CRIME: Room with a View

The view from the apartment buildings that rim Chicago’s lakefront is a pleasant, peaceful thing: the streams of cars on Lake Shore Drive, the narrow strips of green park, the rock-ribbed beaches, the glistening lake with its splashing bathers, and, in the distance, a crisp sail. From his 15th floor apartment, A. Kirk Besley, 53, superintendent of Chicago’s Norwegian American hospital, often passed the time at his picture window studying the scene through his binoculars.

One sunny afternoon last week Besley sat down at his favorite window, focused his glasses on the lake. He watched a launch cut through the water, the frolicking bathers on the beach. Shifting his gaze inland he saw a woman sitting on a camp chair. She was reading a book. Walking slowly up from behind her, a white shirt in his hand, was a tanned, muscular, bare-chested man. Curious, Besley watched as the man walked along the edge of a thicket, suddenly dropped to his hands and knees and crawled into the bushes.

Besley put down his glasses for a moment, then picked them up again. To his surprise he saw the man crawl out of the bushes, stand up, look around furtively, duck back. Then the woman left her chair, walked to a rock about three feet from the thicket. There she sat down again.

Then Besley watched with growing horror as the man abruptly reappeared, darted for the woman, looped his shirt around her face, pulled her down into the bushes, began beating her on the head.

Besley threw down his glasses, called his wife. Together, they raced for their car in the basement garage, sped across the drive, hailed a motorcycle cop. When they arrived at the thicket ten minutes later, the man was gone. In the bushes, the cop found the body of Margaret Gallagher, a 50-year-old beauty-parlor operator. Her skull was crushed, her body half-stripped. Nearby lay her book, Ben-Hur. In it was a religious picture with an image of Christ on one side; on the other was printed “A Prayer for a Happy Death.”