An Incomprehensible Crime: The Murder of Gloria Sullivan

"Chicago Tribune," April 4, 1943, via Newspapers.com

Seemingly motiveless murders are notoriously difficult to solve.  So it is small wonder that the following case--which is about as “seemingly motiveless” as they come--is still remembered as one of the creepiest mysteries in the history of Lansing, Illinois.

Gloria Sullivan had a rough start in life.  In 1933, when she was only four years old, her father Clarence Sullivan deserted his wife Viola and their three children.  What made his abandonment all the worse was that Viola found herself utterly unable to provide for her offspring.  Gloria and an older sister, Theodora, were placed in a juvenile detention home.   A very short time later, Viola died.

Theodora was eventually taken in by a Chicago family, and in 1935, Gloria became the foster daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Brady, of Lansing.  Fortunately, the Bradys were kind, loving people who gave Gloria a good home.  The Bradys wanted to formally adopt the girl, but their inability to contact Clarence Sullivan--who appeared to have disappeared off the face of the earth--made that impossible.  However, this did not stop them from treating Gloria as their biological child.

After Mrs. Brady died of cancer in 1941, 12-year-old Gloria took over as “the lady of the house.”  She managed to juggle housework, school, and frequent babysitting jobs.  Despite all the sadness she had experienced early on, Gloria was now happy and well-adjusted.  She was an intelligent girl who did very well at school, and was clearly unusually mature and responsible for her years.  She seemed to have a promising future.

April 3, 1943, started off as usual.  At 8 a.m., Patrick gave Gloria money to do shopping and left for his job at the Inland Steel Company.  An hour later, Gloria phoned a schoolmate, Dorothy Weidig, to suggest that they go looking for Easter clothes in nearby Hammond, Indiana.  Dorothy agreed, and took a bus to the Brady house.  Also around 9, the driver of a laundry delivery service left some clothes with Gloria.  About half-an-hour later, a neighbor, Viola Tobin, came by to collect a vacuum cleaner Gloria had borrowed.  Mrs. Tobin later said that Gloria seemed perfectly normal.  When she left with her vacuum, Mrs. Tobin had no reason to suspect that she would be the last person to see the 14-year-old alive.

Aside from Gloria’s murderer, that is.  Within less than an hour, something unimaginable took place in the Brady home.

At 10:20, Dorothy Weidig arrived at Gloria’s front door.  She noticed that the door was locked from the inside.  She knocked, and was puzzled to receive no answer.  She tried looking through a window, but the curtains were shut too tightly to see inside.  After about five minutes, she gave up and took the 10:30 bus to Hammond alone.

The Brady home remained quiet--too quiet--until 5:15 p.m., when Patrick came back from work.  As he approached the house, he heard a radio playing loudly inside.  [Note: When questioned later, Dorothy Weidig stated that she did not hear a radio when she visited the home.]  The front door was now unlocked.  When he went into the kitchen, he found a scene of horror: Gloria was lying on the floor, her dead body ravaged by multiple stab wounds.

Police soon ascertained that the girl had been stabbed 20 times in her back, chest, and throat.  There were also multiple defensive wounds on her arms.  Found near the body were the murder weapons--two knives from the Brady kitchen.

From the beginning, investigators were stumped to find a motive for this particularly vicious murder.  Gloria was fully dressed, and showed no signs of sexual assault.  The rest of the house was in its usual perfect order, and nothing was missing--including $200 in cash which was stored in a kitchen cabinet.  Gloria had no boyfriends, and certainly no enemies.

The police found a handful of clues in the house.  In the bathroom was a bloody palm print on the wash basin.  Next to the basin was Gloria’s hairbrush, which was full of long blonde hair.  As Gloria was a brunette and Patrick had gray hair, this was considered noteworthy.  (Although I find it difficult to picture any murderer taking the time to brush his or her hair before fleeing the scene.)  The bathroom also had a bloody fingerprint on the wall and a stack of bloody towels.

Everyone who knew Gloria was questioned by the police, but none of them could name a possible motive for the murder, let alone a possible suspect.  Gloria’s 19-year-old sister Theodora, who was now a telephone operator in Chicago, was equally unhelpful.  She had not talked to Gloria in eight months, and had no idea where their father was.

On the basis of vague, unconfirmed reports that Clarence had been seen in the Lansing area, police toyed with the idea that Gloria’s long-estranged father was the murderer, although they were unable to explain why, after ignoring Gloria’s existence for the past ten years, Clarence would take it into his head to reestablish family ties by stabbing his daughter to death.  An effort was made to trace him, but Clarence had well and truly vanished.  He was declared legally dead in 1950.

While reading Gloria’s diary, investigators noted that someone had “tried to flirt” with her.  When questioned, this male--who was never publicly named--was apparently able to clear himself.

Patrick Brady never really recovered from his beloved foster daughter’s hideous murder.  He would continually haunt the police station, hoping against hope that something would turn up to revive the cold case.  Four years later, he suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of only 59.  One could argue he was the murderer’s second victim.