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by Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune

This article was originally published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

This story includes graphic descriptions of injuries, and one graphic image taken from inside a classroom. We are not publishing images of injured or deceased victims.

UVALDE, Texas — Once they saw a torrent of bullets tear through a classroom wall and metal door, the first police officers in the hallway of Robb Elementary School concluded they were outgunned. And that they could die.

The gunman had an AR-15, a rifle design used by U.S. soldiers in every conflict since Vietnam. Its bullets flew toward the officers at three times the speed of sound and could have pierced their body armor like a hole punch through paper. They grazed two officers in the head, and the group retreated.

Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Daniel Coronado stepped outside, breathing heavily, and got on his radio to warn the others.

“I have a male subject with an AR,” Coronado said.

The dispatch crackled on the radio of another officer on the opposite side of the building.

“Fuck,” that officer said.

“AR,” another exclaimed, alerting others nearby.

Almost a year after Texas’ deadliest school shooting killed 19 children and two teachers, there is still confusion among investigators, law enforcement leaders and politicians over how nearly 400 law enforcement officers could have performed so poorly. People have blamed cowardice or poor leadership or a lack of sufficient training for why police waited more than an hour to breach the classroom and subdue an amateur 18-year-old adversary.

But in their own words, during and after their botched response, the officers pointed to another reason: They were unwilling to confront the rifle on the other side of the door.

A Texas Tribune investigation, based on police body cameras, emergency communications and interviews with investigators that have not been made public, found officers had concluded that immediately confronting the gunman would be too dangerous. Even though some officers were armed with the same rifle, they opted to wait for the arrival of a Border Patrol SWAT team, with more protective body armor, stronger shields and more tactical training — even though the unit was based more than 60 miles away.

“You knew that it was definitely an AR,” Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Donald Page said in an interview with investigators after the school shooting. “There was no way of going in. … We had no choice but to wait and try to get something that had better coverage where we could actually stand up to him.”

“We weren’t equipped to make entry into that room without several casualties,” Uvalde Police Department Detective Louis Landry said in a separate investigative interview. He added, “Once we found out it was a rifle he was using, it was a different game plan we would have had to come up with. It wasn’t just going in guns blazing, the Old West style, and take him out.”

Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was fired in August after state officials cast him as the incident commander and blamed him for the delay in confronting the gunman, told investigators the day after the shooting he chose to focus on evacuating the school over breaching the classroom because of the type of firearm the gunman used.

“We’re gonna get scrutinized (for) why we didn’t go in there,” Arredondo said. “I know the firepower he had, based on what shells I saw, the holes in the wall in the room next to his. … The preservation of life, everything around (the gunman), was a priority.”

None of the officers quoted in this story agreed to be interviewed by the Tribune.

The gunman’s AR-15-style rifle lays in a supply closet of Room 111 at Robb Elementary School. (Law enforcement photo obtained by The Texas Tribune)

That hesitation to confront the gun allowed the gunman to terrorize students and teachers in two classrooms for more than an hour without interference from police. It delayed medical care for more than two dozen gunshot victims, including three who were still alive when the Border Patrol team finally ended the shooting but who later died.

Mass shooting protocols adopted by law enforcement nationwide call on officers to stop the attacker as soon as possible. But police in other mass shootings — including at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida — also hesitated to confront gunmen armed with AR-15-style rifles.

Even if the law enforcement response had been flawless and police had immediately stopped the gunman, the death toll in Uvalde still would have been significant. Investigators concluded most victims were killed in the minutes before police arrived.

But in the aftermath of the shooting, there has been little grappling with the role the gun played. Texas Republicans, who control every lever of state government, have talked about school safety, mental health and police training — but not gun control.

A comprehensive and scathing report of law enforcement’s response to the shooting, released by a Texas House investigative committee chaired by Republican Rep. Dustin Burrows in July, made no mention of the comments by law enforcement officers in interviews that illustrated trepidation about the AR-15.

Other lawmakers have taken the position that the kind of weapon used in the attack made no difference.

“This man had enough time to do it with his hands or a baseball bat, and so it’s not the gun. It’s the person,” Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, said in a hearing a month after the shooting.

Republican state and legislative leaders, who are in the midst of the first legislative session since the shooting, are resisting calls for gun restrictions, like raising the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has suggested such a law would be unconstitutional, while House Speaker Dade Phelan said he doubts his chamber would support it.

Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and four Republican members of the Legislature — Phelan, Hall, Burrows and Rep. Ryan Guillen, chairman of the House committee that will hear all gun-related proposals, declined to discuss the findings of this story or did not respond. Two gun advocacy groups, Texas Gun Rights and the Texas State Rifle Association, also did not respond.

Limiting access to these kinds of rifles may not decrease the frequency of mass shootings, which plagued the country before the rifle became popular among gun owners. During the decade that the federal assault weapons ban was in place, beginning in 1994, the number of mass shootings was roughly the same as in the decade prior, according to a mass shooting database maintained by Mother Jones. It also would not address the root causes that motivate mass shooters, merely limit the lethality of the tools at their disposal.

Relatives of Uvalde victims, like Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece Jackie Cazares was killed in the shooting, say the comments by police who responded in Uvalde are undeniable proof that rifles like the AR-15 should be strictly regulated.

“(Police) knew the monster behind the door was not the kid. It’s the rifle the kid is holding,” said Rizo, referring to the 18-year-old gunman. “It’s the freaking AR that they’re afraid of. … Their training doesn’t say sit back and wait.”

Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Robb Elementary victim Jackie Cazares, 9, said that the police “knew the monster behind the door was not the kid. It’s the rifle the kid is holding.” (Evan L’Roy/The Texas Tribune) A Weapon of War

Officers arriving at Robb Elementary on May 24 had similar reactions as they realized that the gunman had an AR-15.

“You know what kind of gun?” state Trooper Richard Bogdanski asked in a conversation captured on his body-camera footage outside of the school.

“AR. He has a battle rifle,” a voice responded.

“Does he really?” another asked.

“What’s the safest way to do this? I’m not trying to get clapped out,” Bogdanski said.

They had good reason to worry: The AR-15 was designed to efficiently kill humans.

