rockford2
12-03-2007, 10:46 PM
The suburban wife and mother vanished suddenly and completely – simply left home one day, her husband said, and never came back. Their marriage was headed for divorce and she'd confided to others that she feared for her life. But during the massive, multi-agency manhunt that followed, the husband said, oh well, his wife had probably just run off with someone else.
This was in 1977.
Police and the public were very suspicious of the man, Edward Lyng of Palatine, even as today they're very suspicious of Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson, whose wife Stacy disappeared Oct 28, three days after the 30th anniversary of the superficially similar disappearance of Stephanie Lyng.
The Lyng story was huge, even without cable news channels to fuel the nation's interest. Stephanie was the daughter of Sun-Times columnist Dorsey Connors (who died in September, 2007), and Edward was the wealthy owner of a vending machine company.
As the search for Stephanie Lyng dragged on, the common fear --- like the fear today in the Peterson case, the Lisa Stebic case in Plainfield and other ominous missing-spouse cases --- was that if she had been murdered, there'd be no way, without a body, to prove it, much less convict anyone for the crime.
The assumption sounds obvious. People do run away, after all -- change their identities and disappear into the vastness of the world. Unless you find someone's corpse you can never be 100 percent certain he or she is even dead, much less the victim of foul play.
But the assumption is wrong.
"There have been a substantial number of successful murder prosecutions based solely on circumstantial evidence that a murder occurred," said Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, who has studied the case law in this area. The body is "a key piece of evidence," she said, "but it is just one piece of evidence."
Courts have repeatedly held that other evidence – such as blood stains, apparent efforts to remove blood stains, a stormy history with the victim and even the defendant's lack of distress at the victim's disappearance – can add up to proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in what are informally called "no-body" cases.
The legal standard is not 100 percent certainty, observed Ronald Allen, an expert on evidence and criminal procedure at the Northwestern University School of Law. "The burden is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and though that burden obviously gets higher without a body, it's not insurmountable."
In the Lyng case, for instance, investigators learned from one of Ed Lyng's former employees that she had helped him leave his wife's car at a remote parking lot at O'Hare International Airport on the day she vanished. That wasn't enough for an indictment. Neither was a statement from one of Ed Lyng's nephews that Lyng had offered him $50,000 to kill Stephanie.
It wasn't until 1992 that the ex-employee finally told investigators that Lyng had drawn her into his scheme, told her how he'd stabbed Stephanie and dumped her body in a remote area of Lake County, then threatened to have her killed if she told on him.
That was enough. Cook County prosecutors didn't have a body or a murder weapon, but they still had enough to convict Lyng of murder in March, 1994.
The following year he was convicted of trying to hire people in jail to kill two witnesses against him. He's now at Menard Correctional Center and will not be eligible for release until September 2026, when he'll be nearly 92 . (left is his most recent Illinois Dept. of Corrections mug shot)
As noted, the similarities between the Lyng case and the high-profile missing-wife cases so much in the local news this year are superficial and, possibly, irrelevant. No one has been charged in the Peterson or Stebic cases.
Stephanie Lyng has never been found. But her story calls out reassuringly from across the years: You don't necessarily need to find the victim in order to find justice.
MURDER AND BETRAYAL
FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS EDWARD LYNG GOT AWAY WITH KILLING HIS WIFE, AND ONLY NOW ARE HIS FOUR ABUSED DAUGHTERS OUT OF HARM'S WAY
By Maurice Possley, Chicago Tribune
.November 24, 1996
There aren't many metaphors that adequately describe life for Allison, Kelly, Jennifer and Dorsey Lyng after their mother, Stephanie, disappeared on Oct. 25, 1977.
Hell, it appears, just scratches the surface.
To begin with, their father, Edward, was a mean-spirited, violent-tempered, alcoholic philanderer even before he stabbed his wife to death in the family garage, buried the body, told everyone she had abandoned the family, then forbade the girls from ever mentioning her name again.
This is a tale with more elements than a chemistry book-among them: fear, murder, betrayal, infidelity, cruelty, revenge, wealth and power.
