by Otto Penzler
I told him that I had gone to a reunion. His name and number were in the commemorative booklet.
“Well, I don’t want to waste your time—I don’t want to participate in your project, Tom. I don’t want to participate in this conversation—”
“Can I ask you why?”
He sighed again. He took a breath, preamble to the last words he would ever speak to me. “Tom, I’ve had to put a lot of things behind me in my life. You’re one of them. Please lose my number.”
And that was all. It was over. I said, “Okay,” but by that time the line was dead. I was preparing to apologize, but I’m sure he knew I was going to ask for forgiveness, and that forgiveness wasn’t his to dispense. We had our time long ago, and it was irrevocable. I couldn’t get away with it any more than Jonathan Miller could get away with what he had done to Josh Belluardo. Hell, what I had done to Timmy Titimski was worse than what Jonathan had done to Josh because it wasn’t in error. It was pointed, concerted, extended—a campaign. I did what I wanted to do. I had that freedom back then. It was a terrible freedom, and yet I prefer it to its opposite, for I can’t help asking if we can suppress bullying without suppressing the immense and mysterious and ultimately beautiful vagaries of childhood. I can’t help asking if we can criminalize bullying without criminalizing childhood itself. I can’t help wondering if it’s not by our attempt to criminalize childhood that Jonathan Miller paid a man’s price for a boy’s punch, and if the world he now occupies—where the action of Elavil supplants the action of guilt—mirrors our own, where the dictates of conscience are supplanted by the dictates of law and policy. I ask for mercy for Jonathan Miller. But then again, I’m nothing but a goddamned bully. I ask for mercy for Jonathan as a way of asking for mercy for myself. I ask for mercy for Jonathan Miller as a way of keeping alive the hope of all terrible boys, that they do not become terrible men.
On May 2, 2002, the Georgia Supreme Court heard Jonathan Millers appeal, in—of all things—an auditorium full of high school students in Griffin, Georgia. The venue was chosen as an experiment in education, but the appeal turned into an opportunity for the judges to lecture the students on the evils of bullying, even though neither Jonathans counsel nor even the Cherokee County district attorney used the word in their arguments. Not surprisingly, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed Jonathans conviction on all counts, including the decision to try him as an adult for a crime that seems to me the very essence of a juvenile offense. I mean, if coldcocking—and unintentionally killing—a kid at a bus stop isn’t a crime that should be judged in a juvenile court, then what is?
THE BULLY OF TOULON
ROBERT KURSON
On March 22, 2002, sheriffs deputy Adam Streicher was the only cop on duty in Toulon, Illinois, a town of 1,400 that briefly pokes up between cornfields, the municipal equivalent of a prairie dog. Toulon is located 160 miles southwest of Chicago and it feels even farther. Most folks farm the land or work for the town. The lone grocery store has wood floors and hand-drawn signs. A flashing yellow light slows traffic on Main Street.
Deputy Streicher, 23, had dreamed of becoming a cop since childhood, when he admired Ponch, the hero of the TV series CHiPs. He had grown up in nearby Annawan, so he knew the rhythms and mores of rural Illinois. As a Stark County deputy, he would be responsible for covering the county’s three main towns—Bradford, Wyoming, and Toulon—in an area considerably larger than Chicago. Often he was the only law enforcement officer on duty in the entire county. Streicher had been on the force just three months, but he handled his rounds with confidence.
On a Friday night like this one, an ambitious deputy might nab some beer-chugging teenagers or issue a “Settle down, folks” to a bickering couple. But Streicher didn’t intend to sit. He nosed around the Stark County deputy’s office—there was usually something if you looked—and found a five-month-old warrant for the arrest of a local man. It seemed routine enough—the man had failed to pay some court fees and had missed his court date. Dressed in starched brown pants and brown shirt, with a Stark County silver badge covering his left breast, Streicher found the squad car keys and began the four-block ride to the man’s house.
In Toulon, people mind their business. But anyone who had known Streicher’s plan would have spoken up; they would have warned him, Don’t do this. But Streicher did not know what Toulon knew.
