Originally published in The Rock River Times.

Susan Brady and Cecilia Burns were very excited. They had made plans for Susan to go over to Cecilia’s house after school. It was December 20, 1965, and it was chilly, so the girls bundled up before leaving the school.

They left the school around 3:15 p.m. and walked to Cecilia’s house on Irving Avenue. The time passed all too quickly and soon it was time for Susan to go home for dinner. Cecilia offered to walk part of the way with Susan since it got dark so quickly at that time of the year. They walked to the intersection of School Street and Albert Avenue together before going their separate ways at 5:45 p.m. Susan still had quite a walk ahead of her to reach her house at 703 N. Day Avenue. Cecilia was frightened by strange noises on the way home and looked back several times to check on Susan’s progress. She would be the last person to see Susan Brady alive.

Susan’s mother, Norma, grew concerned as the sky darkened and the day turned into evening. Susan was always home by dinner. After James came home from work, they looked for her on foot, following the route that Susan would have taken home. They spoke to Cecilia, who told them she left Susan at the intersection of Albert Avenue and School Street. As the evening grew later, they searched with their car. Two hours after they started searching, they decided to call the police. James explained later that he didn’t want to involve the police too early. The family really felt Susie would walk in the door any second. But of course, she didn’t.

The next day there was still no sign of Susie, and more people got involved in the search. On December 22, the search became a full-blown effort. There were men with dogs looking and others on foot that were divided into teams of five to six men accompanied by a police officer. Police Sergeant Robert Selgren gave the two hundred people that volunteered their last-minute instructions.

There were also ten airplanes taking part in the search under the supervision of Captain H. W. Lundberg. They were in the air looking for anything that should be checked out by the ground crew.

Susan’s father and two older brothers helped in the search. Norma sat in their beautiful home waiting for some word that Susan had been found, safe and sound. The house had been decorated for Christmas, and they plugged in the tree every night so the house would be all lit when Susan came home.

As the massive search was taking place, Susan’s school, St. Patrick’s held a special prayer service and over six hundred students attended. Susan was in Sister Leora’s sixth grade class and the day’s newspapers had quotes from the teacher and several of Susie’s classmates describing her. Sister Leora said that Susie was a good student, quiet, conscientious, and helpful to her fellow classmates. Susan’s friends said she was fun, friendly and that she loved to dance to her favorite group, the Beatles.

On Christmas Eve, the Brady family asked for a special Christmas wish. “Our only request is that everyone pray for her safe return and keep looking in their yards to see if they can find her.” James Brady was quoted in the paper. They also thanked the community for the great response. Many people helped by taking part in the search, answering the telephone, bringing food for the family and volunteers, and assisting with the other Brady children. The whole community seemed determined to find this little girl.

There was a $2,500 reward offered for information leading to the safe return of Susan by Register-Republic and the Rockford Morning Star. Other people gave money toward the reward, including a number of children. Later, another $1,000.00 was added to the reward by the Chamber of Commerce.

The Christmas tree at the Brady house still stood with the lights twinkling every night even through the middle of January. James Brady, Susan’s father, said, “We still are hoping to have our family’s Christmas celebration.” He went on to say the family is back to normal on the outside returning to work and school. But underneath, they still jumped every time they heard a car pull into the driveway or the phone rang.

Around the middle of January, claims from several young girls came to the police’s attention. One girl said that on the day that Susan went missing, December 20, 1965, she was walking just a few blocks from where Susan was last seen. The twelve-year-old little girl was walking home on the 1300 block of Blaisdell Street around 5:30 p.m. A man driving a 1961 green Cadillac pulled over to the side of the road and asked the girl if she wanted a ride. The girl refused and turned the corner and walked quickly away. The man drove away in the same direction where Susan was walking home. Police asked for information from anyone who might have seen the car, or the man described by the second little girl.

The Bradys were very touched by how wonderful and compassionate people had been to them. Cards, telegrams, and well wishes arrived at their house every day. These cards were not just from Rockford but from all over the country.

That Valentine’s Day of 1966 started out as a bright, crisp day but quickly turned dark as the family finally learned what happened to their beautiful, young daughter. The family’s hopes for reuniting with Susan were completely smashed. James and Norma were told that a man, Russell Charles Dewey, twenty-five years old, surrendered to FBI agents in California after returning from a flight to Mexico.