For nearly 20 years, the daughters of Stephanie Lyng have lived under a cloud of anguish. Now, at last, there has been partial closure. In the last two and a half years, after thousands of investigative manhours, two juries have found their father guilty of the murder of their mother and of hiring hitmen to kill the chief witness against him.
And in September, a Cook County Circuit Court jury took away what they believe was their father's last weapon against them-his money. A jury found Lyng liable for $66.4 million in damages for the murder of Stephanie. The amount of the verdict was a statement of the jury's outrage, as Ed Lyng's net worth is closer to $4 million.
For the four daughters, however, it stands as insurance against the slim possibility that a man they hate and fear could one day assemble the resources to hire a killer again.
Now, the daughters hope to put behind them such routines as the daily check for a bomb before starting the family car or heightened vigilance against the possible abduction of one of their children.
For Ed Lyng, 62, his daily routine is played out in the Joliet Correctional Center where he is serving a prison sentence of 65 years. He realizes that, barring a reversal by an appellate court, he will likely die there.
"It is ironic," he said in a recent interview at the prison. "I began my life studying to be a priest, living in what we called cells. I left the life because I did not want to take vows of celibacy and poverty. Here, 45 years later, I'm back in a cell, I practice poverty, chastity and obedience."
Lyng adamantly proclaims that he did not murder Stephanie.
"One of these days she could still walk in," he insists. "It's highly remote. But wouldn't that be something? There would be some very embarrassed jurors and judges and prosecutors."
For the three men who took part in the two prosecutions of Ed Lyng-Patrick O'Brien, James McKay and Scott Cassidy-there is no doubt that he was the killer. "Ed Lyng should face up to his moral responsibility and give those girls some peace by telling us where the body is," McKay says.
And so the daughters still await a final closure. Their perhaps futile vigil is a silent one, as they have refused to grant interviews. The descriptions of their lives as well as the accounts of friends, neighbors and others, drawn from yellowed newspaper clippings, police reports, depositions and transcripts from the three trials, tell the story of their parents, Stephanie and Ed Lyng.-
The mystery began on a cold, drizzly October morning in 1977 when Stephanie Lyng, 39, backed her blue station wagon out of the drive of the family's split-level home at 1328 E. Sanborn Drive in northwest suburban Palatine.
She had hustled the four daughters, then 9 to 15, off to school. Ed had left in his car for the vending company he owned, Lyng Canteen Service Co. in Elgin.
Seemingly a portrait of calm and happiness, life in the Lyng household was on edge. Stephanie was suing for divorce. Her discussions with Ed about money had been bitter.
On that morning, Stephanie's destination was five blocks away, the house of a friend, where she dropped off a check to pay for a Girl Scout trip to Washington, D.C. She left immediately.
"I can't stay for coffee," Stephanie told her friend. "The carpet men are coming this morning to install the new carpet. I don't want to miss them."
Around 10:30 a.m., two men arrived and rang the front doorbell. They noticed wet car tracks in front of the garage, but when no one came to the door, the men left.
Stephanie Lyng was never seen again.
Her disappearance sparked a furious police investigation, but despite lengthy grand jury probes and scores of tips, the case would remain a mystery for 15 years.
Stephanie Lyng was born into a family of wealth and power in Chicago. Her grandfather, William, was committeeman of the Near North Side 42nd Ward and was an Illinois state senator for 27 years. Her mother, Dorsey Connors, was a popular Chicago television personality known for her shows specializing in household, beauty and fashion hints.
Stephanie's father was Joseph Kroeck, a football star at DePaul University in Chicago and Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He began his career as a stockbroker, then quit to join the U.S. Army in 1936 to learn how to fly. He and Dorsey were married in 1937, and Stephanie was born the following year.
Stephanie grew up in a home where the utensils were silver, oil portraits hung from the walls and a housekeeper attended to daily chores. She attended the Latin school, Vassar College and Barat College but was only an average student and did not graduate. At one point she considered joining a convent; then, in the fall of 1959, she enrolled at Loyola University Chicago. There she met Ed Lyng, who sat next to her in philosophy class. They soon fell in love. The following summer, after a tour of the Orient with her father, Stephanie announced she would marry Ed on Jan. 14, 1961, at Holy Name Cathedral. The announcement was reported in newspaper society columns.
