On a recent Monday at 11:55 p.m., Wheaton police responded to a report of theft of property: stolen fish.
Investigators at the scene discovered a broken screen door in the back of a one-story home on a quiet residential street, a smashed window in the basement and vacant pegs on which had hung a pair of stuffed, mounted muskellunge game fish.
The burglars did not steal a watch lying on a counter, a color television set in the dining room, a camera in the basement, a tape recorder in a closet, a bearskin rug on the floor or a stuffed, mounted Canada goose–all there for the taking.
”It`s crazy,” said the victim, Walter Madey. ”Who would do this? It bothers me every day.”
Fish crime. Just the sort of thing people think they can escape when they move to the suburbs. Now this.
Wheaton Police Cmdr. Charles Matthews said his detectives have no leads in the piscatorial purloining. ”We questioned a woman who said she might have seen one of the fish,” he said, ”but it turned out not to be one of the fish.”
The muskies in question were 44 and 50 inches long, respectively, and valued at close to $500. They were stolen when Madey, 30, who runs a taxidermy business out of his home, was exhibiting a sampling of his wares at a sport fishing and travel exposition. He returned, he said, to find evidence of forced entry and a blank wall where his prized, uninsured muskies used to hang.
Neighbors said they saw nothing.
Police blotter reports in local newspapers are routinely filled with similar evidence that all is not sleepy in our bedroom communities.
Des Plaines police recently arrested a 23-year-old man on charges that he broke into another man`s apartment and stabbed his waterbed with a 10-inch knife; they answered another call in which a 45-year-old woman allegedly stabbed her husband in the right buttock with a steak knife.
Clarendon Hills police arrested a 32-year-old man who allegedly attempted to steal a shopping cart full of meat from a supermarket.
Hinsdale police recently charged a 22-year-old woman with disorderly conduct for filing a false police report in which she explained that she had been found delirious on the floor of a house where she was working as a housekeeper because two men broke in and forced her to mix alcohol and pills. Two years ago, in a chillingly reminscent crime to Madey`s fish theft, a Wheaton woman discovered her prized butterfly collection stolen. Wheaton`s finest cracked that case, and the perpetrator of the ”terrible” and
”vicious” theft, as prosecutors called it, was sentenced to two years in jail.
But until now, fish crime has been a stranger to the landlocked western suburbs, and authorities are baffled. ”The case is still open,” Cmdr. Matthews said.
Madey called the theft ”puzzling” and ”really weird.”
He is a single parent who has been making his living for the last couple of years stuffing, painting and mounting game animals and fish. His slogan is: ”The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”
Madey mounts fish for $5 an inch. He goes about his work ”the old way,” cutting a styrofoam mold, stretching the original skin over it and painting the finished product to look real.
He says he thinks one possibility is that the fish filcher was a dissatisfied customer. But, you know, how can you prove it?
Madey also suspects that his missing muskies could have something to do with a string of bad luck he`s been having lately, including what he says has been a string of mysterious break-ins, none of which he reported to the police because nothing was ever stolen.
”It`s been one event after another,” said an exasperated Madey.
”Somebody`s out to get me. I have no idea why. You couldn`t take me for nothing. I don`t have much money anyway.”
But Wheaton`s fish burglars don`t seem to care too much for money.
Shortly after the muskies disappeared, in an incident that did not appear in the police blotters, Madey says his house was broken into again. This time, the thieves stole a color photograph of an Arctic grayling fish.
”Something`s wrong somewhere,” he says darkly. ”Maybe they`re trying to drive me crazy.”