The police became suspicious of Dewey when reports by the little girls of a man in a 1961 Cadillac stopping them to offer a ride home. Dewey owned such a car until January 4 when he sold the car to Genrich and Harris Auto Sales. A day later, he quit his job and left for San Diego.

During questioning, Dewey stated that he was driving on School Street around a quarter to six in the evening when little Susie ran right out in front of his car near St. Patrick’s Church’s driveway. Dewey was unable to stop and struck her with his car.

Dewey scooped Susan up and placed her in the front seat on his trench coat to rush to Rockford Memorial Hospital to get her medical treatment. He drove as fast as he could but when he reached the entrance, the little girl was dead. He checked her heartbeat and pulse, but it was no use, she was already gone. Dewey became frightened, he said, because he had no insurance and was afraid to be sued.

Later that same day, Rockford Police Chief Delbert Peterson shared the sad news of Susie’s death and Dewey’s arrest for the crime at a press conference. Peterson explained to reporters that Dewey had admitted killing Susan but stated that it was an accident. State’s Attorney William Nash then spoke to describe some of the clues that were followed to solve Susan’s murder.

The men described the search for the car reported by the little girl. Following this lead, they came upon Dewey’s name for the first time. Their suspicions grew when they found out he had sold the car, quit his job, and then left town after Susan’s disappearance. The police involved the FBI to hunt Dewey down while they started to look for evidence here in Rockford. The police found out that Dewey had moved in with Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Carruthers, his grandparents, during the summer of 1965.

The police searched the Carruthers home after the reports from the attempted kidnap of the little girl on the day Susie disappeared. The search led to finding the incinerator designed from a 50-gallon drum. They also found some suspicious matter in the ashes at the bottom of the can that appeared to be human bone. The police sent that to the FBI lab in Washington, D.C. It would eventually come back as being bone from a child eight to twelve years old. A fugitive warrant was issued for Dewey.

Dewey admitted he was staying at the Carruthers house during December while his grandparents were in Florida. This is where he decided to take Susie after he realized she was dead. He told the police that he panicked after he realized that Susan was dead, and he drove to his grandparents’ house on West State Street near Meridian. It was here that he jammed Susan’s little body, her bookbag, and his trench coat into a 50-gallon incinerator. He used gasoline to set the items on fire. Dewey was shocked to see that even after hours of burning there were some larger pieces of bone that survived the fire. Dewey disposed of them in the Winnebago County landfill located next to the J.L. Case Plant w here he worked.

The police didn’t believe Dewey’s story of an accident. They felt that he had abducted little Susan, taken her to the garage behind his home where he killed her with a sledgehammer.

Dewey was very concerned about returning to Rockford because he didn’t think he would get a fair trial there. Assistant State’s Attorney Alfred Cowan flew out to San Diego to serve the warrant for Dewey’s arrest for the murder of Susan. Dewey was returned to Rockford in March. His attorney argued for a change of venue, and it was finally decided that the trial would be held in Sycamore.

On February 22, 1966, St. Patrick’s Church held a memorial service for Susan. Hundreds of families, friends, classmates, and members of the Rockford community came together to pay their last respects for the little girl so many had searched and prayed they would be returned safe and sound. Many who attended spoke of being impressed with the inspirational way the Brady family conducted themselves. The Brady family asked the community for fair treatment of the man who killed their daughter.

The trial of Russell Dewey began on August 8, 1966, in Sycamore, Illinois. Attorney Roy S. Lasswell was Dewey’s defense Attorney and State’s Attorney William Nash was assisted by the Assistant State’s Attorney, Alfred W. Cowan representing the State of Illinois. Circuit Judge Charles G. Seidel presided over the trial.

Dr. J. Lawrence, physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. testified about the largest bone found in the incinerator as being “a vertebra from an immature person”. He also testified that the other bone fragments found came from a child eight to twelve years old.

Four little girls also testified during the trial and told the jury how they had been approached by a man in a green 1961 Cadillac. When asked if they could identify the man, all four did not hesitate as they pointed to Dewey sitting at the defense table.

Norma Brady, Susan’s mother, was the last of the thirty-three witnesses called by State’s Attorney William Nash. Her sorrow was hard to witness and many in the court had tears in their eyes when she stepped from the stand. The defense called thirteen witnesses, and Dewey was the last to testify for the defense.

On August 22, the Dekalb County jury consisting of three men and three women, deliberated three hours and forty-seven minutes. Judge Seidel warned that he would tolerate no outburst as the verdict was read. The air was thick with tension as everyone waited to hear the verdict.

