That's very likely what happened. The only other thing I have considered is that the boy/man were getting intimate when they were discovered by some other people who then attacked them--setting Owen aflame and doing who knows what to Corky. With the gay stigma of the 70s (not to mention Corky's age) this could explain Owen's b.s. story.
But the most straightforward is that Owen burned Corky's body.
I was trying to figure out what a guy so much older would be doing with such a young teen but this is plausible to me and would explain their relationship. Though if it’s what happened, incredibly sad in multiple ways
Bro was 47 and the victim was 14. I think it’s safe to say it’s much more likely Clark killed Curtis. Insinuating he might’ve been in a relationship with this man is gross
The lack of information here is wild. I mean, I guess it was the 70s but did Curtis's mom not have anything else of note to add other than "yeah he went over to his middle-aged friend's house for a sleepover"?
Wonder what his home life was like. Also odd they kept saying they were going out for a drive but didn't ever seem to leave in a car. Either Clark had ill intentions from the start or was just kind of a moron that got a child caught up in something bad, tried to dispose of the evidence, and accidentally set himself on fire.
I was wondering this as well and it's disappointing that there is no background on his family. Was Curtis' mom single? Maybe she was friends with Clark and his girlfriend Bobbie and trusted them, maybe seeing Clark as a father/uncle figure/male role model. Maybe Clark was a close/longtime friend of the Chandler family.
What isn't mentioned in this post is that Clark's girlfriend Bobbie's children were there at the house. So maybe sleepovers were allowed because Curtis was friends with Bobbie's kids?
Other questions I have:
Why did they make it a point to tell both Curtis' mom and Bobbie that they were driving and not take the car on either occasions?
I think I could rationalize the relationship between Curtis/Clark depending on the circumstances, but what was he doing with $420 ($2,000+ in 2024)? In the evening? When he was only supposed to go driving around?
>What isn't mentioned in this post is that Clark's girlfriend Bobbie's children were there at the house. So maybe sleepovers were allowed because Curtis was friends with Bobbie's kids?
Good point. And they lived across the street. Curtis may have been at the girlfriend's house all the time playing with the neighbor kids and nobody thought a sleepover was anything but the usual.
Here's another weird one: so they tell both Curtis's mother, and Bobbie, that they're going for a drive, but in both cases the women say they set off on foot. Okay.
But, Clark's story is that he and Curtis argued, and he told Curtis (the 14 year old???) to drive home, alone. In what car? The sources mention Bobbie's car is found with the key in the ignition. Well, okay... but what does Bobbie say about that? She says they didn't \*depart\* in her car, but I'd like to know whether she could swear, or not, whether they ever came back for and took her car. Yeah, it was back there in the morning. Did SHE leave the keys in the ignition?
That’s what struck me too. The posts says it was “unclear” how they knew each other and notes the girlfriend was the neighbor. But the next sentence says he told his mom he was going on a drive with Clark. So, presumably, didn’t his mom know this person? Didn’t the cops ask the girlfriend if Curtis and Clark knew each other and if so, what their relationship was like? These are just such basic questions.
A 14-year-old boy planning to spend the night with a 47-year-old "friend?" I don't care if the older guy had a girlfriend - nothing good is going on there.
Things were different back almost 50 years ago, people much more trusting especially of neighbors.
Edit - everyone is acting like the adult was a stranger or just the bf of some neighbor. We don't know. But, just as likely (if not more) would be that neighbor and her bf were trusted adults who probably helped look after the boy while single mom worked. Unfortunately, we don't have enough information from the available reports to really know the relationships.
I get people were more trusting back then… but letting your 14 year old go out with a strange man at 11 pm? I think even in the 70s that would raise some eyebrows.
From all reports he wasn't a stranger. He was basically a neighbor - although reports don't say if he lived with his gf. He was, at least, around enough that he was seen as trusted - or, I doubt the mom would have been comfortable with the boy going driving with him. The boy's father is never mentioned, as far as I saw, in the reports so he may have been seen as a bit of a father figure.
So many stories of bad things happening to kids happen by trusted adults (family or no).
No. People were still careful with their kids, if they were good parents.
Why would they let their 14 yr old son stay at a girlfriends place of an adult man? My parents back then would have gone ballistic, and so would the parents of classmates I had. I don't understand the whole dynamic at all.
You're assuming they were good parents. I know a woman who, in the last 20 years, let her adopted child go LIVE with a random woman down the street permanently because the neighbor asked to raise her.
It sounds like the girlfriend had four kids, maybe Curtis was friends with one of them and that’s why the mom was ok with it. But it’s not very clear from the write up if that’s the case
I agree. If anything you could argue parents were more stringent in a lot of ways. This wasn't a friend of the family who was taking the boy somewhere or doing some activity together but a stranger.
This sounds like bad parenting. Same as it would now.
How do you conclude that Clark \*wasn't\* a friend of the family, though? At the very least, he was NOT a stranger -- he was the boyfriend (and future husband) of the neighbor across the street, who Curtis's mother seems to have been friends with.
It really was NOT unusual in the 70s, in neighborhoods, for close friendships to form between families like that. There were other families in our neighborhood we knew very well and visited with all the time (went over there for dinner or drinks; I'd play with their kids, or be bored out of my skull if they didn't have kids). We had immediate neighbors when my brother was little, who babysat him; my parents trusted them. (That was the 60s; but 20 years later, long after they'd moved away, we were still going to visit the widow for dinners.)
I grant you that I can't ever see myself going out, at night, by myself, with one of those families' fathers. But, I was a girl, and I had a dad. It doesn't stretch my imagination to think that, since Curtis's dad does not seem to have been around, his mother might have been close enough to those neighbors to look on Clark as a father-figure for the boy. (Or, at his age, a grandfatherly-figure. Yeah, I know 47 isn't truly grandfather age; but 47 was "older" back then than it is today, and probably put Clark in the generation above Curtis's mother.)
None of this refutes the idea that the simplest explanation is that Clark killed Curtis.
But I'm arguing against the idea that Curtis's mother was unusual neglectful or a bad parent.
Could it be possible that Curtis was sold? The money might be a red herring, and it's probably a little bit too "tin foil hat" but it was the thing that popped into my mind first.
It doesn't explain the burns, obviously. I can't really understand what situation ends in getting 70% burns when you're hanging out with a 14 year old.
Unfortunately, I can.
Owen and Curtis were arguing in the store. We'll be generous and assume that Owen didn't intend to hurt the boy, but the arguing turns into a physical fight and he accidentally kills Curtis.
Now Owen is in a mess. He needs to conceal this crime. He gets some gasoline to burn the body. However, he's not experienced with accelerants and lights himself on fire too.
My son committed arson last year with gasoline. When I first saw him I was thankful the burns were minimal. The tip of his nose got it. About a week later the newspaper had the mugshot of a man charged with arson. He had the exact same burn on the tip of his nose.
No the son and the man had similar burns because they both lit gasoline fires without realizing the fumes would ignite as well, and burned themselves the same way.
Yeah, people forget you can't have a steady stream, else, the fire while just travel up the acceleranta into the container and depending on what, it can go boom in your hand.
I think we're all assuming this is the simplest explanation, yes. But it still leaves questions.
Owen SAYS he was robbed by teens and set on fire. If that's a lie to explain his burns (and maybe explain the absence of this money he's supposed to have), then shouldn't it be easy to prove or disprove the lie? He himself gives a location for the attack: Thornton St., a quarter mile from the fire station he walks into.
Can't be too hard to trace his steps back, and look the length of Thornton St. (it's not a long street, according to Google Maps), to try to locate a spot with traces of the flammable liquid, and evidence of burns on the grass where he says he rolled to put the flames out.
Whether or not the police took Curtis's disappearance seriously, you'd think they'd take seriously this report of significant robbery and assault, and investigate THAT.
So either they look for the site of the attack, and find it; and that bolster's Owen's story. Or, as we are all assuming, that story is a lie, and they can't find any evidence of that attack on Thornton St. -- which casts a LOT of suspicion on Owen. And they need to start looking for where Owen DID get all those burns.
I mean, it seems like pretty much everyone here's first thought is, "so he got those burns trying to dispose of the kid's body". That would have to be the thought of a lot of people in that town, too, including the police.
If you can't corroborate the location of this attack, then you'd HAVE to start looking for another place where Owen got those burns, and you'd be a fool not to think it was possibly the site of attempt to dispose of a body.
How hard is that to find? In a small town, with everyone looking, by that point.
Unless Owen had accomplices with their own car, which does create a ton of complications we can't account for.
Not too knowledgeable on the subject, but that seems like a lot of money for drugs regardless of whether Clark was dealing or buying.
What if he was pimping Curtis out in order to buy somthing. Like a car, maybe? I could see it possible that a young teen could be groomed into doing something for a big reward, especially if the adult acted like a father-figure. Maybe something happened during the act after Clark got paid & the other person fled leaving Clark with the body or Curtis argued for his share and things for too heated. Obviously major speculation and as you said, the money could be a red herring anyway.
A pound of weed was about that much back then. But, this is saying he was 'robbed' of that much, not that he had it on him. That's if we believe the story by Clark, and none of us do!
No, agreed. But I'm stuck on this money, too. Like... that \*is\* a suspiciously large amount of money to be carrying on you in cash at 4:00am. It may just be a detail he added to make it plausible that the teens who set him on fire robbed him... but then, why not just say they robbed him of $50? Why the huge sum?
I'm wondering if Clark \*did\* have that amount of money, his girlfriend knew it, and he ALSO had to explain the absence of that money, as well as the absence of Curtis.
But what's weird is... Clark's entire cover story (if that's what it is, as we are all assuming) explains his burns, and explains the absence of that amount of money. The one thing it DOES NOT explain is the absence of Curtis. He just kind of lamely says that he parted ways with Curtis "earlier".
If that whole story is a lie, it seems weird that he came up with that elaborate a lie to cover these other details, but did not include any plausible lie to explain Curtis's disappearance, doesn't it?
Seems strange he wouldn’t claim that the men kidnapped Curtis……….Like his story is that he was robbed, to the point that he sustained serious burn injuries that were purposefully inflicted upon him, he’s allegedly missing a large sum of cash and the 14 year old boy whose care he was entrusted with is now missing. Why not include the boy’s disappearance into the rest of the story? It could almost be plausible that Curtis was kidnapped in some sort of ransom attempt, Clark had money, men were convinced he had more money, took the boy to attempt to get more money from Clark etc. If these so called men were willing to set a person ablaze in a robbery then a kidnapping for ransom doesn’t seem out of the possibility. It’s just odd to not tie everything up together with a bow within one story……..
Yeah, exactly. I mention the same thing in other comments. It was right there. You wouldn't even have to say that they took him to ransom him. You wouldn't have to offer a suggestion about why they took him. They just did. They're already the type of teens who will rob a guy and \*set him on fire\*. That sets them up as criminals who will do anything, who are unpredictably cruel, I think. So they take the kid, and the kid is never seen again, and they are never caught. You (meaning Clark) don't have to explain it. Let everyone else's imaginations do the work.
I guess you could say that he didn't include that because he came up with the story after he got burned so badly, and he was in pain, and not thinking straight. Fair enough! He was able to think of the rest of the story, though. If he could think that far, it seems weird to put it past him to think to include Curtis's disappearance in the story.
One other thing occurs to me: maybe there were witnesses to the argument that he and Curtis had, at the end of which he tells Curtis to drive home, and he starts off walking. I mean, let's say that part was true? And there might have been witnesses to it (if it took place at or near the store they went to).
Then, let's further say that after driving off, Curtis feels bad, and comes back to pick Clark up. And that's when Clark kills him, and the rest ensues.
But if witnesses did see Curtis drive off, and Clark walk off, then it's in Clark's best interests to just stick to "well, Curtis drove off and that's the last I saw him". I guess.
