CSENTERTAINMENTWORLDU.S. NEWSTECH + HEALTHBEASTSTYLEWOMENBOOKS
Jim Young/Reuters
Justin Glawe
Justin Glawe
facebook
tweet
post
REQUIEM10.22.14
Gary, Indiana Is a Serial Killer’s Playground
Darren Deon Vann's hometown has 10,000 abandoned houses, more than enough for him to hide six bodies. Even worse, it's a place where women disappear without being missed.
GARY, Indiana—Over a din of smart-ass comments and after-work banter, Peg at Bugsy’s Tavern asks the obvious question: “You guys wanna watch the news?” The answer is yes, of course, and the crowd at the tiny bar off the main drag in this busted town of 80,000 settles in to hear the score of their newly famous resident.
There’s a Jane Doe or two among the seven women allegedly killed by Darren Deon Vann who need to be identified; more charges are forthcoming for Vann, who is already pinned for the murder of Afrika Hardy, strangled and left in the bathtub of a Motel 6. Six bodies have been discovered thanks to his confession.
“Supposedly there’s 14,” a concrete worker named Josh said Monday night.
“There’s gotta be more,” a beer-sipper agrees.
What there isn’t, the patrons at Bugsy’s are told as they gaze into TV screens glowing in the approaching dusk, is a motive. The whole episode is shocking, confusing, newsy and depressing—a black eye for a town already sporting a fat lip and a broken nose.
There are 10,000 abandoned houses in Gary, the mayor said earlier in the day as details emerged about the crime that brought police to Vann’s doorstep. The homes sit in various stages of decay—some are torched to the point that blackened studs are the only thing left of a family’s long-gone home. Others are fixer-uppers, if you happen to be a construction expert and financial idiot. But most of the abandoned houses, with sagging roofs and drafty walls, are just there.
“It makes me uncomfortable,” a woman says, standing in front of 413 E. 43rd Ave., where the body of Anith Jones was found. “My kids walk by here every day.”
But most of the abandoned houses, with sagging roofs and drafty walls, are just there.
They’re far from alone. Children hopping off school buses roamed the streets Monday afternoon as news crews gathered at the house, slightly obscured from the street by a yard of unkempt grass littered with fallen tree branches. Inside were all the signs of a flophouse. Empty cigarette packs, liquor bottles, containers sticky with food residue covered the floor. In a bedroom at the top of crumbling stairs, a bed was made up with a comforter. A baby carriage and a car seat sat nearby.
“They should just give ‘em away for free,” Josh at the bar says of the houses as the mayor recounts for reporters the difficulties of dealing with Gary’s blight.
Apparently “they” don’t have to, because whoever was living in the upstairs bedroom at 413 E. 43rd isn’t paying rent. Vann likely wasn’t either, if the looks of his home in the 1400 block of East 50th Court are any indication. That abode wasn’t as accessible to vagrants and the wind as 413 E. 43rd, but it is definitely on the wrong side of the fixer-upper scale.
RELATED: The Path of a Serial Killer (PHOTOS)
141022-indiana-killer-01
John Gress/Getty
After the news, Bugsy’s empties a bit. Political ads demonizing some politicians and praising others play on as an older man sips his Colt 45. Smiling politicians seem a long way from here. Gary has been broken for a while, and it looks like much of it has been left to rot. What can a politician do for a town that’s so fucked up that 10,000 abandoned houses are simply part of the scenery, where a killer can dump bodies seemingly at random without much fear of being caught, where only one of the three women so far identified as Vann’s victims had a missing-persons report out on her?
At 7 o’clock, the bartender at Bugsy’s clocks out and gives a bit of direction to her second-shift replacement. The news is over, but I start to notice other stories on the walls of the bar. Newspaper clippings, many of them with pictures of the owner, a former Gary firefighter, are everywhere. Often, the newsprint reads, the fires were battled at abandoned houses.
The bartender switches the channel and the lone patron doesn’t bat an eye. He just keeps sipping his Colt 45 and staring at the TV, where hockey-masked Jason is roaming the woods and two teenagers are running in fear. There are plenty of wooded areas like the one being taken in by the stone-faced drinker sitting next to me, and two of Vann’s victims were found among the trees. But this killer didn’t have to do much hiking. Instead he took advantage of what, for him, is Gary’s greatest asset: abandoned houses left behind when people fled for greener pastures.
