by David Nelson
At school, Tex required devotion from his closest pupils. Often, he was manipulative and mean. Jonathan recalled, “Tex was famous for being able to … make fun of people without them knowing he was making fun of them.”
Aside from frequent conflicts with Tex, Craig also felt the weight of his studies and outside activities beginning to build. “He put a lot of pressure on himself,” said Valerie, Craig’s sister. They often spoke on the phone while she was attending college, and although he never spoke of any distress, she knew that the schoolwork, the music, their father’s expectations, were all weighing on him. He also had financial difficulties.
“We all knew that he was destitute,” said Louis LaPorta, who put together productions for the Chicago Opera Players that Craig and his friend Jonathan were both part of. “He was living from nickel to nickel.”
Handsome, smart, witty Craig Conner was, in a way, outrunning his own fast-paced life, without giving himself a chance to catch up.
“People kept lots of secrets back there in those days in that place,” Jonathan Ben Gordon said.
Although his friend Billy Carroll continued going down to Clark and Diversey, Gene Anderson eventually stopped.
“I just thought it was kind of sleazy,” he said. “I really started realizing the guilt, the shame that you put yourself through when you’re a prostitute. You feel bad about yourself. You lower yourself. Plus, it’s dangerous.”
Boys had started banding together when they turned tricks down in New Town or Bughouse Square. In some instances, they stuck together because it was good business. Gene explained, “The johns, after they had had sex with the boy for two or three occasions, they would say, ‘Well, don’t you have a buddy? I want your buddy. I don’t really want you anymore.’” A partner helped bring in recurring clients but also served as a lookout, both for police and in case a client tried to pull a fast one.
But after a few years, the boys on the corner were too nervous to even get inside cars. If they did, they took down license plates as a precaution. The need to “interview” their client to feel them out over introductory meals or sit-downs became even more important.
For Gene, he looked for different types of “energy.” If he sensed a chicken hawk had more masculine energy, he typically avoided them and looked for one with more effeminate energy, that might be less likely to be aggressive during the sexual act.
The boys had adopted this mentality not only from their own experiences but also from observing female sex workers, who began their work early in the morning and gave pointers about the life. Gene remembered seeing the physical toll of their work—the black eyes and track marks. “We heard those stories every day on the street,” Gene said. “So we knew … that you would run into the same types of difficulty and danger.”
In the Yankee Doodle one day, Gene sat down with a man in his mid-thirties named John, whom he’d seen previously driving a van around Bughouse Square. John was eager to take him home—not just for sex, but also to give him a potential job working in his backyard. In exchange, John would give him money or pills, whichever he preferred. “I got Quaaludes, I got Placidyls, I got Tuinals,” John told Gene.
Gene estimated this was 1976. And by then, he was drifting away from the lifestyle. He had a girlfriend, he was getting into sports, and things at Prologue School were going well for him.
“I didn’t like him,” Gene said. “He was dirty. He had greasy hair. His eyes moved around a lot. I could see he was thinking in three different directions all the time. I could sense he wasn’t an effeminate queer.…”
John had previously caught the attention not just of boys on the street but of law enforcement as well. In early 1976 police focused on John as a potential suspect in the disappearance of nine-year-old John Paul Ferris, missing from his family’s apartment in Uptown since September ’75. Although the boy eventually turned up in California, police had staked out John’s home on Summerdale Avenue near the airport for two weeks, waiting for signs of little John Paul Ferris.
Jaimie, a young man who’d started in the sex trade at the age of twelve, later told the Chicago Sun-Times about an encounter he had with John, who paid him thirty dollars to go back to his home. John had driven him from Bughouse Square all the way to his house near the airport, where the two had gone to the bedroom to have sex. But the encounter turned rough almost immediately, with John warning him to “do what he was told.”
John began beating and choking Jaime. Jaimie was hesitant to resist, for fear of getting hurt worse, figuring the rough nature was part of what turned John on. Not until John pulled out a pair of handcuffs did Jaimie truly realize the danger. He took the handcuffs from John and threw them against a window, then bit into John’s wrist.
