I think that today is the twelfth anniversary of the day I found a hell of a lot of money so I thought it would be safe to tell you the story. I can tell you it caused me a lot of sleepless nights, one hell of a lot of worry, and you might as well toss in a bit of guilt as well. I am eighty three right now; my beloved wife and my wonderful dog Yukon are gone. To tell you the truth I don’t give a damn if anyone knows my secret or not. Oh, I got some value out of the money; we went on seven wonderful vacations because of that money so don’t think I am complaining, because I am not.
It all began the first day of rabbit season, hell I don’t even remember that date any more. I carried a double-barrel 4-10 shotgun that my grandfather had given me and my hunting dog was a big old guy named Yukon. He was a Malamute and Great Pyrenees mix and he was a magnificent dog. I swear to you he thought he was a Beagle hound sometimes the way he ran around not missing a bush or likely spot where those little critters might hide. We always had a wonderful time together. I really am no hunter so when I actually bagged one of those varmints my old friend Mel was glad to have it. He did all the work and then he would ask me over to share it at his kitchen table. My God how I miss him and Yukon and the death of my wife really left me very little to live for. But, I’m still here to tell this story.
Mel, my friend I mentioned owned 350 acres out in Peoria County, that’s in Illinois, not Arizona. We used to hunt together out there, but the pain in his knees stopped that so I carried on because he loved the taste of wild rabbit. He had most of his land in corn with a nice wooded area where he used to hunt squirrel. Yukon and I had kicked up a few bunnies and I bagged one which always made Yukon happy, so we started back to the farm. Now Mel went through a bit of hell dealing with the State Of Illinois when they wanted to put in a two lane road that would pretty much cut his property in half. Well he and his lawyer finally worked it out and the road was there for the rest of his life. Truth is it really did not bother him and when the trees and bushes grew up it was great for an old man because sometimes I just walked down the road and let the dog run.
It was an overcast day and the wind kicked up a bit. We were about 150 yards from the road heading for a small bridge that took the roadway over the creek on Mel’s property. The noise of a car, hell, it sounded like a race car to me so Yukon and I stopped and looked towards the North and watched this car. It was a black one, maybe a four-door Buick race towards us. I bet he was going ninety when he got to where we were standing. I stared at the car and told Yukon it was probably some kid on pot. Well, he zoomed past us and as he neared the bridge I saw something black come flying out the rear passenger’s side window.
“Let’s go see what that is, Yukon.” Well about that time I heard way off in the distance toward the north a siren. We stopped and turned toward the sound and in about three, maybe four minutes an Illinois State Police car raced by. As we walked toward the bridge area another state trooper’s car screamed by. “Must be some pretty bad guys, huh, Yukon?”
We walked close to the bridge and I lifted up my shotgun, “Find ‘em Yukon, find ‘em.” Of course the hunt was on but he was looking for varmints and I was looking for a black bag of some kind. The snow was getting a bit thicker so I really urged the big dog on and in fact I fired a shot to get him even more excited. Less than three minutes later he was looking right at the bag and about to lift his rear leg over it when I rushed over and praised him to high Heaven. It was a pretty fancy valise, or satchel or whatever it was and I picked it up and quickly turned east toward the car. There was some weight to it and at first I thought it was heroin or some kind of drugs. Hell that is all we heard about back then…’course it is true today as well. Mel’s pickup truck was gone and I was happy about that. I put the gun and the bag in the trunk and drove on home.
My wife had a part-time job at that time so I had about two hours before she came home so I hurried the watering and feeding of the dog and headed for my workshop in the basement. My hands shook a bit as I put the valise on the work bench and stared at it a bit. Of course I realized that I should just call the police and hand over the bag…but I didn’t. Instead I pushed the light over to it and expected to have to break into the damn thing. Nope! I snapped the three luggage locks up, and stepped back. I took a couple of big breaths wondering if the damn thing had some explosive stuff in it, you know like banks do in some occasions. No big bang so I stepped up to take a closer look.
OH MY GOD!
