The Dog Catcher
1962
True Story:
I was 10-years-old and in the fifth grade when I briefly became friends with a boy named Ed Wick. Not Edward. Just Ed. By giving him that name, I wondered if his mother knew he would turn out to be a killer. Switched around, as his name would be in a phone book, Ed would be listed as Wick, Ed. And wicked he certainly was.
Ed was a slightly-built, quiet kid with red hair and blue eyes. He had freckles. He rarely smiled. We were thrown together in an odd way and briefly became friends. Ed and I shared first place in a pottery contest at school. He designed a perfect, round bowl, glistening with a cherry glaze.
Mine was a lumpy ashtray. It didn’t really look like a bowl, or anything else for that matter, so I decided it would be an ashtray. Our teacher, intent on drawing me out and helping me build self-confidence, decided to offer me some help and, with a few strokes of paint and a clear glaze, helped me create something remarkable. When it came out of our classroom kiln, I was astonished at its beauty, and half-chagrined that I wasn’t fully responsible for its creation.
I wonder now how Ed felt having to share first place with me. It haunts me in a way. Because of what happened afterwards.
After school one day, the former undisputed champion potter suggested I come over to his house. He lived one street over from us and to get to his house I had to cut through the back yard of the famous writer, Jack Kerouac, who had recently moved across the street. Everyone in the neighborhood talked about Kerouac. He was at the end of his career, having bought the house across the street with his earnings from his most famous book -- “On the Road.”
Kerouac was a pugnacious drunk by then, eager to fly off his barstool at the slightest imagined provocation. Consequently, he was 86’d from Skipper's and Gunther's and most of the other taverns down on Main Street. Some people change when they drink. I hear Kerouac was a simple, polite man when he was sober. When was he sober? I don’t know. But I don’t think it was often. I just know that he gave my mother the creeps when he was over at our house. Bennies and Booze. He had that kind of glazed, wild-eyed look that just never seemed to resonate with my mother. When I cut through his backyard, actually a path through the woods next to his fence, I never saw him. I was glad about that. My mother told me he used to dance naked at night in that backyard, mumbling and counting his trees, of which he was quite fond.
Mom was superstitious about things. Alan Ginsburg would come out in a jelaba and sandals in the middle of Winter. She didn't know how to process this information. My Dad, on the other hand, thought it was very cool. It was he who inflicted Kerouac on my mother. And it was an honor that Kerouac liked my father. He ignored everyone else in the neighborhood, pulling his booze and bacon home in a little red wagon.
When I arrived at Ed Wick’s modest ranch house that day, the atmosphere turned seriously creepy. There was a small dog in the house. I love animals of any kind, and I went to pet the dog but he seemed to cower at my approach. I soon found out why. With Ed’s mother busy in the adjoining kitchen, we sat down to watch television.Suddenly, from between the cushions of the living room sofa, Ed pulled out a gun.
“Don’t be afraid,” he explained. “It’s just a pellet gun.” Then he aimed it at his dog and started shooting, slowly, methodically. I immediately became upset and demanded that he stop what he was doing.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Ed said. “They’re just BB’s.”
“It does too hurt," I said. "They can go under his skin.”
No matter what I said, though, Ed wouldn’t stop. Finally, after making a vain attempt to grab the pellet gun, I gave up and ran into the kitchen where his mother was washing dishes.“Please. You’ve got to make him stop. He's shooting your dog!”
In the living room, I saw the dog trapped in a corner, hiding behind the television, terrified and trying to escape.I was stopped cold by his mother’s response. She turned from the sink, lowered herself a bit to my level, and stared directly into my eyes as though she were searching for something. Her words struck me dumb.
“You look like you’ve got a little of the devil in you too.”
I stared back at her wide-eyed. The hair on my neck stood straight out like porcupine quills. I ran out of the house.Once I reached my house, I blurted out what had just happened. "Leave it alone," my mother said. "Don't go back over there."It wasn’t long after this incident that our dog, Dinah, a beautiful silver German Shepherd, collapsed and died in our driveway. I didn’t see it happen. I only remember the aftermath. My mother was crying and trying to pick up the large dog in her arms. Dinah could not stand on her legs and it looked bad. I was horrified as my mother drove her off to the vet and I cried when she arrived home alone. She told me she had no idea how it had happened. I believed that Dinah, who was rather old at the time, had simply died of natural causes.
