On the evening of May 15,
1970, Edward and Stephanie Andrews, a couple in their early sixties drove the
wrong way down Chicago's magnificent Michigan Avenue and disappeared forever. In
almost a half a decade later, no sign of the Andrews or their 69 Oldsmobile has
ever been found.
The couple arrived at
the Sheraton-Chicago Hotel, then at 505 N. Michigan Ave., shortly after 5:30
p.m. for a cocktail party sponsored by the Woman's Association of Allied
Beverage Industries. All the gusts agreed that the Andrews seemed to be in good
spirits. But then guests noticed that a few hours later, Edward appeared to
become ill. He complained of hunger.
They left the party at
9:30 p.m. and took the elevator to its underground parking garage witness testified
to that much. The parking manager told police Edward Andrews was
"staggering" and that Stephanie was crying and asking him not to
drive home. He seemed to have trouble getting into his black and yellow 1969
Oldsmobile sports coupe. As he drove out he accidentally hit the garage door
before pulling out on the street the wrong way down Michigan Avenue.
The police theorized
that a disoriented Edward attempted a U-turn but instead plunged into the
Chicago River at a point where there were no guard rails and drove into the
Chicago River. However, an extensive search of the water turned up nothing. Ten
years later, in 1980, a full clean-up of the river produced twelve vehicles,
but none of them were the Andrews’ Oldsmobile.
Fourteen years after
that the case came to the attention of the police again in 1994 when an
informant, a 36-year-old man from north suburban Knollwood told police that he
had suffered from amnesia and memories of the killings only recently returned.
He said that the Andrewes’ had been murdered that night by gang members, who
placed the couple’s bodies in their car and submerged it in a pond near the
village Green Oaks, some forty miles north from they were last seen. The
informant was 13 years old at the time and was at the lake when the car was
buried there.
"About every
third sentence he told us was true," said Cpl. Curt Corsi of the Lake
County Sheriff's Office. "We verified some of what he said through police
reports."
Divers searched the
pond and recovered two pieces of metal that resembled pieces of the underside
of a car and also found a large object several feet deep in the muck, but could
not determine what it was. "It's the right size, but there is no way to
get equipment in there to find out what it is," Corsi said. “We don't want
to pull something up, unless we know it's the car"
He added that during
the 1970s, the pond was privately owned and used for water skiing. The
location, about 5 to 10 feet offshore, was marked with a yellow buoy but
because the bottom of the pond is deep with mud and muck, police speculated
whether it would have been possible for a car to sink low enough to escape
detection and determined it wasn't probable.
It was not until the
following Monday that the Andrews were reported missing when co-workers became
concerned because they failed to arrive at work. Police officers thoroughly
searched the Andrewes’ Arlington Heights home at 738 S. Vail Ave. but nothing
was out of sorts. Everything that was supposed to be in the house, was in the
house. All of their stocks, bonds, and credit cards were untouched since the
day they disappeared. Neighbors described them as a happy, outgoing couple,
always willing to help.
A background check
showed nothing abnormal. Edward Andrews was a semi-retired manager and
bookkeeper for Miller-Peerless Manufacturing Co. of Chicago, and Stephanie was
a credit investigator for Local Loan Co. The Andrews drank sparingly and
witnesses do recall them having drinks on the night they disappeared. They
never gambled. They weren’t rich but they were comfortable in a middle class
way. They had apparent ties to any criminal elements. They had been married
about seven years. It was the second marriage for Stephanie, whose first
husband had died. Edward Andrews had been married five times before. A search
of their backgrounds and family revealed nothing to indicate someone would want
to harm them.
In the meantime, a
dozen policemen searched the edges of the river and located a place on a bridge
on Lower Wacker Drive where there were scrapes on a concrete pillar and skid
marks on the road but no sign of a car going down into the river. Another team
of detectives interviewed most of the 250 guests who attended the party.
Police dragged the
river for 11 days after they found the car scrapes and tire marks. A grappling
hook caught something and the next day, divers swam 15 to 20 feet down to the
bottom of the river to investigate but it was random river junk. Stephanie
Andrews' brother, John Rynak, had stepped in to help. He provided sonar
equipment to help with the search. In November 1971, police returned to the
river for another search with more sophisticated sonar equipment and
metal-detection devices. Each of those searches revealed nothing.