The Case of the Drowning Men (28 page)

If
this is
true
,
i
t’s
really
bad news
for law abiding citizens,
because if the police won’t say somebody’s been killed
when they have been
, they won’t investigate
it
either
, and
the
n the
murderers
can
breathe and
walk free without
a
fight.
And kill again
whenever they
please
to
,
without fear of being apprehended.

Historically, with its
in
famous
mob families
, colorful gangsters
and
legendary
shootouts
, Chicago is notorious if not synonymous with crime, so tweaking the numbers
today
to reflect a
sudden
downturn
or turnaround
in criminal activity isn’t going to
radically
change this
worldwide
perception of the windy city.
It’s a rep
Chicagoans are
forever
stuck with, like it or not.

In 2011,
after
the Chicago Police Department
released their statistics for the year 2010, reporting in them that violent crime was the lowest it had been in 45 years, the CPD
was
confronted by the press about the possibility
its
detectives were being pressured to
water down
serious crime stats
.

Clearly vexed by the
insinuation
, t
he chief of police curtly
replied
for the
record
“absolutely not.”

Yet
a year
after
Jay
Polhill’s undetermined death was upgraded by the medical examiner’s office to “drowning due to multiple injuries
from
assault”
the
police ha
d
still not formally labeled
his case
a homicide
. In fact,
Chicago’s
chief of police informed reporters that
it
was only recently forwarded to the CPD’s cold case division
for further
analysis
.

So i
s progress just slow then, or is the
Polhill
murder a perplexing
statistical
nuisance?

At a glance
,
the case doesn’t seem that complicated:
On the
evening of February 28th
2010,
when
Jay Polhill
first
went missing
,
he
’d
told
his
friends he was going to a party on the
opposite
side of town. A
third-year
photography major at
Chicago’s Columbia College, he had his camera strapped
around his neck
and took his laptop with him
as well, both items potentially containing important clues as to what may have happened next, but neither of them ever found.

It’s likely
,
in his journey
s
that night
,
Polhill
may have
mistakenly
stumbled into a bad neighborhood
; Chicago
does have
a few
, I hate to remind
. O
r perhaps
,
even
more probable,
he
saw something
through
his
camera
lens
that he
shouldn’t
have
.

There’s always stuff going down every night
in any
major
city
, and not all of it
is
good
.
I
f
it was an event
of this nature
that
the young
photographer
chanced
upon
,
then
maybe
, i
n his
artistic
opinion
, i
t
w
ould
have made for an award-winning
snapshot
, but it’s still called being in the wrong place at the wrong time
—pe
o
ple enga
g
ed in a
criminal enterprise
, no matter how photogenic,
don’t usually
want
their picture taken
.

The condition of Polhill’s
semi-naked
body when it was recovered March
2nd 2010
from desolate
waters
in the Calumet River basin, suggest
ed
he was
beaten unconscious with a club, a bat, or a similar
style of
weapon, and the
reafter
placed into the
river
where he
may have
quickly
drowned.

An autopsy
on the victim
revealed multiple blunt force trauma delivered to both sides of the skull and to vertebrae in
the
neck
,
while he was
still living.

There were
some
postmortem injuries
eviden
ced
on both
of
his legs
too
,
but
these
were
thought to
have been
derived from an engine propeller striking his body
as it
was floating
downriver
.

A
dditionally, a
lthough
the
fact his
corpse was retrieved
nude from the waist down
generated some
lurid
speculation
, the Chicago medical examiner did not find any
sign
of
a
sexual assault
. Ditto for
campus
rumors
concerning
drugs or a drug deal gone sour
which were also proven to be
unfounded when
,
weeks
later
,
Polhill’s
toxicology report showed
there were no
narcotics
or
even
alcohol
in his system
at
the time
that
he died
.

From the start, Chicago
officials
had
attempted
to rule
Jay
Polhill’s death an accidental drowning, even
implying
a
death by
suicide
, despite the victim having never once displayed or expressed suicidal tendencies
.
Th
e city’s
determination
finally
being overturned
wasn’t the product of
any
nagging second thoughts
either
, but
was
rather
another example of what can be accomplished when
a victim’s family and friends
prod
local
authorities
to consider
new
evidence,
and are willing to part with a pretty penny to
hire
well-respected outside professionals
in order to obtain it
.

Behind the scenes,
it was
a
skilled
private
detective’s
dedication
to
Polhill’s
case
and a
second
forensic pathologist’s opinion
which
led to the city’s medical examiner reconsidering her earlier
ruling
.
This was required
because, o
bviously, someone can’t take a baseball bat
and repeatedly bash
their own skull
in with it
even if the
y
wanted to, so the
original
decision
implying
that
Polhill did
just that
, once
it was
made
known to the
public,
had to be
modified
to save
Chicago’s finest
from
embarrassment
.

Now that his death  has
rightly
been reclassified as
homicide, at least
through
the medical examiner’s office
, the question that must be answered at last is how
Polhill
ended up in
such
a remote locale
more than twenty miles
from his residence, without
owning
a car,
getting
a ride
from someone
, or using his
travel
pass.

As to bridges or other areas he could have walked across or fallen into the river system from,
police insist
they reviewed
surveillance
footage from all
of
the
city
’s
bridges
and
wharfs
and
no images of
the victim
were captured
on
or
near
any of them.

It’s a
modern day
murder mystery and the passage of time
has
certainly
deepen
ed
it, but t
he various
antemortem
fractures and contusions
on Polhill’s body
show this was
far from
a perfect crime.
Hiding it
in water
may have been meticulously
planned
, but t
here were mistakes made in its execution and
clearly
a lot of things went wrong
for the perpetrators, including
the possibility
that their victim fought back
and tried to escape
.
Simply because two years
or more
have passed and the identity of the killers still
remains
a secret does not mean
the individuals responsible for this heinous act can’t be
made to account for it
sometime soon
.

On the part of law enforcement
,
this
only requires
police
persistence
,
a
methodical
pursuit
of the facts to uncover
more
evidence
and eyewitnesses
; and
a
steadfast
dedication
to
enforcing
the
victim
’s rights
,
regardless of who the criminals
should
turn out to be
.

To those ends, the family of Jay Polhill is offering a reward
as an incentive
for the public’s assistance
in cracking this case
. Visit
www.jaypolhill.com
for more information.

As mentioned,
and at the behest of Polhill’s parents, his
disappearance and death
has
finally
been
reexamined
by
the Chicago Police Department
and
it
was recently
assigned
to
their
Cold Case division for
a more
active
investigation. Anyone with
any
information about
this matter
may
now
phone
312-746-9690
to speak
with
a detective,
or leave a
crime
tip on the department's cold
case website
at
http://www.chicagopolice.org/coldcase
.