Jaimie warned John that another boy had written down his license plate as they’d driven off. This further enraged John, who began trying to smother Jaimie. But in that moment, for whatever reason, John suddenly stopped. Something shifted, John calmed, and the violence passed out of him. He turned on the lights and offered to drive Jaimie back.
Fearful that John might change his already unpredictable mind, Jaimie sat quietly while they drove. When they returned to Bughouse, John tipped him an extra fifty bucks and some pills. Jaimie told the newspaper, “It wasn’t worth it.” He stopped working the street for about a month after that, warning other boys about the man named John who’d given him more than just a bad feeling.
Mike Bowling likewise had an encounter with John. Standing near the mouth of Clifton Avenue—a notoriously dangerous alley twisting its way between Broadway and Racine and down to Wilson—Mike saw the same truck go by several times. He knew what the driver had in mind.
Sure enough, the driver eventually pulled up and asked if Mike wanted to go back to his house and “party.” Mike agreed, and they drove westward in the direction of John’s home. “I had it in my mind right there that I’m gonna rob this one,” Mike recalled.
They arrived at a small ranch house along a sleepy avenue near the airport. Inside the house, Mike and John smoked hash together. Eventually, John offered him a mixed drink.
“No,” Mike said firmly. “I don’t drink anything that I don’t mix myself.” He offered it back to John. “You drink it.”
Mike fixed his own drink that evening. Later, after they drank and smoked a bit, John told him, “Come over here, I want to show you something …”
From behind, John snapped a set of handcuffs around Mike’s wrist. “He only got one hand,” Mike explained. “I turned around and I laid him out. I mean, I had him stretched out on the floor.”
Mike hit the man five times, knocking him out for a brief spell. In that time, Mike fished the key from John’s pocket and put the handcuffs on him. While he waited for John to come around, Mike took $150 from him and then went outside and read the words printed on the truck.* John later woke to see Mike standing over him.
“I’m going to let you go,” Mike told him, “but you’re going to take me back.”
“I’m a cop,” John said.
“You’re not no fucking cop.”
Mike dragged the man out the door and back to the truck. He got in first, then he pulled John in, handcuffing him to the steering wheel.
“You’ve got about five seconds to make up your mind,” Mike said. “Are you going to take me back?” When John hesitated, Mike said, “I’ll beat you to death right here and take your truck.”
Handcuffed to his own vehicle, John had little say in the matter. They drove the long journey back to Uptown, where John pulled up alongside a fire station not far from where he’d picked up Mike, who now leaned over to uncuff him. John spilled out of the truck and quickly ran into the station, leaving Mike sitting there.
“I just got out and walked down the street,” Mike said.
Robin Pratt eventually left the conservatory before completing his education. For a time, he worked at a contemporary furniture store on Lincoln Avenue until the owner set the building on fire for insura
nce money. Although she assured her employees she’d rebuild, the woman ended up spending all the money on heroin.
So Robin drifted around Chicago, eventually finding a new job at a wholesale fabric and furnishings store at the Merchandise Mart downtown. During his time there, Robin met another man and left the city, first for Indianapolis. Before leaving, Robin passed along many of his own furnishings for Craig to decorate his apartment on Barry Avenue in New Town.
Robin kept in touch with Craig through letters. “I kept trying and trying and trying to kinda make it happen with Craig,” Robin said.
In a letter back to Robin, Craig said he’d fallen in love with a black man named Teddy. Craig was happy. In jealousy, Robin threw out the letters.
Despite his hurt, Robin did see Craig again. Eventually, Robin made his way to Louisville, Kentucky, where he and a new lover decided to return to Chicago. They moved into an apartment on Barry Avenue, right across the street from Craig.
That last summer, Craig would often cross the street to spend time with Robin. Still nothing happened between them, not even the casual sex they’d had in previous years.