I feel certain my eyes popped as I stared down at all that money. I must have stood there two or three minutes until I reached out a shaky hand to flip through some of the bills. Now I am not a poor man I always had a good job, my wife always worked, we had no kids and we lived in a nice three-bedroom home. I retired at 62, but my wife loved her job and finally went part-time. We had a time-share with a club that let us go pretty much wherever we wanted to go. So staring down at what looked like thousands of dollars shook up my brains and got the old heart racing, but I soon calmed down. I could see a small stack of twenty dollars bills, a lot of fifties and the rest were one hundred dollar bills. I found about twenty thousand in one thousand dollar bills and I carefully counted all that money. It came to sixty-five thousand and I quickly replaced the money and snapped the valise shut. I walked over to the safe to put it in and realized that every time my wife wanted in that safe she asked me to open it. She knew the combination but always had trouble opening it. So, I took the money out to the garage and pulled down the folding stairs and hid it up in the crawl space. I glanced at my watch and realized I had about ten minutes before my wife came home so I sipped on a little wine. I wanted to be my old natural boring self when she came in. It worked like a charm. I wanted to tell her but I knew she would say, “Well, hon, call the police.” I just did not want to do that…so I never told her. That evening and for the next two weeks I listened to every news cast on TV, even did some checking on the computer and waited for some news about a robbery or a state police chase. I heard nothing but the usual shooting here and there and a few muggings but no bank robbery or significant burglary of any kind. A month later I took one of the twenty dollar bills from the valise and put two of my own with it. I bought fifty-six dollars worth of groceries at Wal-Mart and got my change back. Were those bills I found even real? Were the bills marked? Were the T-Men or the FBI just waiting for them to turn up? Well, I waited an entire month and used a couple of fifty dollar bills around the City of Peoria and all went well. We went on a trip to New Orleans for two weeks in a time share and I bought a thousand dollars in traveling checks with my ‘good’ money and took a thousand of the ‘other’ money and this time I took only fifties and one hundred dollar bill. In front of my wife I used the traveler’s checks or credit card, but otherwise I passed the other bills around. We even went on some of the tourist’s attractions we had avoided before because they were just too damn expensive. My dear wife told me it was the best vacation we ever had. Well that is how I spent about forty thousand on our other trips and as I sit here today writing abut this I have $18,000.00 left. My only niece is getting married in a month and I will surprise them with a check for $15,000.00 which I deposited in my checking account from the ‘other’ money and let’s see if that stirs up any excitement.
Today, I feel no regret. I did not steal the money, I did not withhold any ‘evidence’ because from what I knew there was no crime for me to worry about. I spent some days worrying about some guys in a big black Buick knocking on my door, but that never happened. So call it a cop out…who cares? Not me. I sure as hell did not get so pent up with guilt that I sent anonymous money to the IRS… that is for damn sure.
So thank you for listening. I feel much better for having confessed my ‘crime of the century’ to you. I gave some of the money to local charities and allowed my wife to have a much better time than usual on all of her cherished vacations and you know…she never once asked me about my new found generosity. Do you think she ever had a suspicion that her husband of 56 years was in a sense some kind of thief? I hope not. I reckon God and I can straighten all this out somewhere down the road. You think?
Editor’s Note: Norm is a Peoria Historian and True-Crime writer. However this was a work of FICTION! This one is for Harry. norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net
It was an overcast day and the wind kicked up a bit. We were about 150 yards from the road heading for a small bridge that took the roadway over the creek on Mel’s property. The noise of a car, hell, it sounded like a race car to me so Yukon and I stopped and looked towards the North and watched this car. It was a black one, maybe a four-door Buick race towards us. I bet he was going ninety when he got to where we were standing. I stared at the car and told Yukon it was probably some kid on pot. Well, he zoomed past us and as he neared the bridge I saw something black come flying out the rear passenger’s side window.
“Let’s go see what that is, Yukon.” Well about that time I heard way off in the distance toward the north a siren. We stopped and turned toward the sound and in about three, maybe four minutes an Illinois State Police car raced by. As we walked toward the bridge area another state trooper’s car screamed by. “Must be some pretty bad guys, huh, Yukon?”