ArmaLite, a small gunmaker in California, designed the AR-15 in the late 1950s as a next-generation military rifle. Compared with the U.S. Army’s infantry rifle at the time, the AR-15 was less heavy, had a shorter barrel and used lighter ammunition, allowing soldiers to carry more on the battlefield. It also fired a smaller-caliber bullet but compensated for it by increasing the speed at which it is propelled from the barrel.

A declassified 1962 Department of Defense report from the Vietnam War found the AR-15 would be ideal for use by South Vietnamese soldiers, who were smaller in stature and had less training than their American counterparts, for five reasons: its easy maintenance, accuracy, rapid rate of fire, light weight and “excellent killing or stopping power.”

“The lethality of the AR-15 and its reliability record were particularly impressive,” the authors reported.

Its bullets could also penetrate the body armor worn by the initial responding officers to Robb Elementary, an added level of danger they were aware of. While most departments, including the city of Uvalde’s, have rifle-rated body armor, it is not typically worn by officers on patrol because of its added weight.

“Had anybody gone through that door, he would have killed whoever it was,” Uvalde Police Department Lt. Javier Martinez told investigators the day after the shooting. You “can only carry so many ballistic vests on you. That .223 (caliber) round would have gone right through you.”

A rifle cartridge identical to the ammunition used in the Robb Elementary shooting. (Photo illustration by Evan L’Roy/The Texas Tribune)

Coronado echoed the concern in his own interviews with investigators about the moment he realized the gunman had a battle rifle.

“I knew too it wasn’t a pistol. ... I was like, ‘Shit, it’s a rifle,’” he said. He added, “The way he was shooting, he was probably going to take all of us out.”

The AR-15 is less powerful than many rifles, such as those used to hunt deer or other large game. But it has significantly more power than handguns, firing a bullet that has nearly three times the energy of the larger round common in police pistols.

The AR-15 also causes more damage to the human body. Handgun bullets typically travel through the body in a straight line, according to a 2016 study published by The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. High-energy bullets become unstable as they decelerate in flesh, twisting and turning as they damage a wider swath of tissue. This creates “not only a permanent cavity the size of the caliber of the bullet, but also a … second cavity often many times larger than the bullet itself.”

The Defense Department report detailed this effect in plainer language, describing the AR-15’s performance in a firefight with Viet Cong at a range of 50 meters: “One man was shot in the head; it looked like it exploded. A second man was hit in the chest; his back was one big hole.”

The Defense Department placed its first mass order for the rifle in 1963, calling its version the M16, and based each of its service rifles until 2022 on this design. The only significant difference between the military and civilian versions of the AR-15 is that the military rifle can fire automatically, meaning the user can depress the trigger to shoot multiple rounds. The civilian AR-15 is semi-automatic, requiring a trigger pull for each round.

In the context of mass shootings, it is a distinction without a meaningful difference: Both rates of fire can kill a roomful of people in seconds.

That’s what happened in Uvalde.

In two and a half minutes, before any police officer set foot inside the school, the gunman fired more than 100 rounds at students and teachers from point-blank range. Several victims lost large portions of their heads, photos taken by investigators show. Bullets tore gashes in flesh as long as a foot. They shattered a child’s shin, nearly severed another’s arm at the elbow, ripped open another’s neck, blasted a hole the size of a baseball in another’s hip. Other rounds penetrated the wall of Room 111, passed through the empty Room 110, punctured another wall and wounded a student and teacher in Room 109, who survived.

When medics finally reached the victims, there was nothing they could do for most, they said in interviews with investigators. Eighteen of the 21 were pronounced dead at the school. Police assigned each a letter of the alphabet and took DNA samples so they could be identified by family.

Rifle Popularity Surges

Ruben Torres, who saw what the rifle can do in combat while serving as a Marine infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan, never imagined someone would use it to try and kill his daughter, Khloie, who was wounded by bullet fragments at Robb Elementary.

The Corps spends so much time drilling firearm safety into Marines that Torres can recite the rules from memory. Even now, he has no objection to civilians owning AR-15s, but he thinks they should be required to complete training like soldiers because too many who buy one treat it like a toy.

Ruben Torres, whose daughter, Khloie, was wounded in the Robb Elementary shooting, served as a Marine infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has no objection to civilians owning AR-15s but thinks they should be required to complete training like soldiers do. (Evan L’Roy/The Texas Tribune)

“You get people that never served in the military or law enforcement, and yet they’re wannabes,” Torres said. “They purchase this weapons system, not having a clue how to use it, the type of power and the level of maturity needed to even operate it.”

It was customers seeking a military experience who helped spur the rifle’s surge in popularity over the past 15 years, gun industry researchers say. Civilians have been able to buy an AR-15 since the mid-1960s, but for decades it was a niche product whose largest customer segment included police SWAT units.

A federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, creating a new opportunity to market rifles like the AR-15 to the general public, said Timothy Lytton, a professor at the Georgia State University College of Law who researches the gun industry.

Since 1990, More Military-Style Rifles Became Available

The number of military-style rifles, including AR-15 and AK-style, produced or imported in the U.S. went from about 74,000 in 1990 to a national high of almost 2.8 million in 2020. Since 1990, an estimated 24.4 million of these rifles have been in circulation.

(Source: National Shooting Sports Foundation. Credit: Drew An-Pham/Texas Tribune.)

“In the 2000s, there was a shift in the industry’s marketing to people who are not just looking for self-defense, but people who are also looking for some sort of tactical experience,” Lytton said. He said this new consumer wanted to “simulate military combat situations.”

Sales of the rifle exploded. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a prominent trade group, estimates American gunmakers produced 1.4 million semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 in 2015, excluding exports — a figure 10 times higher than a decade earlier. This group of semi-automatic rifles accounted for 89% of the rifles made by domestic manufacturers in 2020, according to government and industry data.

As it grew more popular with the public, the rifle also became more popular with mass shooters. AR-15-style rifles weren’t used in any mass shootings until 2007, according to the mass shooting database maintained by Mother Jones, which includes indiscriminate killings of at least three people in public places, excluding crimes that stem from robbery, gang activity or other conventionally explained motives.

