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.The El rumbled overhead, bringing home workers from downtown.The frigid air felt good in my other lungs.I wasn’t quite ready to go to Darrah Street yet, so I wandered across the street to the newsstand.A headline on the cover of the Evening Bulletin caught my eye:4 Y.O.GIRL MISSINGStanding belly-to-counter at the newsstand—hoping nobody would bump into me and/or through me—I skimmed the story.The words were tough to read in the near-dark, and there were just a few inches of copy before the jump, but it was enough to get the idea.A four-year-old girl named Patty Glenhart had gone missing from Kresge’s, just a few blocks from where I stood.At first I was filled with that sick feeling you get when you read about something tragic like this.You wish this didn’t have to happen.Then my self-defense system kicked in.Push it away, because there was nothing I could do about it except send thoughts and prayers to the little girl’s fam—And then I remember where I was, when I was.I could do something.VIIThe PitI needed a copy of the paper.I needed details.Names, addresses.Reporter stuff.Another fumbling routine later—this one lasting a full half-minute—I had a copy of the Evening Bulletin tucked under my arm.Back upstairs in the office I opened the paper and memorized as much as I could.The Glenhart family lived on Allengrove Street in Northwood, about six blocks away.Patty had two older brothers, both in school.The girl, even though she was barely out of toddlerhood, was incredibly precocious.According to her mother, she had the habit of marching up to the Kresge’s luncheonette counter and ordering something to eat before her mother could say otherwise.The waitress and cook thought it was cute, and usually gave her a free snack.But the same waitress and cook were quoted as noticing some “creepy” guy with long sideburns and a yellow jacket lurking near the lunch counter around the same time the mother started screaming for help, where’s my baby, oh God, where’s my baby.Police are seeking all leads, please call MU6-8989…I read as much I could, committing as many details as possible to memory, then laid down on the floor and waited until I felt the familiar dizzy feeling again.I had taken four pills.I thought I would need the time, stalking my own father.I hadn’t counted on this.After a while I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I was back in the apartment.After pulling myself up off the floor I checked the time on my laptop—3:17 a.m.Only a few hours until sunrise.Not much time at all left.I hit Google and typed in “Glenhart” and “Allengrove” and “missing” and I got a hit immediately.Like every old city, Philadelphia has a long history of atrocities.Some made national headlines, like Gary Heidnick and his infamous West Philly basement of sex slaves.Or the shooting of a police officer by a radio journalist who would later receive the death penalty and become a cause célèbre.Or the 1985 bombing of an entire city block to combat a bunch of radicals who called themselves Move.Only, that last one was the fault of the mayor.But even here in Northeast Philadelphia—for which Frankford served as an unofficial border between it and the rest of the city—there were plenty of atrocities, too.Take the “Boy in the Box”—the name given to a kid, no more than six years old, who was found beaten to death and dumped in an old J.C.Penney bassinet box along the side of a quiet street back in 1957.Despite intense publicity, and a photo of the boy included in every city gas bill, his identity remains unknown to this day.Closer still was the Frankford Slasher, a serial killer who preyed on prostitutes in Frankford during the late 1980s.I hadn’t been kidding with Meghan about that; the Slasher was real.Police apprehended a man who was later convicted of one of the murders, but the real Slasher is believed to be dead or still at large.This wasn’t the case with “The Girl in the Pit,” another Frankford atrocity.I was surprised that I’d never heard of it.I made it a point to seek out any crime stories that took place where I grew up.But one amateur true-crime website had posted a quick case summary.The story was real.Patty Glenhart had gone missing, and stayed missing.They found her body years later.I didn’t linger over gruesome details.I only cared about two things: the name of the bastard who had taken her.And his address.The house was a single on Harrison Street, just four blocks away from where I grew up [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]