Ed Lyng's path to Loyola was a circuitous one. The son of Richard and Rose Lyng, Ed was raised on the South Side, largely in the area of 75th Street and Wabash Avenue. But for one tragic exception, his name would not make the newspapers until Stephanie disappeared.
Ed attended neighborhood grammar schools, but went out of state to high school, enrolling at Divine Heart Seminary, a preparatory school run by an order of priests known as the Sacred Heart Fathers in Donaldson, Ind. The Lyng family was deeply religious.
Tragedy visited his life at an early age. On May 24, 1952, days from his graduation from the seminary, Ed, then 18, was home, driving a car carrying his mother and a brother, Harold, when it was struck by a train at 143rd Street and Southwest Highway, in Orland Park. The auto's gas tank exploded. Ed's mother, Rose, 50, was hurled from the vehicle and crippled for life. His brother, Harold, 17, was killed. Ed, burned severely, was so traumatized that rescue workers had to break his fingers to remove his hands from the steering wheel.
Ed took his preliminary vows 15 months later and went on to the Sacred Heart Monastery in Hales Corners, Wis., just outside Milwaukee. He studied to be a foreign missionary. But ultimately he "decided a life of celibacy was not for me," he said in the interview. "I left and enrolled in night school at Loyola University to pursue a career in business."-
At first, Stephanie and Ed lived in Wilmette, where he worked for a heating supply company. Shortly thereafter, Ed went to work as a route man for Canteen Corp., a vending machine firm. He worked his way into management, leading the family out of state, to New Jersey, Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania, before they returned to the Chicago area in 1972 when Ed was offered an opportunity to buy into a vending franchise in Elgin.
By then, the family had expanded. Dorsey, the eldest, was born in 1962. Jennifer was born a little more than two years later, Karen (who would be called Kelly) was born in the summer of 1965, and the youngest, Allison, came along in January 1968.
It is with mixed emotions that their next door neighbor on Sanborn Drive, Harriett "Lori" Freeh, recalls the first months after the family moved into their split-level frame home.
"Almost every evening the kids would all get out in the yard and play together after school," she said. "And Ed would come home, and we'd all stand around and talk."
Beneath this peaceful portrait, however, were tremors of future ugliness. The women in the neighborhood found Ed had more than just the typical neighborly interest. Within weeks after moving in, Lyng "suggested that we start an affair," Freeh said. "He explained to me how many affairs he'd had in his life." The comments came almost weekly. "He thought he was a real Don Juan."
The seamy situation came to a head two years later, in 1974, when the neighbors organized a 4th of July picnic and declined to invite the Lyngs. Stephanie was devastated and sought the Freeh's counsel.
"That's when she really opened up and let me know what was going on," Freeh said. "Ed didn't care. From then on, I was the confidante of Stephanie."
For two more years, the crumbling marriage remained an ugly secret. Ed drank heavily and isolated himself from his family. Each evening, upon arriving home from Lyng Canteen Service offices, Ed went straight to the den where he poured a drink and waited for his dinner to be served. He ate alone while Stephanie and the girls dined in the kitchen.
He was given to explosions of temper, usually behind closed doors. But Freeh recalled an evening when Ed was playing tennis in the driveway with Kelly, who was not yet a teenager. Kelly knocked a return over Ed's head and it shattered a window in the home.
"He went into a rage," Freeh said.
It was almost as if there were two families in the Lyng household-Stephanie and the girls on one side, Ed on the other. Stephanie pushed the girls to become involved in sports and extra-curricular activities. She chauffeured them everywhere-to school, 4-H club, Girl Scouts, soccer games and swim meets, to the opera, the ballet and museums.
At the same time, she began planning for a life without Ed. She enrolled at nearby Harper College and in September 1974 received a license to sell real estate.
Among those who did have an inkling of trouble were Michael Kelly, who had befriended Stephanie while they were in high school, and his wife, Trudy, of Chicago, perhaps Stephanie's closest friends. Sometime in 1975, Stephanie confided to Trudy that her marriage was in deep trouble. "He physically abused her . . . is what she told me," Trudy Kelly said.
In December 1975, Stephanie saw a lawyer about filing divorce papers. "She was becoming more afraid," Trudy Kelly said. "(Ed) told her that some day she would be taking a very long bath."
