While there was reason for celebration in South Elgin this week as a father was reunited with his daughter six years after her abduction, the occasion also serves as a reminder that many suburban families are still waiting for answers on what happened to loved ones who ve vanished.
Dan Tackett
The mid-1970s brought unimaginable horror and unmasked evil to Lincoln. It was a time when Russell Smrekar and Michael Drabing became household names, spoken in quiet voices at the dinner table, in angry rants at barber shops and taverns.
Smrekar was convicted of the shotgun slayings of a young Lincoln couple in their home. Drabing was sent to prison for the stabbing deaths of a rural Lincoln farm couple and one of their daughters. People who lived in Logan County at the time undoubtedly still remember their names and the bloody carnage they caused.
Mike Harnett, a Lawrence, Kan., resident, certainly recalls the horror of the time. Those indelible memories led Harnett to write a book, “And I Cried, Too: Confronting Evil In A Small Town.” It was not an overnight project.