Instead, Craig would sit at Robin’s piano, tinkering out arpeggios and cadenzas while Robin cooked dinner in the kitchen.
While Robin had carried feelings for Craig through all the cities he’d been to in the intervening years, Craig seemed content with his new boyfriend, Teddy.
Eventually, as summer led into fall, Robin and his boyfriend decided to head back to Louisville to pursue other opportunities. With little ceremony, they packed up their things. Before they left, Robin sold the piano Craig often played on.
“I didn’t let Craig know I was moving,” said Robin.
Things for Craig at school continued to go well, as he progressed through his final year at the conservatory. There was some uncertainty to his future, but eventually he lined up a job interview back out west in Colorado. He booked a flight home to New Mexico for November 4, 1975.
He was also preparing for an upcoming performance with his friend, Jonathan Ben Gordon. After one rehearsal on a Saturday evening, the two went out for dinner and a beer together at a nearby bar.
They carried on one of their easy conversations, perhaps another debate around the merits of calisthenics, Craig’s favored exercise routine, versus lifting weights, which Jonathan preferred. “At some point, he asked me if I was interested in having sex,” Jonathan said. “This was the first time that he’d ever done that.” The sudden proposition surprised Jonathan. “It’s not like we had one of these dreamy, intimate, foreplay-type conversations.”
Jonathan turned Craig down gently, saying he was straight, and he just couldn’t.
“He wasn’t embarrassed,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t feel embarrassed. There was no anger on my part. I just said no. I always assumed he was in a committed relationship,” though Jonathan wasn’t sure with whom. “But I didn’t pry.”
The night continued, but it was clear both young men had things they wanted to get to. Jonathan knew Craig had to wake up the next morning for the musical program at church. He also assumed that Craig was looking for sex, and that he was off to find a more willing partner.
Jonathan said good night to his friend. “I probably was the last person to see him that night.”
Robin Pratt soon regretted leaving Chicago without a proper good-bye to Craig. “I felt terrible,” Robin said. “I kept calling and calling and nobody would ever answer the phone.” He would even call in the middle of the night to see if he could catch Craig to apologize and find out how his friend was doing.
Craig’s old friend Diane Busko also hadn’t heard from him. One of the last interactions she’d had with him had been on a class trip to Cleveland. “Sometime after that, we lost touch,” Diane said. “So I sent him a letter and said, ‘Oh what happened to you? You dropped off the face of the earth.’”
Eventually one of her letters got to Craig’s mother, who wrote back. “I was shocked to hear her letter,” Diane said. “I was totally shocked.”
Robin too, continued trying to find his friend. His calls to Craig’s apartment had started getting a busy signal. He finally had the operator interrupt the line, saying it was an emergency. When Robin got through, he heard a voice on the other end that was not Craig’s. It was Craig’s father, Michael, recently arrived from New Mexico, standing inside his son’s apartment. Craig was missing.
Days prior, Tex Richardson had called Michael, to say he hadn’t seen Craig. Michael had quickly gotten on a flight to Chicago to help search for his son. Robin couldn’t believe it. For days afterwards, he frequently spoke on the phone with Michael, discussing Craig’s possible whereabouts. During one conversation, Michael asked Robin a question. “Do you think Tex could have done something?”
Robin did not hesitate. “I absolutely believe that.”
Mark Johnson often ran into his friend, Dori Lent, in Chicago. Previously, they’d shared an apartment together up in Rosemont, but Mark had moved out to live with a man he’d be with for the next forty-two years. As he settled into domestic life, Mark lost touch with many old friends like John Szyc.
“Well, Mark, I don’t know if he’s doing too well,” Dori told him, when he asked about John. Since his breakup with Cliff, John had been a “little lost.” Dori suspected he’d turned to hustling. Up the street from the Bistro was another bar, PJ’s, that sometimes got busted by police because underage boys often sat at the bar or stood outside, waiting to be picked up. Dori relayed a rumor to Mark that John had been hanging out there.