Russell Dewey was found guilty of the murder of eleven-year-old Susan Brady. He showed no emotion but his first wife, Sandra, was in the courtroom and she began to cry. Dewey patted her arm as if to comfort her. His mother and grandparents were also in the courtroom and were obviously shaken by the verdict.

Dewey apparently did his time without any further incidents and news came in February of 1987 that Dewey would be released in April 1987. There were a lot of people that were angered by the release. Dewey was originally sentenced to twenty to fifty years, but he was released after serving twenty.

Susan’s memory was honored by the opening of the Susan Brady Memorial Library at St. Patrick’s Elementary School. The Brady’s dedicated the money that had been donated by community members, students, and the Chamber of Commerce for the project.

On the anniversary of Susan’s twentieth birthday, St. Patrick’s Church held a special Memorial Mass in her name. Susan and her family are still remembered by many in the city of Rockford and 2025 will mark the sixtieth anniversary of her death. The little girl that disappeared so long ago joined this community together in a way that nothing had before. Her death touched all in the community and some would say that it changed Rockford forever.

 

Copyright © 2025 Kathi Kresol, Haunted Rockford Events

Originally published in “Murder And Mayhem In Rockford, Illinois” by Kathi Kresol.

There are certain images that come to your mind when you hear the word
“prohibition.” One might be sharp-dressed men driving fancy cars; the other might be wild parties with bob-haired women dressed in flapper-style dresses dancing their cares away as the bathtub gin flows. A darker image might be of the gangsters from that period, driving by and shooting their guns at people on the street or police raiding homes and breaking up stills, emptying bottles of moonshine into the street.

There are also stories of everyday folks getting very sick drinking what they thought was homemade moonshine but turned out to be poison. The federal government passed a law that methanol be added to all industrial alcohol to discourage consumption during prohibition. Methanol is a poison that causes blindness and even death. In July 1920, two soldiers from Camp Grant in Rockford Illinois, Private George Girex and Luther H. Davis, were admitted to the base hospital after consuming denatured alcohol.

Girex was in serious condition when checked into the hospital. He was blind and very confused. He was with a group of friends from Camp Grant on West State Street at the Loop Cafe when he passed out. Fortunately, both soldiers made full recoveries. Girex was the one who brought the liquor in a small bottle. At first, the doctors thought he drank the poison in a suicide attempt. His fellow soldiers told the doctors the truth, and eventually it was all explained.

During the period of 1920-33, there was a battle of sorts happening in the streets of Rockford. Sometimes the battle was between the police and the bootleggers. Other times, it was bootlegger against bootlegger as different gangs fought for the advantage in the selling of illegal liquor. There were smaller battles as the liquor makers stole from one another. They would break into houses, stealing equipment, mash or the bottled liquor from one another.
In the war between police and bootleggers, one of the first “kings” to be caught was Stanley “Big Steve” Makeshaitis, a Lithuanian who ran at least five different stills and was suspected of running even more. He pleaded guilty to making, transporting and selling moonshine. He was fined $1,000 and served sixty days for perjury and bootlegging.

The newspapers were filled with stories of the raids that the police held on different houses where the booze was made or the speakeasies where it was sold. People would remodel their homes to hide the booze under trapdoors and in closets. Other bootleggers were even more clever. One man became famous throughout southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois when he shared his secret of smuggling booze in chicken eggs. He blew out the contents of the eggs, filled them with liquor and sealed the holes with candle wax. His house was raided several times, but the police never found any of the hooch. He loved to tell the story of the police tearing apart his house while he sat at the kitchen table right by a basket of freshly gathered eggs. His secret was discovered when he offered to sell it to the wrong man, who later used the information as a bargaining chip with the police.

The illegal liquor business was an equal-opportunity employer. Men and women—white, African American or Native American—were all represented in the jails in the beginning. Whole families became involved as people struggled to hold jobs and feed their families.

Claims of illegal hooch being dangerous were proven in 1922 when Jeremiah Mutimer, a well-loved local man, bought illegal hooch and died shortly afterward. Mutimer, forty-three years old, was going on a trip to California and left the house to buy his ticket. “I think I will go out and get a couple of shots of hooch for my California trip,” he told his niece before leaving the house.

When he returned around 5:00 p.m., he seemed slightly intoxicated and had no train ticket. He pulled the bottle from his pocket and drained the remainder of the liquor. As he finished the bottle, he collapsed. His family thought he was just intoxicated and carried him to bed.

