by Otto Penzler
At trial in the plain white courthouse on Main Street, Thompson testified that Dison had been harassing his family. He stopped the former sheriff, he said, to warn him against bothering his family. “I told him, ‘You fucking old man, you pull it again, and I’m coming after you.’” When asked if he always stopped those he was angry with on a public road, Thompson testified, “It depends on where they are.”
The jury convicted Thompson on both charges. He was fined $150 and sentenced to 21 days in jail. The disorderly conduct verdict, however, was reversed by the Third District appellate court, which reasoned that the trial judge had improperly excluded testimony about the long-running feud between Dison and Thompson and his family.
Seven years later, in 1994, Dison claimed that Thompson approached his car in the parking lot of the local grocery and threatened him. This time, Thompson was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct. At trial, he denied leaving his truck, but acknowledged the gist of the remarks. “I told him to go on in the store or I’d bury his ass,” Thompson told the court. In arguments before the judge, prosecutor James Owens called Thompson “a street thug” and “a schoolyard bully who never left the school-yard.” Thompson was convicted of disorderly conduct, but not the more serious charge of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to a year of probation, $111 in court costs, and 100 hours of community service.
“Up until the end of Dad’s life, Curt harassed him,” Ptasnik says. “Dad was an old man in very poor health. He used a walker! And Curt would still pull up beside him and give him that glare. [Dad] was so upset that nothing could be done about Curt, but not just for himself. He was convinced Curt could kill someone.”
The Richardson “pop bottle” cases lay dormant for four years before being dismissed for lack of pursuit by the plaintiffs. “I think they dropped it because the judge was retiring,” Sandra says. “No one was interested in pursuing it.”
The idea of “not pursuing it” became central to Toulon’s approach to dealing with Thompson. A few, like the Richardsons, filed charges and took Thompson to court. Many more opted to ignore him.
“People would come in and complain,” says Pearson, the former deputy. “They would tell me about the intimidation. But almost no one would file charges. They just put up with him for the most part. The thinking was to ignore him, and hopefully things would get better.”
“I think people rationalized that the problem wasn’t severe enough to justify the effort required to resolve it,” says Jim Nowlan, editor of the Stark County News, a weekly newspaper. “I might have been guilty of it myself.”
Nowlan and others in Toulon tell of hearing several years ago that the Toulon City Council did not intend to enforce a litter ordinance against Thompson. “That infuriated me,” Nowlan says. “I thought the whole town should go over there at once and confront Thompson. I thought we should be united. But my passion cooled and I ultimately forgot about it, and that was probably pretty typical.”
Some suggest, too, that law enforcement was afraid of Thompson.
“The various police from the town and county over the years, not all of them, but some, have been fearful of Thompson,” Nowlan says. “Not in terms of the old-fashioned fistfight, but for fear of an extremely violent reaction.”
Pearson has another take. “We were in a tough situation,” he says of law enforcement. “It’s not against the law to drive your car down a public road or an alley and glare at someone. When [Thompson] did something more serious and someone was willing to file charges, action was taken by the police. But most people chose just to ignore him.”
And the few in Toulon who were willing to file charges were the people Thompson was on his way to see after he allegedly killed Deputy Streicher.
Jim and Janet Giesenhagen were perfectly Toulon. His mother, Ardelle, lived across the alley on a homestead bought by her great-great-grandfather in 1829. Jim co-owned a local television/heating/air-conditioning business, earned a black belt in karate, attended church every Sunday, led a Boy Scout troop. Janet worked long hours at a Peoria grocery store, about an hour away, then went home to play with their daughter, Ashley, and surf the Internet. Ashley played soccer and piano, and remained a daddy’s girl. Most Friday nights the family went out for supper, often for pizza at Happy Joe’s in Kewanee. Their future plans were simple: Save money for retirement, take a trip to Disney World.
In 1986, the Giesenhagens told police that Thompson’s Labrador retriever had bitten 6-year-old Shawn Henderson, Janet’s son from a previous marriage, who lived with them. Stark County authorities filed charges, and the case went to trial. The jury found in favor of Thompson. The Giesenhagens were now on Thompson’s list.