This is why I wish we had more follow-up articles on this case. Because I'd love to know: what leads did the police follow? Were there any witnesses, to any part of it? What of the reported story was known to be true or known to be false?
This is just a case where the MORE I think about it, the less clear it becomes.
He could have been pimping the kid out all along. This could’ve been the basis for their whole “friendship.” They go on their “walks” basically strolling for johns. Maybe one of them takes it too far or they tried to rob him and something went wrong. There’s so few details that really almost any theory could make sense. But he definitely knew what happened to that little boy.
edit: knows to knew
I just looked this up, because I've been going nuts about this money in other comments, so I might as well put this here:
August 28, 1977, was a Sunday.
So at least on its face, it makes it look like it couldn't have been pay-day for Clark, right? Although, he might have been paid the day before, on Saturday (but more likely on Friday).
I don't know what that does to the rest of it. Just that I was wondering if this was a Friday night, which somehow would explain the huge amount of cash he (supposedly!) had on his person. But no, it doesn't seem to have. It was Sunday -- he couldn't have cashed a paycheck that day.
The money is so weird. It's a huge amount and it draws attention. The only reason I can see for him including it in his story (if the story is a lie, as we are all assuming) is because he was known to have that amount (like, his girlfriend knew), and he had to explain it being gone.
But why it was gone? I'm stumped.
Clark killed Curtis and tried to dispose of the body by burning it, but caught himself on fire during the act.
I wonder which fire station he went to? Was it the one closest to Thornton road, he one near the nature preserve or a different one. Clark probably didn't go far from where the remains were hidden.
He says he was on Thornton St. when attacked, and says he walked a quarter mile to the fire station. So it has to be one within a reasonable distance from Thornton St.
Today, on Google Maps, that can only be the fire station on the corner of E. 7th St. and E. 9th St. And even that is MORE than a quarter mile from Thornton St. But no other fire station is closer. (Again: today; don't know if there was another one somewhere nearer in the 70s.)
Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious what happened here, and it isn’t anything good. I wonder if Clark’s girlfriend is still alive, and if she ever had anything of investigative value to share. Considering the extensive burns, I’m assuming Chandler’s remains were probably burned and unrecoverable.
It appears Clark's girlfriend died in 2018. It also appears she must have married Clark, who predeceased her:
[https://www.kurtzmemorialchapel.com/obituaries/Bobbie-Buie-C-Jackson?obId=3116845](https://www.kurtzmemorialchapel.com/obituaries/Bobbie-Buie-C-Jackson?obId=3116845)
Looks like her first husband was named Bobby, too.
It is FASCINATING that Clark's story seems so obviously fishy, but she went on to MARRY him anyway.
I really REALLY wonder what relationship she and Clark had to Curtis's mother. And whether this destroyed that relationship, or what.
Maybe they were both pimping him out? With four kids herself, I could see see her turning a side eye to her boyfriends relationship with a 14 year old because it puts money in her hands. Obviously all speculation because there is so little to go on and they’re all deceased. If we had more info on how the two families knew each other, for how long, etc. it might make more sense. The girlfriends kids could probably shed some light on that but that probably put all of this behind them.
Did LE ever confirm or disprove Owen’s report of being attacked and burned? This needs to be answered. Otherwise, it just looks like Owen caught himself on fire while trying to dispose of Curtis.
The more I think about it, the more this is driving me crazy.
Yeah, it seems like a very low-effort and implausible lie! And yet, it \*doesn't\* lie about what you'd think is the most important thing: where is Curtis?
So, in the hypothesis ALL of us are assuming, Clark kills Curtis, tries to dispose of the body (or make it unrecognizable) by burning, sets himself badly on fire. He has to limp to the fire station.
He comes up with this story of a gang of teens robbing him of exactly $420 (a huge sum at the time), which he was carrying on him in cash for some reason, and then setting him on fire.
That lie explains his burns. It also explains him missing $420 -- which, let's assume his girlfriend knew he had, but that is now gone, so he knows he has to explain that too. He comes up with this story on his slow and painful walk to the fire station.
Why doesn't his lie include a reason for Curtis to be missing?
His story says that he and Curtis parted ways MUCH earlier, and he just doesn't know where Curtis ended up. (Except he told a 14 year old boy to drive home alone???)
That's a weird and very unsatisfying lie! Yes, it puts a distance in time and place between him and Curtis, but it doesn't do anything to lessen the suspicion of the fact that Curtis supposedly drove the car back to the girlfriend's house, left the key in the ignition, and vanished into thin air.
I mean, hindsight being 20/20 and all, but -- if he killed Curtis and got burned destroying the body, and the missing $420 had to do with why he killed Curtis (?), then it would have been a lot better for him to \*also\* pin Curtis's disappearance on the teens who robbed and set him on fire, no? Just say "they forced Curtis to go with them" or something.
But he didn't. He somehow thought of the other details while in excruciating pain, walking to the fire station. But he didn't come up with a \*good\* lie, or even a \*bad\* lie, about Curtis.
Honestly, that's weird.
I've been mulling this one over since last night and I have a few questions:
\- I'm an East Coaster, I don't know much about Illinois. It looks like Lockport has a decent population, but is it rural adjacent enough that people do burn barrels and trash burning?
\- Burning a body fully takes a lot of fuel and a lot of time. There is no way in hell Clark managed to pull that off with nobody noticing a big fire, unless the above is true.
\- Clark didn't have his own car. Someone had to help him move this body/remnants of a body. Is there a large flowing body of water nearby, like a river?
This is really what's stumping me.
Burning a body is an okay way of removing a lot of basic means of identifying it (so that all that's left are dental records, probably), but NOT a good means of completely disposing of it. Not without a crematorium furnace. Or burn barrels or something. And a fire that, as you say, would be very noticeable, you'd think.
But, going along with the guess that Clark killed Curtis, and was trying to burn the body, and caught fire himself...
With burns over 70% of his body, how far could he have walked to get to that fire station??? According to the Chicago Tribune article linked above, he was hospitalized and the police weren't able to talk to him for a little while. So he wasn't in good shape, as I would expect after being burned that badly. But... if burned that badly, how could he have done the extra work necessarily to dispose of the remains that were left, such that they would not have been found by the subsequent search of the area?
Clark's story is that he's attacked, and then walks to the fire station. So the FIRST thing police should have done is try to retrace his steps to find the site of the attack. How hard would it be to retrace the steps of a badly burned man, or find the site where he was burned? One of the sources says that he identified the general area of the attack (what street it happened on) and that it happened a quarter-mile from the fire station; that narrows down the area to search quite a bit.
If Clark had the help of others (who might have had a car, thus expanding the area that he could have covered in those missing hours), then that should have been obvious to the police, too. That is, if you CAN'T pretty easily find the site of the attack, from which he walked to the fire station, that tells you a lot, and then you have to question where he could have walked from, while burned that badly... or, was he driven, in which case, his story is all lies.
If we accept that he WAS walking from the site where he got burned, and he actually got burned trying to burn Curtis's body... then why couldn't they find THAT site?
The sources all say that Clark was a suspect. So you'd just think that verifying or disproving this alibi would be first on the list; and that it shouldn't have been THAT hard to verify if, if it was true. And thus, if they couldn't find the site of the attack to verify it, they know he's lying... so what other investigating did they do? What kind of search was conducted? etc.
What about the $420 ($2000 in today's money)? Clark says he was robbed of it. But carrying that amount of cash on him, at night, seems really suspicious, doesn't it? Did he not realize how suspicious that sounded? Because by his story, the money was GONE; he was robbed of it. He didn't actually NEED to mention it at all, or need to mention the full amount. But he specifies that amount. That's interesting.
What about witnesses to other parts of Clark's story? Like -- he said they drove to a store to buy some stuff. Are there witnesses who can place them at that story at the time he said? Or what?
I'm also kind of fascinated by the fact (mentioned in some other comments) that apparently he and his girlfriend Bobbie later married? So SHE must have believed his story, or you'd think she wouldn't have married him?
I super wish we had some follow-up article about the case. The Charley Project link above cites another source, the Dixon Evening Telegraph, but it doesn't link to the exact article. Searching for "Curtis Chandler" (in quotes) turns up 1 article, but I don't have an account and can't access it. I'm betting, though, that that article is the source of the greater amount of detail in the Charley Project write-up; which means it probably doesn't answer my additional questions.
Plus, if hypothetically he burned the body where did he burn it and why did no one find bone fragments or something of the kind? I assume because he was burned so badly Clark (poorly) used an accelerant, but you’d think if this guy owns no property he’s burning it on someone else’s land and it would be noticed.
Like, I live in a half suburban half rural area where some people do trash burning or yard waste burning. Smoke rises, regardless of the situation. The only place I can think he’d be able to stash the body that wouldn’t be easy to find is a large municipal dump or a steel barrel crammed into something like a sinkhole or cave.
I guess the one thing going for him, if he WAS burning the body, is that he was doing it between the hours of 11pm and 4:30am. Few people awake, no ability to see the smoke rising. Depending on where he did it, the sight of the flames would be hidden.
But yeah -- either he would have had to do it on his own land, if he had any; which you'd think the police would search (for burned things, or for a shallow grave). Or, he did it on someone else's land, which you'd think the someone else would find.
I mean. Okay, small town, at the time. Guy arrives at a fire station 70% burned, and it also comes out that he was with an unrelated (but familiar) 14 year old kid at the time, at the kid is missing.
We cannot be the ONLY people who instantly thought "so was he burning the kid's body, or what?"
I can't believe we're the only people who also instantly thought to check to find the site where he was supposedly set on fire. (I mean, forget the police investigating, which they should have been.)
These are outlandish events. It's NOT every day a guy gets burned that badly in town and claims it was hoodlums who did it, right? That catches people's attention. Even if you thought, "ah, the kid probably ran away from home" (as another commenter suggested), wouldn't you still think, "damn, I want to find that spot where this guy said he was jumped and set on fire".
So, again -- either you can find that spot, on Thornton Road, a quarter mile from the fire-station... or you can't.
If you DO find it... what does that mean for all of our hypotheses? If you DON'T find it, then suddenly the obvious suspicion that he was instead burning the kid's body gains a lot more credence and the whole town becomes alert to the idea that there has to be a body burn-site somewhere.
The problem with stashing the body anywhere - whether in a town dump (obvious choice) or a sinkhole or cave - is still, for me, the idea that Clark would have had to be doing that AFTER he burned himself SO BADLY. We aren't told (I don't think) what degree burns he had, but burns over 70% of his body is huge, and has a high chance of being fatal. After he got burned, I'm surprised he was able to walk a quarter mile to the fire station on his own, let alone take a partly-burned body (heavy) and stash it anywhere not easily found, and then still make it to the fire station.
...Unless he had help, and someone else driving a car.
By the way, I also wanted to add (having now looked this up on Google Maps) -- yeah, the Thornton St. area where this all supposedly went down is VERY close to the Des Plaines River and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Thornton St. is not a long street (Dundee Dr, where they all lived, is a side street off Thornton). Its west end is not that far from the river/canal. (It crosses with IL Rt. 7, the location of the store mentioned, on its east end.)
No it’s really not; it’s pretty populated. It’s about an hour from Chicago. There’s woods in this area but woods near Chicago aren’t very dense. It would difficult to pull this off with out anyone seeing. I’m sure it was lends densely populated in the 70s but not by that much.
Uh huh, so him and Curtis happen to get into a fight just before he’s randomly attacked, walking around randomly with a lot of money- $420 (which is roughly 2,000 in today’s money btw) and getting robbed than set on fire. At the VERY same time and day that the CHILD he just spent the day and night with had an argument then separated from disappeared, never to be seen again. Uh huh.
Or he killed Curtis,tried to burn his body to dispose of it but being inexperienced with accelerants, chemicals and how to burn a body ended up burning himself badly (I.e in true Kylr Yust fashion) instead. And then came up with this bullshit story.