The deputy turned right on Main Street, left on Miller, and right on Thomas. It took him a minute to arrive at the house of the man named in the warrant. Carrying the document, Streicher walked to the front door and knocked.
Nobody in Toulon pretends that the place is Mayberry. It once was, maybe, in the 1950s, when the town supported an active Main Street, four car dealers, four new farm implement dealers, and three doctors; when the city constable was a one-armed geezer who patrolled on foot and shook business doors to check the locks; when America valued its farmers. That’s history now. In Toulon, as in many small towns, young people worry about opportunity. The talented nurture an appetite for the larger world. Empty storefronts embarrass Main Street.
Still, Toulon has its advantages, and they are the kind that don’t defer to eras. Everyone knows each other here, not just by name but by hopes, dreams, victories, and disappointments. A newcomer who buys the Williams house will live in Toulon a decade before residents stop referring to it as the Williams place. Gossip—the small town’s nectar—is reliably ladled in the town’s two coffee shops, ladies at one table, men at another.
But Toulon’s biggest advantage is in its biology. The town exists as a living, unified being; no part moves without implication for the other parts, no person lives without affecting other lives. When someone in Toulon gets sick, much of the town rushes to her bedside or comforts her children or takes over her household chores. When someone in Toulon dies, the town converges for fund-raisers, selling candles or car washes or whatever it takes to make the system whole again. In this way, by merging into a single, 1,400-person organism, Toulon survives.
Residents aren’t naive enough to believe that bad things can’t happen in Toulon. But what they never imagined was that certain kinds of bad things—maybe the worst things—could happen in a place like Toulon because it is small, because everyone knows each other, because the people are so close.
Deputy Streicher waited for an answer at the man’s door. The house and property stood out from its tidy neighbors; logs, tires, and appliances lay around the modest carport, forming a meniscus of junk that crawled along the edges of the house. A small yellow tractor sat parked near the front door. A wooden swing on a faded red metal stand stood sentry on the tiny patch of yard.
(The following events of the evening of March 22, 2002, as described here, are drawn from law enforcement allegations and court records including a thirty-count indictment, as well as Chicago magazine interviews with witnesses and other sources.)
A 60-year-old man with Einstein salt-and-pepper hair, a disorganized gray beard, and frozen eyes answered the door. He stood perhaps five feet nine. His name was Curtis Thompson, and he was a former coal miner who had lived in the area all his life. Apparently, Deputy Streicher announced the purpose of his visit—to serve an arrest warrant. A brief conversation ensued. Shortly thereafter, law enforcement officials and the indictment allege, Thompson located his sawed-off shotgun and pointed it at the deputy. Before Streicher had much of a chance to react, Thompson pulled the trigger, hitting the deputy in the left shoulder, upper chest, and neck. Streicher fell to Thompson’s porch, his face dusted with gunpowder, shotgun wadding stuck to his shirt collar, his upper left side blown away. He likely died before he hit the cement.
Streicher lay on the porch in a pool of blood. Then, the indictment alleges, Curt Thompson took the officer’s 9-millimeter pistol and, along with the shotgun, jumped into the deputy’s squad car, flipped on the flashing lights, and proceeded down Thomas Street, a glaring, enraged monument to a small town’s recent history.
For thirty years, some of the
people of Toulon had worried that it could come to this. Curt Thompson was a terrifying bully. He selected his enemies for committing offenses few could fathom, then punished them through methodical stalking—sometimes for years—that derailed their lives and infused them with fear. “He was the meanest person I ever met,” says a man who knew Thompson. “He wanted people to be afraid of him, and spent years making threats.”
People filed numerous complaints against Thompson. Mayors, city councils, prosecutors, and law enforcement seemed powerless to stop him. (State’s attorney James Owens, Stark County sheriff Lonny Dennison, and Toulon’s lone police officer, Bob Taylor, would not comment for this story.)
A handful of Toulon residents claim that Thompson was misunderstood. They attest to his intelligence, work ethic, kind wife, and instinct to help those in need. Some even mention his sense of humor. “There was quite a bit good about him,” says Mary Jane Swank, whose husband is Thompson’s cousin. “There was nothing Curt wouldn’t do for you.” Few, however, express complete surprise at how things turned out for Thompson and Toulon.