And I believed that for 25 years.
I didn’t even give it a second thought when Jack Kerouac moved to Florida in 1964. But then a snag developed. His mother, to whom he was devoted and for whom he had bought this house, was refusing to leave.Their three outdoor cats never returned home.Mother and son were bereft. They finally left without them.Fortunately, Ed Wick and his family moved soon after as well. Also to Florida. Good riddance. I was glad to hear he was gone. And, gradually, I managed to forget about him.
It is only in retrospect that I have connected these three incidents -- the torturing of the dog, followed soon afterward by the death of our German Shepherd and Jack Kerouac's three cats.
And then, in 1985, twenty-five years after the events on our quiet little cul-de-sac off Dogwood Road, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an Associated Press article about a man from a small southern town who had been disciplined by his bosses for shooting over 30 cats and dogs with his service revolver. After he killed a young boy's dog and it was published in the local paper, he was forced to resign from Animal Control.
The name and age matched, not to mention the MO. I knew it was him.Ed Wick, 35, was now a Dog Catcher!I phoned my mother and got the same response."Leave it alone."Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, "You know, Ed Wick killed Dinah."
It was light bulb time. The mystery of the cul-de-sac killer was solved.
This time I didn't leave it alone. Instead, I forwarded the information to Oprah Winfrey, after she did a show on serial killers and an expert explained that these people often start out by torturing and killing animals.
Oprah, a dog lover like myself, said if anyone knew of someone who was exhibiting these murderous traits, they could write in and she would forward the mail to the proper authorities. I wrote immediately, giving them my phone number and address.
I never heard back.
Recently, I received some items from my mother's estate. Prominent among them, for me anyway, was that ashtray I made back in 1962. And a photograph of Dinah. There was also a picture of my fifth grade class with Ed Wick sitting front and center, crosslegged on the floor, smirking into the camera.
Some time later, I met a police psychic who helped to solve a couple of cases with Scotland Yard. I told her my story.
"I don't think dogs are enough for Eddie anymore. I see a 17-year-old male.""He killed him?"
"Yes."
She later backed off her response.
Has Ed Wick become a serial killer? I don't know. But he's still out there.Somewhere. (I changed the killer's name to "Ed Wick" to protect the guilty. For now.)
Update:
In 2006, I came across a news item on a spate of cat killings in a small town in Florida. I clicked on the link and found that a neighborhood organization had been formed to get to the bottom of who was killing all the cats in town. The group had a police liaison who created a map of all the killings on a chart. I zabasearched Ed Wick's name and realized he lived smack in the middle of the map. My jaw dropped.
I wrote to the police liaison who created the map, the neighborhood organization, the sheriff and the FBI.
Nothing was done.
A few months later, a fire at the local pet shelter killed about 30 animals and did over $1 million in structural damage.
If anyone ever followed-up on my information, I never knew about it.
He's still out there.
True Story:
I was 10-years-old and in the fifth grade when I briefly became friends with a boy named Ed Wick. Not Edward. Just Ed. By giving him that name, I wondered if his mother knew he would turn out to be a killer. Switched around, as his name would be in a phone book, Ed would be listed as Wick, Ed. And wicked he certainly was.
Ed was a slightly-built, quiet kid with red hair and blue eyes. He had freckles. He rarely smiled. We were thrown together in an odd way and briefly became friends. Ed and I shared first place in a pottery contest at school. He designed a perfect, round bowl, glistening with a cherry glaze.
Mine was a lumpy ashtray. It didn’t really look like a bowl, or anything else for that matter, so I decided it would be an ashtray. Our teacher, intent on drawing me out and helping me build self-confidence, decided to offer me some help and, with a few strokes of paint and a clear glaze, helped me create something remarkable. When it came out of our classroom kiln, I was astonished at its beauty, and half-chagrined that I wasn’t fully responsible for its creation.
I wonder now how Ed felt having to share first place with me. It haunts me in a way. Because of what happened afterwards.
