The Man Who Killed Boys by Clifford L. Linedecker

Author:Clifford L. Linedecker [Linedecker, Clifford L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9781939430069
Google: fXrDi-3tSsEC
Publisher: Garrett County Press
Published: 2013-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

6...

Buried Dreams

and a

President's

Wife

The last thing Jon Prestidge's friend said to him when the Michigan youth stepped out of the apartment to begin a night of barhopping was:

"Be careful. You're not in Kalamazoo anymore. There are plenty of crazy people in the world and a lot of them are here in Chicago."11

Jon had heard warnings like that before, as recently as the previous day. On March 14, 1977, he had telephoned his mother, Mrs. Nancy Cassada, of Gobies, near Kalamazoo, and told her he planned to stay in Chicago a couple more days. He said he was going nightclubbing.

Mrs. Cassada cautioned her son to be careful. She worried about him going out alone. He usually carried forty or fifty dollars with him and wore turquoise rings and other jewelry and she was afraid he might be mugged. Even his older brother Michael worried about Jon and warned him to beware of strangers. The brothers were close and Michael knew that Jon could be naive and dangerously trusting of other people.

The gangly twenty-year-old blond youth was a free spirit, who was sure that he could take care of himself. He had graduated from Kalamazoo Central High School after transferring there from Gobies in his senior year and going to live with his father, Lewis Prestidge, a musician. Although he was bright and learned quickly, he preferred farm work and the outdoors to studies. He dropped out of Kalamazoo Community College after attending only a short while and began working intermittently at various motels in the area. He had a cheerful, outgoing personality and got along well with the other employees. But he was adventuresome and believed in taking advantage of the footloose years between school and full adult responsibilities. So he traveled, and his friends learned that he might leave a job at any time to hitchhike to some faraway state.

He always told his family where he was going when he left on trips, and kept in touch at least weekly with telephone calls. For a while his calls were from Philadelphia, where he stayed several months working for a contractor.

He was enjoying life, seeing the country and making new friends. But by early 1977 he had begun to think seriously about a career, and when he telephoned home from Chicago he told his mother he planned to check into a nursing school that had a program for men. He thought he might like to specialize in anesthesiology, and had arranged for an interview on March 16.

Medicine appealed to him. As a member of the profession, he would be exposed to the excitement of working in hospitals, as well as having the satisfaction of knowing he was helping other people.

He liked being with others, and New Town, with its twenty-four-hour bluster of activity, offered new experiences and new friends. The apartment he was staying in with a friend of his grandfather was a mere few blocks from Broadway discos and young people's bars like Crystal's Blinkers, Broadway Ltd., The Phoenix, and the Fat Black Pussy Cat.

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