The shock came when Thompson began to terrorize people. Then Toulon’s strength—its smallness—became its biggest liability. Residents who otherwise massed to help neighbors now advised one another to “just ignore” Thompson. Police counseled citizens to “just stay away from him.” In the town’s two coffee shops, head-quarters for Toulon’s get-involved impulse, the mantra on Thompson became “You know how Curt is. Just leave him be.”
Several decades ago, the town of Skidmore, Missouri, suffered under the rage of its own bully. Ken McElroy, a hulking, 47-year-old farmer with long black sideburns, manufactured feuds and then stalked his foes. For years, McElroy defied authorities. One day in 1981, a posse of thirty or forty followed the bully to his truck and, in broad daylight, shot him dead. When authorities asked for witnesses, no one came forward. The case remains open. By midnight on March 22, 2002, some in Toulon would be wondering if the same fate shouldn’t have befallen Curt Thompson.
The details of Thompson’s life are sketchy. Acquaintances say he grew up on a farm near Toulon, the youngest of several children. His father died when Curt was six years old, leaving the family to struggle for the basics.
“Curt had to go work on farms when he was in grade school,” says Barry Taylor (no relation to Bob Taylor), who knew Thompson when they were children. “It’s a rotten childhood when you have to work in grade school.”
“His mother was good in ways,” recalls Mary Jane Swank. “She could be stubborn; things had to be her way. She didn’t want anyone to touch any of her stuff, and she raised her kids like that. If she got mad at someone, she’d hold that against them forever. But she was smart, and she was a beautiful writer.”
Taylor recalls Thompson as bright, serious, and an excellent high school football player for Toulon High School (now Stark County High). He tells that Thompson had to quit school at 16 to work full-time. “He had no choice. He had to eat.”
Thompson married a girl from his high school class, a woman Taylor describes as “fun and nice and pleasant,” and to whom he is still married. He went to work on various farms, then took a job in an Illinois coal mine. Without exception, those who knew him describe him as a capable and hard worker able to do almost any odd job or farm task. Somewhere along the line, however, Thompson began to get very angry.
At the Stark County courthouse in Toulon, where Abraham Lincoln spoke in 1858, records of legal proceedings are still entered by hand in hefty leather diaries. Under the letter T, going back more than thirty years, are myriad cases against Curt Thompson.
Some appear harmless enough: a dispute with an employer; traffic citations; failure to keep a dog’s vaccination records current; violation of a litter ordinance. But others seem bonded by a common theme—vendetta.
For decades, Thompson maintained grudges against various Toulon residents. Anyone who had taken him to court, or who he perceived had complained about him or violated his sense of territory, made his enemies list, and it was a list often written in indelible ink. As town talk had it, those who angered Thompson might expect to live in constant fear.
“Fear” does not mean in Toulon what it means in Chicago. In Toulon, where most residents live a few blocks from each other and pass on the street several times a day, having an enemy virtually assures a meeting with him in public. When that enemy is Curt Thompson, an intelligent man with time on his hands who dedicated thought and energy to creating fear, it could ruin your life.
Thompson’s modus operandi, at least in recent years, was predictable and intimidating. According to many, he would drive his pickup truck past the home of his foe, slow to a crawl, and glare. He might follow his enemy down the rural roads that led out of Toulon, or block him with his truck at intersections. Always, he would glare.
“He was a bully,” says Jim Pearson, who worked as a Stark County deputy from 1982 to 1987, and who now works as a Peoria County sheriff’s lieutenant. “The glaring, the following, the threatening—he even did it to elderly people.”
“Everyone knew about his temper,” says one of Thompson’s neighbors, who asked that his name be withheld. “He held a grudge. If someone bothered him, he’d bother them back, and he’d stay at it. I told Curt, ‘I don’t hold grudges.’ He said, Well, I do.’”
Early on, Toulon evolved a defense against Thompson that seemed to run counter to its instinct to unify against threats. Whereas the town would mobilize to save a school or care for a sick child, it largely decided to ignore Thompson, to maintain a safe distance, to cross to the other side of the street.