Ardelle Giesenhagen, Jim’s mother, and others say Thompson began to stalk the Giesenhagen family, and kept it up for years. “Day after day, around eight in the morning, Curt would drive down the alley behind Jim’s house, just circling very slow, three or four times, almost not moving, and glaring,” recalls Joe Tracy, Jim’s best friend. “He knew that was about the time Ashley went to school. And it didn’t quit. Jim made complaints. Nothing was ever done.”
Jim began driving Ashley the few blocks to school. In his car, day or night, he zigzagged rather than take the shortest route, always careful to avoid passing near Thompson’s house. Though Jim held a black belt in karate, he rarely, if ever, confronted Thompson; he knew that the man owned guns, and believed that a challenge might short-circuit Thompson’s temper.
Ardelle Giesenhagen, then in her sixties, was not so patient. After Thompson extended his vendetta to her and her husband, and began to circle her house and glare at her, she told him, “Curt, you’re not God! I’m not scared of you. You could shoot me today and it wouldn’t worry me because I know where I’m going. But I don’t know if you’re going anyplace but down below.” Thompson just glared at her. Another time, when he parked in the alley and glowered while Ardelle gardened, she shook her finger at him and said, “Curt, what do you think you’re doin’? Move it!” Thompson only snickered and drove off.
Perhaps the moment that most frightened Ardelle occurred just after her husband died, in 1999. She, Jim, Janet, and Ashley were in her backyard playing with Ardelle’s cats. “Curt drove his truck down the alley and told Jim and Janet he was going to kill them,” Ardelle recalls. “Someone called the police. Bob Taylor came. Curt said he’d get him, too. Taylor did nothing. He didn’t arrest him. Nothing.”
About five years ago, shortly after Joe Tracy went to work for Jim Giesenhagen, he too began to have problems with Thompson. “I had no connection to Curt, no dealings with him,” Tracy says. “My only offense was that I was friends with Jim.”
Sometimes Thompson would block Tracy on Main Street with his truck or follow him out of town or try to run him off the road as he walked to the grocery store. Every day, Tracy says, Thompson circled his house, glaring. When he told Thompson, “Curt, why don’t you just leave us alone? We’re not bothering you.” Thompson replied, “Yes, you are bothering me. You’re harassing me all the time,” and Tracy could only shake his head.
In 1999, Tracy filed a criminal complaint claiming that Thompson had followed him for two miles into the country, then jumped out of his truck at an intersection and waved a hammer threateningly. Jim and Janet Giesenhagen gave statements about Thompson’s behavior in connection with that case. Thompson was convicted of simple assault, and in August 2000, he was ordered to pay $116 in court costs, $25 per month in probation fees for twenty-four months, and a $100 public defender’s fee. He was also ordered to stay away from Joe Tracy and his family, and from Jim Giesenhagen and his family—an order Tracy says Thompson violated repeatedly.
“Jim didn’t know what to do,” Tracy says. “He went to the law, he made lots of calls, and they didn’t do anything.”
Finally, Jim set up a video camera on the back of his garage and pointed it toward the alley. Thompson drove by and glared. Often Jim and Tracy believed that this was clear evidence of vio
lation of the court order prohibiting contact with the Giesenhagens. Jim delivered the tapes to the state’s attorney. Tracy says they never heard back.
More than a year after the conviction in the hammer-waving case, Thompson had paid just $18 of the required fees and costs. Judge Scott Shore issued a summons for him to appear before the court for nonpayment. Thompson did not appear. On October 15, 2001, Shore issued a warrant for Thompson’s arrest. It was this warrant that Deputy Streicher had tried to serve the night he was shot, more than five months after it had been issued.
On that Friday night last March, while Deputy Streicher lay on Curt Thompson’s porch, Thompson streaked in the squad car toward the Giesenhagen house. Inside, the family was enjoying a quiet evening together. Janet was on the couch. Jim and Ashley had gone to the basement, probably to fetch a vaporizer to soothe Janet’s asthma.
