Sarah Avon Abducted 37 Years Ago: Ferak Column

JOLIET, IL - This past week marked another anniversary in Joliet, but it's a sad, agonizing anniversary. On July 21, 1981, a Tuesday night, 6-year-old Sarah Avon was playing outside with her 5-year-old sister, Marie, on Joliet's southeast side. Shortly before dark, Sarah vanished. She was never seen again. The Will County Sheriff's Department never found her body and sheriff's detectives did not catch the person who kidnapped Sarah.

I was 8 years old when Sarah vanished, and I remember hearing news about her disappearance on WJOL and in The Joliet Herald-News. At the time, we also lived on Joliet's east side, on Gardner Street, across from Nowell Park. Even as a child, I remember trying to replay the events on her disappearance in my head. How did it happen? Did a car pull up and offer her candy? Did someone jump out of the bushes, grab her and speed off on Interstate 80?

I also remember how my mind started playing tricks with me. It was that fall or the following year when two of my uncles took my brother and I up to Chicago to visit the Museum of Science & Industry. I still remember it like yesterday, a creepy looking guy, in the crowded stairwell, muttered something to me. I was scared and turned away, but the image of the encounter did not go away. The guy had dark greasy hair, unshaven, looked to be around 35 to 40. I'm pretty sure he was alone.

I've often wondered whether the man was completely harmless or a creepy predator scouting a large public venue for naive-looking kids? Did Sarah Avon's disappearance cause my mind to play tricks on me? Probably.

This week, to re-familiarize myself with Sarah's tragedy, I visited the Joliet Public Library in downtown Joliet. I pulled out the microfilm from the months of July 1981 and August 1981. I wanted to review the old newspaper articles in The Joliet Herald-News.

Sarah disappeared at a time before Amber Alerts, before the Internet and before social media. I remember how people had slapped up posters of Sarah in her Joliet Park District soccer jersey, inside the Stewarts Grocery Store on Richards Street, where my parents used to buy their meat.

From the original articles in The Herald-News, here were some key takeaways:

"Missing Since Tuesday: Search for girl continues." The original article about Sarah's disappearance, published July 22, 1981, was seven paragraphs, not incredibly long. "Will County Sheriff's deputies and volunteers continued to search this morning for 6-year-old Sarah Avon who has been missing from her east side Joliet home since about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday. Police and neighbors continued their all-night search around her home, 716 Richards Street, while volunteer firefighters manned five boats and dragged a quarry near Richards and Interstate 80."

Key police officials mentioned in the original articles: Sgt. Tom Hernandez of the Will County Sheriff's Department, undersheriff Charles Hahn and Lt. Larry Suligoy.

Two John Whiteside Columns

The late John Whiteside produced two columns within three weeks of her disappearance. Both focused on his interviews with Sarah's mother, Mary "Jame" Avon, then 26. Whiteside's original column ran on Friday, July 24, 1981.

Excerpts from the original column:

"Little Sarah has been missing since about 8:20 p.m. Tuesday. No one has seen her since she walked across the street to see a playmate who wasn't home."

"Sarah and her sister, Marie, 5, had been playing track ball moments earlier ... Marie went to the front porch of the home next door to play a game. That's when Sarah walked across the street. Earlier, the two girls had been to see their mother. They wanted to go to a tractor pull. They didn't know what it was, but they wanted to see one. Someone outside had mentioned the tractor pull, and it sounded like fun."

Sarah "knows a lot of people in this area that I don't," her mother told Whiteside. "She's active in church, swimming lessons, park district soccer, ballet and she knows a lot from the neighborhood. I've been racking my brain trying to remember who she might trust. She's very perceptive of people."

Whiteside column 2, published Aug. 11, 1981.

Sarah's mother: "All I can think of is, 'Dear God, why?' Why can't someone just let me know my baby is alive. If she's alive and well, just let her write me a letter. The not knowing is the worst. I try to keep hoping but ... I want to keep hoping she is all right. If she's dead, please let me know. If she's alive, please let me know."

"I'm so afraid they will stop looking. A 6-year-old child just doesn't vanish and leave nothing behind. Someone has to know something."

"Is she somewhere screaming for help? Who's got my daughter? She was looking forward so much to being a big girl and out of kindergarten ... What will she look like when she's 18? Will I ever see my baby grow up?"

Cop quotes: Here are some of the comments made by Will County Sheriff's officials in the days and weeks that followed in their unsuccessful search to find Sarah and identify the culprit.

July 27 newspaper article, Sgt. Hernandez: "We have nothing further than we had the day she disappeared."

Aug. 6 article, Lt. Larry Suligoy: "It's no longer the case of a lost child after two weeks." Suligoy went on to say he could not remember a Will County Sheriff's Department case where a child was ever missing this long.

Police dig up lot, 1993: Former Chicago Tribune reporter Bob Merrifield produced a story in May 1993 headlined,"Deathbed Clue May Solve Girl's '81 Disappearance." The article surrounded a tip that came from a dying man in Arkansas, unable to speak, making a drawing that some people in his family believed was in reference to the burial of Sarah Avon's body in Joliet.

Merrifield wrote how a former Joliet property owner on Miller Street, about two miles away, "is reported to have given the police a clue to Sarah's disappearance, possibly implicating a mentally ill relative. As he lay dying, unable to speak, with family members gathered around in his final hours, the man drew a distinctive, triangular shape on a piece of paper and put a circle inside the figure. Some family members have told police the drawing strongly resembled the odd-shaped lot on which the family home once stood in Joliet."

Dig on Miller Street doesn't pan out:

Merrifield's coverage of the dig in May 1993 noted how Sarah's father, Charles Avon, then 44, was on hand, as was Robert Tadej, who told police about the "deathbed revelation" of his uncle in Arkansas.

Merrifield reported that Tadej initially thought the map looked like a property of his dying uncle in Arkansas, but ultimately suspected it had been his uncle's former home in Joliet. Tadej also told the Chicago Tribune reporter that the uncle's mentally disturbed son, who was 15 when Sarah Avon vanished, implicated himself and another boy in her death during a subsequent conversation with Tadej.

"He said he molested Sarah but was upstairs when she was murdered," Tadej told the Tribune in the May 1993 article. "There was no doubt in my mind at that time that he had done it because everything fit. The only question was, Where was the body?"

Sarah's body still has not been found. The Will County's Sheriff's Department has not made any arrests in connection with Sarah Avon's murder.

Sarah's sister speaks out: In 2014, Marie Avon posted a lengthy response on an Internet blog dedicated to missing persons, murders and mysteries in Illinois. Here are key excerpts:

"I really am Marie Avon, but I'm now married and have a different last name that I won't reveal here for the privacy of my children ... My mother is very much alive and has since remarried ... My mom was raked over the coals by overzealous reporters and the only journalist who really truly cared about our family was John Whiteside, may he Rest in Peace ... The possibility that Sarah's case may one day be solved remains alive because all of you allow her to live on in your hearts. I do not believe my sister is alive, but that she remains alive in our hearts and in the loving arms of Jesus in Heaven. Thank you for keeping the fight for justice alive in whatever small way possible."

Main image of Sarah Avon via NamUS