the Oswego police, Aurora police, Kendall County sheriff's office. None of them knew anything about the death of Betty Stewart. There were many young women who disappeared around 1974 -- Stewart would make 18 in nine years -- and Lorang wondered if there was a serial killer on the loose. (Some of those crimes have been solved and at least three are attributed to two different men.)
Or maybe -- she tried not to think it -- maybe her dad knows something?
Lorang is still close with Johnnie Stewart. And even though he rarely talks about his first wife, he still visits her grave in Pocohantas, Ark., where Stewart was born.
"I remember the fights (Johnnie had with other wives)," Lorang said. "They would say: you're in love with a dead woman. Every time he goes down there, he cries when he sees her grave."
And what about the inquest? It certainly suggests a suicide, although from what Lorang can gather her mom had no mental issues and no drug or alcohol addictions. Her only bad habit was that as a 19-year-old girl, she would get in an argument with her husband and disappear for a few days. Unsafe, but probably not uncommon.
However, those facts are no more than hearsay, gathered by Lorang from half-remembered family stories or the speculation of well-intentioned relatives.
And so her amateur sleuthing has become entangled with something more basic, more personal. As much as Lorang wants to know how her mom died -- and she wants to know badly -- she wants even more to discover her mother's life.
How did she laugh? What were her plans for the future? Would she approve of how her girls turned out?
Sometimes Lorang will take out her mother's Bible, a well-worn copy that was underlined and highlighted three decades ago. While many people look for meaning in that same book, Lorang's reading of the passages is half healing, half investigation.
And as she looks at the pages, Lorang wonders: have I been changed by the things I do not know? Can my mystery be solved?
Am I still the little girl, pedaling out to find my mom?