Court documents allege that, armed with Streicher’s service revolver and his own sawed-off shotgun, Thompson pulled into the driveway of the house, smashing the rear end of a parked Mercury SUV and driving it through wooden fence posts and into a pole flying the American flag. Thompson jumped out of the vehicle with the shotgun. He climbed the four wooden steps that led to the side door of the house, leaving the squad car lights flashing in the drive-way. Then, the indictment alleges, Thompson broke down the door to the house and burst in, carrying his sawed-off shotgun. At close range, he fired at Janet, hitting her in the arms and the chest, leaving her left forearm dangling by a thread of skin as she collapsed to the floor. Then, authorities say, he likely moved to the basement, where he fired the shotgun and struck Jim Giesenhagen in the face, the buckshot obliterating his tongue and the floor of his mouth. Jim fell dead. Thompson did not harm Ashley, who probably witnessed her father’s killing. Finished, Thompson left the house.
Ashley called her grandmother, Ardelle. Toulon does not have 911 service; the town voted it down twice, thinking it too expensive, at $2.85 a month, to adopt. Ashley told Ardelle, “Grandma, come quick! Curt Thompson just killed my daddy and hurt my mommy.” Ardelle, who did not know whether Thompson was still inside the Giesenhagen home, threw on her shoes and coat and ran across the alley.
When Ardelle stepped inside, she saw Janet on the floor, one hand to her chest, the other nearly detached from her arm. “Grandma, he’s down there,” Ashley said. Ardelle looked down the stairs and saw Jim lying in a pool of blood, a hole in his head. She could tell that he was dead, but wondered what had happened to his beard.
Ardelle called the sheriff’s office. Janet asked for a pillow, which Ardelle retrieved for her. “My back hurts,” Janet said. Ardelle placed the pillow behind Janet’s back then covered her with a blanket.
As Ardelle waited for an ambulance, she went to Ashley’s bedroom. Just a few weeks earlier, after Thompson had driven by Ardelle’s house and glared, Ashley had locked the windows and said, “You know what, Grandma? We need to pray for Curt. He doesn’t have anybody to love him.” Now Ashley’s socks were soaked in blood. “Let’s kneel and pray for Mommy because I think she might make it,” Ardelle told her granddaughter. Then she noticed that Ashley had started to pack a suitcase of clothes because she knew she wouldn’t be staying home that night.
Lights still flashing, Thompson drove the now-damaged squad car west to the intersection of Commercial and Franklin Streets. There, he spotted a pickup truck being driven by his young neighbor Jason Rice, with whom he purportedly had been feuding. According to the indictment, Thompson rammed the pickup. Rice, believing he had been struck by a deputy, approached the squad car to offer help. Thompson pointed the shotgun. Rice ran from the scene.
At the Giesenhagen house, Ardelle still waited for an ambulance as Janet clung to life. It had been, by her estimation, several minutes since she had called the sheriff’s office. She called again. “I need help now!” she told the dispatcher. “Where is the ambulance?” Ardelle says the dispatcher told her, “You have to call it yourself.” Incredulous, Ardelle found the number to the local ambulance, located just blocks away, and called. Ardelle believes “at least” fifteen or twenty minutes passed from the time she first called the dispatcher until the ambulance arrived.
By now, calls for help had been broadcast to officers in two other Stark County towns—Wyoming (six miles away) and Bradford (fifteen miles away). Sources say that the Toulon city policeman, Bob Taylor, was not on duty, but he raced to the scene upon learning what was happening.
Thompson was now pointed south on Franklin Street. Backup law enforcement was still minutes away. One witness says that Thompson approached another house, this one belonging to Joe Tracy, Jim Giesenhagen’s best friend.
As Thompson drove past Tracy’s house, Tracy’s telephone rang furiously inside. By now, friends and family had heard word that Thompson had done something terrible, and they were desperate to warn Tracy. The phone kept ringing. Tracy and his wife had eaten dinner at the Barn House in Kewanee that night, and had stopped to talk to Joe’s stepdaughter. Their house was empty.