SHARETWEETPOSTEMAIL66COMMENTS
Sign in24 people listening
+ Follow
Share
Post comment as...
Newest | Oldest | Top Comments
millli 7 hours ago
Democrats, Republicans, whomever...deliberately shipped jobs overseas for their agenda.
By making us poor and indebt, they will be able to control us even more. It's all part of the plan. Didn't Obama say he wanted to level the playing field? Hmmm...
FlagShareLikeReply
IgnacioYou 10 hours ago
Sad but not surprising. The Region, Gary-Hammond-East Chicago, has been an economic wasteland since the fifties; largely forgotten by the politicians in Indianapolis.
FlagShareLikeReply
Stratman 13 hours ago
More decaying evidence of the magical thinking that went into Republican trickle-down economics, massive off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and financial sector criminal activities.
FlagShare2LikeReply
philtraum 13 hours ago
Motive? Who cares? He's remorseful now and confessing and Jesus forgives so charges can be dropped. He should start his own church.
FlagShareLikeReply
mizlize56@yahoo.ca 5 hours ago
@philtraum Or go into politics.
FlagShareLikeReply
hippyhay73 14 hours ago
This is what America has turned into when we ship millions of jobs overseas so we can all enjoy low prices on underwear, shoes and most importantly, manufacturing. We did it to our selves !!!
FlagShare1LikeReply
Coot 14 hours ago
@hippyhay73
as long as the oligarchs and plutocrats are calling the shots..this is the road this country will continue to go down for some time to come....we are too busy being entertained by reality TV and Fashion Show News Idols, cue in Fox and Friends, to realize we are slowly being dismantled and sold as scrap.
FlagShare1LikeReply
Mikey862 16 hours ago
Absent a motive? Serial killers have motives?
FlagShare1LikeReply
Indestructicon 15 hours ago
@Mikey862 Um, yes, they normally do.
FlagShareLikeReply
ladyliberty62 15 hours ago
@Indestructicon @Mikey862 Um, no the don't, that's why they are so hard to find - they have no connection to the people they kill. They kill because they like it.
FlagShare1LikeReply
Biggins_3 16 hours ago
You can call it Gary, Indiana.
What it is , is south Chicago, Illinois.
FlagShare1LikeReply
Tiler 16 hours ago
@Biggins_3 east of Chicago
FlagShareLikeReply
Biggins_3 15 hours ago
@Tiler
We'll start at Chicago city center.
You drive east, I'll drive south.
We'll see who gets there first.
Bring a flotation device.
FlagShareLikeReply
TonyHines 17 hours ago
Give credit to Detroit. At least that have sense enough to bulldoze those areas blighted the most.
FlagShareLikeReply
rickinindiana 16 hours ago
@TonyHines
if only we could sweep away the neo-confederacy into the dustbin of history.
FlagShare2LikeReply
TonyHines 16 hours ago
@rickinindiana @TonyHines Our economy is growing and our cities are not blighted. That is a blue state predicament.
FlagShareLikeReply
rickinindiana 16 hours ago
@TonyHines @rickinindiana you think Indiana is a blue state?
You moron
ruled by the GOP for decades
FlagShare2LikeReply
TonyHines 16 hours ago
@rickinindiana @TonyHines Gary is dark Blue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary,_Indiana
FlagShareLikeReply
rickinindiana 16 hours ago
@TonyHines @rickinindiana
bet you love that "DARK" designation
thanks for revealing your true message
FlagShare1LikeReply
TonyHines 16 hours ago
@rickinindiana @TonyHines what message is that? I have the advantage od being neither dark nor light so bait your racist victim status crap somewhere else.
FlagShareLikeReply
Jukesgrrl 9 hours ago
@TonyHines @rickinindiana However, the state it is in is governed by Republicans and has been for decades. They allowed the manufacturing jobs that were the life's blood of Gary to go overseas and are now compounding the problems with a governor who is anti-union.
FlagShareLikeReply
rickinindiana 16 hours ago
@TonyHines @rickinindiana
most recent unemployment figures:
Indiana 5.7
Alabama 6.1
http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
But congratulations Alabama has risen to number 3 in the number of murders per capita trailing only Mississippi and Louisiana.
