Chicago Magazine For years, a rough-hewn man named Curt Thompson threatened and intimidated his neighbors in the small farming community of Toulon, Illinois. Many complained about him, and a few filed charges, yet little was done, and residents learned to alter their lives to avoid him. Then one night, authorities say, a newcomer paid him a call, and the town’s worst fears came true
Patrick Fitzgerald may have arrived in town as the new U.S. attorney in August 2001, but he didn't really arrive until April 2, 2002, when he stood before the television cameras and announced the stunning news: Gov. George Ryan's three-decades-old campaign committee was being charged as a "criminal enterprise" whose thirst for money had led … Read more
“Kill your parents!” urged sixties leftist Bill Ayers, whose father was the chairman of Commonwealth Edison here. In Ayers’s new memoir, Fugitive Days, he reconciles his militant past with his present identity: father of three, esteemed professor at UIC—and unabashed patron of the great bourgeois coffee chain, Starbucks
By the time he died at 32 in 1958, Robert Earl Hughes of tiny Fishhook, Illinois, weighed more than 1,000 pounds, earning a place in The Guinness Book of World Records as the largest man on earth. Except for his neighbors and family, few people knew much about his life until recently, when an astonishing photograph sent the author in search of Hughes’s real story: Raised in a sharecropper’s cabin, trapped inside half a ton of flesh, this literate, companionable young man had dreamed of seeing the world. Aside from some carnival tours and one disastrous trip to New York, he never lived his dream. But in his short life, he found something else.
Ann Marie Lipinski may be the most powerful journalist in Chicago. She climbed to the top of the Chicago Tribune masthead in February, becoming the first woman to edit the daily in its 154-year history. In a long career there, she’s already put her mark on the paper, promoting good writing (some say at the cost of solid reporting) and advancing her crew of literate colleagues (dismaying others on the staff). She’s got more plans, including a redesign. Still, can her vision lift the Trib?
THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT: We asked Byrne and Bilandic how the snowstorm affected the February mayoral primary.
Jarrett and Rogers, both now headed to the White House, form two-thirds of a high-profile Chicago sisterhood along with publishing heir Linda Johnson Rice. Their friendship is described in this story by Marcia Froelke Coburn. Jarrett has been named a senior adviser to Obama and Rogers is said to be in line to be White House social secretary.
Pat Burgus thought she would soon be healed when psychiatrist Bennett Braun began treating her for multiple personality disorder. Instead, under hypnosis and on heavy medication, Burgus came to believe she possessed 300 personalities, ate human flesh, and sexually abused her two sons. Later, convinced Braun helped manufacture those memories, she sued. Now, even after receiving a $10.6-million settlement, she won’t let up in her crusade against the man whose treatment, she says, nearly destroyed her
In honor of the Steppenwolf mainstay, we are republishing our 1998 profile of Mahoney at the height of his TV career.