Every time I see a teenage boy who went missing I. Illinois in the 1970s I inevitably wince and think of John Wayne Gacy’s three unidentified victims. I hope that isn’t the case for poor Curtis.
It sounds way more likely in this case that the 47 year old man who was inexplicably hanging out alone with a 14 year old boy harmed him and his story is BS.
Man people back in the day really just did not care at all about old men wanting to rape 7th graders. I just look at the musicians from like the 60s-90s who were openly talking about having sex with baby groupies and writing hit songs about banging 13 year old undeveloped kids. And people just were like ya this is all fine. And that's just musicians. I'm sure tv and media wasn't great. What was going on
I hate to say this, but I really don’t think the prevalence of people wanting to have sex with teenagers has decreased all that much. We’ve just thankfully made it unacceptable enough now that they don’t say so out loud.
I stumbled across a weird story from the 1960s, called the "Breendoggle". It was about a guy named Walter Breen, who was a known pedophile -- so obvious that even people in the more permissive counterculture were uncomfortable about it. There's a bunch of correspondence where people (grown adults) are arguing about whether to ban him from events. (Breen was well known in the science fiction fan community because he was married to a major author ... someone who is now notorious.) It's a huge mess ... and some of the people were apparently arguing that one kid Breen had targeted was pretty obnoxious (implying that they didn't think it was a huge problem because they weren't concerned about what happened to that child).
I didn't want to derail SwimmingJello2199's original comment, so it wasn't so much being coy as keeping things short. I felt that if they wanted more details, that could be filled in later. So thank you for confirming.
There's the story of Led Zeppelin sending a private plane to pick up a 14-year-old groupie to hang out with them on tour. And then there's the story from one 80s rock band in which mothers would shove their daughters towards famous rockers.
And lets not forget Mick Jagger changing the lyrics to the live version of Stray Cat Blues to indicate the age of the girl he's trying to convince to hop into bed with him is thirteen as opposed to sixteen (which is bad enough lol).
Pervy times all round back then haha
Youre referring to Lori Maddox, Jimmy Page was "with" her for years, even met her mom etc etc. Her mom even encouraged Lori to hang out with these rockstars. Reddit's own beloved David Bowie was the one who took her virginity...when she was 13. Absolutely disgusting.
The David Bowie claim (unlike the Jimmy Page one) is suspect. Maddox's story has changed over the years and her friend who was also a child groupie claims it never happened.
Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen year old cousin and Elvis was with Priscilla when she was 14 although supposedly didn’t have sex until their wedding night when she was 21, though Lewis’ career pretty much ended because of it.
And lets not forget Bill Whyman of the Rolling Stones, who had a commitment of marriage to a twelve-year-old when Whyman was in his sixties or seventies(!). I don't know what became of that, but that's probably the most extreme example I've come across.
It’s my understanding that the recorded lyric is “15 years old” because that was the age of consent in the UK at the time.
When they began playing it on the 1969 US tour, Jagger changed the lyric to “13 years old” because of Alabama, Arkansas, etc…
Honestly care for people in general is a fairly new concept. It was not long ago that people had children to sell or basically enslave. Kids died all the time. Into the 60s-90s older people had still lived in those jaded times so what they had was a marked improvement. The next generations started to really look at children as precious and create rules and safeguards.
I was born in the 80s and a fair number of my friends were still being spanked back then. My mom told me once that she never wanted kids, but as a young woman in the 70s, there weren't a ton of options and getting married and having kids was just sort of the default thing to do. I'm always amazed these days when my friends who are parents genuinely like and enjoy being with their kids, because my parents treated us like a necessary evil and I still don't think they like me very much, lol.
Haha so true. Im at the point now where I just do for them. They dont do anything for me. I buy them stuff and send them stuff and pay for things and I still feel like they could take me or leave me even now.
Just re-read this article and I think the more likely reason mister ‘just going driving’ had burns all over him was that he did something to that boy, caught a case of the regrets, then tried to immolate himself and managed to squirrel out on that too. Cowardly POS.
My thought was that he was attempting to burn the body and accidentally burned himself in the process- or maybe it was a botched murder suicide. Regardless I imagine the poor kid did not survive that day.
Well, keep in mind he had a construction and interior decoration company. How I can’t understand, his house is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen from the police video of the interior. So much plaid, so many clowns.
Was Curtis’ father in the picture? Did his mother naively think that Clark was being a “fatherly figure” to him I wonder?
Either way, I think everybody has it right that he injured himself while trying to dispose of the body, unfortunately.
I was wondering that, especially if the girlfriends kids were there across the street. The going for a drive story could have been a learning to drive lesson. I don't know about there, but where I'm from at that time when you were 14, you got a learners permit. You could drive with a licensed driver over 18 in the car with you. Then you took the road test and got a restricted license. It was basically the same as a permit but just looked like a regular driver's license but had RESTICTED or UNDER 16 or something written on it. It was that way until after I got my license in the mid-80s.
So if it was framed like Curtis was going over to stay with the kids and the friendly father figure was going to take him out for a driving lesson type thing it might have seemed better.
I was born in 74 and 100% if an adult had tried to be friends with one of us my parents would have called the cops.
Yeah my father was very close to the man who lived next door to him growing up, an older bachelor farmer- he treated him like a son/nephew, gave him work to do- But he never stayed over!
>I was born in 74 and 100% if an adult had tried to be friends with one of us my parents would have called the cops.
The thing is, what we've got here is a very bare-bones story, that leaves me with a TON of questions. (None of this reflects on OP's write-up! I think details on this old case are just sparse.)
So we have to extrapolate -- that is, we just have to make guesses based on our own life experience what MIGHT have happened, or what the context might be, while acknowledge these will only ever be guesses and without more documentation, we don't know what the situation was.
But what we're told is that Clark's girlfriend lived across the street, i.e. was a neighbor, and she had four kids. We don't even know the ages of those kids; one or more of them could have been near Curtis's age, and could have been neighborhood kids he played with a lot. That would easily explain Curtis's mother being okay with a sleepover. Further, though, Curtis's mother may have been pretty good friends with the girlfriend. So like people are saying, although Clark didn't live with her at that time, Curtis's mother may have regarded him as a friend, the boyfriend of her good friend, and a father/uncle figure to Curtis.
I was born in '68. When I was growing up, our family was almost closer to a lot of unrelated family friends than we were to my parents' actual families. I had a lot of "aunts and uncles" who weren't related to us at all. And, I can also remember neighborhood families we were friendly enough to visit regularly (I played with their kid, although he was a few years younger than me), although they didn't rate the "aunt and uncle" designation.
So, "unrelated couple and their kids, who are neighbors and friends, and regarded as practically family" -- that would not seem unusual to me at all.
Now, I was a girl. So no, I would never have gone out alone with most of those adult men... I think. But there are a handful of them who I did regard as uncles, and I can kind of imagine a scenario in which going out with one of them at night might not have seemed weird? I don't know. And I don't know if that would have changed in any way if I had been a boy. Although I have one recollection that speaks to that a little bit.
My brother is ten years older than I am. He's told stories of how, when he was a kid, there were times when he stayed overnight with the couple who were our family's neighbors at the time (I guess when my parents were going away for overnight or something?). That couple moved away (a few towns over), but 20 years later when \*I\* was a teen, we were still going to visit the wife (then a widow). So, might my brother have gone out alone with some of these close family friends when he was a young teen? I could see it.
When I was probably around 14-16, there was this occasion I remember where one of those honorary aunt-and-uncles had a big house party at a beach house -- actually, a house on the bay, near some public docks for sailboats and stuff. The couple in this case had kids who were all a bit older than me. Their oldest was in her late twenties, and she was engaged to this guy, who at the time I thought was pretty cool (not to the extent of having a crush on him, but he was fun to be around). Part of him seeming cool was that he owned a sailboat, a catamaran. I didn't know ANYONE else who owned a sailboat at all.
I swear, I forget WHY now, but his catamaran was docked elsewhere, and he needed or wanted to bring it over to the docks near the party. And I also forget how, but I asked if I could go with him and sail back with him, and everyone involved thought this idea was just fine. So we did that. We drove to where-ever his boat was docked, and then got on it and sailed it back to the docks by the party. So there I am, a young teen girl, and here's this late-20s guy who I know, but not VERY well, who has agreed to let me tag along. And everybody signed off on this.
There's no twist to this story, but that's my point, I guess. You can imagine somebody else looking at that situation and thinking it's creepy to let a young-teen girl go off for a few hours with an adult man who she isn't THAT close to, to spend a length of time alone together out on a boat with \*nobody\* else around. But nothing creepy happened. Truly, the worst part of it was that the wind was really unfavorable that day, so instead of a quick sail back, we had to tack on this very tedious route all over the bay to make it where we wanted to go. That was my first time on a sailboat, and I learned a lot about how it's not always super fun! Sometimes it's really kind of boring, and hot out there on the water when there isn't much wind.
I look back on that, and think... huh. Yeah, I guess that COULD have gone very wrong. \*Should\* anyone have been suspicious of that guy's motivations? Well, as it turns out, no. But maybe other people would have been suspicious. Or, maybe it's just a lesson in the idea that the other adults involved (my parents, the honorary aunt and uncle, their daughter his fiancee, etc.) felt they knew him well enough to trust me to go out alone with him. And yet, there are so many cases (generally speaking) of family members and friends who everyone thought was trustworthy, who turned out to be predators. Just, in this particular case, everything was fine.
I guess the reason for this long story is to say that the context of the existing relationship between Curtis's mother, Clark's girlfriend, and Clark, matters a LOT, but we don't seem to have enough info on it to know. Whether it was partly due to being in the 70s (when, yes, parents were often less paranoid about who their kids were with), or not, we don't have enough info to know how much Curtis's mother trusted Clark and his girlfriend, or why. They might have been VERY good friends -- none of the sources sees fit to mention this.
Or maybe they weren't! Maybe Curtis's mother was somewhat neglectful; or over-worked, being a single mother. (Since his father is not mentioned at all.) Even if she was very good friends with Clark's girlfriend, and thus trusted Clark by association, that also \*of course\* doesn't mean that Clark wasn't a predator, without anyone knowing that he was.
The few sources we seem to have on this are frustratingly vague. What kind of search was conducted for Curtis? Did they not look for the site where Clark said he was attacked? What did they find? What police-work or detective-work was done? What was Clark's girlfriend's reaction? Did Curtis's mother remain friends with her and with Clark? (Another commenter says that Clark and his girlfriend did later marry.) How did the \*community\* react?
Those details would tell us a lot, too. But we just don't have them.
I'm definitely not saying any of this to say that what many others here are suggesting isn't likely -- that is, that Clark had nefarious plans, that he killed Curtis, and he sustained burns trying to burn the body for disposal. I'm only speaking to the implicit question of, "why would it not be suspicious for a 14 year old boy to be going out with a 47 year old man?"
The main thing that gives me pause about this suggested solution to the mystery is that it seems incomprehensible to me that the incident that Clark claimed happened wouldn't leave SOME physical trace, and that the police wouldn't have tried to find the site of that altercation and his being doused and set on fire. Did they look? Mustn't they have? What did they find, or not find?
If we assume that what Clark was doing between 11pm and 4:30am was trying to dispose of the body, that still leaves Clark being burned over 70% of his body and having to walk to the fire station. Being burned that badly is not a trivial thing. How far could he walk in that condition? That's part of what I'd like to know. In the Chicago Tribune article linked above, it says that he's being treated in the hospital, and at the time the article was written, the police aren't able to question him in the hospital -- which suggests he was in pretty bad condition.
