Steven Pfiel (A Musing on What Generates the Traffic to the Case Study)

     I wonder what draws some of the people looking for information about Steven Pfiel to this blog.  Surely most of it must be some sort of curiosity.  I can judge that alone by the people in foreign lands who were likely just putting their or a friend's name into Google and finding that there was a Steven Pfiel who committed a pair of heinous murders – and one confirmed sexual assault – currently serving out the rest of his life in a maximum security prison in Illinois.  Some of the traffic may also be due to the fact that my scholastic (not professional) case study of him, largely gathered from public sources, appears to be the most comprehensive treatment of his journey from troubled child to convicted killer that is easily available to the public.  Still, if I had to guess, I would imagine that the majority of people looking for information about Pfiel knew him or of him back when he first made headlines in 1993.
     As such, it is a little disheartening that there has been so little feedback about the case study.  Sure, it is likely much longer than anything one would want to read from a computer screen.  It also does not have the crime scene photos for which many are searching.  I want to make a point on that subject.  I do not have photos of either the Hillary Norkog or Roger Pfiel, Jr. murder.  If I had access to such images, I would not make them available to the general public nor post them on a blog.  It isn't that I do not believe that such images don't better inform the actions and underlying mindset of Pfiel and his actions.  Rather, it is my belief that the value of what can be gained from an examination of them is limited – and would truly apply to a small group of professional (of which I would not be included) – and does not exceed the disrespect it would show for the victims.
     Back to the subject of feedback.  It strikes me that there should be several hundred people who count themselves as former classmates of Steven Pfiel, and no fewer who would have similar ties to Hillary Norskog or Roger Pfiel, Jr. (indeed, I was a classmate of Roger's).  While I am aware that the case study does not do much of a service of illustrating the victims – and there is really no place in a case study to do as much – I do think that there is a place for some commentary on those who were murdered by Pfiel.  Leaving the victims as little more than names with ties to the killer does not allow for the best understanding of the tragedy of the murders.
     Likewise, I am well aware that there were people who counted themselves as friends and supporters of Pfiel.  Yet there has been no mention of the how the paper misrepresented Pfiel's behavior or actions.  Nor has there been any feedback of how easy it was to miss the signals of how damaged Pfiel was – at least not on the blog.  There was an off-hand comment while I was constructing the paper about how 'nobody could see it coming', but such a sentiment only reflects the general lack of awareness to the Macdonald Triad (which suggests that animal cruelty, fire-setting, and persistent bed wetting after five years old are strong indicators of later homicidal behavior) and how Pfiel may have scored on such a measure.
     Clearly, there were those who had more than a general sense of discomfort when dealing with a young Steven Pfiel (I count myself in this camp).  To be perfectly fair, I assume that there were probably an equal number of people who had similar sentiments about an adolescent me.  I think that whatever superficial relationship Roger and I may have had would have been informed by his noting similarities between his brother and me.  It may explain why Roger was always friendly towards me, even though we weren't really friends.  Of course, it is probably just as likely that Roger was of better character than I was willing to acknowledge at the time; he may have been cool to everybody who didn't go out of their way to piss him off.  The last time I saw Roger was the Thursday before high school graduation when he and I were part of a group of students called in to serve any and all detentions still due; I got out of this rather deftly, as I had been in possession of my disciplinary card for months at that time and had the only record of what I was due to serve (for the record, it was two regular detentions and thirteen Saturday detentions).  He and I nodded to one another and as far as I know, he spent the rest of that day in the school doing nothing, a perfect example of how punishment often overrides the need to do better by the student.
     I do not know if I would have given Roger much thought after that had his brother not murdered Hillary Norskog.  I do know that there are people much better suited to speak to the character of Roger and his relationship with Steven than my personal experience would allow me to do; I don't know if I had more than three interactions with the younger Pfiel.  The case study was undertaken in an attempt to better understand just what may have been going on, what motivated a teenager with no lack of opportunity or means to commit violent crimes against people he knew intimately.  I cannot state without equivocation that my conclusions are correct.  People who knew Hillary, Roger, and/or Steven may come away from reading the case study thinking that is completely ignores the people involved in the events, that it gave them no better insight into the mind of the killer.
     More recently, the murders of John and Maria Granat by their son, John Jr., in Palos Park has brought new attention to the Pfiel case.  Palos is still a small village, though nowhere near as intimate or isolated as when I was growing up there.  There are undoubtedly many crimes going on in the quietude of wooded suburbia, but murder is a decidedly rare one.  What ties the Granat case to Pfiel's is Stagg High School and the relatively young ages of the people involved.  However, the Granat case seems to be so mundane – adolescent rage against parental authority and ignorant greed.  It does not, to me, evoke the same sense of wonder or curiosity that the Pfiel case does.
     What I am asking here, and I am not expecting much of a response, is for some feedback about the Pfiel pieces.  What is the cause for the interest in him and his crimes to be so enduring?  Is it just the personal attachments we may have had with him or his victims?  Is it just location, that those who are from Palos are interested in this small piece of history?  Is it just a curiosity about the crimes?  If you, the reader, have any information that you would like to share, I encourage you to do so (either here at the blog or at tim.mcneil93@gmail.com).  There is much left to be said about the murders and the man behind them.
     I have met the threshold I set in order to start looking into what it would take to arrange an interview with prisoner Pfiel.  At the same time, I very much hope that he would have no interest in assenting to such a request; I am not eager to sit before a murderer and ask him what he was feeling when he killed a fifteen year old girl.  Still, I think that there is more left to the tale than what little I have contributed.  And I am hoping that the people who knew Hillary, Roger, and Steven would be willing to come forward with some of their remembrances. 
     Otherwise, I will just assume that it is curiosity that drives the traffic.  A sense of uncertainty as to what may have led a supposedly normal boy to kill those he had close relationships.  I don't have the real answers for that.