In race to the bottom Alabama ( along with Mississippi) defines the neo-Confederacy madness
FlagShare1LikeReply
TonyHines 16 hours ago
@rickinindiana @TonyHines I rest my case:
http://www.bestplaces.net/compare-ci...ary_in/economy
take a look at income especially
FlagShareLikeReply
Tiler 16 hours ago
@rickinindiana @TonyHines and most of the murderers are black, but blame the whiteman
FlagShareLikeReply
hfb1053_1 12 hours ago
@Tiler @rickinindiana @TonyHines
Gary is predominantly black (84%) and was once an industrial city but that changed when so many jobs were outsourced to China.
If one were to assess blame, it would be political more than anything else.
And while Gary is predominantly blue, the state is governed red. Facts cannot hurt.
FlagShare1LikeReply
hippyhay73 14 hours ago
@TonyHines @rickinindiana the southern states are all welfare states. While states like Michigan get back only seventy cents on the dollar sent to Washington, nine out of ten southern states enjoy a increase. Most states down south enjoy a return of $1.30 for every dollar sent to Washington.
FlagShare3LikeReply
Tiler 16 hours ago
@rickinindiana @TonyHines what a mindless liar. Typical lib-verm, they never takes responsibility for the messes they create, Gary is a Democratic black run city and Indiana was a Union state, so you are blatantly lying your butt off
FlagShareLikeReply
rickinindiana 14 hours ago
@Tiler @rickinindiana @TonyHines
ah another RW moron who thinks that because a state is north of the mason Dixon Line, that they are a traditional blue state
Let me guess home schooled in neo-Confederacy.
Try doing a bit of research before you open your ignorant pie hole
FlagShare2LikeReply
marriea 17 hours ago
I'm not a proponent of the death penalty. I hate the thought of us as a government killing somebody. However in this case, as I looked at the eyes Mr Vann, I truly saw no life. His eyes seemed so cold, I couldn't help wondering what was it in his life that turned him into a monster. Be that as it may, I also couldn't help but think that maybe him being so sloppy with his latest kill that perhaps he wanted to be stopped. Put him out of his misery. I also heard that he was once a Marine. I understand what our military is supposed to represent, but when we train folks to become killers, we shouldn't be surprised when some of them don't know when or how to turn off the spigot. Put him out his misery. If he found a way to beat this and got out, he'll sure kill again. How sad.
FlagShareLikeReply
Kanook 17 hours ago
U.S. cities lead the world in homelessness AND abandoned houses! Something doesn't add up here!
FlagShare1LikeReply
thelastprophet 18 hours ago
NAFTA, GATT, TPP.
FlagShare2LikeReply
TonyHines 16 hours ago
@thelastprophet Labor Unions
FlagShareLikeReply
hfb1053_1 12 hours ago
@TonyHines @thelastprophet
Labor union officials have greedy sticky fingers but nothing compares to the outsourcing of jobs by those who profit on the backs of our workers. Labor unions are the last resource many of our workers have to protect them from the scavengers on Wall St.
FlagShareLikeReply
suprabuddha 18 hours ago
Keep voting republican dimwits. This will be the future for the 98%.
FlagShare2LikeReply
Granite Sentry 18 hours ago
@suprabuddha Except that the Democrats have been running Gary (into the ground) for decades. With other smoking ruins like Detroit and D.C. it's a perfect example of what happens when the professional social welfare bureaucracy (the real Welfare Kings and Queens) uses a metro area as a cash cow to be milked for their own private profit.
FlagShare1LikeReply
Kanook 17 hours ago
@Granite Sentry @suprabuddha
Canadian cities are far more left wing than any of your U.S. examples. Why are they not cesspools of crime, decay and abandoned houses? On the contrary they're booming and on the move!!
FlagShare1LikeReply
TonyHines 17 hours ago
@suprabuddha Sorry bro but everyone of these cities that are blighted like this are in Blue States with Blue mayors
FlagShareLikeReply
rickinindiana 16 hours ago
@TonyHines @suprabuddha
Is that what passes for intelligence in the state of Alabama?
Please consider your rankings at the bottom of this country in all categories for education health and quality of life.
However Alabama has the unique experience of having it's speaker of the house under indictment for corruption.