The papers were filed in court in October 1976. Less than two weeks later, Stephanie sought out a neighbor, Paul Biebel Jr., then an assistant Cook County state's attorney. "She asked me to prepare a will," said Biebel. "She said that she believed her husband was going to kill her. She believed he would do it, and she believed he would get caught. I prepared it on the spot."
Divorce was not an option for Ed Lyng. A strict Catholic, Lyng would not listen to Stephanie's talk of it.
"He firmly believed you stayed married forever," Freeh said. The girls were not spared. One afternoon, Ed called daughter Dorsey into her bedroom, then closed the door.
"I want you to tell Mommy that you want to live with me if we get divorced," Dorsey remembers him saying. "I was scared to death. I told him I couldn't do that."
At a summer barbecue at the Lyng home just months before Stephanie disappeared, Ed sidled up to Trudy Kelly.
"What did Stephanie say about the divorce?" he prodded.
"Simply that she wants a divorce," Trudy said evasively.
Lyng's temper flashed.
"I hope you know that she will never get away with this," he snapped. "Nobody will ever take my children or my home from me. Understand-she will never, ever get away with this."
Kelly was terrified. "I couldn't say anything at the time because everybody was there. Afterward, I told my husband my fear and my fear for Stephanie," she said. "I called her the next morning and told her to get out while she still had a chance. At that point, she told me she thought she could handle it."
One late afternoon, Freeh and Stephanie sat on the steps of the Lyng home, watching their children frolic in the leaves.
"Lori," Stephanie said. "He's going to kill me."
"Can't we call the police?" Freeh asked.
Stephanie's answer suggested that was something she had considered already. "There's no evidence," she said.
By early fall, Lyng had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and was still attempting a reconciliation. But on Oct. 21, 1977, he learned that under a change in Illinois divorce law, Stephanie could get as much as 65 percent of his company.
That, apparently, sealed Stephanie's fate.
An already fractured home was ripped apart on Oct. 25, 1977, when Jennifer, 13, came home from school and could not find her mother. She walked next door.
"Mrs. Freeh," she said. "Mom's not home."
Freeh recalled that Stephanie's car had been acting up and reassured Jennifer, suggesting that her mother had taken the car to a repair shop. Soon, Dorsey, then Kelly and Allison, arrived home. Still no Mom.
Shortly after 7 p.m., Freeh telephoned and Dorsey picked up the receiver.
"Mrs. Freeh," she said. "She's not home."
"Honey," Freeh said, "if she's not home, it's because she can't get home. Call the police."
By the time Ed Lyng finally came home that night, the police had filled out a missing persons report and left. Tearfully, Dorsey rushed to greet her father. "Dad," she said, "Mom's not home."
Brusquely, her father pushed past her. "She's probably out selling a house," he declared. "She'll be home later." Dorsey put her sisters to sleep, reassuring them that their mother would be home soon, then sat up until dawn. The next morning, their father's only comment was that Stephanie must have run away.
Three days later, when Stephanie's station wagon was found in a remote parking lot at O'Hare International Airport and bloodstains found in the car matched Stephanie's blood type, Lyng became the prime suspect. But after giving an initial statement, Lyng refused to talk further.
His alibi, provided by Christine Rezba, a former vending-route worker for Lyng, was unshakable. She said that she had met him by chance on the day Stephanie disappeared and they discussed her possible return to the vending firm. Rezba claimed she was not romantically involved with Lyng, but after acquaintances suggested otherwise, police suspicion of Lyng grew.
It was a massive investigation, involving not only the Palatine and Chicago police, but the Cook County Sheriff's police and State's Attorney's office, the FBI, the Illinois Attorney General's office and the Illinois State police.
The police searched the Lyng home eight days after Stephanie's disappearance but found nothing. Stephanie's mother, Dorsey Connors, offered a $10,000 reward. Seeds found on the floor of Stephanie's car were analyzed by a biologist and determined to be from a plant found commonly in the woods, prompting some digging and dredging in forest preserves near the airport. Nothing was turned up.
Rezba and Lyng were called before a grand jury, but both refused to testify, asserting their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. For more than two months, Rezba was kept under surveillance but did nothing suspicious. The case had turned into a waiting game.