The Beast of Chicago: The Murderous Career of H.H. Holmes (2003)

     I would imagine that the average reader probably wants something different from an examination into the serial killer known as H.H. Holmes. I want more of an understanding of the motivations of the subject, and I want the details of the killings – because those inform the picture as well as anything else.  Being partially educated, I knew I probably wasn't going to get much in regards to the psychology of Holmes from a graphic novel, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be any appeal for me.
     Rick Geary's The Beast of Chicago: The Murderous Career of H.H. Holmes (2003) is noted on FEARnet.com as one of the five graphic novels one needs to read (provided one has already read The Walking Dead).  I definitely would not rank it that high, but I have not read any of their suggestions from that list, save the subject of this post.  It has some merit, but almost none of that seems tied to it being a graphic novel.

Geary's take on the second floor of the Castle

     In essence, Geary manages to turn what would be a somewhat dry four page paper on Holmes' travels, schemes, and possible actions – that part needed to be better researched – into a 70+ page collection of illustrated panels which add little to his text.  This is not a knock of Geary's skill; he is quite good.  It is just that there is so little action implied in his drawings that the illustrations do little to pace the narrative.  None of the horror of Holmes' acts carries into the artwork, but Geary does have a flair for conveying a sense of the late 19th Century.  Where the illustrations work best is in showcasing the look and layout of Holmes' Murder Castle, but I cannot say that these are more informative that the existent information already available.

Geary's presentation of the Castle's exterior

     Geary essentially gives a bare bones account of Holmes, noting his rise from being little Herman Webster Mudgett in New Hampshire to traveling across the country – and into Ontario, Canada – in an effort to perpetrate a fraud (and kill some people along the way).  There is no dramatic license in the narrative.  Indeed, Geary seems to go out of his way to make sure that he is well within the established facts – as far as he researched them – of the case.  Unfortunately, this leads to there being scant few panels where Geary can impart more than a stoic face, a street scene, or architecture.

More realistic depiction of the Murder Castle

     As a primer on Holmes, I think this book serves a purpose.  But I don't know if it does a better job than looking him up on Wikipedia (where this very graphic novel serves to inform the entry).  It takes surprisingly little time to read, which makes it a fine selection to check out from the library.  I just can't recommend it as a purchase, nor can I say it serves to better understand psychopathy or serial killing in general.  At the same time, it doesn't celebrate Holmes or killing, so it is better than some of the other titles in the same genre.

Falling Angels: The Effects of Depression and Alcohol Dependency on Family Relations

     Another bid to buy some time, this is a paper from a Movies and Mental Illness class at Roosevelt.  It goes into much more detail about the film in question than I tend to with reviews.  All the same, I highly recommend the movie.

From left to right: Lou, Sandy, Jim, Mary, and Norma Field

Falling Angels: The Effects of Depression and Alcohol Dependency on Family Relations

      Based on the Barbara Gowdy novel of the same name, Falling Angels (2005) offers a glimpse of the dysfunction of the Field family which has come to be understood as normal and acceptable.  Where the novel spans a period of more than ten years, the film instead focuses on the few months between the fall of 1969 to early January 1970, with repeated flashbacks to an aborted vacation to Disneyland that was instead spent in the family’s backyard underground bomb shelter.  The Field family consists of father Jim, mother Mary, and daughters Norma, Lou, and Sandy.  Though each of the daughters is shown interacting with someone outside of the family – and Jim Field is acknowledged to have a mistress for part of the time shown – the focus is clearly on the intra-family relations and how the home situation has made interpersonal relationships for the Fields abstruse.