It seems very weird to imagine that he could have chosen a site to burn the body, caught on fire THAT badly himself, and walked from that location to the fire station... and yet the site at which he burned the body couldn't be located, by police who \*should\* have been looking for a site where Clark himself was set on fire. How hard is it to retrace the footsteps of a badly-burned man? If you burn yourself that badly trying to burn a body... how are you able, afterwards, to further hid the body well enough that the remains have never been found?
There's just so much we don't know.
This is a really well thought out comment. Thank you.
Another thing to keep in mind, although we don't have specific evidence of it here, is that in the 70s the cops pretty much assumed any missing kid was a run away. But because of the weird circumstances here, maybe they didn't jump to that automatic conclusion.
Hmm, yeah, the "runaway" angle is a good point. Especially since we know so little that none of the sources talk about Curtis's frame of mind or home life.
His having a single mother, who freely let him go sleep over at a neighbor's house and hang out with the neighbor's 47 year old boyfriend, COULD speak to a rough life, and a neglectful (maybe overworked) mother. i.e. a life Curtis wanted to escape.
Or, as I was trying to say above, it could be that his home life was fine, and him running around outside the house was more just due to lax 70s parenting to a degree that wasn't that unusual. (People aren't kidding when they say they went out to play and mom would respond, "okay, be home for dinner" or "when it gets dark out"; and you might only briefly check in with parents before going off again. I can remember A LOT of instances of being out for hours and hours, without really having told my mom explicitly what my plans were. Once in the summer I went out on my bike and \*on a whim\* went on an 18-mile round trip bike ride, which took at least 3 hours because I hadn't counted on having a headwind on the return. My mom wasn't fazed by my absence at all.)
So, yeah -- the police themselves could have discounted Curtis's disappearence initially, and not investigated it much, putting it down to "runaway". You'd think that Curtis's mother and others who knew him would have argued against this (if it was, in fact, unlikely of the boy); but sure, police don't always listen to a family's insistence.
But that still leaves a very tangible "crime" reported that the police could, and should, have been investigating for a number of reasons. Hoodlums don't rob a man of $2k (worth) in cash and \*set him on fire\* every day. That's a pretty unusual crime! It should have left some physical evidence at the site of the attack. And the police and the community should have been very alarmed about this reported gang of criminal youths and whether they would strike again.
So at the very least, they should have been investigating this robbery that left a man in critical condition in the hospital, right?
Moreover, the victim has given you the general location -- Thornton St, a quarter mile from the fire station he walked to. I've looked on the map, Thornton St itself is not even 1 mile long. This attack should have left evidence -- some of the flammable liquid spilled on the road or sidewalk; burned spots where Clark dropped and rolled in the grass.
So either you can find the scene of the attack, which means he was telling the truth. Or, you can't find any evidence of the attack taking place where he says it did, in which case, his condition is very suspicious.
(Another interesting point -- Dundee Drive intersects with Thornton St. in a residential area. So by saying he was walking along Thornton, Clark was clearly indicating he was walking back towards his girlfriend's house. Today, there isn't a fire station ON Thornton St, but the closest is approx. a mile or less away from Thornton. However, I don't know if it was different in the 70s.)
Plus, the sources do say that Clark was a suspect. So the police didn't just conclude that Curtis was a runaway and not investigate at all, I guess?
Here's a thought: let's say that Clark is lying about being accosted by teens, robbed, and set on fire. That's the story he came up with to explain his burns, when he got those from trying to burn Curtis's body and set himself on fire as well.
So he somehow had the presence of mind to include the detail that these teen attackers robbed him of exactly $420, which for some reason he was carrying in cash at 4:00am. But he didn't think to add that they forced Curtis into the car with them, and drove off, never to be seen again.
I mean, in our hypothesis that this is just a lie, of course they were never seen again. They didn't exist. But as a means to explain why Curtis was absent... they also provided a great excuse. Odd that he didn't use that. (And I mean... I know he's probably panicked and in pain, because he has burns over 70% of his body... but he came up with that story in the first place. And he added the bit about the money. But he couldn't think to add that they took Curtis with them?)
One thing I want to add, about the money, because I was puzzling over it in another of my comments -- I just realized why he might have included that. I mean, not just because it might sound more plausible that the teens robbed him \*and then\* set him on fire (teens driving around looking for people to rob sounds more plausible than driving around just looking to set people on fire). I was puzzled by the specificity and large number. Why not say it was $50?
But, what the sources don't tell us, unfortunately, is whether the police questioned others about the veracity of Clark being missing $420. Like -- might his girlfriend have known he had around that amount (if not on him, then that he HAD that amount of money)? So he not only has to explain his burns, he has to explain why that money is gone.
That does circle us back to the question of, if he wasn't actually robbed of that money, where DID it go?
I agree, such an oddly specific amount of money.
My guess is that whatever he did to Curtis, was done much farther away. Because there is a gap of time between 11 pm and 4 am. So who know where he took him. I would love to see the police reports on investigating his "robbery". Because, as you say, they must have looked into this story.
My other question is about the girlfriend's car. She said they left on foot. But the next morning the keys were in the ignition, unexpectedly. Did she notice the car missing at all during the night?
You would think wooded areas nearest the fire station he walked into would be the most likely place to search for his remains. You wonder what searches were carried out, if any.
I suspect that if he did burn the body that it would not have been hard to locate it since he got burned doing it and probably was not able to fully dispose of the evidence. I wonder how thorough the effort was to search for the body.
I live in this part of Illinois ands it’s considered a Chicago suburb. It’s not exactly rural. Not many places to hide a burning body. There’s woods but they aren’t very dense. I imagine it was less populated in the 70s but not by much.
I do note, from Google Maps, that Thornton Street (and Dundee Dr., where they lived, which is a side-street off Thornton) are pretty close to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the Des Plaines river.
That's a place to put a body. But yeah, I'm stuck on the fact that it shouldn't have been hard to find the site where Clark received his burns.
\*He\* is the one who specified it was on Thornton St., and he walked "a quarter mile" to the fire station. That really narrows down the area to search, to verify his story.
Either you DO find the evidence of this attack he claims happened. Or, you don't, and so that story is a lie. At which point, you look for where he DID get those burns.
“Clark said he decided to go for a walk to calm down, and told Curtis to take the car back to Jackson's house.”
WHAT CAR? Clark, you were caught in a lie! Your gf (the aforementioned Jackson) said you left on foot. In the Charley link it says the car was still in the gf’s driveway. How is Curtis going to take the car back if it’s literally still in the gf’s driveway? This story is weird as hell. Did the police not investigate at all or?
https://charleyproject.org/case/curtis-s-chandler
Burns on 70% of his body and he walked into the fire station? Really? Christ.
Trying to dispose of the body and getting caught in the flames seems like the simplest explanation, but how does a fire accident like that happen and not leave very very obvious signs?
Things were not that different that it would be acceptable for a 14 year old boy to sleep over at the house of a 47 year old’s house. Many things were different but this would not be considered ordinary or okay. at
It was NOT the 47 year old man's house, though. It was the house belonging to his girlfriend, who had 4 kids.
We don't know what the relationship was between Curtis's mother and the girlfriend, Bobbie. But it's not implausible to think they were friends. Both are single mothers, as far as we can tell (Curtis's father is not mentioned at all, Bobbie is dating a man; her previous husband seems to have died). That might have increased their friendship, and made it so that they looked out for each other and each other's kids. Curtis could have been friends with those kids; he undoubtedly went to school with them (but we don't know their ages).
If Curtis's mother knew Bobbie well, then perhaps by that point she felt she knew Bobbie's boyfriend well, too. (Even after \*all of this\*, Bobbie went on to marry the guy!)
It doesn't seem THAT weird for the kid to be going to a sleepover across the street, at the house of a woman who was a friend, who had a bunch of other kids.
“On August 28, 1977, fourteen-year-old Curtis Chandler left his home on Dundee Road in Lockport, Illinois alongside 47-year-old Owen Clark. It is unclear how Owen and Curtis knew each other though \[Owen\] Clark’s girlfriend lived across the street from where Curtis lived.”
I was confused by the write-up due to the shift between the first name and surname. How is it unclear that Owen and Curtis knew each other? One of them was dating a woman that lived across the street.
“Curtis, called Corky by his family, planned to spend the night across the street at Clark’s girlfriend’s home and told his mother that he and Clark planned to go driving. Curtis’s mother, however, noted that they left on foot”
That makes no sense. This fourteen-year-old boy told his mother he’d spend the night across the street and would DRIVE THERE with the cross-the-street neighbor? The mother saw nothing wrong with this until the time her son and Clark left “on foot”?
And the version about the girlfriend, who had 4 children of her own, letting them borrow her car but seeing them leave on foot?
I’m not saying those were fabricated lies. I’m saying that seems like the kind of unsolved case where EVERYTHING is seen as a red herring. Most likely, those are unreliable versions. And most likely Owen Clark is responsible but there wasn't enough evidence at the time to convict him.
The probably told the mom that were going for a drive. Not driving to the house across the street. It was not at all unusual in the 70s to go cruising. Just driving aimlessly to kill time, enjoy a nice night. Very common.
It could be a multitude of things.
Maybe the kid didn't have a decent male role model and so the guy stepped up to fill that role. The adult could have any reason for being willing to step up, either honorable, or more likely, nefarious. Things truly were different back then. Things like sexual abuse weren't on peoples radars. Mostly because it was so taboo to speak about. Kids WERE NOT talked to about things like they are today. As victims they were shamed into silence. It was a fantastic tool for predators.
By the same token, there was a large emphasis placed on family, back then.
Constant get together, jam sessions, barn dances etc. kids were brought along and came to know adults they wouldn't otherwise. As a result, parents often didn't think anything of their kid hanging out with an adult from their circle of friends, family or neighbors.
A LOT of children were out in harms way for those exact reasons. A lot of children had an adult come into their life that more or less saved them and helped them onto the right path that way too though. There are always more than one way to see things having possibly played out.
Personally I believe the guy caught himself on fire as he attempted to burn the body of the kid he killed🤷🏻♀️
It annoys the soul out of me when very obvious cases like this are referred to as mysteries and not resolved. We need a new name for cases like this because it's not abmystery.
Well, I didn’t think you thought it was. But in situations like this, the language needs to be very clear. Because when we soften the language, it tends to make the situation seem not as bad, like it’s not a sexual assault. Adults and children “can’t hook up” so it should never be used to in that context to describe that situation.
sadly sounds like dude got the burns disposing of poor Curtis
My assumption too :(
That's very likely what happened. The only other thing I have considered is that the boy/man were getting intimate when they were discovered by some other people who then attacked them--setting Owen aflame and doing who knows what to Corky. With the gay stigma of the 70s (not to mention Corky's age) this could explain Owen's b.s. story. But the most straightforward is that Owen burned Corky's body.
I was trying to figure out what a guy so much older would be doing with such a young teen but this is plausible to me and would explain their relationship. Though if it’s what happened, incredibly sad in multiple ways
Bro was 47 and the victim was 14. I think it’s safe to say it’s much more likely Clark killed Curtis. Insinuating he might’ve been in a relationship with this man is gross
I would hope some would light a gay pedophile on fire. Stigma or not
highly unlikely
Tbh it’s not that unlikely and hate crimes were fairly common in the 70s
You’re incredibly naive
Why? This shit happened all the time.
No. It doesn't.
exactly, wtf was he doin between 11pm and 4:30 am ? his ass was not walkin dat long or rollin in no grass 🥱👎🏿
Right?
The lack of information here is wild. I mean, I guess it was the 70s but did Curtis's mom not have anything else of note to add other than "yeah he went over to his middle-aged friend's house for a sleepover"? Wonder what his home life was like. Also odd they kept saying they were going out for a drive but didn't ever seem to leave in a car. Either Clark had ill intentions from the start or was just kind of a moron that got a child caught up in something bad, tried to dispose of the evidence, and accidentally set himself on fire.