We walked close to the bridge and I lifted up my shotgun, “Find ‘em Yukon, find ‘em.” Of course the hunt was on but he was looking for varmints and I was looking for a black bag of some kind. The snow was getting a bit thicker so I really urged the big dog on and in fact I fired a shot to get him even more excited. Less than three minutes later he was looking right at the bag and about to lift his rear leg over it when I rushed over and praised him to high Heaven. It was a pretty fancy valise, or satchel or whatever it was and I picked it up and quickly turned east toward the car. There was some weight to it and at first I thought it was heroin or some kind of drugs. Hell that is all we heard about back then…’course it is true today as well. Mel’s pickup truck was gone and I was happy about that. I put the gun and the bag in the trunk and drove on home.
My wife had a part-time job at that time so I had about two hours before she came home so I hurried the watering and feeding of the dog and headed for my workshop in the basement. My hands shook a bit as I put the valise on the work bench and stared at it a bit. Of course I realized that I should just call the police and hand over the bag…but I didn’t. Instead I pushed the light over to it and expected to have to break into the damn thing. Nope! I snapped the three luggage locks up, and stepped back. I took a couple of big breaths wondering if the damn thing had some explosive stuff in it, you know like banks do in some occasions. No big bang so I stepped up to take a closer look.
I feel certain my eyes popped as I stared down at all that money. I must have stood there two or three minutes until I reached out a shaky hand to flip through some of the bills. Now I am not a poor man I always had a good job, my wife always worked, we had no kids and we lived in a nice three-bedroom home. I retired at 62, but my wife loved her job and finally went part-time. We had a time-share with a club that let us go pretty much wherever we wanted to go. So staring down at what looked like thousands of dollars shook up my brains and got the old heart racing, but I soon calmed down. I could see a small stack of twenty dollars bills, a lot of fifties and the rest were one hundred dollar bills. I found about twenty thousand in one thousand dollar bills and I carefully counted all that money. It came to sixty-five thousand and I quickly replaced the money and snapped the valise shut. I walked over to the safe to put it in and realized that every time my wife wanted in that safe she asked me to open it. She knew the combination but always had trouble opening it. So, I took the money out to the garage and pulled down the folding stairs and hid it up in the crawl space. I glanced at my watch and realized I had about ten minutes before my wife came home so I sipped on a little wine. I wanted to be my old natural boring self when she came in. It worked like a charm. I wanted to tell her but I knew she would say, “Well, hon, call the police.” I just did not want to do that…so I never told her. That evening and for the next two weeks I listened to every news cast on TV, even did some checking on the computer and waited for some news about a robbery or a state police chase. I heard nothing but the usual shooting here and there and a few muggings but no bank robbery or significant burglary of any kind. A month later I took one of the twenty dollar bills from the valise and put two of my own with it. I bought fifty-six dollars worth of groceries at Wal-Mart and got my change back. Were those bills I found even real? Were the bills marked? Were the T-Men or the FBI just waiting for them to turn up? Well, I waited an entire month and used a couple of fifty dollar bills around the City of Peoria and all went well. We went on a trip to New Orleans for two weeks in a time share and I bought a thousand dollars in traveling checks with my ‘good’ money and took a thousand of the ‘other’ money and this time I took only fifties and one hundred dollar bill. In front of my wife I used the traveler’s checks or credit card, but otherwise I passed the other bills around. We even went on some of the tourist’s attractions we had avoided before because they were just too damn expensive. My dear wife told me it was the best vacation we ever had. Well that is how I spent about forty thousand on our other trips and as I sit here today writing abut this I have $18,000.00 left. My only niece is getting married in a month and I will surprise them with a check for $15,000.00 which I deposited in my checking account from the ‘other’ money and let’s see if that stirs up any excitement.
Today, I feel no regret. I did not steal the money, I did not withhold any ‘evidence’ because from what I knew there was no crime for me to worry about. I spent some days worrying about some guys in a big black Buick knocking on my door, but that never happened. So call it a cop out…who cares? Not me. I sure as hell did not get so pent up with guilt that I sent anonymous money to the IRS… that is for damn sure.
So thank you for listening. I feel much better for having confessed my ‘crime of the century’ to you. I gave some of the money to local charities and allowed my wife to have a much better time than usual on all of her cherished vacations and you know…she never once asked me about my new found generosity. Do you think she ever had a suspicion that her husband of 56 years was in a sense some kind of thief? I hope not. I reckon God and I can straighten all this out somewhere down the road. You think?
Editor’s Note: Norm is a Peoria Historian and True-Crime writer. However this was a work of FICTION! This one is for Harry. norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net
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