The Best American Crime Writing (28 page)

No one knows for certain the origins of the dispute. Court records show that Dison arrested Thompson in 1971 after Thompson allegedly threatened a man at a Toulon feed store. It didn’t take long, according to many, for the feud to blaze.

“Curt would come after Dad every time he saw him,” says Kathy Ptasnik, Dison’s daughter. “He backed up his truck and glared into the house when my parents were socializing. He’d follow Dad and flip him the finger. Dad was afraid of Curt having revenge. He told us never to walk past his house.” Even among her siblings, Ptasnik says, the instinct was to turn away from Thompson. “My brother and I begged Dad to ignore him,” she says.

“Dison didn’t take any shit,” says Collins, the former mayor. “He wasn’t afraid to stand up to Curt.” Others say Dison gave as good as he got. “After Buck had retired, I saw him flip Curt the bird when Curt was just minding his own business,” says a friend of Thompson’s who asked to remain anonymous.

In 1987, Thompson pulled his pickup in front of Dison’s car on a rural road, blocking the former sheriff. Thompson got out of his truck and approached Dison’s car. The two men argued and, Dison claimed, Thompson threatened him (Dison was 68 years old at the time; Thompson was 46). Thompson was charged with reckless driving and disorderly conduct.

At trial in the plain white courthouse on Main Street, Thompson testified that Dison had been harassing his family. He stopped the former sheriff, he said, to warn him against bothering his family. “I told him, ‘You fucking old man, you pull it again, and I’m coming after you.’” When asked if he always stopped those he was angry with on a public road, Thompson testified, “It depends on where they are.”

The jury convicted Thompson on both charges. He was fined $150 and sentenced to 21 days in jail. The disorderly conduct verdict, however, was reversed by the Third District appellate court, which reasoned that the trial judge had improperly excluded testimony about the long-running feud between Dison and Thompson and his family.

Seven years later, in 1994, Dison claimed that Thompson approached his car in the parking lot of the local grocery and threatened him. This time, Thompson was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct. At trial, he denied leaving his truck, but acknowledged the gist of the remarks. “I told him to go on in the store or I’d bury his ass,” Thompson told the court. In arguments before the judge, prosecutor James Owens called Thompson “a street thug” and “a schoolyard bully who never left the school-yard.” Thompson was convicted of disorderly conduct, but not the more serious charge of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to a year of probation, $111 in court costs, and 100 hours of community service.

“Up until the end of Dad’s life, Curt harassed him,” Ptasnik says. “Dad was an old man in very poor health. He used a walker! And Curt would still pull up beside him and give him that glare. [Dad] was so upset that nothing could be done about Curt, but not just for himself. He was convinced Curt could kill someone.”

The Richardson “pop bottle” cases lay dormant for four years before being dismissed for lack of pursuit by the plaintiffs. “I think they dropped it because the judge was retiring,” Sandra says. “No one was interested in pursuing it.”

The idea of “not pursuing it” became central to Toulon’s approach to dealing with Thompson. A few, like the Richardsons, filed charges and took Thompson to court. Many more opted to ignore him.

“People would come in and complain,” says Pearson, the former deputy. “They would tell me about the intimidation. But almost no one would file charges. They just put up with him for the most part. The thinking was to ignore him, and hopefully things would get better.”

“I think people rationalized that the problem wasn’t severe enough to justify the effort required to resolve it,” says Jim Nowlan, editor of the
Stark County News
, a weekly newspaper. “I might have been guilty of it myself.”

Nowlan and others in Toulon tell of hearing several years ago that the Toulon City Council did not intend to enforce a litter ordinance against Thompson. “That infuriated me,” Nowlan says. “I thought the whole town should go over there at once and confront Thompson. I thought we should be united. But my passion cooled and I ultimately forgot about it, and that was probably pretty typical.”

Some suggest, too, that law enforcement was afraid of Thompson.

“The various police from the town and county over the years, not all of them, but some, have been fearful of Thompson,” Nowlan says. “Not in terms of the old-fashioned fistfight, but for fear of an extremely violent reaction.”

Pearson has another take. “We were in a tough situation,” he says of law enforcement. “It’s not against the law to drive your car down a public road or an alley and glare at someone. When [Thompson] did something more serious and someone was willing to file charges, action was taken by the police. But most people chose just to ignore him.”