Gunmen used the rifle in 5% of attacks that decade and 27% in the 2010s. 2022 cemented the AR-15 as the weapon of choice for mass shooters. They wielded the rifle in 67% of the 12 massacres that year, including a parade in Illinois where seven were slain and a supermarket shooting in New York that killed 10.

The death toll in Uvalde exceeded them both.

The Gunman’s Purchase

Little is known about what motivated the shooter in Uvalde or why he targeted the elementary school he once attended. But signs of planning, and a fixation on guns, stretched back months.

Beginning in late 2021, he began buying accessories: an electronic gun sight, rifle straps, shin guards, a vest with pockets to hold body armor and a hellfire trigger, which can be snapped onto semi-automatic weapons to allow near-automatic fire.

He faced a single significant obstacle to assembling an arsenal: Under Texas law, the minimum age to purchase long guns like rifles is 18. That hindrance vanished on May 16, 2022, his 18th birthday. He ordered an AR-15-style rifle from the website of Daniel Defense, a gunmaker that has pioneered marketing firearms via social media.

Its sleek Instagram videos often feature young men rapidly firing the company’s rifles, wearing outfits that resemble combat uniforms. Other posts feature members of the U.S. military. A lawsuit filed by Uvalde victims’ families against Daniel Defense alleges the gunmaker’s marketing intentionally targets vulnerable young men driven by military fantasies.

The company rejected these claims and cast the lawsuit as an attempt to bankrupt the gun industry.

“To imply that images portraying the heroic work of our soldiers risking their lives in combat inspires young men back home to shoot children is inexcusable,” then-CEO Marty Daniel said last year. The case is ongoing.

Federal law requires weapons purchased online to be picked up at a licensed dealer, which also performs a background check. The Uvalde gunman had no criminal history and had never been arrested, ensuring he would pass. He had the Daniel Defense rifle shipped to Oasis Outback, a gun store in town.

The gunman visited the store alone three times between May 17 and May 20. First, he purchased a Smith & Wesson AR-15-style rifle, then returned to buy 375 rounds of ammunition, then came back again to pick up the Daniel Defense rifle. Surveillance footage from the shop shows an employee placing the case on the counter and opening it. The gunman picked up the rifle, peered down the barrel and placed his finger on the trigger — a breach of a cardinal rule of gun safety, to never do so until you are ready to fire.

This video shows the person who was the shooter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. (Surveillance footage from Oasis Outback)

The gun store’s owner told investigators he was an average customer with no “red flags,” though patrons told FBI agents he was “very nervous looking” and “appeared odd and looked like one of those school shooters.”

An online order he’d placed for 1,740 rifle cartridges arrived at 6:09 p.m. on May 23. In the eight days after he became eligible to purchase firearms, he bought two AR-15-style rifles and 2,115 rounds of ammunition.

He had broken no laws. He had aroused no suspicion with authorities. And, like many mass shooters, he had given no public warning about his plan.

May 24, the day of the Uvalde shooting, was most likely the first time he had ever fired a gun, investigators concluded. To do so with an AR-15 is simple: Insert a loaded magazine, cock the rifle to force a cartridge into the firing chamber, slide the safety switch off and pull the trigger. Still, he initially struggled to attach the magazine correctly in the previous days, a relative recalled to investigators, and it kept falling to the floor.

He figured it out by the time he pointed one of the rifles at his grandmother and shot her in the face, amid a dispute about his cellphone plan. The bullet tore a gash in the right side of her face; she required a lengthy hospitalization but survived. He took only the Daniel Defense rifle to the school, leaving the Smith & Wesson at his grandmother’s truck, which he had stolen, driven three blocks and crashed on the west edge of the elementary campus.

When Other Officers Hesitated

The 77-minute delay in breaching the fourth grade classroom was an “abject failure” that set the law enforcement profession back a decade, the Texas state police director said in June. Police had failed to follow protocol developed after the 1999 Columbine school shooting that states the first priority is to confront shooters and stop the killing. Yet even beyond Uvalde, the performance of police against active shooters with AR-15-style rifles — which were rarely used in mass shootings when the standards were developed — is inconsistent.

AR-15-Style Rifles Are Now More Common in Mass Shootings

Since 1982, AR-15-style rifles have been used in 30 mass shootings — their use significantly rising after the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004. In 2022, 67% of mass shootings involved at least one AR-15-style weapon.

Note: Mass shootings are defined as the indiscriminate killing of at least three people in a public place, excluding crimes related to domestic violence, robbery and gang activity. (Source: Mother Jones and Texas Tribune analysis. Credit: Drew An-Pham/Texas Tribune.)

When a gunman began firing an AR-15-style rifle in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, an officer providing security waited six minutes for backup before pursuing the suspect into the club; he later said his handgun was “no match” for the shooter’s rifle.

Two years later, a sheriff’s deputy at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida did not confront the AR-15-wielding shooter there, either. Investigators said he instead retreated for four and a half minutes, during which the gunman shot 10 students and teachers, six fatally.

In some instances, police have confronted the rifle without hesitation. Officers killed a gunman who had fatally shot seven people in a 2019 shooting spree in the Texas cities of Midland and Odessa. During the 2021 supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colorado, one of the 10 victims the gunman killed with his AR-15 was one of the first responding officers.

The extreme stress the body experiences in a gunfight slows critical thinking and motor skills, said Massad Ayoob, a police firearms trainer since the 1970s. Officers can overcome this with repeated training that is as realistic as possible, he said. Without it, they are more likely to freeze or retreat.

“Have you ever been in a firefight? Have you ever been in a situation where you were about to die?” said Kevin Lawrence, a law enforcement officer for 40 years and the executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association. “None of us knows how we’re going to react to that circumstance until we’re in it.”

Improved training that reinforces the expectation that police immediately confront active shooters would improve the likelihood that they do so, said Jimmy Perdue, president of the Texas Police Chiefs Association. But because they attack at random locations and times, he said it is unrealistic to expect that all 800,000 law enforcement officers in the United States would be prepared. That rifles like the AR-15 are especially lethal, he acknowledged, adds an additional mental obstacle for officers.