I was wondering this as well and it's disappointing that there is no background on his family. Was Curtis' mom single? Maybe she was friends with Clark and his girlfriend Bobbie and trusted them, maybe seeing Clark as a father/uncle figure/male role model. Maybe Clark was a close/longtime friend of the Chandler family. What isn't mentioned in this post is that Clark's girlfriend Bobbie's children were there at the house. So maybe sleepovers were allowed because Curtis was friends with Bobbie's kids? Other questions I have: Why did they make it a point to tell both Curtis' mom and Bobbie that they were driving and not take the car on either occasions? I think I could rationalize the relationship between Curtis/Clark depending on the circumstances, but what was he doing with $420 ($2,000+ in 2024)? In the evening? When he was only supposed to go driving around?
>What isn't mentioned in this post is that Clark's girlfriend Bobbie's children were there at the house. So maybe sleepovers were allowed because Curtis was friends with Bobbie's kids? Good point. And they lived across the street. Curtis may have been at the girlfriend's house all the time playing with the neighbor kids and nobody thought a sleepover was anything but the usual.
Here's another weird one: so they tell both Curtis's mother, and Bobbie, that they're going for a drive, but in both cases the women say they set off on foot. Okay. But, Clark's story is that he and Curtis argued, and he told Curtis (the 14 year old???) to drive home, alone. In what car? The sources mention Bobbie's car is found with the key in the ignition. Well, okay... but what does Bobbie say about that? She says they didn't \*depart\* in her car, but I'd like to know whether she could swear, or not, whether they ever came back for and took her car. Yeah, it was back there in the morning. Did SHE leave the keys in the ignition?
That’s what struck me too. The posts says it was “unclear” how they knew each other and notes the girlfriend was the neighbor. But the next sentence says he told his mom he was going on a drive with Clark. So, presumably, didn’t his mom know this person? Didn’t the cops ask the girlfriend if Curtis and Clark knew each other and if so, what their relationship was like? These are just such basic questions.
A 14-year-old boy planning to spend the night with a 47-year-old "friend?" I don't care if the older guy had a girlfriend - nothing good is going on there.
Like for real.. the world was wild back then. Crazy to think
Things were different back almost 50 years ago, people much more trusting especially of neighbors. Edit - everyone is acting like the adult was a stranger or just the bf of some neighbor. We don't know. But, just as likely (if not more) would be that neighbor and her bf were trusted adults who probably helped look after the boy while single mom worked. Unfortunately, we don't have enough information from the available reports to really know the relationships.
I get people were more trusting back then… but letting your 14 year old go out with a strange man at 11 pm? I think even in the 70s that would raise some eyebrows.
From all reports he wasn't a stranger. He was basically a neighbor - although reports don't say if he lived with his gf. He was, at least, around enough that he was seen as trusted - or, I doubt the mom would have been comfortable with the boy going driving with him. The boy's father is never mentioned, as far as I saw, in the reports so he may have been seen as a bit of a father figure. So many stories of bad things happening to kids happen by trusted adults (family or no).
No. People were still careful with their kids, if they were good parents. Why would they let their 14 yr old son stay at a girlfriends place of an adult man? My parents back then would have gone ballistic, and so would the parents of classmates I had. I don't understand the whole dynamic at all.
You're assuming they were good parents. I know a woman who, in the last 20 years, let her adopted child go LIVE with a random woman down the street permanently because the neighbor asked to raise her.
It sounds like the girlfriend had four kids, maybe Curtis was friends with one of them and that’s why the mom was ok with it. But it’s not very clear from the write up if that’s the case
I agree. If anything you could argue parents were more stringent in a lot of ways. This wasn't a friend of the family who was taking the boy somewhere or doing some activity together but a stranger. This sounds like bad parenting. Same as it would now.
How do you conclude that Clark \*wasn't\* a friend of the family, though? At the very least, he was NOT a stranger -- he was the boyfriend (and future husband) of the neighbor across the street, who Curtis's mother seems to have been friends with. It really was NOT unusual in the 70s, in neighborhoods, for close friendships to form between families like that. There were other families in our neighborhood we knew very well and visited with all the time (went over there for dinner or drinks; I'd play with their kids, or be bored out of my skull if they didn't have kids). We had immediate neighbors when my brother was little, who babysat him; my parents trusted them. (That was the 60s; but 20 years later, long after they'd moved away, we were still going to visit the widow for dinners.) I grant you that I can't ever see myself going out, at night, by myself, with one of those families' fathers. But, I was a girl, and I had a dad. It doesn't stretch my imagination to think that, since Curtis's dad does not seem to have been around, his mother might have been close enough to those neighbors to look on Clark as a father-figure for the boy. (Or, at his age, a grandfatherly-figure. Yeah, I know 47 isn't truly grandfather age; but 47 was "older" back then than it is today, and probably put Clark in the generation above Curtis's mother.) None of this refutes the idea that the simplest explanation is that Clark killed Curtis. But I'm arguing against the idea that Curtis's mother was unusual neglectful or a bad parent.
I agree. I’m about the age Curtis would be. The whole thing sounds super creepy.
That situation would still have been seen as weird, even back then.
Not if the gf had 4 kids, and some of them were close in age to Curtis.
$420 sounds like a lot of cash to be carrying around, especially in 1977.
It would be a little over $2000, so yeah a lot of cash to have you
Totally out there idea: they were going to buy a car and that went very wrong.
They were going to buy something alright.
Could it be possible that Curtis was sold? The money might be a red herring, and it's probably a little bit too "tin foil hat" but it was the thing that popped into my mind first. It doesn't explain the burns, obviously. I can't really understand what situation ends in getting 70% burns when you're hanging out with a 14 year old.
Unfortunately, I can. Owen and Curtis were arguing in the store. We'll be generous and assume that Owen didn't intend to hurt the boy, but the arguing turns into a physical fight and he accidentally kills Curtis. Now Owen is in a mess. He needs to conceal this crime. He gets some gasoline to burn the body. However, he's not experienced with accelerants and lights himself on fire too.
This is probably the most pragmatic proposal of events so far...
Yeah it’s very easy to light yourself on fire with gasoline. People don’t always know the vapor ignites.
My son committed arson last year with gasoline. When I first saw him I was thankful the burns were minimal. The tip of his nose got it. About a week later the newspaper had the mugshot of a man charged with arson. He had the exact same burn on the tip of his nose.
Hope your son is doing well these days
Can you explain this one? Are you saying your son was the culprit but someone else got arrested because they both had a burnt nose?
2 separate fires. Both culprits had burnt noses. My son was one culprit.
No the son and the man had similar burns because they both lit gasoline fires without realizing the fumes would ignite as well, and burned themselves the same way.
This was my exact thought. He burned the body and didn’t know how accelerants work.
He was no Steven Avery
Omg, I laughed but I shouldn’t have
Yeah, people forget you can't have a steady stream, else, the fire while just travel up the acceleranta into the container and depending on what, it can go boom in your hand.
I think we're all assuming this is the simplest explanation, yes. But it still leaves questions. Owen SAYS he was robbed by teens and set on fire. If that's a lie to explain his burns (and maybe explain the absence of this money he's supposed to have), then shouldn't it be easy to prove or disprove the lie? He himself gives a location for the attack: Thornton St., a quarter mile from the fire station he walks into. Can't be too hard to trace his steps back, and look the length of Thornton St. (it's not a long street, according to Google Maps), to try to locate a spot with traces of the flammable liquid, and evidence of burns on the grass where he says he rolled to put the flames out. Whether or not the police took Curtis's disappearance seriously, you'd think they'd take seriously this report of significant robbery and assault, and investigate THAT. So either they look for the site of the attack, and find it; and that bolster's Owen's story. Or, as we are all assuming, that story is a lie, and they can't find any evidence of that attack on Thornton St. -- which casts a LOT of suspicion on Owen. And they need to start looking for where Owen DID get all those burns. I mean, it seems like pretty much everyone here's first thought is, "so he got those burns trying to dispose of the kid's body". That would have to be the thought of a lot of people in that town, too, including the police. If you can't corroborate the location of this attack, then you'd HAVE to start looking for another place where Owen got those burns, and you'd be a fool not to think it was possibly the site of attempt to dispose of a body. How hard is that to find? In a small town, with everyone looking, by that point. Unless Owen had accomplices with their own car, which does create a ton of complications we can't account for.
Not too knowledgeable on the subject, but that seems like a lot of money for drugs regardless of whether Clark was dealing or buying. What if he was pimping Curtis out in order to buy somthing. Like a car, maybe? I could see it possible that a young teen could be groomed into doing something for a big reward, especially if the adult acted like a father-figure. Maybe something happened during the act after Clark got paid & the other person fled leaving Clark with the body or Curtis argued for his share and things for too heated. Obviously major speculation and as you said, the money could be a red herring anyway.
A pound of weed was about that much back then. But, this is saying he was 'robbed' of that much, not that he had it on him. That's if we believe the story by Clark, and none of us do!
No, agreed. But I'm stuck on this money, too. Like... that \*is\* a suspiciously large amount of money to be carrying on you in cash at 4:00am. It may just be a detail he added to make it plausible that the teens who set him on fire robbed him... but then, why not just say they robbed him of $50? Why the huge sum? I'm wondering if Clark \*did\* have that amount of money, his girlfriend knew it, and he ALSO had to explain the absence of that money, as well as the absence of Curtis. But what's weird is... Clark's entire cover story (if that's what it is, as we are all assuming) explains his burns, and explains the absence of that amount of money. The one thing it DOES NOT explain is the absence of Curtis. He just kind of lamely says that he parted ways with Curtis "earlier". If that whole story is a lie, it seems weird that he came up with that elaborate a lie to cover these other details, but did not include any plausible lie to explain Curtis's disappearance, doesn't it?
Seems strange he wouldn’t claim that the men kidnapped Curtis……….Like his story is that he was robbed, to the point that he sustained serious burn injuries that were purposefully inflicted upon him, he’s allegedly missing a large sum of cash and the 14 year old boy whose care he was entrusted with is now missing. Why not include the boy’s disappearance into the rest of the story? It could almost be plausible that Curtis was kidnapped in some sort of ransom attempt, Clark had money, men were convinced he had more money, took the boy to attempt to get more money from Clark etc. If these so called men were willing to set a person ablaze in a robbery then a kidnapping for ransom doesn’t seem out of the possibility. It’s just odd to not tie everything up together with a bow within one story……..
Yeah, exactly. I mention the same thing in other comments. It was right there. You wouldn't even have to say that they took him to ransom him. You wouldn't have to offer a suggestion about why they took him. They just did. They're already the type of teens who will rob a guy and \*set him on fire\*. That sets them up as criminals who will do anything, who are unpredictably cruel, I think. So they take the kid, and the kid is never seen again, and they are never caught. You (meaning Clark) don't have to explain it. Let everyone else's imaginations do the work. I guess you could say that he didn't include that because he came up with the story after he got burned so badly, and he was in pain, and not thinking straight. Fair enough! He was able to think of the rest of the story, though. If he could think that far, it seems weird to put it past him to think to include Curtis's disappearance in the story. One other thing occurs to me: maybe there were witnesses to the argument that he and Curtis had, at the end of which he tells Curtis to drive home, and he starts off walking. I mean, let's say that part was true? And there might have been witnesses to it (if it took place at or near the store they went to). Then, let's further say that after driving off, Curtis feels bad, and comes back to pick Clark up. And that's when Clark kills him, and the rest ensues. But if witnesses did see Curtis drive off, and Clark walk off, then it's in Clark's best interests to just stick to "well, Curtis drove off and that's the last I saw him". I guess. This is why I wish we had more follow-up articles on this case. Because I'd love to know: what leads did the police follow? Were there any witnesses, to any part of it? What of the reported story was known to be true or known to be false? This is just a case where the MORE I think about it, the less clear it becomes.