For the girls, it was the beginning of a nightmare.
To be continued.....:1222423:
This was in 1977.
Police and the public were very suspicious of the man, Edward Lyng of Palatine, even as today they're very suspicious of Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson, whose wife Stacy disappeared Oct 28, three days after the 30th anniversary of the superficially similar disappearance of Stephanie Lyng.
The Lyng story was huge, even without cable news channels to fuel the nation's interest. Stephanie was the daughter of Sun-Times columnist Dorsey Connors (who died in September, 2007), and Edward was the wealthy owner of a vending machine company.
As the search for Stephanie Lyng dragged on, the common fear --- like the fear today in the Peterson case, the Lisa Stebic case in Plainfield and other ominous missing-spouse cases --- was that if she had been murdered, there'd be no way, without a body, to prove it, much less convict anyone for the crime.
The assumption sounds obvious. People do run away, after all -- change their identities and disappear into the vastness of the world. Unless you find someone's corpse you can never be 100 percent certain he or she is even dead, much less the victim of foul play.
But the assumption is wrong.
"There have been a substantial number of successful murder prosecutions based solely on circumstantial evidence that a murder occurred," said Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, who has studied the case law in this area. The body is "a key piece of evidence," she said, "but it is just one piece of evidence."
Courts have repeatedly held that other evidence – such as blood stains, apparent efforts to remove blood stains, a stormy history with the victim and even the defendant's lack of distress at the victim's disappearance – can add up to proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in what are informally called "no-body" cases.
The legal standard is not 100 percent certainty, observed Ronald Allen, an expert on evidence and criminal procedure at the Northwestern University School of Law. "The burden is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and though that burden obviously gets higher without a body, it's not insurmountable."
In the Lyng case, for instance, investigators learned from one of Ed Lyng's former employees that she had helped him leave his wife's car at a remote parking lot at O'Hare International Airport on the day she vanished. That wasn't enough for an indictment. Neither was a statement from one of Ed Lyng's nephews that Lyng had offered him $50,000 to kill Stephanie.
It wasn't until 1992 that the ex-employee finally told investigators that Lyng had drawn her into his scheme, told her how he'd stabbed Stephanie and dumped her body in a remote area of Lake County, then threatened to have her killed if she told on him.
That was enough. Cook County prosecutors didn't have a body or a murder weapon, but they still had enough to convict Lyng of murder in March, 1994.
The following year he was convicted of trying to hire people in jail to kill two witnesses against him. He's now at Menard Correctional Center and will not be eligible for release until September 2026, when he'll be nearly 92 . (left is his most recent Illinois Dept. of Corrections mug shot)
As noted, the similarities between the Lyng case and the high-profile missing-wife cases so much in the local news this year are superficial and, possibly, irrelevant. No one has been charged in the Peterson or Stebic cases.
Stephanie Lyng has never been found. But her story calls out reassuringly from across the years: You don't necessarily need to find the victim in order to find justice.
MURDER AND BETRAYAL
FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS EDWARD LYNG GOT AWAY WITH KILLING HIS WIFE, AND ONLY NOW ARE HIS FOUR ABUSED DAUGHTERS OUT OF HARM'S WAY
By Maurice Possley, Chicago Tribune
.November 24, 1996
There aren't many metaphors that adequately describe life for Allison, Kelly, Jennifer and Dorsey Lyng after their mother, Stephanie, disappeared on Oct. 25, 1977.
Hell, it appears, just scratches the surface.
To begin with, their father, Edward, was a mean-spirited, violent-tempered, alcoholic philanderer even before he stabbed his wife to death in the family garage, buried the body, told everyone she had abandoned the family, then forbade the girls from ever mentioning her name again.
This is a tale with more elements than a chemistry book-among them: fear, murder, betrayal, infidelity, cruelty, revenge, wealth and power.
For nearly 20 years, the daughters of Stephanie Lyng have lived under a cloud of anguish. Now, at last, there has been partial closure. In the last two and a half years, after thousands of investigative manhours, two juries have found their father guilty of the murder of their mother and of hiring hitmen to kill the chief witness against him.
