In Joliet, Illinois—according to its official website “a perfect place to live, work and play”—two women and a man were drinking in a bar. The women, Elvida and Jessica, were cousins, in their 30s. The man, who was younger, paid $50 to have sex with Elvida in a nearby shed. The act made her hungry, if not rich, and she left to get something to eat. Out it wore the man, apparently, and he went home.
A little later, Jessica removed $76 dollars from the man’s wallet, while he sat motionless on his sofa. This pick-pocketing required no art. She first beat him to death with a baseball bat. The fair-minded cousins split the money, though only after Jessica claimed a small vig for her exertions: she kept $40. You’d think you could dump a body in Chicago, but it didn’t work. Yesterday, Jess got thirty years. Elvida, earlier, twenty-five.