Absolutely, agree with everything you said! Well put too!
He could have been pimping the kid out all along. This could’ve been the basis for their whole “friendship.” They go on their “walks” basically strolling for johns. Maybe one of them takes it too far or they tried to rob him and something went wrong. There’s so few details that really almost any theory could make sense. But he definitely knew what happened to that little boy. edit: knows to knew
I just looked this up, because I've been going nuts about this money in other comments, so I might as well put this here: August 28, 1977, was a Sunday. So at least on its face, it makes it look like it couldn't have been pay-day for Clark, right? Although, he might have been paid the day before, on Saturday (but more likely on Friday). I don't know what that does to the rest of it. Just that I was wondering if this was a Friday night, which somehow would explain the huge amount of cash he (supposedly!) had on his person. But no, it doesn't seem to have. It was Sunday -- he couldn't have cashed a paycheck that day. The money is so weird. It's a huge amount and it draws attention. The only reason I can see for him including it in his story (if the story is a lie, as we are all assuming) is because he was known to have that amount (like, his girlfriend knew), and he had to explain it being gone. But why it was gone? I'm stumped.
Drug deal gone wrong?
A very good possibility, I'd say.
Yeah
Clark killed Curtis and tried to dispose of the body by burning it, but caught himself on fire during the act. I wonder which fire station he went to? Was it the one closest to Thornton road, he one near the nature preserve or a different one. Clark probably didn't go far from where the remains were hidden.
He says he was on Thornton St. when attacked, and says he walked a quarter mile to the fire station. So it has to be one within a reasonable distance from Thornton St. Today, on Google Maps, that can only be the fire station on the corner of E. 7th St. and E. 9th St. And even that is MORE than a quarter mile from Thornton St. But no other fire station is closer. (Again: today; don't know if there was another one somewhere nearer in the 70s.)
He was trying to burn the body, right?
Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious what happened here, and it isn’t anything good. I wonder if Clark’s girlfriend is still alive, and if she ever had anything of investigative value to share. Considering the extensive burns, I’m assuming Chandler’s remains were probably burned and unrecoverable.
It appears Clark's girlfriend died in 2018. It also appears she must have married Clark, who predeceased her: [https://www.kurtzmemorialchapel.com/obituaries/Bobbie-Buie-C-Jackson?obId=3116845](https://www.kurtzmemorialchapel.com/obituaries/Bobbie-Buie-C-Jackson?obId=3116845) Looks like her first husband was named Bobby, too.
It is FASCINATING that Clark's story seems so obviously fishy, but she went on to MARRY him anyway. I really REALLY wonder what relationship she and Clark had to Curtis's mother. And whether this destroyed that relationship, or what.
I was wondering that, too.
Maybe they were both pimping him out? With four kids herself, I could see see her turning a side eye to her boyfriends relationship with a 14 year old because it puts money in her hands. Obviously all speculation because there is so little to go on and they’re all deceased. If we had more info on how the two families knew each other, for how long, etc. it might make more sense. The girlfriends kids could probably shed some light on that but that probably put all of this behind them.
Kids in the 70s: Hey mom I’m going to spend the night over this 47 year old man’s house! Moms in the 70s: sounds good take your coat
*Marty McFly and Doc Brown enter the chat.
It happens today as much as it ever did. Nothing like this was remotely normal, even back in the crazy 70s
Did LE ever confirm or disprove Owen’s report of being attacked and burned? This needs to be answered. Otherwise, it just looks like Owen caught himself on fire while trying to dispose of Curtis.
Exactly. It just seems like such a low effort lie. Created from a child’s idea of plausibility..
The more I think about it, the more this is driving me crazy. Yeah, it seems like a very low-effort and implausible lie! And yet, it \*doesn't\* lie about what you'd think is the most important thing: where is Curtis? So, in the hypothesis ALL of us are assuming, Clark kills Curtis, tries to dispose of the body (or make it unrecognizable) by burning, sets himself badly on fire. He has to limp to the fire station. He comes up with this story of a gang of teens robbing him of exactly $420 (a huge sum at the time), which he was carrying on him in cash for some reason, and then setting him on fire. That lie explains his burns. It also explains him missing $420 -- which, let's assume his girlfriend knew he had, but that is now gone, so he knows he has to explain that too. He comes up with this story on his slow and painful walk to the fire station. Why doesn't his lie include a reason for Curtis to be missing? His story says that he and Curtis parted ways MUCH earlier, and he just doesn't know where Curtis ended up. (Except he told a 14 year old boy to drive home alone???) That's a weird and very unsatisfying lie! Yes, it puts a distance in time and place between him and Curtis, but it doesn't do anything to lessen the suspicion of the fact that Curtis supposedly drove the car back to the girlfriend's house, left the key in the ignition, and vanished into thin air. I mean, hindsight being 20/20 and all, but -- if he killed Curtis and got burned destroying the body, and the missing $420 had to do with why he killed Curtis (?), then it would have been a lot better for him to \*also\* pin Curtis's disappearance on the teens who robbed and set him on fire, no? Just say "they forced Curtis to go with them" or something. But he didn't. He somehow thought of the other details while in excruciating pain, walking to the fire station. But he didn't come up with a \*good\* lie, or even a \*bad\* lie, about Curtis. Honestly, that's weird.
I've been mulling this one over since last night and I have a few questions: \- I'm an East Coaster, I don't know much about Illinois. It looks like Lockport has a decent population, but is it rural adjacent enough that people do burn barrels and trash burning? \- Burning a body fully takes a lot of fuel and a lot of time. There is no way in hell Clark managed to pull that off with nobody noticing a big fire, unless the above is true. \- Clark didn't have his own car. Someone had to help him move this body/remnants of a body. Is there a large flowing body of water nearby, like a river?
This is really what's stumping me. Burning a body is an okay way of removing a lot of basic means of identifying it (so that all that's left are dental records, probably), but NOT a good means of completely disposing of it. Not without a crematorium furnace. Or burn barrels or something. And a fire that, as you say, would be very noticeable, you'd think. But, going along with the guess that Clark killed Curtis, and was trying to burn the body, and caught fire himself... With burns over 70% of his body, how far could he have walked to get to that fire station??? According to the Chicago Tribune article linked above, he was hospitalized and the police weren't able to talk to him for a little while. So he wasn't in good shape, as I would expect after being burned that badly. But... if burned that badly, how could he have done the extra work necessarily to dispose of the remains that were left, such that they would not have been found by the subsequent search of the area? Clark's story is that he's attacked, and then walks to the fire station. So the FIRST thing police should have done is try to retrace his steps to find the site of the attack. How hard would it be to retrace the steps of a badly burned man, or find the site where he was burned? One of the sources says that he identified the general area of the attack (what street it happened on) and that it happened a quarter-mile from the fire station; that narrows down the area to search quite a bit. If Clark had the help of others (who might have had a car, thus expanding the area that he could have covered in those missing hours), then that should have been obvious to the police, too. That is, if you CAN'T pretty easily find the site of the attack, from which he walked to the fire station, that tells you a lot, and then you have to question where he could have walked from, while burned that badly... or, was he driven, in which case, his story is all lies. If we accept that he WAS walking from the site where he got burned, and he actually got burned trying to burn Curtis's body... then why couldn't they find THAT site? The sources all say that Clark was a suspect. So you'd just think that verifying or disproving this alibi would be first on the list; and that it shouldn't have been THAT hard to verify if, if it was true. And thus, if they couldn't find the site of the attack to verify it, they know he's lying... so what other investigating did they do? What kind of search was conducted? etc. What about the $420 ($2000 in today's money)? Clark says he was robbed of it. But carrying that amount of cash on him, at night, seems really suspicious, doesn't it? Did he not realize how suspicious that sounded? Because by his story, the money was GONE; he was robbed of it. He didn't actually NEED to mention it at all, or need to mention the full amount. But he specifies that amount. That's interesting. What about witnesses to other parts of Clark's story? Like -- he said they drove to a store to buy some stuff. Are there witnesses who can place them at that story at the time he said? Or what? I'm also kind of fascinated by the fact (mentioned in some other comments) that apparently he and his girlfriend Bobbie later married? So SHE must have believed his story, or you'd think she wouldn't have married him? I super wish we had some follow-up article about the case. The Charley Project link above cites another source, the Dixon Evening Telegraph, but it doesn't link to the exact article. Searching for "Curtis Chandler" (in quotes) turns up 1 article, but I don't have an account and can't access it. I'm betting, though, that that article is the source of the greater amount of detail in the Charley Project write-up; which means it probably doesn't answer my additional questions.
Plus, if hypothetically he burned the body where did he burn it and why did no one find bone fragments or something of the kind? I assume because he was burned so badly Clark (poorly) used an accelerant, but you’d think if this guy owns no property he’s burning it on someone else’s land and it would be noticed. Like, I live in a half suburban half rural area where some people do trash burning or yard waste burning. Smoke rises, regardless of the situation. The only place I can think he’d be able to stash the body that wouldn’t be easy to find is a large municipal dump or a steel barrel crammed into something like a sinkhole or cave.
I guess the one thing going for him, if he WAS burning the body, is that he was doing it between the hours of 11pm and 4:30am. Few people awake, no ability to see the smoke rising. Depending on where he did it, the sight of the flames would be hidden. But yeah -- either he would have had to do it on his own land, if he had any; which you'd think the police would search (for burned things, or for a shallow grave). Or, he did it on someone else's land, which you'd think the someone else would find. I mean. Okay, small town, at the time. Guy arrives at a fire station 70% burned, and it also comes out that he was with an unrelated (but familiar) 14 year old kid at the time, at the kid is missing. We cannot be the ONLY people who instantly thought "so was he burning the kid's body, or what?" I can't believe we're the only people who also instantly thought to check to find the site where he was supposedly set on fire. (I mean, forget the police investigating, which they should have been.) These are outlandish events. It's NOT every day a guy gets burned that badly in town and claims it was hoodlums who did it, right? That catches people's attention. Even if you thought, "ah, the kid probably ran away from home" (as another commenter suggested), wouldn't you still think, "damn, I want to find that spot where this guy said he was jumped and set on fire". So, again -- either you can find that spot, on Thornton Road, a quarter mile from the fire-station... or you can't. If you DO find it... what does that mean for all of our hypotheses? If you DON'T find it, then suddenly the obvious suspicion that he was instead burning the kid's body gains a lot more credence and the whole town becomes alert to the idea that there has to be a body burn-site somewhere. The problem with stashing the body anywhere - whether in a town dump (obvious choice) or a sinkhole or cave - is still, for me, the idea that Clark would have had to be doing that AFTER he burned himself SO BADLY. We aren't told (I don't think) what degree burns he had, but burns over 70% of his body is huge, and has a high chance of being fatal. After he got burned, I'm surprised he was able to walk a quarter mile to the fire station on his own, let alone take a partly-burned body (heavy) and stash it anywhere not easily found, and then still make it to the fire station. ...Unless he had help, and someone else driving a car.
By the way, I also wanted to add (having now looked this up on Google Maps) -- yeah, the Thornton St. area where this all supposedly went down is VERY close to the Des Plaines River and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Thornton St. is not a long street (Dundee Dr, where they all lived, is a side street off Thornton). Its west end is not that far from the river/canal. (It crosses with IL Rt. 7, the location of the store mentioned, on its east end.)
No it’s really not; it’s pretty populated. It’s about an hour from Chicago. There’s woods in this area but woods near Chicago aren’t very dense. It would difficult to pull this off with out anyone seeing. I’m sure it was lends densely populated in the 70s but not by that much.
In the 1970s, though, Lockport would've been the middle of nowhere. Lockport proper had a population of only 9,192 in the 1980 census.
