Chicago police have named a former detective as the killer of 8-year-old Gloria Kowalewicz after more than 65 years, and an expert now fears he may have claimed other victims.
On Nov. 12, 1960, Gloria left home just before 8 a.m. to walk a few blocks to St. Mary of Mt. Carmel Church. She never arrived. About four hours later, her body was found in a ditch in a forest preserve southwest of Chicago.
Fox News reported that Chicago police have now identified Thomas F. McInerney Jr., then a Chicago Police Department violent crimes detective and a recent hire, as the man who abducted, shot, and killed her. A fingerprint on the strap of her white communion purse, preserved along with DNA evidence, finally tied him to the crime more than six decades later.
McInerney retired after 28 years, moved to Las Vegas, and died in 2006 at age 70. He was never identified or held accountable while alive. Her parents have since passed away.
The Chicago Police Department issued a prepared statement after the identification. Detectives never stopped searching, the department said, working over the years with the Illinois State Police and the FBI. Technology advances, a preserved fingerprint, and DNA evidence finally produced a name.
In that statement, the department did not soften the point about one of its own.
"His abhorrent actions not only took the life of an 8-year-old child, but left her parents and all who knew and loved her shattered as they searched for answers,"
the department said. It went further:
"McInerney should never have worn the CPD star, and it is devastating to accept that he was never identified and held accountable while he was alive. Though her parents have since passed away and were not able to receive justice in their daughter’s murder, we hope that this news brings a measure of closure to all who knew Gloria and her story."
A family spokeswoman and attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
After the killing, a CPD task force knocked on hundreds of doors. Investigators interviewed more than 1,300 people and put more than a dozen through polygraph exams. Evidence was also left along a highway back toward Chicago. The purse, coat, shoes, a prayer book, and a bullet were part of what was recovered with the child.
That evidence sat long enough for modern tools to matter. Michael Gould, a founding member of the New York Police Department’s K-9 unit, told Fox News Digital that long-term retention is rare, and that the tools available in 1960 were limited.
"It's not that law enforcement was incompetent at the time. They just didn't have the sophisticated investigative tools,"
Gould said. He argued K-9 teams can locate what the eye misses, and that dogs were not widely used in crime investigation until the mid-1980s.
"Dogs could have tracked where the person lived and what direction he fled."
He also described K-9 work in plain terms:
"They give us X-ray vision. They allow us to see things, evidence, that's invisible to the naked eye. And that's what the primary locating tool should be for law enforcement, police K-9."
Gould did not stop at investigative methods. He said he expects DNA work to open more cold cases, and he offered a blunt prediction about McInerney: this was unlikely to be a sole act. In his view, the crime looked planned and intentional, and offenders who succeed often escalate.
"My prediction is there are going to be other victims [linked to McInerney]. I don't think this was a sole act."
He added that such killings rarely stay isolated, and that success can push the pattern further. Chicago police have not publicly named other victims in this reporting. Gould’s warning stands as expert speculation, not an official finding.
What made the case worse, in Gould’s account, was the badge. He said McInerney may have used his position as an officer to lure a child into a car, a betrayal of the trust parents teach their kids to place in police.
"We teach our children that you should trust law enforcement, and when they leverage that against innocent people, particularly children, it's horrendous."
Gloria was walking to mass on a November morning. A man who wore the Chicago star is now named as her killer. The department that employed him calls his actions abhorrent and says he should never have worn the badge. The parents who searched for answers are gone. The suspect is gone. The fingerprint and DNA that survived the decades finally closed one circle and opened another: whether more cases still sit unsolved because one detective hid behind the authority of the job.
When a badge becomes cover for the crime it is sworn to stop, the public is owed more than a late press statement, it is owed full accounting for every case that badge may have touched.