“All we can do is play the averages … and hope that the training will take place and they’ll be able to understand the gravity of the situation and respond accordingly,” Perdue said. “But there is no guarantee that the one officer that happens to be on duty when this next shooting occurs is going to respond correctly.”

In many cases, whether officers follow active-shooter training is irrelevant. Most mass shootings end in less than five minutes, research from the FBI concluded, often before officers arrive.

This was the case in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 26 people at an elementary school in 2012, and in Aurora, Colorado, where another killed 12 people at a movie theater the same year. Both used AR-15-style rifles.

Family members of the Robb Elementary shooting victims and their supporters wait to meet with an aide of a state senator to ask the lawmaker to consider supporting gun reform legislation. (Evan L’Roy/The Texas Tribune) Resistance to Gun Control

Texas has a long, proud and increasingly less-regulated history of gun ownership. It is rooted in a belief in personal responsibility, that average citizens can sensibly own guns to protect themselves and their families and intervene to stop armed criminals in the absence of police.

“Ultimately, as we all know, what stops armed bad guys is armed good guys,” said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston three days after the Uvalde shooting.

He cited two examples: the Border Patrol team who finally breached the classroom at Robb Elementary and the firearms instructor who shot the gunman who in 2017 attacked a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, with an AR-15-style rifle. Both actions potentially saved lives. But they failed to prevent the murders of 47 people.

This year a group of Uvalde families has been regularly visiting the Capitol to push for stricter gun laws, including to raise the age someone can legally purchase AR-15-style rifles to 21.

The mass shootings since 2016 in Dallas, Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso and Midland-Odessa — all but one committed with a semi-automatic rifle — did not persuade the Legislature to restrict access to guns. Instead, lawmakers relaxed regulations, including allowing the open carry of handguns without a license or training. And Democrats who have proposed a number of new restrictions this session admit that their bills face nearly insurmountable odds.

The AR-15s carried by state troopers at the Capitol give Sandra Torres flashbacks. Her daughter, 10-year-old Eliahna, a promising softball player, died at Robb Elementary. Sandra never got to tell her she’d made the all-star team. Mack Segovia, Eliahna’s stepfather, didn’t grow up around guns, but he’s seen enough pictures of 200-pound wild hogs his friends tore up with AR-15s while hunting to understand what the rifle did to his daughter.

The couple has made the six-hour round trip to Austin five times already, squeezing with other families into tiny offices for meetings with lawmakers to ask for what they think are commonsense regulations. Most legislators are cordial, but sometimes the families can tell they are being rebuffed, Torres said. Her partner recalled how the House speaker drove 360 miles from his home in Beaumont to Uvalde to tell families he did not support new gun laws, which struck him as a hell of a long way for a man to travel to say: Sorry, I can’t help you.

The experience is frustrating. Torres and Segovia said they did not have a strong opinion about guns until their daughter was taken from them by a young man who bought one designed for combat, no questions asked. They said they feel compelled, if Eliahna’s death served any purpose, to make it harder for other people to do the same.

“Those were babies,” Segovia said. “I promise you, if it happened to those people in the Senate, or the governor, it would be different.”

Sandra Torres and her partner, Mack Segovia, dedicated a room in their new house to Eliahna Torres, 10, who was killed at Robb Elementary. (Evan L’Roy/The Texas Tribune)

Lomi Kriel contributed reporting.

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Try, try again. Here’s the epic saga the Biden administration wants to add to.

by Elyssa Cherney, Crain’s Chicago Business, and Steve Mills, ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica have identified at least nine objects once owned by James and Marilynn Alsdorf that have been sent back to their countries of origin since the late 1980s. Nepali activists — and government officials, in one case — are pressing for the return of more Alsdorf objects donated to the Art Institute of Chicago, saying they have evidence the pieces may have been looted and sold on the art market. (Marilynn Alsdorf’s son and an attorney for her trust declined to comment for this story.)

Returned Objects

Brooke Herbert for Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica

Sculpture of Tara: The Yale University Art Gallery in May returned to Nepal a stone sculpture of a goddess that had once belonged to the Alsdorfs. The Alsdorfs had sold the piece in a 2002 Sotheby’s auction; it was later donated to the gallery.

Brooke Herbert for Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica

Stone stele of Nagaraja: This 12th century piece was one of three objects sent back to Nepal by the Marilynn B. Alsdorf Trust in 2022, according to records obtained by Crain’s and ProPublica.

(Brooke Herbert for Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica)

Figure of Buddha: Estimated to be from the 14th or 15th century, this was one of three objects sent back to Nepal by the Marilynn B. Alsdorf Trust in 2022, records show.

(Brooke Herbert for Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica)

Stone stele of Padmapani: Estimated to be from the 10th or 11th century, this was one of three objects sent back to Nepal by the Marilynn B. Alsdorf Trust in 2022, records show.

(Brooke Herbert for Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica)

Linga with four faces: The Art Institute helped facilitate the return of this object, which Marilynn Alsdorf loaned to the museum, in April 2021. The object, a sixth-century sculpture depicting Shiva, was stolen from a shrine in Nepal in 1984, according to Nepali news reports and records obtained by ProPublica and Crain’s.

(Courtesy of Christie's June 2020 online ancient art catalog)

Marble hare: Christie’s pulled this second to third century Roman piece from a 2020 Alsdorf estate sale after receiving information that it had been linked to a convicted antiquities smuggler. Christie’s helped return the piece to Italy, according to a spokesperson.

(Courtesy of Christie's June 2020 online ancient art catalog)

Bronze eagle: Christie’s pulled this second to third century Roman piece from a 2020 Alsdorf estate sale after receiving information that it had been linked to a convicted antiquities smuggler. Christie’s helped return the piece to Italy, according to a spokesperson.

Lakulisa sculpture (not pictured): Marilynn Alsdorf returned a sculpture of Lakulisa, a figure associated with Shiva, to India in 2000 after researching the piece for a 1997 exhibit at the Art Institute and finding issues with its provenance, according to research by an academic.

Vishnu carving (not pictured): The Art Institute agreed to return to Thailand a decorative stone beam of the god Vishnu, which the Alsdorfs had bought through a New York art dealer in 1967, according to news articles at the time. The Thai government said the carving, which the Alsdorfs’ foundation donated to the museum in 1983, disappeared from a temple in the 1960s.