And the few in Toulon who were willing to file charges were the people Thompson was on his way to see after he allegedly killed Deputy Streicher.

Jim and Janet Giesenhagen were perfectly Toulon. His mother, Ardelle, lived across the alley on a homestead bought by her great-great-grandfather
in 1829. Jim co-owned a local television/heating/air-conditioning business, earned a black belt in karate, attended church every Sunday, led a Boy Scout troop. Janet worked long hours at a Peoria grocery store, about an hour away, then went home to play with their daughter, Ashley, and surf the Internet. Ashley played soccer and piano, and remained a daddy’s girl. Most Friday nights the family went out for supper, often for pizza at Happy Joe’s in Kewanee. Their future plans were simple: Save money for retirement, take a trip to Disney World.

In 1986, the Giesenhagens told police that Thompson’s Labrador retriever had bitten 6-year-old Shawn Henderson, Janet’s son from a previous marriage, who lived with them. Stark County authorities filed charges, and the case went to trial. The jury found in favor of Thompson. The Giesenhagens were now on Thompson’s list.

Ardelle Giesenhagen, Jim’s mother, and others say Thompson began to stalk the Giesenhagen family, and kept it up for years. “Day after day, around eight in the morning, Curt would drive down the alley behind Jim’s house, just circling very slow, three or four times, almost not moving, and glaring,” recalls Joe Tracy, Jim’s best friend. “He knew that was about the time Ashley went to school. And it didn’t quit. Jim made complaints. Nothing was ever done.”

Jim began driving Ashley the few blocks to school. In his car, day or night, he zigzagged rather than take the shortest route, always careful to avoid passing near Thompson’s house. Though Jim held a black belt in karate, he rarely, if ever, confronted Thompson; he knew that the man owned guns, and believed that a challenge might short-circuit Thompson’s temper.

Ardelle Giesenhagen, then in her sixties, was not so patient. After Thompson extended his vendetta to her and her husband, and began to circle her house and glare at her, she told him, “Curt, you’re not God! I’m not scared of you. You could shoot me today and it wouldn’t worry me because I know where I’m going. But I don’t know if you’re going anyplace but down below.” Thompson
just glared at her. Another time, when he parked in the alley and glowered while Ardelle gardened, she shook her finger at him and said, “Curt, what do you think you’re doin’? Move it!” Thompson only snickered and drove off.

Perhaps the moment that most frightened Ardelle occurred just after her husband died, in 1999. She, Jim, Janet, and Ashley were in her backyard playing with Ardelle’s cats. “Curt drove his truck down the alley and told Jim and Janet he was going to kill them,” Ardelle recalls. “Someone called the police. Bob Taylor came. Curt said he’d get him, too. Taylor did nothing. He didn’t arrest him. Nothing.”

About five years ago, shortly after Joe Tracy went to work for Jim Giesenhagen, he too began to have problems with Thompson. “I had no connection to Curt, no dealings with him,” Tracy says. “My only offense was that I was friends with Jim.”

Sometimes Thompson would block Tracy on Main Street with his truck or follow him out of town or try to run him off the road as he walked to the grocery store. Every day, Tracy says, Thompson circled his house, glaring. When he told Thompson, “Curt, why don’t you just leave us alone? We’re not bothering you.” Thompson replied, “Yes, you are bothering me. You’re harassing me all the time,” and Tracy could only shake his head.

In 1999, Tracy filed a criminal complaint claiming that Thompson had followed him for two miles into the country, then jumped out of his truck at an intersection and waved a hammer threateningly. Jim and Janet Giesenhagen gave statements about Thompson’s behavior in connection with that case. Thompson was convicted of simple assault, and in August 2000, he was ordered to pay $116 in court costs, $25 per month in probation fees for twenty-four months, and a $100 public defender’s fee. He was also ordered to stay away from Joe Tracy and his family, and from Jim Giesenhagen
and his family—an order Tracy says Thompson violated repeatedly.

“Jim didn’t know what to do,” Tracy says. “He went to the law, he made lots of calls, and they didn’t do anything.”

Finally, Jim set up a video camera on the back of his garage and pointed it toward the alley. Thompson drove by and glared. Often Jim and Tracy believed that this was clear evidence of violation of the court order prohibiting contact with the Giesenhagens. Jim delivered the tapes to the state’s attorney. Tracy says they never heard back.