“People talked about Thompson being crazy,” says Art Mott, who has lived in Toulon for ten years. “The thinking was to stay away from him.”
“It was a small-town mentality,” says another Toulon resident. “People thought: Nothing major is going to happen; he’s just crazy; ignore him; he’s been harassing people for years, so just ignore him.”
No one remembers any formative incident in Thompson’s life that might explain the roots of his temper. Rather, it appears that his encyclopedia of grudges grew out of his particular notions about territory. “He wouldn’t have a problem with a stranger on the street,” says one person who knew Thompson. “But if your wash blew onto his lawn, he’d have a big problem with that. Personal space was a big issue with him.”
Unlike most bullies, Thompson targeted more than the weak. Sheriffs, politicians, even black belts in karate qualified for vendetta if they managed to wrong Thompson.
In 1984, Toulon’s mayor, Rick Collins, followed up on a citizen’s complaint against one of Thompson’s dogs. “That started Curt’s grudge against me,” says Collins, now a commercial pilot for a major airline. The next year, he and Thompson attended a retirement party for a bus driver at a restaurant just outside Toulon.
“I nodded across the table, a friendly hello,” Collins says. “He glared. Later, as I was leaving, Curt came up behind me, threatening me with all kinds of profanities. I ignored it. He struck me a couple blows to the head, then pushed me down a small flight of stairs. I hit the bottom on my hands and knees, but just got up and kept going. Had I gone after him, the only way the confrontation would have ended would have been death or jail.” Neither the Toulon city policeman nor the Stark County sheriff, Collins says, was interested in pursuing the matter, claiming it to be outside their jurisdictions.
In 1980, Thompson had a run-in with Kenneth Richardson, then the Toulon city policeman. Thompson and Richardson owned adjoining properties. While working outside, Thompson and Richardson began to argue about the property line. A struggle ensued, during which Richardson managed to get atop Thompson and hold him down.
“I had gone to take a bottle of pop to my husband,” recalls Sandra Richardson, Kenneth’s wife. “When Curt saw me, he yelled to his son, ‘She’s going to hit me with that bottle! Get her or I’ll get you!’” She alleged in a lawsuit that Thompson’s son, a football player, ran and tackled her
and broke her wrist in six places.
The Richardsons filed two lawsuits. The first, by Kenneth, claimed that Thompson had punched him, and had been “verbally abusive, hostile, and obscene” for weeks before the incident. The second was filed by Sandra against Thompson’s son, Curtis Jr.
“After that,” Sandra says, “Curt would set at the stop sign at the end of our driveway and glare.”
One law enforcement official who seemed willing to confront Thompson was Kenneth “Buck” Dison, the Stark County sheriff from 1970 to 1982. For nearly thirty years—well into Dison’s old age and retirement—Thompson maintained a feud with the sheriff.
No one knows for certain the origins of the dispute. Court records show that Dison arrested Thompson in 1971 after Thompson allegedly threatened a man at a Toulon feed store. It didn’t take long, according to many, for the feud to blaze.
“Curt would come after Dad every time he saw him,” says Kathy Ptasnik, Dison’s daughter. “He backed up his truck and glared into the house when my parents were socializing. He’d follow Dad and flip him the finger. Dad was afraid of Curt having revenge. He told us never to walk past his house.” Even among her siblings, Ptasnik says, the instinct was to turn away from Thompson. “My brother and I begged Dad to ignore him,” she says.
“Dison didn’t take any shit,” says Collins, the former mayor. “He wasn’t afraid to stand up to Curt.” Others say Dison gave as good as he got. “After Buck had retired, I saw him flip Curt the bird when Curt was just minding his own business,” says a friend of Thompson’s who asked to remain anonymous.
In 1987, Thompson pulled his pickup in front of Dison’s car on a rural road, blocking the former sheriff. Thompson got out of his truck and approached Dison’s car. The two men argued and, Dison claimed, Thompson threatened him (Dison was 68 years old at the time; Thompson was 46). Thompson was charged with reckless driving and disorderly conduct.