Contested Objects

(Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago)

Taleju necklace: The Nepali government asked the Art Institute in August 2021 to repatriate the gilt-copper necklace made for a Hindu goddess. Negotiations over the piece, which was commissioned by a Nepali king in the 17th century, are ongoing.

(Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago)

Bhairava sculpture: The Alsdorfs loaned this sculpture of a form of Shiva to the Art Institute in 1997, and the museum acquired it in 2014, according to a museum spokesperson. Nepali activists say they’ve located a photo of the piece that shows it was in Nepal during the 1980s and allege it could have only left the country through illicit means. The photo is on a memory card that came with a book about Nepali stone sculptures. Activists don’t know the exact date or location of where the photo was taken. The Art Institute has seen the photo and is reviewing the object’s provenance, the spokesperson said.

(Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago)

“Buddha Sheltered by the Serpent King Muchalinda”: The Alsdorfs loaned this sculpture to the Art Institute in 1997, and the museum acquired it in 2014, according to a museum spokesperson. Nepali activists have located a photo that they say shows the piece in Nepal in 1970 and say it may have been looted from that site. A spokesperson for the Art Institute said the museum has seen the photo, which is published in an archive created by art history professors, and is reviewing the object’s provenance.

(Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago)

Wooden Tara: The Alsdorfs loaned this piece to the Art Institute in 1997, and the museum acquired it in 2014, according to a museum spokesperson. Nepali activists have located a photo, published in a 1974 article by a scholar, that they say shows the piece in a temple and is evidence the object may have been illicitly removed from Nepal after that time. The Art Institute has seen the photo but hasn’t concluded the piece is the same, the spokesperson said.

Get rich by getting the rubes mad.

by Elyssa Cherney, Crain’s Chicago Business, and Steve Mills, ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Eying a rare collection of Asian artifacts, the Art Institute of Chicago turned on the charm to woo a local benefactor.

It arranged a major exhibit to showcase the South and Southeast Asian art that Marilynn Alsdorf had accumulated over decades and published an elegant catalog to commemorate the event. The museum even hired a longtime Alsdorf friend as a curator.

It was “like a card game, or a minuet … a little dancing,” Alsdorf said at the time.

That effort paid off. In 1997, Alsdorf announced at a party of the museum’s Woman’s Board that she would leave approximately 500 objects from Nepal, India and other countries to the Art Institute, saving it the millions of dollars it would have had to spend to build such a collection. And in 2008, the Art Institute opened the Alsdorf Galleries, a tribute to Marilynn and her late husband, James.

But the Alsdorf collection, once so desired, has increasingly become a problem for the Art Institute as it faces questions of ownership history that cast doubt on the museum’s commitment to keeping its galleries free of looted antiquities.

Twenty-four objects from the Alsdorf collection at the Art Institute have incomplete provenance by modern standards, according to a national online registry of museum pieces. No other single collection at the museum that's listed on the registry has as many gaps.

Beyond that, ProPublica and Crain’s Chicago Business have identified at least four Alsdorf pieces at the Art Institute for which there’s evidence that they may have been looted from Nepal and exported illegally.

Among them is an inscribed gilt-copper necklace, embellished with semiprecious stones and intricate designs, which a 17th century Nepali king offered to a Hindu goddess. The Nepali government and activists are pressing for the return of the necklace, which is still on display at the museum.

A necklace said to have been given to the Hindu goddess Taleju by a Nepali king, on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, came from the Alsdorf collection. Nepalis interviewed for this story said they were comfortable with a photo of the necklace being published. (Alyce Henson for Crain’s Chicago Business)

The dispute over the rights to that necklace has dragged on for close to 20 months, raising frustration in Nepal. “I don’t know what else they want,” said Alisha Sijapati, director of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, which seeks to repatriate stolen objects and has called attention to the case. “The more they delay, it’s damaging to their reputation.”

Crain’s and ProPublica also found that at least nine additional pieces once owned by the Alsdorfs have previously been returned to Nepal and other nations — a pattern that some art historians say should trigger a broader and public examination by the museum of the couple’s collection. The Art Institute was involved in returning two of the pieces: a decorative stone beam from a temple in Thailand, which had been donated to the museum, and a sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva from Nepal, which had been on loan.

The other objects were in the Alsdorfs’ personal collection; one piece was in another museum.

While some museums have taken a more expansive approach to weeding out looted artifacts, the Art Institute lags behind, ProPublica and Crain’s found. Other U.S. museums post information online when they find a problem or repatriate an object; the Art Institute does not. Some museums also maintain an online, public record of repatriations that includes the names of collectors who loaned or donated the contested piece; the Art Institute does not.

A spokesperson for the Art Institute said the museum strives to thoroughly research the objects in its collection and follows industrywide best practices for vetting ownership history or provenance.

The Art Institute takes all repatriation requests “extremely seriously,” the spokesperson, Katie Rahn, said. “Repatriation discussions can be exceptionally complex and can take significant time, but every effort is made to resolve these matters as quickly as possible.”

Concerns about the Alsdorf collection are mounting at a time when museums are drawing scrutiny for their failures to return stolen objects, and even the remains of Native Americans, that are still in their possession.

Art historians and other experts say it’s especially difficult for an underdeveloped country like Nepal to negotiate with a large, world-famous museum like the Art Institute. Nepali officials have lamented that the country’s Department of Archaeology, which handles research into looted objects, is severely understaffed and that coordination between government agencies can be slow.

“Legally, the burden of proof is on the victim,” said Melissa Kerin, an associate professor at Washington and Lee University who specializes in South Asian and Tibetan art and architecture. “They’re the ones already living without the object, but they’re the ones who have to pull together a legal team. We’re talking about a developing country.”

Worshippers light diyas, or oil lamps, at the Kaal Bhairav Hindu shrine in Kathmandu Durbar Square in Nepal’s capital. (Brooke Herbert for Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica)

Nepal’s history of political unrest has made it particularly susceptible to looting; hundreds of sculptures, paintings and other spiritual objects have been stolen from the country since 1960, after it began opening its borders to tourism. As in much of South Asia, sculptures depicting deities are considered to be inhabited by those gods and not mere inanimate idols. Their absence leaves worshippers reeling.