     The film opens with the Fields beset by a reporter seeking an answer as to why she was on the roof.  Lou tells the reporter that she was looking for the family cat. (Though there is no cat in the film, the novel does describe the time that the Field girls had adopted a stray cat only to have it killed by the engine of their father’s car, where it had gone to stay warm.)  The Field girls go inside an empty funeral home to see their mother (the she in question) in a small pink casket.  The characters are ably sketched out in this short sequence, with Lou being the vocal rebel, Norma the compliant mediator and caretaker, Sandy the naïve aesthete, Jim the ill-tempered father who has no meaningful relationship with his daughters, and Mary as not really there. 

     From the opening, the film goes back to trace the events that led up to Mary’s death.  Jim is shown to be a control freak who inspects his daughters’ hands and dictates their care for Mary.  In an early flashback, a more severe instance of Jim’s controlling nature can be seen as he wakes his family in the middle of the night, rushes them to the bomb shelter to avoid a (fake) nuclear attack by the Russians, and then tells them that instead of going to Disneyland as he had promised the girls, they will be spending the next two weeks locked underground.  They will follow a strict schedule (as laid out by Jim) for everything, from the order that they will use the latrine (chemical toilet) to when they will be allowed to drink water.  He does not allow his miscalculations – he underestimates the amount of fresh water needed for five people (to the point that the family ends up drinking soapy dishwater and whiskey for the last few days) – or medical situations (such as Norma getting her first period) to interrupt the exercise.  What is not as clear, until much later in the film, is that much of the work Jim is doing to hold his family together may actually be necessary.  Whether it is or not, Jim is trying to apply the structure he learned in the Canadian military and service in World War II to his family in hopes that it will override all of the factors that would threaten to tear his family apart, but does not given much consideration to the thoughts and feelings of his children in doing so.

     Mary is revealed to have had a child with Jim before Norma (the oldest of the girls).  The baby boy, Jimmy, died at Niagra Falls.  It was ruled an accident by the coroner – that Mary slipped and lost control of the baby – which overruled the police’s suspicions of intent on Mary’s behalf.  While Mary obviously carries a great deal of guilt over this incident – which can be seen in her reaction to Lou and Norma while on the church steps and very clearly in a brief conversation with Sandy (“You can’t trick nature.  Can’t...dance to the music and then kill the piper.”), she more often appears to be casually unaware of her environment until stirred by a change.  Mary’s life is shown as one where she is dependent on her adolescent daughters for care, accepting of her husband’s controlling nature (and even understanding of his affairs), and as a captive in her own home.  It is not surprising, then, that when Mary attempts to break free from what her life has become, it takes shape as leaving the house (either running to the church or climbing on the roof).  Aside from these two instances, Mary does not leave the house.

     Norma is an introvert who is teased at school – the boys call her “Enorma” and compare her to a cow and the girls openly laugh at her behind her back – and held in little esteem at home.  The only respite from this at school is the new girl, Stella, who befriends Norma.  Through her relationship with Stella, Norma has to come face-to-face with the shame she feels for her mother’s condition (and knowing that her father has mandated that the neighbors know as little as possible as to what goes on in the Field’s home), but she is also given the possibility of having somebody who will love and accept her.  (In the novel, Stella rejects Norma after Norma kisses her and admits to being a lesbian; Norma’s sexuality is left in question in the film.)  Emboldened, Norma is able to make some headway in establishing her identity on her terms, which leads to an improved relationship with her sisters and the grudging respect of her father.  However, this is not without incident, as during her becoming, Norma is nearly molested by her drunk father while he is teaching her how to drive.

     Lou is the most aware of the wrongness of the family situation in the Field’s home.  While neither Norma nor Sandy balks at the dictum to present their hands for inspection, nor will either confront Jim when they believe he is in the wrong, Lou acts out both directly (such as when scrawls the word tyrant on the street in front of their house, stomps on his foot, or accuses him of causing Mary’s death) and indirectly (such as when she does a Nazi salute behind his back or “quits” the family and runs away to the bomb shelter).  Lou is still bound to follow Jim’s rules, though.  She may think that it is wrong for her father to effectively keep Mary prisoner in her own home, but she still acts to bring her home as quickly as possible.  This may be done because she is afraid of Jim’s reaction – he is prone to acts of violence against furniture and game boards – but is also a result of her not knowing any other means by which to handle the situation.  Allowing Mary to seek solace or absolution in the church means allowing for her own weaknesses to shine through, and that is something that Lou cannot afford.  Even in her relationship with Tom, she does not reveal herself until under the effects of LSD.  Instead, she hides behind a character she has created (she acts less intelligent to make herself more appealing) and her wit (to avoid real engagement).  She cannot even bring herself to talk to her mother learning that Mary is aware of Jim’s affairs.