After school one day, the former undisputed champion potter suggested I come over to his house. He lived one street over from us and to get to his house I had to cut through the back yard of the famous writer, Jack Kerouac, who had recently moved across the street. Everyone in the neighborhood talked about Kerouac. He was at the end of his career, having bought the house across the street with his earnings from his most famous book -- “On the Road.”
Kerouac was a pugnacious drunk by then, eager to fly off his barstool at the slightest imagined provocation. Consequently, he was 86’d from Skipper's and Gunther's and most of the other taverns down on Main Street. Some people change when they drink. I hear Kerouac was a simple, polite man when he was sober. When was he sober? I don’t know. But I don’t think it was often. I just know that he gave my mother the creeps when he was over at our house. Bennies and Booze. He had that kind of glazed, wild-eyed look that just never seemed to resonate with my mother. When I cut through his backyard, actually a path through the woods next to his fence, I never saw him. I was glad about that. My mother told me he used to dance naked at night in that backyard, mumbling and counting his trees, of which he was quite fond.
Mom was superstitious about things. Alan Ginsburg would come out in a jelaba and sandals in the middle of Winter. She didn't know how to process this information. My Dad, on the other hand, thought it was very cool. It was he who inflicted Kerouac on my mother. And it was an honor that Kerouac liked my father. He ignored everyone else in the neighborhood, pulling his booze and bacon home in a little red wagon.
When I arrived at Ed Wick’s modest ranch house that day, the atmosphere turned seriously creepy. There was a small dog in the house. I love animals of any kind, and I went to pet the dog but he seemed to cower at my approach. I soon found out why. With Ed’s mother busy in the adjoining kitchen, we sat down to watch television.Suddenly, from between the cushions of the living room sofa, Ed pulled out a gun.
“Don’t be afraid,” he explained. “It’s just a pellet gun.” Then he aimed it at his dog and started shooting, slowly, methodically. I immediately became upset and demanded that he stop what he was doing.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Ed said. “They’re just BB’s.”
“It does too hurt," I said. "They can go under his skin.”
No matter what I said, though, Ed wouldn’t stop. Finally, after making a vain attempt to grab the pellet gun, I gave up and ran into the kitchen where his mother was washing dishes.“Please. You’ve got to make him stop. He's shooting your dog!”
In the living room, I saw the dog trapped in a corner, hiding behind the television, terrified and trying to escape.I was stopped cold by his mother’s response. She turned from the sink, lowered herself a bit to my level, and stared directly into my eyes as though she were searching for something. Her words struck me dumb.
“You look like you’ve got a little of the devil in you too.”
I stared back at her wide-eyed. The hair on my neck stood straight out like porcupine quills. I ran out of the house.Once I reached my house, I blurted out what had just happened. "Leave it alone," my mother said. "Don't go back over there."It wasn’t long after this incident that our dog, Dinah, a beautiful silver German Shepherd, collapsed and died in our driveway. I didn’t see it happen. I only remember the aftermath. My mother was crying and trying to pick up the large dog in her arms. Dinah could not stand on her legs and it looked bad. I was horrified as my mother drove her off to the vet and I cried when she arrived home alone. She told me she had no idea how it had happened. I believed that Dinah, who was rather old at the time, had simply died of natural causes.
And I believed that for 25 years.
I didn’t even give it a second thought when Jack Kerouac moved to Florida in 1964. But then a snag developed. His mother, to whom he was devoted and for whom he had bought this house, was refusing to leave.Their three outdoor cats never returned home.Mother and son were bereft. They finally left without them.Fortunately, Ed Wick and his family moved soon after as well. Also to Florida. Good riddance. I was glad to hear he was gone. And, gradually, I managed to forget about him.
It is only in retrospect that I have connected these three incidents -- the torturing of the dog, followed soon afterward by the death of our German Shepherd and Jack Kerouac's three cats.
And then, in 1985, twenty-five years after the events on our quiet little cul-de-sac off Dogwood Road, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an Associated Press article about a man from a small southern town who had been disciplined by his bosses for shooting over 30 cats and dogs with his service revolver. After he killed a young boy's dog and it was published in the local paper, he was forced to resign from Animal Control.