The next time Mark and Dori ran into one another, she was still concerned. Although John had a new job at Sargent and Lundy, an energy company downtown, Dori had a sense that he was preparing for something. “I have a feeling he’s going to move,” Dori told Mark.
“Have you asked him, Dori?”
“Well, not really outwardly,” she replied. “I just think he wants something else.”
Like many others in that era, they assumed he was looking toward California, the paradise of the west, for his escape. Sometime after their breakup, Cliff had moved to San Francisco, where the Castro neighborhood was making a name for itself at the forefront of the gay lifestyle.
John’s other friend, Lynn Meadows, had reasons to worry as well. He’d started telling her about a man also named John who’d been making promises. “He’s gonna take me to Florida and buy me a fur coat,” John Szyc had told her.
“Why do you need a fur coat in Florida?” Lynn asked him. Every time John would bring this man up, Lynn would ask, “Is he gorgeous or something?”
“No, he’s not,” John answered. “He just has money. [He can] get me jobs.”
Lynn got a bad feeling from it, pleading with John not to meet up with his mysterious “Florida John.”
“I’m telling you, honey,” Lynn said to her friend. “Please don’t go.” This was one of the last times she spoke to him.
Dori Lent kept in touch with Mark, letting him know she’d gone to John Szyc’s apartment one day, but he hadn’t answered. She’d heard noises coming from inside, which she heard in a second visit when again, there was no answer. What the noises were exactly, it’s uncertain. John had previously mentioned to Dori that he was selling his television as well as his car. Mark later heard through friends that John had struck a deal with a blond-haired boy he’d met at PJ’s.
They all agreed something wasn’t right.
It was 1977. John was nineteen.
In later years Mark heard more rumors: someone had seen John on the streets of San Francisco, someone else had seen him in Chicago. Nothing added up. He’d no doubt kept secrets from his family, but now it seemed like he had secrets from everyone.
Mark Johnson knew there were dangers waiting for a young gay man. Not long after his friend disappeared, Mark was sitting in the 21 Club on Irving Park, near Cliff’s old apartment where they’d all partied and loved and laughed. A middle-aged man sidled up to him at the bar and introduced
himself as John.
“I like older men,” Mark admitted.
“Well, I live far out in the suburbs,” John said to him.
Mark, living in Des Plaines by then, replied, “So do I. I’ll follow you home.”
John led him back along the Kennedy Expressway and up to a neighborhood near the airport. On a quiet street called Summerdale, Mark pulled up to a small ranch-style house where John waited to let him in.
They went to the bedroom where they both undressed and laid down in the bed. They’d barely even started when Mark grew hesitant.
“You’re not really what I’m looking for,” Mark told John.
Before John could reply, they heard a sound from somewhere in the house.
“What’s that?” Mark said.
“It’s my mother,” John answered.
For Mark this was the sign he needed to leave. He gathered his clothes and hurried out of the house naked. Only when he was safely inside his car, did he bother to put on his underwear. “Something was creeping me out,” Mark recalled, “and I couldn’t put my finger on it.” Mark drove off and returned home. But it wouldn’t be the last time he’d see the man, John.
All of them—Mark Johnson, Gene Anderson, Mike Bowling, Jaimie the young sex worker, and others—would see this man named John again someday soon. They would know his full name. They would feel the rhythm of evil with every syllable.
* The true identity of Mr. Clean has never been established.
* Multiple studies from the 1970s onward have disproved any correlation between “homosexuals” and “pedophiles.” In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A study by Gregory Herek, a professor at University of California, found most pedophiles could be classified as heterosexuals operating primarily in their own network of children. Other pedophiles found themselves unattracted to either sex their own age but “regressed” to turning their focus on children. These studies in no way excused pedophile behavior. Instead, they underscored the fact these men led complex and varied lifestyles driven by specific inner impulses of their sexual behavior.