Feature | Wednesday, June 11,2008

The kingdom of the crystal skull

Forget Hollywood — the true story of the fabled relic, and its owners, is weirder than fiction

Untitled Document Do you feel the love?” asks Bill Homann. He is sitting in an easy chair in the living room of his modest suburban tract home in Valparaiso,

Feature | Wednesday, June 11,2008

Forget Indiana Jones — meet Illinois Shapiro

A reincarnated Union general’s search for the lost crystal skull of Peru

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document “You have to understand, I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” says Joshua “Illinois” Shapiro, “and for 25 years there were no

Feature | Wednesday, April 2,2008

Devil’s in the details

James Earl Ray had ties to Chicago mob, says his book-promoting brother

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document The last time John Larry Ray visited New York City was in 1965. He was between jobs, collecting unemployment benefits. While there, he remembers, Ma

Feature | Wednesday, February 20,2008

Lowney's legacy

More than a love of writing drove the strange colony in Marshall, Ill.

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document The contents of 77 boxes shelved in the special-collections department of the Brookens Library at the University of Illinois at Springfield tell a l

Feature | Wednesday, February 20,2008

Banned Valentine

English teacher keeps James Jones’ legacy alive in Robinson

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document Helen Howe’s audience on this bone-chillingly cold day is an English class of about two-dozen seniors sequestered in the library of Robinson High School i

Feature | Wednesday, February 20,2008

The Marshall Papers

UIS home to unique collection of writers’ colony documents

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document When Thomas J. Wood began working at then-Sangamon State University, in late 1986, the files of Lowney Handy, James Jones’ mentor, were still

Feature | Wednesday, December 19,2007

Christmas songs

Music speaks of freedom and unbridled transcendental love

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document I play guitar — or, at least, I like to think I do — but I never have learned any Christmas carols, though I’ve attempted to fingerpick “

Feature | Thursday, November 29,2007

His last score

After years of fighting the feds, James Earl Ray’s brother banks on a new book to settle his account

By C. D. Stelzer

John Larry Ray has been pitching this story for nearly a decade — but until now few have been willing to listen. On March 30, 1998, Ray says, less than a month before his brother died, he wrote

Feature | Wednesday, November 28,2007

The assassin’s brother

John Larry Ray marks time in Quincy, still trying to set the record straight

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document The lone robber entered the Farmers Bank of Liberty at 9:10 a.m. on Friday May 30, 1980. He didn’t bark any demands, and he didn’t

Feature | Wednesday, August 8,2007

Keeper of the farm

Singer-songwriter Wil Maring finds her place in rural Illinois

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document It’s a languid August evening in Cobden, a former stop on the old Illinois Central line about 10 miles south of Carbondale. At one time, the surrounding o