Activists with the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign said they have found photos showing three objects in their original locations in the country before the Alsdorfs allegedly bought them and gave them to the Art Institute: a wooden sculpture of the goddess Tara, a stone carving of Buddha and another stone sculpture of a Shiva.

Rahn said that the museum is aware of the photos and is investigating the provenance of those objects, but that it has not determined that all of the photos match its pieces. The Nepali government has not initiated repatriation requests on those objects.

According to Rahn, the Art Institute’s last written communication from Nepal about the necklace was in May 2022, and the museum is waiting for additional information. Nepal’s embassy in Washington said the Archaeology Department is “coordinating” with the Art Institute on questions about the necklace, though activists say the museum has asked for records that may not exist or would be difficult to obtain.

The Art Institute would not say if it has conducted a top-to-bottom review of the Alsdorf collection since Marilynn’s death in 2019. The items donated by the Alsdorfs were vetted by the museum when they were acquired under the standards in place at the time, Rahn said, but those internal policies have evolved — and strengthened — since then. “If new information emerges for any object, we conduct further research,” she said.

The Art Institute created three positions “primarily dedicated” to provenance, including a curator who oversees these efforts across the institution, Rahn said. Two of the positions were created in July 2020 and the third in February 2022, she said, as “research became a bigger priority for the museum.”

Rahn said the museum also had formed a task force last year of “senior curatorial and legal leaders” to help prioritize provenance research, but she would not provide additional details. She said the museum is “considering” posting online information about objects that might be returned in the future.

A sculpture photographed in Nepal in 1970, first image, and a stone carving the Art Institute lists as the “Buddha Sheltered by the Serpent King Muchalinda,” second image, which came from the Alsdorf collection. Activists say the photos show the same object and provide evidence the museum may be in possession of a looted item. (First image: John C. Huntington, courtesy of the John C. and Susan L. Huntington Photographic Archive of Buddhist and Asian Art. Second image: Photo courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago.)

Though the Alsdorfs are both dead, efforts to protect their legacy are ongoing. As part of four recent returns to Nepal, Marilynn Alsdorf’s trust has required the country to agree to not identify the Alsdorfs as the owners in any press releases or other public announcements, according to interviews and records obtained by ProPublica and Crain’s.

Given an opportunity in April 2021 to identify Marilynn Alsdorf as the owner of an object the Art Institute was helping to return to Nepal — the Shiva that had been on loan there — museum officials declined to do so in ArtNews, a major news organization for the arts community.

The Art Institute, however, was not a party to the confidentiality agreement.

“This is all hush hush — very intentionally so,” Kerin said. “It’s protecting the system.”

A Love of Collecting, a Looted Picasso

James and Marilynn Alsdorf supported various museums in their hometown, but perhaps none benefited from a relationship with the couple as much as the Art Institute.

Throughout their lives, the Alsdorfs donated more than $20 million to the Art Institute. James Alsdorf — the son of a Dutch diplomat and a successful owner of a business that produced glass coffee-making equipment — was chair of the museum’s board from 1975 to 1978. Marilynn Alsdorf, who graduated from Northwestern University and worked briefly as a model for commercial and fashion photographers, was a museum trustee and president of its Woman’s Board.

James and Marilynn Alsdorf in 1950. The couple purchased their first South Asian object, a metal sculpture made in Nepal, during a 1955 trip to Paris. (Photo courtesy of christies.com)

The couple purchased their first South Asian object — a metal sculpture made in Nepal — during a 1955 trip to Paris. In the decades that followed, the Alsdorfs grew their acquisitions and their reputation as leading American collectors. And they became especially well known for their holdings from South and Southeast Asia.

While the Alsdorfs enjoyed the thrill of collecting art together, they also seemed to relish their connection with the elite arts world.

“They liked being part of that community of donors to the city, of having a place of success and status,” said David Tunkl, an art dealer who began working with the Alsdorfs in the 1980s.

Whether the Alsdorfs were aware they were purchasing stolen objects or whether they were taken advantage of by unscrupulous dealers may never be known. They acquired much of their collection during their travels in the 1950s and 1960s, an era that many art historians have described as particularly freewheeling.

During those decades, collectors seldom inquired about a piece’s provenance, perhaps loath to learn an object had been illicitly dug out of the ground or taken from a temple, said Erin Thompson, an associate professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“They would’ve seen objects like this being worshipped,” she said. “They should have known.”

The Alsdorfs purchased art all over the world — in India, France and England. They also visited dealers in New York, including Doris Wiener, whose involvement in the illicit trade came to light after the arrest of her daughter Nancy for trafficking in looted objects from Southeast Asia and India. Nancy Wiener pleaded guilty. Attempts to reach Nancy Wiener for comment were not successful; Doris Wiener died in 2011.

Nearly a decade after James Alsdorf’s death in 1990, Marilynn Alsdorf agreed to exhibit her collection at the Art Institute. In a catalog accompanying the 1997 exhibit, Marilynn Alsdorf explained her attraction to art from South and Southeast Asia, saying she and her husband “looked for objects to delight our eyes and souls rather than objects that embodied particular ritual practices or exemplified specific religious texts.”

The contributions Marilynn Alsdorf made to the Art Institute after her husband’s death created the couple’s namesake galleries, a curator’s position at the museum and a professorship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, 110 objects from the Alsdorf collection are on display, the majority in the Asian collection.

Questions about the provenance of some objects began when the Alsdorfs were alive. The first widely known case dates to the mid-1970s, when the Thai Embassy alleged a 1,000-year-old stone carving of the god Vishnu was stolen from a temple and asked the Alsdorfs to return it.

James Alsdorf said at the time that he asked the Thais for evidence to corroborate the claim but never received it, so the piece remained at the Art Institute, where it had been displayed for about 10 years, according to news accounts.

In 1988, Thai officials approached the Art Institute, but the museum defended the Alsdorfs and its right to keep the piece, saying it was bought in good faith — legally through a dealer, according to the news accounts.