     Sandy may be seen as naïve, and she is in many ways, but she is not lacking in experience or expectations.  Her expectations are low – she wants to marry her high school boyfriend because she is pregnant with Reg Shellman’s baby and because Reg is, ultimately, not what she is willing to accept – and she blithely accepts the roles imposed upon her at home (baby) and school (future housewife).  Sandy is sexually experienced (her older sisters are not), but this is completely hidden from her family until she reveals her pregnancy. 

     At the center of the Field family’s problems are Mary and her depression.  While Mary no doubt could be diagnosed with late onset dysthymic disorder due to the duration of her depression, that alone is not sufficient in describing her situation.  She definitely meets most of the criteria.  Her depressed mood is nearly constant and has lasted for years.  She has hypersomnia, low energy, low self-esteem, and at times appears to have an inability to concentrate.  There is no evidence of a time when she has not been depressed prior to having children.  It is unclear if there were any major depressive episodes during the early periods of her dysthymia.  There is no evidence of any type of manic episode (Mary’s active moments are still somewhat labored and slow, and there does not appear a mood elevation as much as a less foggy presentation).  Mary does not have a psychotic disorder.  It cannot be stated with any certainty that her depression is not directly tied to her alcohol consumption, but it is more likely that her mood is augmented more than dictated by her steady consumption of whiskey.  Most telling, her symptoms have caused near total social impairment, and almost all of her needs require the care and attention of her daughters.

     It is likely that Mary has recurrent major depressive episodes during this time.  In addition to the criteria met under dysthymic disorder, she displays psychomotor retardation, both fatigue and loss of energy, and recurrent thoughts about death.  While Mary does experience bouts of guilt, some of them are understandable.  However, she also has moments of guilt mixed with anger and feelings of worthlessness.  This cannot be taken as part of the normal bereavement process because it has endured for twenty-one years.

     Mary, as mentioned above, consumes a large amount of alcohol.  While it is impossible to properly diagnose alcohol dependence from what is presented in the film – Mary is not shown to have developed a tolerance (though one can be inferred from her drinking coffee cups of whisky at a time throughout the day), does not show any symptoms of withdrawal (though her moments of agitation occur when she is alone and without alcohol), there is no way of telling whether Mary would try to stop drinking, there is no effort necessary to acquire the alcohol nor recovery necessary (she can be nearly constantly intoxicated) – there are some signs that point toward it.  Mary does favor drinking over interacting with her family, her only social interaction.  Jim (and the daughters) believes that she can be bribed off the roof with the promise of more whiskey.  Mary continues to drink despite knowing that it limits her ability to relate to her family and may exacerbate her depression.

     It is likely that Jim’s behavior is in large part a reaction to Mary’s actions (killing baby Jimmy) and depression.  Jim is more than a bit of a monster, but he honestly believes that his actions are for the benefit of his family (though his affairs may only benefit his family in that they make Jim feel better).  While he has clear anger and control issues, as well as instances of alcohol abuse, Jim maintains a level of functionality throughout the film.  Even when he makes the illogical assumption that threatening to shoot Mary if she does not get off the roof (rather than call the fire department and expose the family to the scrutiny of the neighbors), he is acting on his experiences from the war and the assumption that survival (and not quality of life) is the ultimate goal.  Because Mary is not really present as a parent (and cannot be fully trusted with children) and Jim has obvious limitations, his strategy becomes to provide structure instead of love, and support is always conditional on meeting his expectations.

     Treating Mary in 1969-70 would be different from treating her today, but both should start with reducing her dependency on alcohol.  Not only would Mary benefit physically, but she would likely have a reduced sense of depressed mood on a day-to-day basis.  Therapy would not be allowed by Jim – actually, any type of external assistance would be looked upon as a threat by Jim – so Mary would need to leave the house for her treatment.  As Mary’s experiences as very self-directed, she may benefit more from a pharmacological treatment.  Either naltrexone or acamprosate combined with therapy may work, but disulfiram would likely only cause a deeper, darker depression and other adverse effects that overshadow its benefits in reducing the desire to consume alcohol.

     Having begun to address the alcohol dependency, it is likely that Mary would be more open therapy to address her depression.  Ideally, this therapy would eventually expand to include the entire family (Jim appears to let his guard down after the death of Jimmy is related aloud, but at the same time, Mary is already dead), as Mary’s feeling toward and relations with them are undoubtedly tied to her own feeling of depression.  However, this therapy may start with something so simple as getting Mary to initiate some level of socialization.  This is a modest goal, to be sure, but so long as Mary’s entire world consists of her family (whom she is actually desperate to leave – when Mary declares that she has to get out, it is not the bomb shelter but the family to which she is referring), Mary cannot escape the reminders of her killing her first child and unhappily spent years.  While MAIOs (for treating chronic depression dating back many years) and SSRIs (avoiding a side effect of sedation would be better for Mary) could be prescribed, cognitive therapy (because of the depression being tied directly to a severe life event) may be more appropriate, or at the very least incorporated with any medical treatment.  Until Mary can address her feelings about the event at Niagra Falls and toward her family, her depressed mood will persist to some degree.  It is likely that even if her mood were to improve without cognitive therapy, her thoughts above death and guilt would remain. 