By about 8:15 P.M., squad cars from Wyoming and Bradford, along with Bob Taylor in the Toulon city police car, had converged, sirens blaring. Thompson turned east on Thomas Street, then south on Miller Street, lights still flashing. He was within a block of his own house, where the slain deputy still lay.
The Bradford policeman, driving north on Miller, came head-to-head with the stolen squad car. Thompson stopped. The Wyoming and Toulon cars, which had gone first to Thompson’s house, now came racing around the corner onto Miller and stopped behind the stolen vehicle. Thompson was surrounded.
The police aimed their weapons at Thompson. Still seated in the deputy’s car, the indictment alleges, Thompson reached for a shotgun and fired through the windshield at the officers. The officers returned fire. Then nothing moved. The only sounds in Toulon that moment were the officers’ heaving breaths and the whine of distant sirens racing to save the town.
Then more shots rang out, so many and for so long that some, describing it afterward, would liken it to the grand finale of a fireworks display. Then, another, longer silence, this one crushing in its implication—it was time for the officers to approach the stolen vehicle.
The police moved in, their lives thrust up against the crescendo of a thirty-year rage. Nothing moved inside the squad car. They stepped closer. Toulon’s lone traffic light, blinking a block away on Main Street, lit the scene in uncertain yellow. Thompson had been shot in the face. He appeared unconscious. Police dragged him from the car, handcuffed him, and continued to point their service revolvers at him. A medevac helicopter landed on the nearby high school football field and airlifted Thompson to a Peoria hospital.
Janet Giesenhagen was rushed to the same football field, where a helicopter awaited. She was pronounced dead on the field. That night, 10-year-old Ashley took her suitcase and slept at her grandmother’s house.
Thompson was placed on life support at OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria. His condition improved over the course of the next week. On April 1, ten days after the murders in Toulon, he was transferred to the Peoria County Jail, and placed in a cell by himself. A few days later, he appeared in court in Toulon and demanded to represent himself, saying his court-appointed attorneys in previous cases had not been “worth throwing back.” He finally consented to a public defender—Matthew Maloney, an attorney certified to handle capital cases, from Princeton, Illinois, northeast of Toulon.
There are people in Toulon—and they do not make themselves loud or visible—who knew another side to Curt Thompson. They speak of a farm boy who lost his father at an early age, who had to work for room and board in grade school, who was bright and well-read and married a lovely woman to whom he stayed married and with whom he produced three children. They know that Thompson will be remembered in Toulon as a monster. They say they will remember more than that.
“Curt was probably born a hundred years too late,” says one of Thompson’s neighbors. “He butchered his own meat. He lived frugally
and was a very intelligent person. He knew the biology of livestock and was well-read in politics and life events. He was very capable. I would have hired the man in an instant if not for his temper.”
“If you needed anything, Curt and his wife would come,” recalls Mary Jane Swank. “When I came home from the hospital, they fixed us a complete meal, and I mean complete: chicken, pork chops, corn, potatoes, everything. Just a few days before [the shootings], Curt brought us some meat he’d butchered.
“I knew he had problems with people. But if anyone treated him fair, he’d treat you fair back. Curt had so much to give—that’s the part that hurts me a lot. If he was treated decent … you know how small towns are—they have to pick at somebody and never let up.”
“I felt bad for him sometimes,” says a friend of Thompson’s. “He never drove a fancy truck. A lot of his life was spent not having more than minimum finances. He always had two big black Lab dogs—salivated all over, but very nice, never growled or snapped. He’d bring the dogs along sometimes. About ten years ago, I noticed that he had only one of the dogs. He told me he had to put the other dog to sleep because it had heartworms. I asked if heartworms couldn’t be treated. He said, Yeah, you can treat it, but I did not have enough money.’ You should have seen his face. I thought he was going to cry. To me, it showed that he had a heart like anyone else.”
Shortly after Jim and Janet Giesenhagen died, Toulon united to throw several fund-raisers for Ashley. In a candle sale, citizens collected $3,500 for her future education. It had been the kind of gesture instinctive to the town since before Lincoln’s speech on the courthouse lawn.
When asked about Thompson, many in Toulon do not want to talk. They are polite about it, all of them. And they are consistent in their reasoning.