And in September, a Cook County Circuit Court jury took away what they believe was their father's last weapon against them-his money. A jury found Lyng liable for $66.4 million in damages for the murder of Stephanie. The amount of the verdict was a statement of the jury's outrage, as Ed Lyng's net worth is closer to $4 million.
For the four daughters, however, it stands as insurance against the slim possibility that a man they hate and fear could one day assemble the resources to hire a killer again.
Now, the daughters hope to put behind them such routines as the daily check for a bomb before starting the family car or heightened vigilance against the possible abduction of one of their children.
For Ed Lyng, 62, his daily routine is played out in the Joliet Correctional Center where he is serving a prison sentence of 65 years. He realizes that, barring a reversal by an appellate court, he will likely die there.
"It is ironic," he said in a recent interview at the prison. "I began my life studying to be a priest, living in what we called cells. I left the life because I did not want to take vows of celibacy and poverty. Here, 45 years later, I'm back in a cell, I practice poverty, chastity and obedience."
Lyng adamantly proclaims that he did not murder Stephanie.
"One of these days she could still walk in," he insists. "It's highly remote. But wouldn't that be something? There would be some very embarrassed jurors and judges and prosecutors."
For the three men who took part in the two prosecutions of Ed Lyng-Patrick O'Brien, James McKay and Scott Cassidy-there is no doubt that he was the killer. "Ed Lyng should face up to his moral responsibility and give those girls some peace by telling us where the body is," McKay says.
And so the daughters still await a final closure. Their perhaps futile vigil is a silent one, as they have refused to grant interviews. The descriptions of their lives as well as the accounts of friends, neighbors and others, drawn from yellowed newspaper clippings, police reports, depositions and transcripts from the three trials, tell the story of their parents, Stephanie and Ed Lyng.-
The mystery began on a cold, drizzly October morning in 1977 when Stephanie Lyng, 39, backed her blue station wagon out of the drive of the family's split-level home at 1328 E. Sanborn Drive in northwest suburban Palatine.
She had hustled the four daughters, then 9 to 15, off to school. Ed had left in his car for the vending company he owned, Lyng Canteen Service Co. in Elgin.
Seemingly a portrait of calm and happiness, life in the Lyng household was on edge. Stephanie was suing for divorce. Her discussions with Ed about money had been bitter.
On that morning, Stephanie's destination was five blocks away, the house of a friend, where she dropped off a check to pay for a Girl Scout trip to Washington, D.C. She left immediately.
"I can't stay for coffee," Stephanie told her friend. "The carpet men are coming this morning to install the new carpet. I don't want to miss them."
Around 10:30 a.m., two men arrived and rang the front doorbell. They noticed wet car tracks in front of the garage, but when no one came to the door, the men left.
Stephanie Lyng was never seen again.
Her disappearance sparked a furious police investigation, but despite lengthy grand jury probes and scores of tips, the case would remain a mystery for 15 years.
Stephanie Lyng was born into a family of wealth and power in Chicago. Her grandfather, William, was committeeman of the Near North Side 42nd Ward and was an Illinois state senator for 27 years. Her mother, Dorsey Connors, was a popular Chicago television personality known for her shows specializing in household, beauty and fashion hints.
Stephanie's father was Joseph Kroeck, a football star at DePaul University in Chicago and Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He began his career as a stockbroker, then quit to join the U.S. Army in 1936 to learn how to fly. He and Dorsey were married in 1937, and Stephanie was born the following year.
Stephanie grew up in a home where the utensils were silver, oil portraits hung from the walls and a housekeeper attended to daily chores. She attended the Latin school, Vassar College and Barat College but was only an average student and did not graduate. At one point she considered joining a convent; then, in the fall of 1959, she enrolled at Loyola University Chicago. There she met Ed Lyng, who sat next to her in philosophy class. They soon fell in love. The following summer, after a tour of the Orient with her father, Stephanie announced she would marry Ed on Jan. 14, 1961, at Holy Name Cathedral. The announcement was reported in newspaper society columns.
Ed Lyng's path to Loyola was a circuitous one. The son of Richard and Rose Lyng, Ed was raised on the South Side, largely in the area of 75th Street and Wabash Avenue. But for one tragic exception, his name would not make the newspapers until Stephanie disappeared.