More than a year after the conviction in the hammer-waving case, Thompson had paid just $18 of the required fees and costs. Judge Scott Shore issued a summons for him to appear before the court for nonpayment. Thompson did not appear. On October 15, 2001, Shore issued a warrant for Thompson’s arrest. It was this warrant that Deputy Streicher had tried to serve the night he was shot, more than five months after it had been issued.

On that Friday night last March, while Deputy Streicher lay on Curt Thompson’s porch, Thompson streaked in the squad car toward the Giesenhagen house. Inside, the family was enjoying a quiet evening together. Janet was on the couch. Jim and Ashley had gone to the basement, probably to fetch a vaporizer to soothe Janet’s asthma.

Court documents allege that, armed with Streicher’s service revolver and his own sawed-off shotgun, Thompson pulled into the driveway of the house, smashing the rear end of a parked Mercury SUV and driving it through wooden fence posts and into a pole flying the American flag. Thompson jumped out of the vehicle with the shotgun. He climbed the four wooden steps that led to the side door of the house, leaving the squad car lights flashing in the drive-way. Then, the indictment alleges, Thompson broke down the door to the house and burst in, carrying his sawed-off shotgun. At close range, he fired at Janet, hitting her in the arms and the chest, leaving
her left forearm dangling by a thread of skin as she collapsed to the floor. Then, authorities say, he likely moved to the basement, where he fired the shotgun and struck Jim Giesenhagen in the face, the buckshot obliterating his tongue and the floor of his mouth. Jim fell dead. Thompson did not harm Ashley, who probably witnessed her father’s killing. Finished, Thompson left the house.

Ashley called her grandmother, Ardelle. Toulon does not have 911 service; the town voted it down twice, thinking it too expensive, at $2.85 a month, to adopt. Ashley told Ardelle, “Grandma, come quick! Curt Thompson just killed my daddy and hurt my mommy.” Ardelle, who did not know whether Thompson was still inside the Giesenhagen home, threw on her shoes and coat and ran across the alley.

When Ardelle stepped inside, she saw Janet on the floor, one hand to her chest, the other nearly detached from her arm. “Grandma, he’s down there,” Ashley said. Ardelle looked down the stairs and saw Jim lying in a pool of blood, a hole in his head. She could tell that he was dead, but wondered what had happened to his beard.

Ardelle called the sheriff’s office. Janet asked for a pillow, which Ardelle retrieved for her. “My back hurts,” Janet said. Ardelle placed the pillow behind Janet’s back then covered her with a blanket.

As Ardelle waited for an ambulance, she went to Ashley’s bedroom. Just a few weeks earlier, after Thompson had driven by Ardelle’s house and glared, Ashley had locked the windows and said, “You know what, Grandma? We need to pray for Curt. He doesn’t have anybody to love him.” Now Ashley’s socks were soaked in blood. “Let’s kneel and pray for Mommy because I think she might make it,” Ardelle told her granddaughter. Then she noticed that Ashley had started to pack a suitcase of clothes because she knew she wouldn’t be staying home that night.

Lights still flashing, Thompson drove the now-damaged squad car west to the intersection of Commercial and Franklin Streets. There, he spotted a pickup truck being driven by his young neighbor Jason Rice, with whom he purportedly had been feuding. According to the indictment, Thompson rammed the pickup. Rice, believing he had been struck by a deputy, approached the squad car to offer help. Thompson pointed the shotgun. Rice ran from the scene.

At the Giesenhagen house, Ardelle still waited for an ambulance as Janet clung to life. It had been, by her estimation, several minutes since she had called the sheriff’s office. She called again. “I need help now!” she told the dispatcher. “Where is the ambulance?” Ardelle says the dispatcher told her, “You have to call it yourself.” Incredulous, Ardelle found the number to the local ambulance, located just blocks away, and called. Ardelle believes “at least” fifteen or twenty minutes passed from the time she first called the dispatcher until the ambulance arrived.

By now, calls for help had been broadcast to officers in two other Stark County towns—Wyoming (six miles away) and Bradford (fifteen miles away). Sources say that the Toulon city policeman, Bob Taylor, was not on duty, but he raced to the scene upon learning what was happening.

Thompson was now pointed south on Franklin Street. Backup law enforcement was still minutes away. One witness says that Thompson approached another house, this one belonging to Joe Tracy, Jim Giesenhagen’s best friend.