     Mary would need to have started treatment at least two years prior to the time covered in the film (excepting the flashbacks).  This allows for her to have a real chance to avoid her untimely end (a happy if unintentional suicide) and to serve as a beneficial factor in her children’s lives during their times of need.  While she may have been able to avoid death by starting later, she would not have been able to offer any support to her children; though there may be some addition by subtraction in regards to the demands placed on the daughters in regards to having to care for her, it is also just as likely that they would have some difficulty adapting to the new situation regarding their mother.

     The rest of the family would also benefit from varying treatments.  Jim could benefit from a self-help group (AA) to help with his bouts of binge drinking.  This could help him to direct his need to control situations at something more productive while encountering a sponsor who he could respect who might encourage a more open-minded approach to life for Jim.  He would also benefit from treatment for his anger issues.  This would likely need to be in the form of behavior treatment (as Jim would likely be suspicious of any medical treatment for himself).  Jim and Mary could benefit from some form of marital counseling, as neither of them are meeting the others needs and have evinced an unwillingness to deal with that problem directly.  All three daughter would benefit with some social skills training, but more specifically with therapy that teaches more appropriate roles and expectations of being parents (as they have had less than ideal role models).  While Lou would also likely benefit from some sort of anger management treatment, what she (more so than either Norma or Sandy) could use is college and the belief that she has a future beyond the kind of life her mother had.