In the morning, his niece’s eight-year-old son, Joe, who was Mutimer’s constant companion, tried to wake him up. Joe was unsuccessful and ran to get his mother. It was then that the family realized that Mutimer was dead. The coroner, Fred C. Olson, was sent for. Olson questioned the family and learned that Mutimer had been drinking. Little Joe told police and the coroner that Mutimer frequently purchased his booze from Big Mary.

Police were very familiar with Big Mary. Her full name was Mary Bukowski, and she was known to the police, the state’s attorney and the people on the southwest side of Rockford. Little Joe accompanied his great uncle to Mary’s place many times in the past to buy the illegal hooch. In fact, on the last trip, just two days before Mutimer’s death, he and Big Mary had argued and Big Mary had threatened Joe and told him not to return.

The county physician, Clarence Boswell, conducted an autopsy on Mutimer and sent the contents of his stomach to Kenneth Jones, the city chemist, to see if he could determine what ingredients were used to make the booze. This would allow them to determine which liquor maker had mixed the lethal dose.

Jeremiah worked as a knitter at the Burson Knitting Company in the past but had quit his job to move to California. He was home for a month-long visit with his family and staying at his niece’s house. The family told the police that Jeremiah was a well-known man with lots of friends. His only problems arose from his drinking habit. It had increased in the last year, and his family was concerned for him.

Jeremiah’s death was later determined to be caused by the swelling of his brain due to the poison contained in the illegal liquor. Big Mary and her son, Sigmund, were both arrested and later released on bond. It was decided that the poisoning was accidental.

Rockford earned a reputation for being so strict on bootleggers that the supply of hooch was well below the high demand. In 1922, bootleggers would come from all over Illinois to attempt to sell illegal liquor at higher prices than they could charge in other areas. This kept the police busy with the increased liquor traffic and with the skirmishes that erupted between the local dealers and the visiting booze sellers.

The bootleggers started to organize into gangs in 1923. The Rockford Sunday Republic dated August 17, 1930, stated the reason for this was “to withstand the attacks being made on them by enforcement officers, and to hold up the tumbling alcohol and moonshine prices which were rapidly slipping down.”

The gangs had to use strong-arm tactics to ensure their success. The first reported gangland killing in Rockford was on October 8, 1923. George Minert, thirteen years old, was looking for insects for his zoology class on the Fred Stoner property on the Old Freeport Road that branched off of Montague Road almost four miles southwest of Rockford. Young Minert must have been horrified when he looked into a culvert and found a body. The man was later identified as Louis J. Milani. Milani had his head bashed in, and his throat was cut ear to ear so deeply that he was almost decapitated. He had deep slashes on his face and hands. A large one-hundred-pound rock had been placed on his chest, and then his body was stuffed into the culvert. The police believed that Milani was grabbed from his rooming house at 412 Sixteenth Avenue, knocked unconscious and then taken outside the city. The evidence proved that he was already in the culvert when his throat was cut.

Police knew that Milani worked in the “bootleg racket.” They worked the theory that Milani had been “taken for a ride” by the gang for an unknown reason. They hit a brick wall in their investigation, and the murder went unsolved.

Coroner Olson was approached by a medical school in Chicago. They requested Milani’s body for teaching purposes. Olson decided that the body should stay in Rockford, in case family turned up at a later date. Louis Milani was laid to rest in the Potter’s Field in at the Winnebago County Poor Farm Cemetery.

Sources:
Rockford (IL) Daily Register Gazette. “Bootlegger Is Fined $1,000 and Draws 60 Days,” June 23, 1921.
___________. “Drinker Is Found Dead; Hunt Seller.” May 5, 1922.
___________. “Moon Too Cheap in the Tri-Cities.” January 10, 1922.
Rockford (IL) Morning Star. “Post Mortem Mutimer Body Causes Stir.” May 6, 1922.
___________. “Soldier Wanted a Drink of Liquor, Not Poison.” July 1, 1920.
Rockford (IL) Republic. “Man’s Head Almost Slashed from Body.” October 8, 1923.
___________. “Moonshine Egg.” June 10, 1921.
___________. “Rival Slew Milani.” October 16, 1923.

 

Photo Credit:
A Photograph of police dumping confiscated illegal liquor in the street in front of the courthouse. From Midway Village Museum, Rockford, Illinois.

 

Copyright © 2015, 2025 Kathi Kresol, Haunted Rockford.