The controversy dragged on for months and spurred a protest outside the museum.

Eventually, the Art Institute agreed to return the piece in exchange for receiving an object from the Thais from the same period and of “equal artistic merit.”

Years later, Marilynn Alsdorf returned a sculpture of a Shiva cult figure to India after learning, during research for the 1997 exhibition at the Art Institute, that it was likely stolen from a temple decades earlier.

Her attitude was sharply different in the case of a 1922 painting by Picasso, “Femme en Blanc,” or “Lady in White.” In a lawsuit, a California law school student demanded its return, alleging the painting had been owned by his grandmother before it was stolen by the Nazis during World War II from an art dealer storing it for her in Paris.

Though the German and French governments determined that the Nazis had looted the Picasso, Alsdorf insisted that, because she and her husband had bought it from a reputable dealer, it was hers. She acknowledged, however, that they hadn’t made any inquiries into its provenance, according to a sworn deposition from the case.

Alsdorf said she had no intention of returning the Picasso, valued at roughly $10 million. When a lawyer at the deposition asked why, Alsdorf said: “Because I felt I owned the painting. I still feel I own the painting.”

In the end, Alsdorf admitted no wrongdoing but paid the law student $6.5 million and got to keep the painting. The law student, Tom Bennigson, in an interview recalled Alsdorf as “this supercilious rich person who didn’t want to deal with my claim.”

Alsdorf’s son, Jeffrey Alsdorf of Seattle, declined to comment for this story. He is listed as an executor of his mother’s estate and, with other family members, sits on the board of the Alsdorf Foundation, according to the most recently publicly available tax records. Linda Feinstein, a Chicago lawyer who, according to documents, represents Alsdorf’s trust, did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Following Alsdorf’s death at 94, a flurry of repatriations occurred.

The auction house Christie’s returned two Alsdorf-owned objects to Italy that had been put up for auction during a 2020 estate sale, a Christie’s spokesperson said. After the Art Institute assisted with the return of a sixth century Hindu sculpture to Nepal in 2021, Alsdorf’s estate returned three artifacts to the country the following year, also under the condition that she not be publicly identified as the owner.

The agreements required that Nepal refer to the objects only as coming from a “private collection” and prohibited it from naming the Alsdorfs in any press releases or public statements about the repatriations, according to interviews and records obtained by ProPublica and Crain’s.

Most recently, the Yale University Art Gallery in May returned to Nepal a piece it had acquired that was once owned by the Alsdorfs but had been given to the museum by a later owner, according to a curator at the museum.

“Troublingly Close” Relationships

Though collecting ethics have evolved to acknowledge the prevalence of antiquities trafficking, critics say the standards don’t go far enough.

Ethical guidelines created by the Association of Art Museum Directors, a major professional organization, do not apply to objects acquired before 2008, when the standards were created. The guidelines also don’t apply to objects promised by donors before 2008 but officially given much later.

The AAMD guidelines say “member museums normally should not acquire” ancient art or archaeological material if they cannot be sure the items left their country of origin before 1970 or were legally exported after 1970.

That’s the year UNESCO adopted a sweeping treaty to curb antiquities trafficking, prompting many museums to adopt stricter due diligence protocols. The AAMD guidelines suggest that, before museums acquire new objects, they obtain import and export papers, sale records and other provenance documents.

But Patty Gerstenblith, a distinguished research professor specializing in cultural heritage law at DePaul University, said the guidelines contain “exceptions big enough to drive a truck through.”

She points to a provision that allows museums to keep works with incomplete provenances if a donor signed a promise to give the work as a gift or bequest before 2008 — when the AAMD adopted the so-called 1970 rule. But that standard doesn’t apply if an object was on long-term loan before 2008, the donor had signed a promised gift agreement before 2008 or if the institution had an “expectation” prior to 2008 of receiving it.

Since Marilynn Alsdorf promised to donate much of her collection to the Art Institute in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of the objects likely fall under these exemptions.

The AAMD also requires museums to post information about ancient art or archaeological material if they acquire an object under an exception. But only objects acquired since 2008 and that meet certain definitions for what is an antiquity must be posted — a small percentage of most museum collections.

The Art Institute of Chicago lists 48 objects on the registry; half are Alsdorf donations.

The AAMD says that its registry helps publicize provenance information that would otherwise not come to light. “This makes possible the kind of provenance research — and possibility for restitution, if appropriate — that is not possible when an object is out of view in a private collection,” an organization spokesperson said in an email.

Worshippers light diyas in the early morning at Ashok Binayak, a Hindu temple, in Kathmandu Durbar Square. (Brooke Herbert for Crain's Chicago Business and ProPublica)

Museums have an incentive not to probe too deeply, according to critics. Conducting rigorous provenance research is time consuming and costly. It also threatens to open the floodgates for repatriation requests and could dissuade potential donors from making contributions.

Robert Linrothe, an associate professor emeritus of art history at Northwestern University who also worked in the education department at the Art Institute in the 1990s, said in an email that the long-term relationship between the museum and donors such as the Alsdorfs has appeared “troublingly close.”

“Many of us have warned of a pattern of turning a blind eye to dishonorable collecting practices that can be traced back to colonial times,” he said. “Western museums are now having to face up to this unfortunate legacy.”

The Art Institute, however, said it has adapted. “There is no question that the generally accepted standards for provenance research have evolved,” Rahn said. “As we engage in the work to learn and publish more about an object’s provenance, it is simply inaccurate to suggest that any current gap in provenance is indicative of illegal or unethical behavior.”

But some museums are more transparent. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston provides the findings of its provenance research online. Last year, it repatriated 13 objects to four different sources, the museum’s senior curator for provenance, Victoria Reed, has said publicly. The museum also lists previous owners and donors.

The San Antonio Museum of Art, meanwhile, allows website users to search its collection for artwork that was repatriated. The website includes information for 16 objects that were returned to Italy in 2021 and 2022, including the names of the private collectors who had donated the items.

Lynley McAlpine, a curatorial fellow at the museum, said in an email that the museum chose to post the information online “because it is the most efficient way for us to provide transparency.”

