Kathleen Marie Opachan:Hammond, Indiana

 

      She was in the woods near Michigan City Road and Torrance Avenue in Calumet City, Illinois. It was heavily wooded there in 1978 and it still is today. 

    Kathleen Marie Opachan was a hardworking young woman from Hammond. She had worked at the Jewel grocery store for five years and had also taken on a second job tending bar. She was 22. It was the Summer of 1978. 

  Hammond and Calumet City blend together so easily that you might not notice a difference as you drive between them. Both are between Chicago and Gary, Indiana. 

   The newspapers were full of stories about John Wayne Gacy at the time.  He was awaiting trial and they were still digging around and under his house. But Gacy was not the only killer around the Chicagoland area.

   Kathleen’s family had not filed a missing persons report. That seems suspicious at first. But, they were not really worried that they had not seen her.  They knew she was busy with friends and work and they just didn’t think that anything was wrong.  

   It is not easy to get a timeline of events leading up to her death. Was she working an evening shift and got nabbed on the way home? Was she heading to work? Did she walk, drive or ride the bus?  None of these things were mentioned in the articles that I found. 

   A crew spraying for mosquitoes found a smoldering trunk in the woods.  Inside they found a body.  Kathleen had been strangled and then dismembered.  She wasn’t the first dismembered body found in the area. She was only the latest.  It was five weeks before she was positively identified through dental records. 

   One article describes the city’s efforts to curb the “dumping” problem. It goes into great detail to describe barriers that will be placed to prevent cars from accessing these wooded areas. This was what the level of violent crime had done to the public consciousness. People were getting calloused and hardened to it.  The bodies being dumped near the nice neighborhoods were considered a big problem.  They had all but given up trying to stop the murders. Not that there was much they could do to stop the murders. Those darn bodies piling up close by were something they could curb. The 1970’s and 1980’s were wild. 

   None of the other murders mentioned in news articles were particularly close by. They could be linked but could also be completely unrelated. 

   Kathleen was found in a trunk that had been set on fire. It seems like this killer had access to a car or truck. I doubt he’s taking a trunk on the city bus. 

   Her family took issue with an article in The Times that painted them as uncaring for not initially reporting her missing.  She had not been missing long when she was found. They had not had time to realize that anything was even wrong. She was 22 and worked two jobs.  She often spent time with her friends.  She was a young person on the go.  It was Summer for goodness sake. When a body was found and they were unable to contact Kathleen they then reported her missing. 

   Her family loved her and cared about her.  It had all just happened so fast. Everything had changed overnight.

   One man, Gayhart Goddard, who wrote lewd letters to several Calumet City women was considered a suspect. He had a foot fetish and writing letters to women was part of his kink. Letter writing doesn’t exactly rise to the level of murder.  Some of the letters contained threats.  He pleaded guilty to sending threatening mail. In 1979 he was sentenced to three years in federal prison. He was eligible for parole beginning in October of 1979.  I think he was only considered a suspect in these other murders because of his fetish.  He doesn’t come up in the newspapers later.  Anything is possible but I doubt it. 

    Kathleen’s murder was never solved. She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery and Mausoleums in Calumet City, Illinois.  It is not a searchable cemetery on Find-a-Grave but I was able to find this information in an obituary online. 

 (In her yearbook and most news articles the family name is spelled Opachan.  In Kathleen’s obituary, it is spelled Opachin.) 

  Perhaps one day someone will talk.  Maybe there’s someone out there who needs to tell what they know. Deathbed confessions sometimes happen. 

  Rest in peace Kathleen Marie Opachan.

Calumet City Police: (708) 868-2500