I just finished this book by Chicago Tribune reporter Bill O'Connell, about the murder of 14 year old David Stukel in 1968 by two other 14 year olds. It's of the true-crime genre, and it's very well written, in my opinion. O'Connell published it on Iuniverse, but copies were available in all the local bookstores.

It's an old crime, but O'Connell makes it a compelling read. Who can say they "enjoy" a book like this? I could barely put it down, but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to a verb like "enjoy."

He details the heinous, senseless murder of a boy just starting high school by a couple of ne'er-do-wells named Billy Rose Sprinkle and James Perruquet. It started out as a robbery, progressed into a beating, and ended up as full-fledged torture and murder. He then reports on the events of the trial, their sentencing, their time in prison and their eventual parole (due to the peculiarities of Illinois' sentencing laws, they were eligible for parole about 11 years after they went into jail although their sentence was for 75 to 90 years).

Then O'Connell tries to make sense of the crime by interviewing many of the people associated with the crime, law enforcement people, lawyers, judges, witnesses and family members of the victim and the perpetrators. What he finds in the end was that nothing made sense about the murder. It was just a couple of bad kids taking out their anger on a nice boy from a good family, who neither of them knew.

Finally he talks to one of the perpetrators, Perruquet. Both of them are still in prison, but Perruquet admits and takes responsibility for the crime, and Sprinkle continues to maintain that he didn't have anything to do with it - he was just the lookout.

This was made more compelling for me by the fact that I grew up on the same street as the victim, David Stukel. David was 6 years older than me, and I don't remember him, but my mom and David's dad grew up together. By 1968 we had moved to the far west side of town. My dad and David's dad both worked at the Joliet Arsenal (closed many years ago), and were friendly with the Stukels. (My parents hadn't had any contact with their family for many years.) My mom told me that my folks went to the wake, and that David had been nice to me when I was a little kid, playing with me quite a bit, even though he was older. They said he was just a very nice boy.

Lots of familiar names and places for me when I'm reading it; not all people who I really "know" but people who I've heard of. Funny how stuff touches your life, either knowingly or unknowingly...

But beyond all that, it really was a compelling and well written account of a terrible crime.

If you are at all interested in stuff like this, I recommend this book. It is available at B&N.com and at Amazon.com