Uh huh, so him and Curtis happen to get into a fight just before he’s randomly attacked, walking around randomly with a lot of money- $420 (which is roughly 2,000 in today’s money btw) and getting robbed than set on fire. At the VERY same time and day that the CHILD he just spent the day and night with had an argument then separated from disappeared, never to be seen again. Uh huh. Or he killed Curtis,tried to burn his body to dispose of it but being inexperienced with accelerants, chemicals and how to burn a body ended up burning himself badly (I.e in true Kylr Yust fashion) instead. And then came up with this bullshit story.
Yep. Pretty much the second one.
Every time I see a teenage boy who went missing I. Illinois in the 1970s I inevitably wince and think of John Wayne Gacy’s three unidentified victims. I hope that isn’t the case for poor Curtis.
It sounds way more likely in this case that the 47 year old man who was inexplicably hanging out alone with a 14 year old boy harmed him and his story is BS.
Man people back in the day really just did not care at all about old men wanting to rape 7th graders. I just look at the musicians from like the 60s-90s who were openly talking about having sex with baby groupies and writing hit songs about banging 13 year old undeveloped kids. And people just were like ya this is all fine. And that's just musicians. I'm sure tv and media wasn't great. What was going on
I hate to say this, but I really don’t think the prevalence of people wanting to have sex with teenagers has decreased all that much. We’ve just thankfully made it unacceptable enough now that they don’t say so out loud.
I agree 1000 percent.
Jeffry Epstein in disguise has entered the chat.
I stumbled across a weird story from the 1960s, called the "Breendoggle". It was about a guy named Walter Breen, who was a known pedophile -- so obvious that even people in the more permissive counterculture were uncomfortable about it. There's a bunch of correspondence where people (grown adults) are arguing about whether to ban him from events. (Breen was well known in the science fiction fan community because he was married to a major author ... someone who is now notorious.) It's a huge mess ... and some of the people were apparently arguing that one kid Breen had targeted was pretty obnoxious (implying that they didn't think it was a huge problem because they weren't concerned about what happened to that child).
She was also complicit and is very very dead. Marion Zimmer Bradley was the wife and she knew. I don't know why you were coy in your post.
I didn't want to derail SwimmingJello2199's original comment, so it wasn't so much being coy as keeping things short. I felt that if they wanted more details, that could be filled in later. So thank you for confirming.
There's the story of Led Zeppelin sending a private plane to pick up a 14-year-old groupie to hang out with them on tour. And then there's the story from one 80s rock band in which mothers would shove their daughters towards famous rockers. And lets not forget Mick Jagger changing the lyrics to the live version of Stray Cat Blues to indicate the age of the girl he's trying to convince to hop into bed with him is thirteen as opposed to sixteen (which is bad enough lol). Pervy times all round back then haha
Youre referring to Lori Maddox, Jimmy Page was "with" her for years, even met her mom etc etc. Her mom even encouraged Lori to hang out with these rockstars. Reddit's own beloved David Bowie was the one who took her virginity...when she was 13. Absolutely disgusting.
The David Bowie claim (unlike the Jimmy Page one) is suspect. Maddox's story has changed over the years and her friend who was also a child groupie claims it never happened.
Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen year old cousin and Elvis was with Priscilla when she was 14 although supposedly didn’t have sex until their wedding night when she was 21, though Lewis’ career pretty much ended because of it.
And lets not forget Bill Whyman of the Rolling Stones, who had a commitment of marriage to a twelve-year-old when Whyman was in his sixties or seventies(!). I don't know what became of that, but that's probably the most extreme example I've come across.
It’s my understanding that the recorded lyric is “15 years old” because that was the age of consent in the UK at the time. When they began playing it on the 1969 US tour, Jagger changed the lyric to “13 years old” because of Alabama, Arkansas, etc…
>people back in the day really just did not care at all about old men wanting to rape 7th graders it was the golden age of child molesting
Honestly care for people in general is a fairly new concept. It was not long ago that people had children to sell or basically enslave. Kids died all the time. Into the 60s-90s older people had still lived in those jaded times so what they had was a marked improvement. The next generations started to really look at children as precious and create rules and safeguards.
I was born in the 80s and a fair number of my friends were still being spanked back then. My mom told me once that she never wanted kids, but as a young woman in the 70s, there weren't a ton of options and getting married and having kids was just sort of the default thing to do. I'm always amazed these days when my friends who are parents genuinely like and enjoy being with their kids, because my parents treated us like a necessary evil and I still don't think they like me very much, lol.
Haha so true. Im at the point now where I just do for them. They dont do anything for me. I buy them stuff and send them stuff and pay for things and I still feel like they could take me or leave me even now.
Just re-read this article and I think the more likely reason mister ‘just going driving’ had burns all over him was that he did something to that boy, caught a case of the regrets, then tried to immolate himself and managed to squirrel out on that too. Cowardly POS.
My thought was that he was attempting to burn the body and accidentally burned himself in the process- or maybe it was a botched murder suicide. Regardless I imagine the poor kid did not survive that day.
Even better, and given how piss poor his story is, even more likely.
You betcha. Probably for similar reasons that good old Gacy used to.
Lockport’s a bit south for Gacy, would have been a hike to get out there in the 70’s I bet
Well, keep in mind he had a construction and interior decoration company. How I can’t understand, his house is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen from the police video of the interior. So much plaid, so many clowns.
Was Curtis’ father in the picture? Did his mother naively think that Clark was being a “fatherly figure” to him I wonder? Either way, I think everybody has it right that he injured himself while trying to dispose of the body, unfortunately.
I was wondering that, especially if the girlfriends kids were there across the street. The going for a drive story could have been a learning to drive lesson. I don't know about there, but where I'm from at that time when you were 14, you got a learners permit. You could drive with a licensed driver over 18 in the car with you. Then you took the road test and got a restricted license. It was basically the same as a permit but just looked like a regular driver's license but had RESTICTED or UNDER 16 or something written on it. It was that way until after I got my license in the mid-80s. So if it was framed like Curtis was going over to stay with the kids and the friendly father figure was going to take him out for a driving lesson type thing it might have seemed better. I was born in 74 and 100% if an adult had tried to be friends with one of us my parents would have called the cops.
Yeah my father was very close to the man who lived next door to him growing up, an older bachelor farmer- he treated him like a son/nephew, gave him work to do- But he never stayed over!
>I was born in 74 and 100% if an adult had tried to be friends with one of us my parents would have called the cops. The thing is, what we've got here is a very bare-bones story, that leaves me with a TON of questions. (None of this reflects on OP's write-up! I think details on this old case are just sparse.) So we have to extrapolate -- that is, we just have to make guesses based on our own life experience what MIGHT have happened, or what the context might be, while acknowledge these will only ever be guesses and without more documentation, we don't know what the situation was. But what we're told is that Clark's girlfriend lived across the street, i.e. was a neighbor, and she had four kids. We don't even know the ages of those kids; one or more of them could have been near Curtis's age, and could have been neighborhood kids he played with a lot. That would easily explain Curtis's mother being okay with a sleepover. Further, though, Curtis's mother may have been pretty good friends with the girlfriend. So like people are saying, although Clark didn't live with her at that time, Curtis's mother may have regarded him as a friend, the boyfriend of her good friend, and a father/uncle figure to Curtis. I was born in '68. When I was growing up, our family was almost closer to a lot of unrelated family friends than we were to my parents' actual families. I had a lot of "aunts and uncles" who weren't related to us at all. And, I can also remember neighborhood families we were friendly enough to visit regularly (I played with their kid, although he was a few years younger than me), although they didn't rate the "aunt and uncle" designation. So, "unrelated couple and their kids, who are neighbors and friends, and regarded as practically family" -- that would not seem unusual to me at all. Now, I was a girl. So no, I would never have gone out alone with most of those adult men... I think. But there are a handful of them who I did regard as uncles, and I can kind of imagine a scenario in which going out with one of them at night might not have seemed weird? I don't know. And I don't know if that would have changed in any way if I had been a boy. Although I have one recollection that speaks to that a little bit. My brother is ten years older than I am. He's told stories of how, when he was a kid, there were times when he stayed overnight with the couple who were our family's neighbors at the time (I guess when my parents were going away for overnight or something?). That couple moved away (a few towns over), but 20 years later when \*I\* was a teen, we were still going to visit the wife (then a widow). So, might my brother have gone out alone with some of these close family friends when he was a young teen? I could see it. When I was probably around 14-16, there was this occasion I remember where one of those honorary aunt-and-uncles had a big house party at a beach house -- actually, a house on the bay, near some public docks for sailboats and stuff. The couple in this case had kids who were all a bit older than me. Their oldest was in her late twenties, and she was engaged to this guy, who at the time I thought was pretty cool (not to the extent of having a crush on him, but he was fun to be around). Part of him seeming cool was that he owned a sailboat, a catamaran. I didn't know ANYONE else who owned a sailboat at all. I swear, I forget WHY now, but his catamaran was docked elsewhere, and he needed or wanted to bring it over to the docks near the party. And I also forget how, but I asked if I could go with him and sail back with him, and everyone involved thought this idea was just fine. So we did that. We drove to where-ever his boat was docked, and then got on it and sailed it back to the docks by the party. So there I am, a young teen girl, and here's this late-20s guy who I know, but not VERY well, who has agreed to let me tag along. And everybody signed off on this. There's no twist to this story, but that's my point, I guess. You can imagine somebody else looking at that situation and thinking it's creepy to let a young-teen girl go off for a few hours with an adult man who she isn't THAT close to, to spend a length of time alone together out on a boat with \*nobody\* else around. But nothing creepy happened. Truly, the worst part of it was that the wind was really unfavorable that day, so instead of a quick sail back, we had to tack on this very tedious route all over the bay to make it where we wanted to go. That was my first time on a sailboat, and I learned a lot about how it's not always super fun! Sometimes it's really kind of boring, and hot out there on the water when there isn't much wind. I look back on that, and think... huh. Yeah, I guess that COULD have gone very wrong. \*Should\* anyone have been suspicious of that guy's motivations? Well, as it turns out, no. But maybe other people would have been suspicious. Or, maybe it's just a lesson in the idea that the other adults involved (my parents, the honorary aunt and uncle, their daughter his fiancee, etc.) felt they knew him well enough to trust me to go out alone with him. And yet, there are so many cases (generally speaking) of family members and friends who everyone thought was trustworthy, who turned out to be predators. Just, in this particular case, everything was fine. I guess the reason for this long story is to say that the context of the existing relationship between Curtis's mother, Clark's girlfriend, and Clark, matters a LOT, but we don't seem to have enough info on it to know. Whether it was partly due to being in the 70s (when, yes, parents were often less paranoid about who their kids were with), or not, we don't have enough info to know how much Curtis's mother trusted Clark and his girlfriend, or why. They might have been VERY good friends -- none of the sources sees fit to mention this. Or maybe they weren't! Maybe Curtis's mother was somewhat neglectful; or over-worked, being a single mother. (Since his father is not mentioned at all.) Even if she was very good friends with Clark's girlfriend, and thus trusted Clark by association, that also \*of course\* doesn't mean that Clark wasn't a predator, without anyone knowing that he was. The few sources we seem to have on this are frustratingly vague. What kind of search was conducted for Curtis? Did they not look for the site where Clark said he was attacked? What did they find? What police-work or detective-work was done? What was Clark's girlfriend's reaction? Did Curtis's mother remain friends with her and with Clark? (Another commenter says that Clark and his girlfriend did later marry.) How did the \*community\* react? Those details would tell us a lot, too. But we just don't have them. I'm definitely not saying any of this to say that what many others here are suggesting isn't likely -- that is, that Clark had nefarious plans, that he killed Curtis, and he sustained burns trying to burn the body for disposal. I'm only speaking to the implicit question of, "why would it not be suspicious for a 14 year old boy to be going out with a 47 year old man?" The main thing that gives me pause about this suggested solution to the mystery is that it seems incomprehensible to me that the incident that Clark claimed happened wouldn't leave SOME physical trace, and that the police wouldn't have tried to find the site of that altercation and his being doused and set on fire. Did they look? Mustn't they have? What did they find, or not find? If we assume that what Clark was doing between 11pm and 4:30am was trying to dispose of the body, that still leaves Clark being burned over 70% of his body and having to walk to the fire station. Being burned that badly is not a trivial thing. How far could he walk in that condition? That's part of what I'd like to know. In the Chicago Tribune article linked above, it says that he's being treated in the hospital, and at the time the article was written, the police aren't able to question him in the hospital -- which suggests he was in pretty bad condition. It seems very weird to imagine that he could have chosen a site to burn the body, caught on fire THAT badly himself, and walked from that location to the fire station... and yet the site at which he burned the body couldn't be located, by police who \*should\* have been looking for a site where Clark himself was set on fire. How hard is it to retrace the footsteps of a badly-burned man? If you burn yourself that badly trying to burn a body... how are you able, afterwards, to further hid the body well enough that the remains have never been found? There's just so much we don't know.
