NEWSWEEK Magazine, NATIONAL AFFAIRS (September 18, 1944)

The Madman of Mattoon

The descriptions tallied. Most of the prowler's victims talked of a tall, thin man in a black skull cap who carried a spray gun, squirted a sickening sweet "gas" through their bedroom windows, and then slipped into the night. Fully 31 Mattoon, Ill., residents, mostly women, claimed they had been thus victimized in their homes last week. The spray temporarily paralyzed some and nauseated others. Even four Chicago reporters sent to investigate felt its lingeringeffects. They reported to skeptical city editors that their heads ached, their tongues thickened, and they could hardly phone in their stories.

No greater sensation had hit Mattoon since Gen. Ulysses S. Grant arrived there in 1861 to muster the 21st Illinois Infantry into state service. Londoners who had brushed with buzz bombs drew no more eager audience than Mattoon citizens who had seen or sniffed the mystery man's trail. Mrs. Laura Junkin told of walking into her bedroom, smelling "something heavenly, yet sickening," and having to lie down because her left leg was partially paralyzed. Mrs. Beulah Cordes told of drinking coffee with her husband one night when she saw something like a "small white package with a funny red stain on it" out on the front porch. She went to investigate and found a piece of cloth about 6 by 10 inches. When she held it up to her nose, she staggered and screamed: "That went right to my toes!"

Clues were scarce, theories plentiful. Public opinion leaned to three: The villain was either a mad scientist at work in a secret laboratory, a high-school chemistry student, or a discharged soldier with experience in chemical warfare. The Chemical Warfare Service in Chicago thought the gas might be chlorpicrin--samples might have been sent to the local Office of Civilian Defense and fallen into the wrong hands.

Out-of-towners scoffed. The "madman's" weapon, they charged, was nothing but a compound of clover, ragweed, sour milk, rumor, and imagination--a perfect recipe for mass hysteria. Their jeers mounted when nothing came of a State Crime Bureau analysis of the only tangible clue--a piece of white cloth left on the porch of Mrs. Cordes' home. But jittery Mattoon (population 17,000), scanning a growing list of casualties, persisted. Local police took on 24-hour patrol duty. Backing them up were hundreds of civilian vigilantes.