Almost 60 years after the brutal murder of 14-year-old Nanette Hartman, police believe they now have a shot at solving the Aurora cold case.
Aurora Police Det. Benjamin Grabowski looks through the file of 14-year-old Nanette Hartman, who was stabbed 62 times on June 2, 1965, a cold case killing that has suddenly heated up and he hopes can be solved with the help of DNA technology.June 2, 1965, to be exact.That’s when a 14-year-old girl named Nanette Hartman, finishing up her final days at Simmons Junior High School, was stabbed to death in the living room of the Aurora duplex she shared with her mother and sister.
Although 57 years have passed, those who were kids in the neighborhood back then remember the impact, including Dickens’ wife Patti, a fifth-grader at St. Joseph, who recalls that months later she’d become “physically sick” with fear if her parents were not home and night was advancing.The brutal killing of 14-year-old Nanette Hartman in June of 1965 led to plenty of headlines and fear throughout Aurora but remains unsolved 57 years later.
An old picture of an Aurora Police Department evidence audit shows items taken from the scene after Nanette Hartman's killing in 1965. That means plenty of work and a lot of luck will have to go into this resurrected investigation, which started a couple weeks ago with the Aurora detective diving into the horrific details contained in the old APD file.
As far as Grabowski could tell from the sometimes awkwardly written police report, a male suspect was interviewed but nothing came of those leads, or from the many other theories people offered as the investigation quickly narrowed. After making contact with the Illinois State Police, where a forensics specialist assured him “so much more can be done,” Grabowski a few days ago sent five items to the lab - two drinking glasses, both knives and Nanette’s blood-soaked blouse.
And he showed me an old Beacon-News story immediately after the killing that featured a large illustration mapping out the young girl’s walk home from Simmons on that fateful day, as well as a large black and white photograph of the crime scene, with the teen’s body shaded so only the outline remained.
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