My Father's Birthday

     Truth be told, what little life plan I had cobbled together about a decade ago was heavily reliant on my not living into my forties.  There is a rather serious history of heart disease in the family – both my grandfather and father had massive heart attacks, though both survived them – and I have never, or at least not since 1985, lived anything approaching a healthy lifestyle.  I had gotten quite used to carrying around entirely too much fat (and yearly diminishing muscle) around on my short, squat, defective frame.  I had missed my chance, or repeated chances, at making anything out of my life and the very low goal I was targeting was simply making it to the end without causing any more major disruptions in the lives of others.
     There was a period of time where I wasn't speaking to most of my extended family, the result of my grandmother attempting to place the blame for everything in my life – like she had with my father before me – squarely on the shoulders of my mother.  Sure, my mother is a contributor to the emotional train wreck that I am and long have been, but so is my father, my brother, a half-score of teachers, and most importantly, I am.  I am the one who has made the disastrously bad decisions in my life, and I am the one who has never made good on what was once assumed to be a great amount of potential.
     At my lowest in my adult life, though it can be argued that I have done much to avoid living as an adult, I reached out to my family for help.  My grandmother put a price on her help: blame your mother for everything.  Blame your mother, free your father from blame, and more than that, free myself from any realization that I am the author of my miseries.  And all I had to do was say it. I didn't have to mean it.  I didn't have to live my life affirming it.  I just had to profess something I didn't believe to be true and she would be willing to help me, which is to say that she would intercede with my grandfather on my behalf.  Blame my mother, the woman who could have easily had me sent off to jail at that particular time, and all would be made right, all favors would be granted.
     I couldn't do it.  I may have been (and maybe am still to this day) a most reprehensible creature, but I was not going to assign my troubles – those of the moment – to my mother and my mother alone.  If I were going to be assigning blame within the family, I would start with me.  And I wouldn't absolve my father for his part.
     Not long before this moment –which took place in some forgettable restaurant in Oak Brook, Illinois – I had reached out to my father for help.  I was at a serious low point; almost Fall of '92 in how close I came to just quitting on everything.  I was scheduled to visit my father in about three weeks, but it would have been much better if I could have gotten out to see him before that.  I hadn't really seen much of him since we lost the apartment in Orland Park, Illinois.
     He went off to live with his sister in Winfield and I with my mother in Oak Park.  He stopped by a few times for some reason or another; I remember him helping track down my mother's wayward cat in a search that lasted more than three hours.  I remember him showing up to celebrate my 18th birthday – which wasn't on my 18th birthday (I spent that day driving to and from Michigan to retrieve a friend who promised to come back and watch Jurassic Park on opening day with me and a collection of friends – to show off his new motorcycle; he introduced it with the quip, "Do you like what I spent your tuition money on?".
     My father drove me out to Iowa City and back to register for classes – I really could have used some help with that – and find a place to live.  Not to stay, like the regular freshman who went off to the dorms.  Floods and circumstances placed me in an apartment a little over a mile off campus with a pair of drop-outs.  Don't get me wrong, I came to really like my roommates (and I cannot apologize enough for them having to put up with me), but I could have strongly benefited from living like a student and being surrounded by students.  Then again, I would have severely benefited by going to any other school in the country.  Live and learn, but I didn't aspire to doing much of either.
     I saw him that Christmas (1993) back in Illinois.  I had done as bad as a student could do and still earn credit.  The message I was given was "do better".  That April, I he swung through Iowa City on his way out to Denver.  I drove the majority of the trip from where I joined, finally giving into exhaustion in Brush, Colorado – I had been hallucinating behind the wheel and figured it was time for some sleep – having been up for nearly three days straight constantly waiting for his "I should be there in six hours" time frames.  I never saw Denver on that trip, only the old airport as I was put on a plane for Cedar Rapids and my room mate Dave being kind enough to make the trip to come get me.
     I was invited out to see my father once.  Flying out on a United Airlines pass – and arriving an hour early because that was the flight with open seats – I was greeted not by my father but by his landlord, Rich Charles.  Rich got my bags to my father's jeep (and showed me how to get into it when it was locked) and word to him that I had arrived.  An hour later, Rich came by and found me again; no sign of my father.  Well, since I would be staying at Rich's house, he could take me there if my father never showed up.  But he did show up.
     He hadn't come up with any kind of plan for what we would do, at least not one he wanted to let me know about.  Rich had to strongly suggest that my father get some food as there was nothing for me at the house.  Other than my father looking absolutely lost in a supermarket – and not in the way intimated by the Clash – the only thing I remember from that night was that Rich's ex-wife (?) had a thing for Kip Winger.  Come the next day, my father spent most of the morning in the basement with his girlfriend.  Eventually he emerged and we had a brief conversation, but he retreated back to the basement.  The only activity of the trip ended up being a trip out to see a country music festival she wanted to see.
     At the time, I was supremely upset that he would invite me out for a weekend he had already prioritized to someone else.  I got to sit around in an unfamiliar house without much to do, take a long uncomfortable (because of how I behaved) trip to and from the festival, and then during the festival was ignored enough that I took the ski lift up the mountain just so I could walk back down and kill time.  I wasn't behaving at all like an adult, and I want to say that I was 20, so I should have been something more than a pouting child.
     Of course, this girlfriend of his ended up being his wife of fourteen years (I honestly am guessing here; it is hard for me to be definite when I wasn't invited to or even notified of the wedding).  My father went on to, in his way, build a life in Colorado that was quite different from the one he had in Illinois.  The next time I was invited out to Denver was in the summer of 1998 and I needed to be there a little before we had arranged.  I needed to get out of Illinois in a way not unlike my father did when he transferred four years earlier, but my need was more personal.
     I called him from a pay phone at the White Hen Pantry convenience store at North Boulevard and Euclid in Oak Park; I couldn't make the call from home.  Dad, I pleaded with him, I need to get out of here.  Can I come and see you now?  It will still only be a week, but I just can't stay here and I have nowhere else to go.  And all of that was true.  I had no friends left to turn to, no family that would have me.  Whatever damage my mother may have done to me over the course of my entire life to that point I had repaid more than tenfold over the space of a year.  My brother and I had come to blows frequently over the months leading up to this phone call.
     My father just couldn't be bothered to change his schedule.  He was too busy.  Maybe next time.  I was suicidal, and that was tough, but there was nothing he could do about it.
     We didn't speak again until I went down to visit him in Florida after his heart attack.  I felt uncomfortable as I climbed into my aunt's SUV and my grandfather beamed that he was just so glad that he was able to see me again, that I had come down.  Of course I did.  I may have still had an intense resentment of my father for neglecting me when I reached out to him, in the moment when I wanted someone to allow me to see if I thought my life was still worth living (and when I came to the realization that it wasn't I proceeded to drift aimlessly towards an early death), but I wasn't going to compound that by deciding that I was too petty to come down and see him.
     He could have died.  It was the most serious heart attack I've ever heard of somebody surviving, or at least of that level of magnitude.  I brought some of what I had written – because I still occasionally wrote back then – and bought a special edition Time Magazine full of pictures for him when I was told he couldn't concentrate well enough to read.  I didn't want him to die, but that is a sentiment without context.  As angry as I have been perceived to be – and I want to make the point that frustration and anger are different – I don't really want anyone to die.  But I didn't want my father to die down in Florida.  I didn't want his parents, my grandparents – the ones who would have helped me if I had turned on my mother – to have to bury their son.  I didn't want him to die on a trip where he had gone down to help them out by doing some chores and repair work in their townhouse.