Ed attended neighborhood grammar schools, but went out of state to high school, enrolling at Divine Heart Seminary, a preparatory school run by an order of priests known as the Sacred Heart Fathers in Donaldson, Ind. The Lyng family was deeply religious.
Tragedy visited his life at an early age. On May 24, 1952, days from his graduation from the seminary, Ed, then 18, was home, driving a car carrying his mother and a brother, Harold, when it was struck by a train at 143rd Street and Southwest Highway, in Orland Park. The auto's gas tank exploded. Ed's mother, Rose, 50, was hurled from the vehicle and crippled for life. His brother, Harold, 17, was killed. Ed, burned severely, was so traumatized that rescue workers had to break his fingers to remove his hands from the steering wheel.
Ed took his preliminary vows 15 months later and went on to the Sacred Heart Monastery in Hales Corners, Wis., just outside Milwaukee. He studied to be a foreign missionary. But ultimately he "decided a life of celibacy was not for me," he said in the interview. "I left and enrolled in night school at Loyola University to pursue a career in business."-
At first, Stephanie and Ed lived in Wilmette, where he worked for a heating supply company. Shortly thereafter, Ed went to work as a route man for Canteen Corp., a vending machine firm. He worked his way into management, leading the family out of state, to New Jersey, Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania, before they returned to the Chicago area in 1972 when Ed was offered an opportunity to buy into a vending franchise in Elgin.
By then, the family had expanded. Dorsey, the eldest, was born in 1962. Jennifer was born a little more than two years later, Karen (who would be called Kelly) was born in the summer of 1965, and the youngest, Allison, came along in January 1968.
It is with mixed emotions that their next door neighbor on Sanborn Drive, Harriett "Lori" Freeh, recalls the first months after the family moved into their split-level frame home.
"Almost every evening the kids would all get out in the yard and play together after school," she said. "And Ed would come home, and we'd all stand around and talk."
Beneath this peaceful portrait, however, were tremors of future ugliness. The women in the neighborhood found Ed had more than just the typical neighborly interest. Within weeks after moving in, Lyng "suggested that we start an affair," Freeh said. "He explained to me how many affairs he'd had in his life." The comments came almost weekly. "He thought he was a real Don Juan."
The seamy situation came to a head two years later, in 1974, when the neighbors organized a 4th of July picnic and declined to invite the Lyngs. Stephanie was devastated and sought the Freeh's counsel.
"That's when she really opened up and let me know what was going on," Freeh said. "Ed didn't care. From then on, I was the confidante of Stephanie."
For two more years, the crumbling marriage remained an ugly secret. Ed drank heavily and isolated himself from his family. Each evening, upon arriving home from Lyng Canteen Service offices, Ed went straight to the den where he poured a drink and waited for his dinner to be served. He ate alone while Stephanie and the girls dined in the kitchen.
He was given to explosions of temper, usually behind closed doors. But Freeh recalled an evening when Ed was playing tennis in the driveway with Kelly, who was not yet a teenager. Kelly knocked a return over Ed's head and it shattered a window in the home.
"He went into a rage," Freeh said.
It was almost as if there were two families in the Lyng household-Stephanie and the girls on one side, Ed on the other. Stephanie pushed the girls to become involved in sports and extra-curricular activities. She chauffeured them everywhere-to school, 4-H club, Girl Scouts, soccer games and swim meets, to the opera, the ballet and museums.
At the same time, she began planning for a life without Ed. She enrolled at nearby Harper College and in September 1974 received a license to sell real estate.
Among those who did have an inkling of trouble were Michael Kelly, who had befriended Stephanie while they were in high school, and his wife, Trudy, of Chicago, perhaps Stephanie's closest friends. Sometime in 1975, Stephanie confided to Trudy that her marriage was in deep trouble. "He physically abused her . . . is what she told me," Trudy Kelly said.
In December 1975, Stephanie saw a lawyer about filing divorce papers. "She was becoming more afraid," Trudy Kelly said. "(Ed) told her that some day she would be taking a very long bath."