The Art Institute, by comparison, doesn’t keep an online record of repatriated objects, and it made no returns in 2022, according to Rahn.

An “Overwhelming” Moment

Sweta Baniya stared in disbelief at the copper necklace at the Art Institute. On that summer day in 2021, Baniya, a Nepali academic living in the U.S., had been excited to explore the vast collection of art from her home country, which she’d learned about from a friend.

When Baniya spotted the necklace — a gift from Marilynn Alsdorf — her emotions shifted.

She dropped to her knees, clasped her hands in prayer and wept. Later, as her mind raced with questions, Baniya shared her experience on social media.

“When I saw the necklace, it was just very overwhelming,” Baniya, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, said in an interview. “It’s so majestic … but it shouldn’t belong” at the Art Institute.

Sweta Baniya, a Nepali academic living in the U.S., found the experience of seeing the Taleju necklace at the Art Institute to be “very overwhelming.” “It’s so majestic,” she said, “but it shouldn’t belong” to the museum (Sam Dean for Crain’s Chicago Business)

The necklace, which was said to have been given to the Hindu goddess Taleju by a Nepali king, contained an inscription in Newari, an ancient language of the Kathmandu Valley.

“Victory to the Mother-Goddess,” the inscription says. It also includes the name of King Pratapamalladeva, who ruled the region from 1641 to 1674, and refers to him as “lord of the kings.”

In Nepal, divine representations of Taleju are hidden from public view. Worshippers are permitted inside her temple just one day a year during a religious festival. Even then, they’re not allowed to see her.

Documents obtained by Crain’s and ProPublica show that the Nepali Embassy in Washington first asked for the necklace to be repatriated in August 2021, after Baniya’s posts stirred interest. The embassy sent the Art Institute an archaeological report saying the necklace disappeared from Taleju’s temple in the 1970s and must have been smuggled out of the country.

Nepali officials don’t know precisely when or how the necklace left the country, key facts to help establish its history. According to museum records, the Alsdorfs bought the necklace from a California dealer in June 1976 and loaned it to the museum about two weeks later. Marilynn Alsdorf donated it to the Art Institute in 2010.

Leslie Darling, the Art Institute’s executive vice president and general counsel, told the Nepali Embassy in a September 2021 letter that the museum took the issue “very seriously” and would look into the provenance of the necklace, according to a copy of the letter obtained by ProPublica and Crain’s.

In May of the following year, Darling asked Nepal for additional records on the necklace. Rahn, the Art Institute spokesperson, said the Nepali government hasn’t responded to that letter. A spokesperson for Nepal’s Archaeology Department said officials are still looking for the evidence they were asked to provide but maintain that the inscription on the necklace is “irrefutable” proof that the necklace belongs to Nepal.

Uddhav Karmacharya, standing in Kathmandu Durbar Square, the high priest of a temple devoted to the Hindu goddess Taleju. He notified the Nepali government about scrolls he found in the temple’s basement that mention a large copper necklace with a description matching the one at the Art Institute. (Brooke Herbert for Crain's Chicago Business and ProPublica)

In addition, Uddhav Karmacharya, the high priest of Nepal’s Taleju temple, has found scrolls in the temple basement showing an inventory of gifts given to the goddess, he said. Karmacharya said he notified his government about the scrolls, which mention a large copper necklace with a description matching the one at the Art Institute and provide evidence of the necklace’s origins.

Karmacharya has never seen the necklace in person but said he still feels a strong connection to it.

“This item is not something to be displayed on the wall and to all these onlookers who don’t have the same belief system,” he said in an interview through an interpreter. “A curator might think it’s very beautiful … but this particular item is priceless.”

There are also some tough questions for the Nepalis about how the necklace left their country, including whether the country’s royal family may have helped sell the necklace in the late 1990s to fund its lavish lifestyle. Much of that family died in a massacre in 2001, and the monarchy has been abolished.

The Art Institute seems to have explored the possibility that the royal family played a role as well. In the May letter to the Nepali Embassy, the museum sought information about “the actions of the Zonal Office and other government or religious officials who may have removed and separated jewelry and ornaments.”

Even if Nepali royals were involved, advocates for repatriation say the museum should return the necklace because it is an item of spiritual significance that is collectively owned by the nation.

Since questions about the necklace have become public, so have details about Bruce Miller, the California dealer who sold the Alsdorfs the necklace. Although he was never charged criminally, Miller was described in a 2014 Indian court case as having worked with an alleged antiquities smuggler in India in 1992.

Miller, through his wife, declined an interview, citing health issues. In an email, he said he was “at a complete loss” as to how the Indian case had anything to do with the Alsdorfs and their collection.

Neither Miller nor his wife addressed his involvement in the case. The smuggler was convicted by a jury for the 1992 offenses but a judge overturned his conviction in 2014, saying the prosecution had not met its burden of proof, according to the ruling and a news article.

Roshan Mishra, standing at the Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu, is a founding member of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, which seeks to repatriate stolen objects. (Brooke Herbert for Crain’s Chicago Business and ProPublica)

Roshan Mishra, a founding member of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, said he understands why repatriations take time. But he said he thinks the Art Institute is stalling, ignoring the strongest proof that comes from the inscription.

“At the end of the day, the necklace belongs to Taleju,” he said. “All of the evidence is there — on the necklace.”

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EDWARDSVILLE - Andrew Hendrickson, a senior pitcher/outfielder with the Edwardsville baseball team, is off to a good start as the Tigers opened the 2023 season this past week, getting the only two hits in the team's 10-0 loss to Lockport Township Mar. 16, driving in a run in a 12-2 win over St. Joseph-Ogden in the season opener on Mar. 15, and going three innings on the mound in a 14-4 win over Washington on Mar. 17, allowing two runs without a hit and walking one in gaining his first win of the season. Last season, Hendrickson had no record in six appearances on the mound, having a 1.83 ERA in recording two saves, walking eight while fanning seven. He also hit .190 on the year with one home run and nine RBIs as he helped the Tigers win the Class 4A state championship. It's a new year, of course, and against the Porters, Edwardsville gave up four run in both the fifth and seventh innings in their loss, but Hendrickson isn't about to let a bad game get in the way of working hard and

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