     I probably could have gone the rest of my life – because I wasn't doing any living in it – without ever speaking to my father again, but it seemed like it would have taken a force of pure spitefulness to not be there in whatever fashion I could be when he was in need.  Not that I could do anything.  No matter what kind of ego centric spin I want to put on it, I was little more than just another face in the crowd of family that was there wishing for him to get better.  The difference was that I, like my brother and my father's wife – who I will eventually get around to referring to as Theresa...I don't know why I have been so reticent in giving her credit for her role in his life thus far in this story – had to make a journey to see him.
     My father got well enough to go back to Colorado.  He was well enough to return to Florida after his father died to clean out the townhouse and get it ready for the market.  My brother and I were enlisted to be labor in this project.  My brother was told as much; I was not.  I was told that we should all go visit Grandma and make sure she's doing okay.  If I had known I was to be moving boxes and furniture around in 90 degree heat, I would have packed different clothing.
     One night (on that trip) when we went out to eat, the we in question was just my brother and I.  My father handed over his Harley Davidson credit card and told us to not go crazy.  We ended up in an Outback Steakhouse in Naples, but it could have been any western suburb of Chicago from the look of it (or the people inside, many of whom were refugees from the Chicagoland area).  Even when we were together, my father found a way for he and I to not be.
     So our conversations, which could be as frequent as twice a month or as infrequent as twice a year, revolved around nothing important.  I had long ago resolved to not accomplish anything in my life, so even if he had good advice to give about how to move forward, I wasn't going to make myself into the kind of person who would ask for it.  There was only a narrow window of our shared past that he cared to revisit.  I couldn't get him to talk much about his time in Vietnam or racing.  I took four months to get him to talk about his relationship with his grandfather and how it was vastly different than the relationship I had with his father.
     I didn't want to talk about work – unless I had done something that would have gotten a regular employee fired (yay to being the kind of worker who is good enough to get away with that) – and he wasn't working.  I didn't have any kind of relationship with Theresa or her children, and that was the family that was closer to my father than I was.  We had been largely removed from each others' lives for four years when we stopped speaking, and it was seven years of that silence.before the heart attack.  By the time we established any regular contact, it had been thirteen years since we spent much time with one another.
     We weren't strangers, but we certainly kept a distance in our relationship.  I went to Denver once since the trip to Rich's and the festival.  I went out to play some Living Arcanis, listen to the Q&A with Henry Lopez – who insulted me (though not by name) in front of everyone present – and also see my father, his house, and Theresa.  I stayed at the hotel where the convention was.  I wanted some distance even when I was there.
     This year, about a week before my birthday, I called him just to talk.  He was very upset and I gave him the kind of advice that a friend or a son can give, but a professional (which I am not) mental health care specialist cannot and does not.  He had built up a fantasy of where he could return to Illinois and live with me or my brother.  Again, I had been long building towards not being around, to not living an adult life.  I have a cat and I can't support it, much less a person.  My brother was not in a position where he could help, and given something that transpired a few years earlier, I don't think he would have been eager to do much other than encourage my father to seek his ends elsewhere.
     There was no succor to be had back home.  It wasn't malice.  His sons simply couldn't give him the rescue option he wanted to be there.
     I spoke to him on my birthday, very briefly.  The kind of exchange between people who know they should be talking to one another but can't figure out what they are supposed to say.  There was some kind of distraction in the background on his end and I asked him if he had to deal with it.  "No," he said, "I just live here."
     And then, four days later, that ceased to be true.
     Today would have been my father's sixty sixth birthday.  Before this year, he was always – the ten week discrepancy not withstanding – thirty years older than me.  Not that I thought of him that way.  He was, at least until his heart attack and back problems forced him from work and the hobbies that defined him, an active man.  I tended to think of him as he was at thirty eight – for some reason I never really sought to figure out how old my father was before the third grade, and he remained at that age (in part) to me.  And not just me.  I discovered that my brother thought of him at that age, too, during our long drive out to his memorial service.  Thirty eight year old Larry McNeil hadn't yet gone to work for United Airlines, hadn't yet gotten into Harley Davidson motorcycles, hadn't moved to Colorado and started a new life.
     Thirty eight year old Larry had all the trappings of 25+ year old Tim McNeil in terms of not taking meaningful steps towards real adulthood, except that he had a family and belief that he would find that something that would pull everything together.  The Larry McNeil that moved out to Colorado was forty eight years old, aged by ten years of raising his sons (most of 1989-1992 as the primary parent to me, the dates being different for my older brother) and not being free to pursue life on his own terms.
     We never got to talk about that.  We never got to have a serious conversation about how I had disappointed him, and he had done the same to me.  We never even mentioned forgiving one another, or even one of us doing as much for the other alone.
     Today would have been my father's birthday.  I would have called him up and had an awkward conversation with him.  I would have asked him about what he had planned for today and known that for the most part the response wouldn't matter to me.  He might have said something about how he missed his mother, who died the year before.  He might have been as angry as he was on the 22nd of June.  He might have been sad and depressed and focused on his ailments.  He might have been in a great and positive mood.
     But he isn't any of those things, now.  He isn't anything anymore.  Some of his remains are out in the front room, awaiting a time next summer when my brother schedules to scatter his ashes in Palos Park, Illinois and at Burt Lake in Michigan (just couldn't be one place, could it, Dad?).  The rest are out with Theresa, and I doubt that they are any comfort for Larry not being there any more.
     Today is a day when I would want to call my father and talk about him.  The kind of day I would want to be there for him.  At least as much as I could be, given how I have done so much in my life to be of so little consequence as to not be able to really help.  Even if perfunctory communication was all that today would have entailed, it would have been something.
     There are so many parallels between 22 June, 2011 and – God help me, I can't give it a specific date (and I'm betting the letter with the date has long since been destroyed) – Fall of 1992 that it is beyond sad.  The major difference is that something went wrong in '92 and didn't in '11.  I wouldn't be here if not for a malfunction, or if I were, it would be with some severe and lasting damage.  I didn't consult my father about that decision, nor did he call my brother or me.
     And now there is no special meaning to today.
     My father is dead.  He isn't going to hear what I have to say, and even if he could I'm not sure it would matter much to him.  We hadn't done much to build a solid relationship, and I know how much of that is my fault.  My father is gone and I will never have a chance to get to know him as an adult.  I will never get back the years of anger, animosity, and hurt.  What's worse, I'm sure that even if those had been great years between us, I would still be writing a piece on my father's birthday today.
     Because 22nd June, 2011 wasn't about me.
     Just like Fall of 1992 wasn't about him.
     And now 31 August is just another day in the year.  It used to be my father's birthday; he isn't going to have any more.  I can keep what memories I have of him with me, but that is a poor substitute for his actual being.  The only bright point I can find is that I failed where he succeeded, and he had good years out in Colorado not tainted by my need to be anywhere other than alive.

