The police blotter in Palos Hills, a middle-class suburb southwest of Chicago, rarely offered anything graver than juvenile pranks and DUIs. There hadn’t been a homicide, said police chief William Shanley, in his 22 years on the force.
Marsha Norskog was terrified. During the next few days she couldn’t bear to tell her own parents what was going on. “My mother would call and I would just say that Hillary is fine. I would say she was asleep in her room.” At night she heard helicopters. Perhaps they were only monitoring traffic, but she preferred to believe they were searching the nearby fields and woods.
Hillary’s bedroom at the far end of the apartment stands basically unchanged since her death. The walls, ruffled curtains, and fringed bedspreads are all white and cotton-candy pink. Sympathy cards are standing open on a dresser, near a deflating bunch of silver balloons and a bouquet of fresh flowers. On another dresser Norskog keeps a basket filled with newspaper articles.
Pfiel was held in Cook County Jail from the day he was charged until October 8, when his parents posted $100,000 bond. He was kept in Division Ten, a protective custody unit apart from the jail’s general population. Pfiel’s lawyer, Raymond Pijon, said at the time, “The jail is no place for someone who has not been locked up for a period of time to be. It’s not a healthy environment for him to be in with the kinds of people he’s locked up with.”
Twenty-five years ago Palos Hills was a small community, sleepy and sparsely populated, almost a farm town. The area grew as Chicagoans vacated their old neighborhoods for a quiet life in tree-lined suburbs.
Pfiel’s friends say they spent most nights driving in circles looking for a safe place to party, looking for a spot where they wouldn’t be bothered by adults or hassled by police. Signs posted at the entrances of the nearby forest preserves announced that they closed at sunset. The kids parked their cars after dark in a subdivision or restaurant lot, then trekked along bike or horse trails until they were deep in the woods. There were different favorite spots–Swallow Cliff, Pioneer, Crooked Creek.
