The Riverfront Times, St. Louis, September 12, 1990 Autumn tugs August, the the night air chilling perceptively as Interstate 55 makes its steep descent into the Meramec Valley, the same river basin George Gilmore and his victims called home. Upstream from here at Glencoe, on the night of Oct. 29, 1980, Gilmore murdered 83-year-old Lottie […]
Tom Hall works the steel of his National Guitar first published in The Riverfront Times, Feb. 6, 1991 When a Thursday night patron of the Broadway Oyster Bar exhorts the musicians with a shouted “The Show Must Go On, Tom Hall winces, then resolutely mounts the stage, straps on his metal-bodied National Steel guitar and, […]
J.J. Maloney traded a knife for a pen, swapping a life of crime for a career in journalism. copyright 2021 by C.D. Stelzer An earlier version of this story appeared in the St. Louis Journalism review in 2008 and Focus/midwest magazine in 2010. He chain-smoked. The brand varied with the decade: L&Ms or, later, Marlboro […]
Riding the mean streets of St. Louis with the Rev. Cornelius Osby, investigator for the circuit attorney’s office first published in the Riverfront Times, March 2, 1994 by C.D. Stelzer “Yeah, this one happened back in August,” says Cornelius Osby. “So it was warm. In your mind’s eye, can you imagine folks sittin’ out on […]
Richard Kieninger founded the burg of Stelle, Illinois on the belief that Armageddon would occur in the year 2000. A version of this story appeared in the Riverfront Times and FOCUS/Midwest. C.D. Stelzer It has been nearly 10 years since the Battle of Armageddon was supposed to have occurred, according to the predictions of the […]
When the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information touted its $10,000 grant from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the public didn’t know the foundation was a CIA front. first published at firstsecretcity.com The announcement came at the second-annual meeting of the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Safety at the Heman Park Community […]
More than two decades ago, an ATF study of guns confiscated from criminals in St. Louis showed that the merchants of death were often federally licensed firearms dealers from white suburbs. There is no reason to believe that correlation has changed. A version of this story appeared in the Riverfront Times, March 31, 1999. [In […]
The day two off-duty cops protecting NRA President Charleston Heston assaulted me. A version of this story appeared in the Riverfront Times, March 31, 1999. It all started with an 11-year-old girl in a red jumpsuit. She sang a patriotic anthem, karaoke-style, her blond locks bobbing, sequins sparkling and go-go boots shuffling. After the tiny […]
After decades on the lam, a student anti-war protestor is busted. A version of this story first appeared in the Riverfront Times, Feb. 16, 2000. Howard Mechanic was granted a pardon in January 2001 by out-going President Bill Clinton. Penny Overton, a young reporter for the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Tribune, found it difficult to believe when […]
After helping James Earl Ray escape prison in 1967, his brother says they reached out to the St. Louis underworld. A version of this story appeared in Illinois Times, April 2, 2008. The last time John Larry Ray visited New York City was in 1965. He was between jobs, collecting unemployment benefits. While there, he […]
Did the CIA’s MK-Ultra program influence the behavior of James Earl Ray? A version of this story first appeared in Illinois Times Nov. 29, 2007. John Larry Ray died in 2013 by C.D. Stelzer John Larry Ray has been pitching this story for nearly a decade — but until now [2007] few have been willing […]
Jim Green, ex-con and government snitch, says he and his buddies from the Bootheel took part in the plot to kill Martin Luther King Jr. Trouble is nobody believed him and now he’s dead. by C.D. Stelzer A version of this story was first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis) May 9, 2001. […]
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