Ferak Column: Is Sarah Avon Still Buried On Miller Ave?

JOLIET, IL — Sadly, this month marks another anniversary without answers or any sense of justice for the family, friends and people who remember little Sarah Avon. The 6-year-old Joliet girl, whose family lived on Oscar Avenue, vanished July 21, 1981, after playing outside in her neighborhood near Richards Street on a Tuesday night. Her body has never been found and nobody was ever arrested in connection with her disappearance.

And yet, 38 years later, her case doesn't seem like a complete mystery.

A number of people who grew up on the city's east side believe they know who was involved. Those people theorize that Sarah was abducted or lured to another location, many blocks away, and that her body was buried on Joliet's east side to conceal the crime.

Last year, I wrote a column about Sarah Avon's missing person's case, since I remembered her disappearance from growing up on Joliet's east side. She was just two years younger than I was. After my column ran, several people contacted me with suggestions and information. They, too, hope to help bring closure to Joliet and Sarah's family, insisting it's a solvable case.

One person I met with was involved in the 1993 excavation of the late Ernest "Ernie" Wilson Sr.'s property on Miller Avenue. The excavation was chronicled by late Joliet Herald News columnist John Whiteside in one of the last major newspaper articles on Sarah's case.

The 1993 dig concentrated on a very small area of the now-vacant lot where the Wilson house once stood. Will County used backhoes and other heavy equipment but turned up nothing. Within a couple days of digging, the event was called off and everybody left and went on their way.

However, the government official involved with the excavation still maintains to this day that too small of a spot was excavated for the authorities to reach the conclusion that Sarah Avon's remains were not buried on the former Wilson property.

My second source also met up with us last year when we walked the vacant lot on Miller Avenue, which is now owned by the city of Joliet. The second person vividly remembered that he saw the late Ernie Wilson Sr. digging a deep hole manually with a shovel and that Wilson was almost chest deep in the hole during the middle of the night.

That source, who was a teenager in 1981, told me that he went outside during the night and asked Ernie Wilson Sr. why he was digging a hole in the yard.

"I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was digging a hole to transplant his sunflower plants, which were flourishing where they were at," my source recounted for me again on Sunday, July 29. "They were tall. They were full-grown sunflower plants. I knew nothing of the disappearance, so I didn't suspect anything."

On a second night, the neighbor told me, he saw Ernie Wilson Sr. operating his D9 bulldozer, pushing mounds of dirt over the peninsula near Hickory Creek and knocking down trees in the area where Spring Creek and Hickory Creek meet.

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At a later point, the witness told me, the Wilsons' above-ground swimming pool got moved from its regular spot close to the house to the peninsula along Hickory Creek. The area the pool was moved to was away from the sun and more into the shade, near the location where Wilson was using his bulldozer to pile up large mounds of dirt near peninsula.

The witness said he now wonders whether Wilson may have moved Sarah Avon's body from the initial spot where he saw Wilson digging with a hand shovel in the middle of the night. The witness emphasized that too much time has elapsed for him to say that the digging occurred on the night that Sarah Avon went missing.

Additionally, this source told me he had been a guest inside the Wilson house on occasions, from growing up in the neighborhood, and that he vividly remembers there were two old aluminum coolers, one 7Up and one Coca-Cola, in the same spot near the bottom of the basement stairs.

The witness told me the 7Up cooler vanished and was never in the basement during any of his subsequent visits to the house.

This witness told me that he approached Will County Sheriff's officials during the 1993 dig, mainly because he suspected they were not digging deep enough into the dirt on the property in hopes of finding Sarah Avon.

"They told me to mind my own business," my source recalled.

Was Sarah Avon's body placed into the 7Up cooler and buried on the Miller Avenue property? Is her body still underground, 38 years later?

"I'm no detective, but I'm no dummy," my source told me again on Sunday. "The series of things I seen ... I do truly believe she was buried over there. The events I seen unfold were suspicious. Do I believe she's buried there? I think so."

The Chicago Tribune's coverage of the 1993 dig on Miller Avenue 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.

According to obituary information, Ernest "Ernie" Wilson died Jan. 25, 1993, at age 72, and he is buried in Arkansas.

Tadej told the Chicago Tribune reporter in 1993 that his 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?'"

A third person, a woman who grew up in the neighborhood, also reached out to me last year and sent me a map diagram. She believes the authorities back in 1993 misinterpreted a drawing of a triangle provided by Ernie Wilson Sr. during his apparent deathbed confession.

She insists the triangle wasn't a drawing of Wilson's yard. She said the triangle symbolized the island behind the Wilson property where Hickory Creek and Spring Creek come together.

In her opinion, Sarah Avon's body is likely located in this area of woods.

This month, I reached out to Sarah Avon's sister, Marie, who was 5 when her sister vanished in 1981. I notified her that I was working on another column because I want to keep her sister's case front and center in the community of Joliet's spotlight.

"It's been 38 years, but Sarah's memory lives on in our family and throughout the community. She was a little girl who was greatly loved and is greatly missed," Marie wrote me. "She hasn't been forgotten and we know many in Will County and the surrounding areas still share our hope that prayers that the truth of what took her from us will one day be revealed."

Sarah's sister, who now lives out of state, also informed me that the case has been assigned to Lt. Nat Freeman of the Will County Sheriff's Office.

Based on what I know, Freeman is regarded as one of the more capable and compassionate detectives employed by Will County. I reached out to him last week for comment on Sarah Avon's case, but he did not call back.

"We have been in contact with Will County, and Detective Freeman updates us regularly," Sarah's sister told me. "At this time, we are not at liberty to discuss any information pertaining to the current open investigation, but I can affirm that it is still open and active."

Marie urged anyone who may have information in hopes of finding her sister's body and the persons responsible for the July 1981 homicide to call the Will County Sheriff's Office. The detective unit is reachable at 815-727-8575.

"Even though it's been 38 years, her case is still open, if anyone has information that could potentially be helpful to bring resolution to her case, I beg you to please contact Will County Sheriff's Department," Sarah's sister urged everyone.