The name and age matched, not to mention the MO. I knew it was him.Ed Wick, 35, was now a Dog Catcher!I phoned my mother and got the same response."Leave it alone."Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, "You know, Ed Wick killed Dinah."
It was light bulb time. The mystery of the cul-de-sac killer was solved.
This time I didn't leave it alone. Instead, I forwarded the information to Oprah Winfrey, after she did a show on serial killers and an expert explained that these people often start out by torturing and killing animals.
Oprah, a dog lover like myself, said if anyone knew of someone who was exhibiting these murderous traits, they could write in and she would forward the mail to the proper authorities. I wrote immediately, giving them my phone number and address.
I never heard back.
Recently, I received some items from my mother's estate. Prominent among them, for me anyway, was that ashtray I made back in 1962. And a photograph of Dinah. There was also a picture of my fifth grade class with Ed Wick sitting front and center, crosslegged on the floor, smirking into the camera.
Some time later, I met a police psychic who helped to solve a couple of cases with Scotland Yard. I told her my story.
"I don't think dogs are enough for Eddie anymore. I see a 17-year-old male.""He killed him?"
"Yes."
She later backed off her response.
Has Ed Wick become a serial killer? I don't know. But he's still out there.Somewhere. (I changed the killer's name to "Ed Wick" to protect the guilty. For now.)
Update:
In 2006, I came across a news item on a spate of cat killings in a small town in Florida. I clicked on the link and found that a neighborhood organization had been formed to get to the bottom of who was killing all the cats in town. The group had a police liaison who created a map of all the killings on a chart. I zabasearched Ed Wick's name and realized he lived smack in the middle of the map. My jaw dropped.
I wrote to the police liaison who created the map, the neighborhood organization, the sheriff and the FBI.
Nothing was done.
A few months later, a fire at the local pet shelter killed about 30 animals and did over $1 million in structural damage.
If anyone ever followed-up on my information, I never knew about it.
He's still out there.
posted by Jon at 2:02 PM
4 Comments:
Hi love,
It's me and I was reading your account about the dog killer. Did you ever think of putting it in a short story form.
You wwrite so wonderfully descriptive.
Love
dad
Dear Jon,
Once again another reality story. Thank you for publishing this story. It is terrible the way people get away with crimes killing animals as this Whick did, and then continued in other forms. You definitely are a hero for pursuing the incident and writing about it for all to keep their eye out. It is very revealing in more ways than one, especially after you wrote to Oprah and nothing was done, and then to the authorities and nothing was done. If I had been there with you when he was shooting his little dog, I would have grabbed that gun out of his hand for sure. And I most definitely would have suspected him killing your dog and the cats. What a dirty person this guy is. I appreciate the fact you reflect and think back and remember events and then even if it takes 25 yrs later to have a better understanding, that is wonderful . I respect you very much and thankful for having grown up with you and I still have the special scrapbook I made of all the notes cards and wrappers from the twinkies, and straws from the vanila sodas we drank. God Bless You my dear friend. You have always been like a brother to me. Keep up the good work and God Bless You.
Thank you dear Jon, for always being a gifted writer. I even have the notes you wrote me and pictures of you when we grew up together. So glad you never stopped writing. You are extremely gifted and you need to write a book. You have always been a true blue and honest good person, always at my side. Unbelievable how I always brought you on my dates with me. How stupid was I for doing that but I needed you there with me because you always protected me. I think you are saint and a very special person always. Be well and God Bless. Much love to you always, from your old buddy. As your dad always told me, it is better to have one good friend than many friends. He was right. Once a buddy always a buddy no matter what.
That's really scary...and really sad. Aside from this being another wonderfully written story, I sympathize with your frustration. I too have stepped forward on numerous occasions, hoping to alert the authorities of dangerous people, but like you, found that very little was accomplished. Sometimes, I feel that it’s the result of a system that is obviously so saturated with addressing crimes and following up on leads from people who report crimes, that there are simply not enough people to handle the paperwork. Other times, I think complacency in the workforce plays a part in why crimes often continue for so many years…too many people don’t care about work, they just want to get paid. In either case, NOT doing something about it is the wrong answer. Thank you for choosing the correct path. I don’t know what makes some people so heartless, but it’s the conscious of good men that has kept the world from falling apart.
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