My Father, Trains, and the Soap Crayon

     I don't know if I've ever told a story as well, or to as willing an audience, as when I related the tale of a Christmas morning in the early 1980s and how it related to the relationship between my father and me.  This is a rough re-imagining of that story.  It is an incredible act of vanity that I not so secretly wish that someone had recorded my performance so as to present it better here.  Still, I do not believe that I am wholly without talent and there is a story worth telling somewhere in here.
     This is also not the definitive piece on my relationship with my father.

Steven Pfiel Update (for Google Searchers)

     Steven Pfiel is incarcerated (under the name Steven Pfeil).  He is serving sentences for the murders of Hillary Norskog and his older brother, Roger Pfiel, Jr.

     This should satisfy those who Google search "Whatever happened to Steve Pfiel".  There may come a day when I am would be in the position to properly interview him, but that will not be any time soon.

A Case Study of Steven Pfiel (2010)

    Steven Pfiel was considered by many to be an average child from an average family acting out normal adolescent rebellions.  On 17 July, 1993, those assumptions would begin to unravel.  What would emerge is a clear, though not definitive, picture of an adolescent psychopath.  Unfortunately, Steven would go on to become a serial killer, engage in sex acts immediately after one of his murders, and leave both families of his victims without answers as to what motivated him.  This paper will examine the troubling history of Steven Pfiel, from elementary school to an inmate of the Illinois Department of Corrections, with specific attention paid to the two murders and one rape he is known to have committed.  It will make the case that not only is Steven a serial killer, but also a psychopathic sexual sadist.  This paper will attempt to showcase that while all of the popular assumptions regarding these definitions may not apply to Steven, he meets the criteria nonetheless.  This paper is formatted as to detail Steven Pfiel=s history and then to attempt an analysis of his behavior as meeting the thresholds for inclusion in psychopathy, serial homicide, and sexual sadism.

     Sometime after leaving a party in a Cook County, IL, forest preserve with Hillary Norskog in his car on the night of 14 July, 1993, Steven Pfiel murdered her ( McWhirter, 1994; Sloan & McWhirter, 1993b; Sloan & McWhirter, 1993c).  He stabbed the thirteen year old girl at least twelve times (Heinzmann, 2001; McWhirter & Sloan, 1993; Sloan & McWhirter, 1993c; Ziemba, 1998), particularly about the head and neck (Caro, 1995d).  This vicious attack resulted in Hillary having to be identified through dental records (McWhirter & Sloan, 1993).  The police did not even attempt to let Hillary=s mother, Marsha Norskog identify the disfigured body (Sloan & McWhirter, 1993b).  The body was found on 17, July, 1993, in unincorporated Palos Township (Cytrynbaum, 1996h; McWhirter, 1994), dumped in a field (Sloan, 1995c; Ziemba, 1998).