The papers were filed in court in October 1976. Less than two weeks later, Stephanie sought out a neighbor, Paul Biebel Jr., then an assistant Cook County state's attorney. "She asked me to prepare a will," said Biebel. "She said that she believed her husband was going to kill her. She believed he would do it, and she believed he would get caught. I prepared it on the spot."
Divorce was not an option for Ed Lyng. A strict Catholic, Lyng would not listen to Stephanie's talk of it.
"He firmly believed you stayed married forever," Freeh said. The girls were not spared. One afternoon, Ed called daughter Dorsey into her bedroom, then closed the door.
"I want you to tell Mommy that you want to live with me if we get divorced," Dorsey remembers him saying. "I was scared to death. I told him I couldn't do that."
At a summer barbecue at the Lyng home just months before Stephanie disappeared, Ed sidled up to Trudy Kelly.
"What did Stephanie say about the divorce?" he prodded.
"Simply that she wants a divorce," Trudy said evasively.
Lyng's temper flashed.
"I hope you know that she will never get away with this," he snapped. "Nobody will ever take my children or my home from me. Understand-she will never, ever get away with this."
Kelly was terrified. "I couldn't say anything at the time because everybody was there. Afterward, I told my husband my fear and my fear for Stephanie," she said. "I called her the next morning and told her to get out while she still had a chance. At that point, she told me she thought she could handle it."
One late afternoon, Freeh and Stephanie sat on the steps of the Lyng home, watching their children frolic in the leaves.
"Lori," Stephanie said. "He's going to kill me."
"Can't we call the police?" Freeh asked.
Stephanie's answer suggested that was something she had considered already. "There's no evidence," she said.
By early fall, Lyng had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and was still attempting a reconciliation. But on Oct. 21, 1977, he learned that under a change in Illinois divorce law, Stephanie could get as much as 65 percent of his company.
That, apparently, sealed Stephanie's fate.
An already fractured home was ripped apart on Oct. 25, 1977, when Jennifer, 13, came home from school and could not find her mother. She walked next door.
"Mrs. Freeh," she said. "Mom's not home."
Freeh recalled that Stephanie's car had been acting up and reassured Jennifer, suggesting that her mother had taken the car to a repair shop. Soon, Dorsey, then Kelly and Allison, arrived home. Still no Mom.
Shortly after 7 p.m., Freeh telephoned and Dorsey picked up the receiver.
"Mrs. Freeh," she said. "She's not home."
"Honey," Freeh said, "if she's not home, it's because she can't get home. Call the police."
By the time Ed Lyng finally came home that night, the police had filled out a missing persons report and left. Tearfully, Dorsey rushed to greet her father. "Dad," she said, "Mom's not home."
Brusquely, her father pushed past her. "She's probably out selling a house," he declared. "She'll be home later." Dorsey put her sisters to sleep, reassuring them that their mother would be home soon, then sat up until dawn. The next morning, their father's only comment was that Stephanie must have run away.
Three days later, when Stephanie's station wagon was found in a remote parking lot at O'Hare International Airport and bloodstains found in the car matched Stephanie's blood type, Lyng became the prime suspect. But after giving an initial statement, Lyng refused to talk further.
His alibi, provided by Christine Rezba, a former vending-route worker for Lyng, was unshakable. She said that she had met him by chance on the day Stephanie disappeared and they discussed her possible return to the vending firm. Rezba claimed she was not romantically involved with Lyng, but after acquaintances suggested otherwise, police suspicion of Lyng grew.
It was a massive investigation, involving not only the Palatine and Chicago police, but the Cook County Sheriff's police and State's Attorney's office, the FBI, the Illinois Attorney General's office and the Illinois State police.
The police searched the Lyng home eight days after Stephanie's disappearance but found nothing. Stephanie's mother, Dorsey Connors, offered a $10,000 reward. Seeds found on the floor of Stephanie's car were analyzed by a biologist and determined to be from a plant found commonly in the woods, prompting some digging and dredging in forest preserves near the airport. Nothing was turned up.
Rezba and Lyng were called before a grand jury, but both refused to testify, asserting their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. For more than two months, Rezba was kept under surveillance but did nothing suspicious. The case had turned into a waiting game.
For the girls, it was the beginning of a nightmare.
To be continued.....:1222423: