If you pay attention to our newsfeed here at The Gorko, you will know that there is no lack of strange goings-on in the larger Peoria area, and the world, and all about the penchant of our own editors for amateur sleuthing. What you may or may not have realized are how heavily local and national professional crimefighters actually depend on The Gorko for important leads! Here are some of the most bizarre true crime cases that we have personally put to rest over the years.
WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, LEMON?
On October 4th, 1986, while walking from an interview with Peoria Radio along Peabody Lane towards the YXCA flophouse he called home, clinical hypnotherapy grad student phenom Lemon Reilly was attacked and physically beaten about the ears and shoulders by two dark-clad assailants who continually cried out, for the space of two blocks, a mysterious phrase: ‘What’s the frequency, Lemon?’ before vanishing into the night.
‘I do not know who they were,’ Lemon reported to the Peoria police, ‘just a couple of muggers I guess, but they clearly knew who I was.’
Earlier the same evening Lemon had appeared on the radio talkshow PHIL In The Blank with Phil Blankenstoeppen to discuss his most recent groundbreaking psychomedical trials, which the pre-med student was conducting in the basement of University of Peoria College of Medicine. Lemon had not yet been charged with the more than 85 counts of illegally administering psychoactive substances to unsuspecting minors (as later immortalized in the 1989 film The Peoria Hyde: Lemon Reilly and the Kids), but he had risen to a certain level of local acclaim.
HOW THE GORKO CRACKED THE CASE
In 1994 The Gorko received a startling telegram (yes we were still communicating by telegram in those dark, old times) that claimed the sender knew a vital clue about the mysterious phrase, which they would disclose under the full moon at midnight under the Franklin Bridge, for $20.
It was Uncle Toby, desperate for some money to go to the movies, and he ended up knowing nothing. However, while under the bridge waiting for The Gorko representative (we had not replied; nor had any intention of ever replying) Uncle Toby was physically detained by a man in dark clothing who kept muttering, ‘What’s the frequency, Lemon?’
Squealing like a pig, Toby burst from the underpass in his shorts and hailed a passing patrol car. Officers DeWitt and Blueberry emerged from their vehicle and, after a short pursuit on foot, placed the mystery stranger under arrest. Uncle Toby was lucky, for in the stranger’s backpack the officers found a kitchen knife with blood from another recent crime scene, the stabbing of Peoria Radio security guard Winsome Hues. The stranger’s name was Tom Valentin and under questioning he confessed to the 1986 incident, stating that cosmic rays from another dimension were being transmitted through the Peoria radio frequencies and frying his brain, and he had only been trying to find out the frequency in order to shut them down, and save the world.
Mr. Valentin received a 12 to 24 year sentence for the second-degree murder of Winsome Hues. Uncle Toby walked free, though he had to go back and put on his pants again first.
Image created on neural.love
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