I’m new around here, and have done a little catching up on the threads related to this case. I grew up in Springfield and moved away about 30 years ago. I don’t have any personal connections to the case, but my circles of friends in the late 1980s included people who are older siblings of some of the players in this case. In 1992, I lived about a mile south of 1717 East Delmar.
I don’t have anything new or insider-y to offer, but I did want to throw out some thoughts, facts and observations that are mostly unrelated to each other:
* 1717 East Delmar is a long, long way from the center of any activity involving Kickapoo High School. It’s well removed from Kickapoo’s actual attendance area. In those days, attendance areas were pretty tightly enforced, with one exception: If you were a senior in high school, you could choose to remain at the high school you were attending if your parents moved out of the attendance area (I vaguely remember this practice being known as “senior preference.”) Suzie’s connection to Kickapoo would have been from a previous residence. This is why I’ve always thought it was odd that so many people just let themselves into the residence; it wasn’t like these were close neighbors who knew each other well. The Delmar house was several miles outside of the Kickapoo district.
* Given that, it was a bit weird that anybody from a KHS graduation party other than Suzie would want to wind down their night at the Delmar house. This, to me, lends some credence to the belief that Stacy McCall was trying to be a friend to Suzie (and, also, simply didn’t wanna go home that night). It would have been, at the time, at least a 25-30 minute drive from the Battlefield area, even with no traffic. If you look at a map now, you’ll think, well, couldn’t they have just zipped down the James River Freeway? Nope, it ended at Kansas Expressway at the time. West Bypass’s southern terminus was Sunshine. That trip from the Kirbys’ house would have involved Weaver Road, the old Republic Road, and Campbell, maybe crossing over on Battlefield to get to Glenstone.
* That said, I know from my own youthful efforts to get from one part of Springfield to another after having had a drink or two, if they followed basic Springfieldian strategy of the time, they would have stayed off Glenstone to reduce the likelihood of an encounter with law enforcement. This would mean they likely would have approached Delmar from Kentwood via Fremont or National, which would explain why their cars were parked facing Glenstone. I never found that odd.
* I’ve noted several posts, articles and at least one podcast repeat the assertion that the 911 system was new to Springfield in June of 1992. It wasn’t. It had been launched in March 1979. Janis McCall didn’t want to call 911 because “911 was for emergencies” and she still wasn’t convinced or was trying block out the thought that the situation she was facing in the evening of June 7 was an emergency. But it wasn’t because she was unfamiliar with 911.
* The various gas station/convenience store “sightings” never rang true with me. Neither Streeter nor McCall looked particularly distinctive for the time or place. A lot of teenagers would have been out that night, and the bored guy behind the cash register at the Apco or Rapid Roberts or whatever would likely not have been able to pick Streeter or McCall out of a lineup.
* The idea that anybody would walk from 1717 E. Delmar to George’s Steak House for late-night breakfast is patently silly. Glenstone doesn’t have sidewalks. Kentwood doesn’t have sidewalks. Nobody in Springfield walks to anywhere except on university campuses. That one is really easy to cross off the list.
* I’m pretty sure Hydra-Slide WAS open late on summer nights and weekends. So it’s not implausible that Janelle Kirby’s cutoffs would still have been wet from being at Hydra-Slide. It has always struck me as odd that … she and Mike Henson WENT to Hydra-Slide rather than advising some adults that three vehicles and no people were at the unlocked Delmar house. And a Hydra-Slide trip would certainly not have been an all-day-into-the-evening thing the way a trip to White Water would have been.
* And finally: The idea that “Springfield was a place where people didn’t lock their doors” in 1992 is absolutely false. I grew up in a house in the heart of Springfield in the ‘70s and ‘80s which had double dead-bolt locks. Lots and lots of criming was going on in Springfield throughout my childhood and adolescence — big violent crime, drug-fueled crime, petty crime, and yes, more than our fair share of missing women. It’s true that there weren’t a lot of murders IN THE CITY LIMITS of Springfield, but there were plenty on the outskirts. And there were many, many home break-ins, car thefts, and other property crimes. The only thing that really stood out about this case was that it was three people at one time, and that the crime scene was as clean as it was.
So: None of these assertions advance anything, but hopefully they level-set a few key points, especially for those not from Springfield.