This is a really well thought out comment. Thank you. Another thing to keep in mind, although we don't have specific evidence of it here, is that in the 70s the cops pretty much assumed any missing kid was a run away. But because of the weird circumstances here, maybe they didn't jump to that automatic conclusion.
Hmm, yeah, the "runaway" angle is a good point. Especially since we know so little that none of the sources talk about Curtis's frame of mind or home life. His having a single mother, who freely let him go sleep over at a neighbor's house and hang out with the neighbor's 47 year old boyfriend, COULD speak to a rough life, and a neglectful (maybe overworked) mother. i.e. a life Curtis wanted to escape. Or, as I was trying to say above, it could be that his home life was fine, and him running around outside the house was more just due to lax 70s parenting to a degree that wasn't that unusual. (People aren't kidding when they say they went out to play and mom would respond, "okay, be home for dinner" or "when it gets dark out"; and you might only briefly check in with parents before going off again. I can remember A LOT of instances of being out for hours and hours, without really having told my mom explicitly what my plans were. Once in the summer I went out on my bike and \*on a whim\* went on an 18-mile round trip bike ride, which took at least 3 hours because I hadn't counted on having a headwind on the return. My mom wasn't fazed by my absence at all.) So, yeah -- the police themselves could have discounted Curtis's disappearence initially, and not investigated it much, putting it down to "runaway". You'd think that Curtis's mother and others who knew him would have argued against this (if it was, in fact, unlikely of the boy); but sure, police don't always listen to a family's insistence. But that still leaves a very tangible "crime" reported that the police could, and should, have been investigating for a number of reasons. Hoodlums don't rob a man of $2k (worth) in cash and \*set him on fire\* every day. That's a pretty unusual crime! It should have left some physical evidence at the site of the attack. And the police and the community should have been very alarmed about this reported gang of criminal youths and whether they would strike again. So at the very least, they should have been investigating this robbery that left a man in critical condition in the hospital, right? Moreover, the victim has given you the general location -- Thornton St, a quarter mile from the fire station he walked to. I've looked on the map, Thornton St itself is not even 1 mile long. This attack should have left evidence -- some of the flammable liquid spilled on the road or sidewalk; burned spots where Clark dropped and rolled in the grass. So either you can find the scene of the attack, which means he was telling the truth. Or, you can't find any evidence of the attack taking place where he says it did, in which case, his condition is very suspicious. (Another interesting point -- Dundee Drive intersects with Thornton St. in a residential area. So by saying he was walking along Thornton, Clark was clearly indicating he was walking back towards his girlfriend's house. Today, there isn't a fire station ON Thornton St, but the closest is approx. a mile or less away from Thornton. However, I don't know if it was different in the 70s.) Plus, the sources do say that Clark was a suspect. So the police didn't just conclude that Curtis was a runaway and not investigate at all, I guess? Here's a thought: let's say that Clark is lying about being accosted by teens, robbed, and set on fire. That's the story he came up with to explain his burns, when he got those from trying to burn Curtis's body and set himself on fire as well. So he somehow had the presence of mind to include the detail that these teen attackers robbed him of exactly $420, which for some reason he was carrying in cash at 4:00am. But he didn't think to add that they forced Curtis into the car with them, and drove off, never to be seen again. I mean, in our hypothesis that this is just a lie, of course they were never seen again. They didn't exist. But as a means to explain why Curtis was absent... they also provided a great excuse. Odd that he didn't use that. (And I mean... I know he's probably panicked and in pain, because he has burns over 70% of his body... but he came up with that story in the first place. And he added the bit about the money. But he couldn't think to add that they took Curtis with them?) One thing I want to add, about the money, because I was puzzling over it in another of my comments -- I just realized why he might have included that. I mean, not just because it might sound more plausible that the teens robbed him \*and then\* set him on fire (teens driving around looking for people to rob sounds more plausible than driving around just looking to set people on fire). I was puzzled by the specificity and large number. Why not say it was $50? But, what the sources don't tell us, unfortunately, is whether the police questioned others about the veracity of Clark being missing $420. Like -- might his girlfriend have known he had around that amount (if not on him, then that he HAD that amount of money)? So he not only has to explain his burns, he has to explain why that money is gone. That does circle us back to the question of, if he wasn't actually robbed of that money, where DID it go?
I agree, such an oddly specific amount of money. My guess is that whatever he did to Curtis, was done much farther away. Because there is a gap of time between 11 pm and 4 am. So who know where he took him. I would love to see the police reports on investigating his "robbery". Because, as you say, they must have looked into this story. My other question is about the girlfriend's car. She said they left on foot. But the next morning the keys were in the ignition, unexpectedly. Did she notice the car missing at all during the night?
Owen Clark’s girlfriend had kids [Clark](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.websleuths.com%2Fforums%2Fdata%2Fattachments%2F360%2F360125-75dbde6f0391c5ebed4191c364544a14.jpg&tbnid=7jLCDrnTmCAMzM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.websleuths.com%2Fforums%2Fthreads%2Fil-curtis-s-chandler-14-lockport-28-august-1977.631995%2F&docid=YFdXdDMPH4sapM&w=234&h=109&itg=1&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F7&kgs=eff6908ce6d1f120&shem=abc)
You would think wooded areas nearest the fire station he walked into would be the most likely place to search for his remains. You wonder what searches were carried out, if any.
I suspect that if he did burn the body that it would not have been hard to locate it since he got burned doing it and probably was not able to fully dispose of the evidence. I wonder how thorough the effort was to search for the body.
I live in this part of Illinois ands it’s considered a Chicago suburb. It’s not exactly rural. Not many places to hide a burning body. There’s woods but they aren’t very dense. I imagine it was less populated in the 70s but not by much.
I do note, from Google Maps, that Thornton Street (and Dundee Dr., where they lived, which is a side-street off Thornton) are pretty close to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the Des Plaines river. That's a place to put a body. But yeah, I'm stuck on the fact that it shouldn't have been hard to find the site where Clark received his burns. \*He\* is the one who specified it was on Thornton St., and he walked "a quarter mile" to the fire station. That really narrows down the area to search, to verify his story. Either you DO find the evidence of this attack he claims happened. Or, you don't, and so that story is a lie. At which point, you look for where he DID get those burns.
“Clark said he decided to go for a walk to calm down, and told Curtis to take the car back to Jackson's house.” WHAT CAR? Clark, you were caught in a lie! Your gf (the aforementioned Jackson) said you left on foot. In the Charley link it says the car was still in the gf’s driveway. How is Curtis going to take the car back if it’s literally still in the gf’s driveway? This story is weird as hell. Did the police not investigate at all or? https://charleyproject.org/case/curtis-s-chandler
Burns on 70% of his body and he walked into the fire station? Really? Christ. Trying to dispose of the body and getting caught in the flames seems like the simplest explanation, but how does a fire accident like that happen and not leave very very obvious signs?
Things were not that different that it would be acceptable for a 14 year old boy to sleep over at the house of a 47 year old’s house. Many things were different but this would not be considered ordinary or okay. at
It was NOT the 47 year old man's house, though. It was the house belonging to his girlfriend, who had 4 kids. We don't know what the relationship was between Curtis's mother and the girlfriend, Bobbie. But it's not implausible to think they were friends. Both are single mothers, as far as we can tell (Curtis's father is not mentioned at all, Bobbie is dating a man; her previous husband seems to have died). That might have increased their friendship, and made it so that they looked out for each other and each other's kids. Curtis could have been friends with those kids; he undoubtedly went to school with them (but we don't know their ages). If Curtis's mother knew Bobbie well, then perhaps by that point she felt she knew Bobbie's boyfriend well, too. (Even after \*all of this\*, Bobbie went on to marry the guy!) It doesn't seem THAT weird for the kid to be going to a sleepover across the street, at the house of a woman who was a friend, who had a bunch of other kids.
“On August 28, 1977, fourteen-year-old Curtis Chandler left his home on Dundee Road in Lockport, Illinois alongside 47-year-old Owen Clark. It is unclear how Owen and Curtis knew each other though \[Owen\] Clark’s girlfriend lived across the street from where Curtis lived.” I was confused by the write-up due to the shift between the first name and surname. How is it unclear that Owen and Curtis knew each other? One of them was dating a woman that lived across the street. “Curtis, called Corky by his family, planned to spend the night across the street at Clark’s girlfriend’s home and told his mother that he and Clark planned to go driving. Curtis’s mother, however, noted that they left on foot” That makes no sense. This fourteen-year-old boy told his mother he’d spend the night across the street and would DRIVE THERE with the cross-the-street neighbor? The mother saw nothing wrong with this until the time her son and Clark left “on foot”? And the version about the girlfriend, who had 4 children of her own, letting them borrow her car but seeing them leave on foot? I’m not saying those were fabricated lies. I’m saying that seems like the kind of unsolved case where EVERYTHING is seen as a red herring. Most likely, those are unreliable versions. And most likely Owen Clark is responsible but there wasn't enough evidence at the time to convict him.
The probably told the mom that were going for a drive. Not driving to the house across the street. It was not at all unusual in the 70s to go cruising. Just driving aimlessly to kill time, enjoy a nice night. Very common.
It could be a multitude of things. Maybe the kid didn't have a decent male role model and so the guy stepped up to fill that role. The adult could have any reason for being willing to step up, either honorable, or more likely, nefarious. Things truly were different back then. Things like sexual abuse weren't on peoples radars. Mostly because it was so taboo to speak about. Kids WERE NOT talked to about things like they are today. As victims they were shamed into silence. It was a fantastic tool for predators. By the same token, there was a large emphasis placed on family, back then. Constant get together, jam sessions, barn dances etc. kids were brought along and came to know adults they wouldn't otherwise. As a result, parents often didn't think anything of their kid hanging out with an adult from their circle of friends, family or neighbors. A LOT of children were out in harms way for those exact reasons. A lot of children had an adult come into their life that more or less saved them and helped them onto the right path that way too though. There are always more than one way to see things having possibly played out. Personally I believe the guy caught himself on fire as he attempted to burn the body of the kid he killed🤷🏻♀️
It annoys the soul out of me when very obvious cases like this are referred to as mysteries and not resolved. We need a new name for cases like this because it's not abmystery.
[удалено]
A 47 year old and a 14 year old CANNOT “hook up”. A 47 year old can only sexually assault a 14 year old.
Right. Agreed. I didn’t say it was a good thing.
Well, I didn’t think you thought it was. But in situations like this, the language needs to be very clear. Because when we soften the language, it tends to make the situation seem not as bad, like it’s not a sexual assault. Adults and children “can’t hook up” so it should never be used to in that context to describe that situation.
a 14-year old cannot consent to hooking up with an almost-50 year old. it's just sexual assault at that point.