Broad lawns. Fine old homes. Children who go into the world and make their mark. It sounds like either heaven or satire. Or like Kirkwood, Missouri, my hometown.
An old friend who’s lived all his life in the Saint Louis area but never in Kirkwood cast a cold eye on my hometown. “Not only is the last strand of Kirkwood’s leafy innocence destroyed, but I have the sense that this case will eventually rock the foundation of all suburban white America. I fully expect at least one made-for-TV movie and probably a Hollywood motion picture about Devlin. He will become a part of America’s prime crime folklore.”
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Neither could his wife. “The people who the media chose to interview regarding this story made Kirkwood (and Missouri) look like the rural West Virginia hills. I think this was the worst part for Kirkwood,” she wrote. “Shawn was apparently tortured beyond belief the first month after he was kidnapped. . . . Basically, I don’t understand how someone can see his photo on posters, etc . . . have police come to the house, and never say a word. Not to mention, going to a formal dance at a private girls’ school with a date. It’s beyond my understanding. . . . I personally believe the movie and book, etc., will be more about Shawn. Michael Devlin I consider to be just another pedophile who should be tortured and executed.”
But in Kirkwood, people were surprised, defensive, angry. Pat, a librarian at the public library, said that the owner of the pizza joint where Devlin worked “has been harassed (windows broken), and his business has slowed considerably. He placed a full page ad in the Webster-Kirkwood Times basically trying to con-vince people that he knew nothing about this.”
For more, see Michael Miner’s blog at chicagoreader.com.
