Authorities had no bodies, no murder weapon and no crime scene. All they knew was that two people were gone and rumors pointed to drug dealer Billy Dean Smith.
Their break in the case came when he started talking, but was his confession really true?
About the author
A veteran community newspaper journalist, Phil Hermanek has reported on crime from the South Side of Chicago to Northwest Indiana to Southcentral Alaska. His most extensive trial coverage has been from Cook County Criminal Court at 26th and California in Chicago and the Kenai and Anchorage courts in Alaska.
After learning journalism at the Defense Information School at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Hermanek wrote for and edited U.S. Army newspapers in Germany. Upon being honorably discharged in 1971, he returned to his hometown of Chicago and began working as a crime and general assignment reporter for The Daily Calumet. At that time, he also studied crime reporting at Loyola University with long-time criminal court reporter Ed Rooney of The Chicago Daily News. Hermanek and Rooney worked side-by-side covering the famous Ed Hanrahan trial, former Cook County State’s Attorney.
As editor of The Calumet Day newspaper in Northwest Indiana, Hermanek covered the criminal trial of former Hammond Mayor Joe Klen, also providing courtroom sketches to the newspaper.
After many years of full-time work and part-time college, Hermanek completed a degree in English from Northwestern University’s downtown Chicago night school.
Following a couple stints as a professional business communicator for Big Oil in Chicago and the automotive safety products industry in Utah, Hermanek returned to community journalism and his passion –crime reporting — for The Peninsula Clarion newspaper in Kenai, Alaska.
Now retired and living with his ever-present Alaskan Husky — Yukon — Hermanek writes from his log cabin high in the mountains of northeastern Utah.
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