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POLO
Tri-County Press June 4, 2015 Volume 157, Number 37 - $1.00
State Performance
Sectional Loss
Tax Abatement
Polo-Forreston athletes competed in the IHSA 1A Boys State Track Meet May 28-30. B1
The Forreston Cardinals season came to a close Monday night. B1
The Ogle County Board approved “Project Green” during the May 19 meeting. A7
City sticker will be needed for golf carts, UTVs By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecountynews.com Golf carts and utility task vehicles (UTVs) must have a city sticker to operate on Polo streets. The council approved an amendment Monday to a recently approved ordinance that allows golf carts and UTVs to travel on the streets from sunrise to sunset with certain provisions. The original ordinance was approved April 20. The amendment will require the vehicles to display a sticker indicating they are permitted. Provisions in the ordinance require that anyone operating a golf cart or UTV on a city street must be 21 or older, have a driver’s license and proof of insurance, and a city permit. The vehicles must have certain equipment, including a horn and proper lighting. The city permits, which will initially cost $25 each, will be valid only from April 1 to Nov. 1. Prior to a permit being issued, the vehicle must be inspected by the Chief of Police. According to the
ordinance, the vehicles are limited to a maximum of 30 mph except where the speed limit is less. Certain streets will be off-limits. The ordinance currently stipulates that no more than three people can ride in one of the vehicles and that each must be wearing a seatbelt. Alderman Jim Busser asked if more than three would be allowed in vehicles designed for more passengers and equipped with seat belts for each. Attorney Tom Suits said the ordinance would need to be amended again to allow that. Alderman Randy Schoon said he recently saw UTV equipped with slow vehicle license plates driving on a state highway. Suits agreed to look into the state laws that would apply. In another matter, the council discussed the purchase of a building at 113 E. Colden St. Mayor Doug Knapp said he and Schoon recently met with property owner Richard Hahn about buying the property and are in the Turn to A2
Customers help restaurant with rebuilding costs By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecountynews.com Hundreds of people turned out May 30 to help an Ogle County restaurant owner get back in business. The crowd was estimated at 1,000 at a fundraiser to assist Ava Mirtoska, owner of Grubsteakers, rebuild her restaurant. The all-day event, held at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Lindenwood, and put on by Mirtoska’s employees and friends, raised approximately $20,000. “It was amazing,” Mirtoska said. “All the customers for years were there. It was happy and sad. I was very glad to see everyone but not for that reason. I’m so grateful. I can’t thank them all enough.” The well-known restaurant, located at the intersection of Ill. 64 and 251, was demolished by the EF4 tornado that swept through eastern Ogle County around suppertime on April 9. Mirtoska saw the storm approaching and quickly ushered about a dozen customers and employees into a storm cellar, preventing serious injuries and possibly saving their lives. Mirtoska said Tuesday that
she hopes to begin digging the foundation for a new restaurant in July. “I can’t wait,” she said. “It’s been seven weeks and it feels like seven months. For the last 11 years that [the restaurant] was my life.” Architects are already working on a design, she said, but several things need to be worked out before construction can start. “There’s a lot of things that need to be done,” Mirtoska said. The first issue to be resolved is where to locate the new building, she said. Illinois Department of Transportation rules won’t allow it to be as close to the two state highways as the old building was. Meeting those standards may put the new structure too close to the septic field. “As far as I have to go back, it’s running into the septic,” Mirtoska said. She hopes to avoid having to move the septic field because of the expense involved. The insurance she carried on the property will help pay some of the cost of rebuilding but is not going to cover all of it.
In This Week’s Edition...
Property demolished The old Polo Hotel was demolished by the City of Polo on May 29. The city council agreed to have the aging property demolished because it was a danger to the public. Photos by Vinde Wells
Exhumation yields few new clues By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecountynews.com The exhumation of a Rockford man murdered in 1948 has yielded little new information about Ogle County’s oldest cold case. However, the man’s nephew, Stephan Skridla, 62, Rockford, said May 29 that he is hopeful the findings may lead to solving the decades-old double homicide of his uncle Stanley Skridla, then 28, and his date, Mary Jane Reed, then 17, on a lover’s lane just outside of Oregon. “I’m very hopeful,” Skidla said at an afternoon press conference in Oregon. “I think Ogle County investigators are going to work with us. Let’s put almost 70 years to rest. My uncle was shot in the groin and burned with acid. That’s a statement. Someone definitely wanted him dead and [wanted to say] don’t mess with us.” “We’re certainly closer than we’ve ever been before,” said Michael Arians, the now retired owner of an Oregon restaurant, and former Oregon mayor, who has tried to help solve the murder for several years. Arians obtained a court order from Winnebago County Judge Eugene G. Doherty last November to have Skridla’s remains exhumed from Calvary Cemetery, just west of Rockford, in his ongoing personal quest to solve the two murders. During the press conference, held at The Roadhouse, Arians said Skridla’s coffin did not contain Reed’s skull as he suggested it might last November. During an autopsy conducted right after the exhumation on May 28, Arians said forensic anthropologists determined that the coffin contained all of and only Skridla’s remains. “The body was the same throughout,” he said. Two 32-caliber slugs and the possible
Church News, A5 Classifieds, B7-B12 Entertainment, A6 Fines, B4 Marriage Licenses, A4
Oregon Police, B3 Polo Police, A3 Public Voice, A9 Property Transfers, B4 Sheriff’s Arrests, B3
Mike Arians, left, and Stephan Skridla, the nephew of 1948 murder victim Stanley Skridla, listen to a question from the media during a press conference in Oregon on Friday afternoon. Photo by Earleen Hinton
remnants of a third were also retrieved from the casket, Arians said. Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said only skeletal remains were left of Skridla’s body. “We had only skeletal remains because he had been down so long. There was no tissue,” she said. “The forensic anthropologists determined that they were the remains of one male individual between the ages of 28 and 31.” She said two slugs were found in the casket. Fiduccia said that because of the Skridla family’s concern that his body was burned with acid, scrapings were taken from the skull. She said the scrapings will be analyzed to determine the presence of acid or an accelerant, such as gasoline. She did not know when those results would be available. Stanley Skridla, a U.S. Navy veteran, was reburied after the autopsy. His nephew said he is glad they did took those steps. “I was pleased they could find 99.9 percent of his remains,” Stephan Skridla
Social News, A4 Sports, B1, B2 State’s Attorney, B4 Weather, A3
said. “I’m pleased that we could bury him with military honors and with a priest. He didn’t get that before.” The case began on June 24, 1948 when Reed failed to return home after a date. She and Skridla, her companion on the night she disappeared, were subsequently found shot to death. Skridla’s body was discovered the next morning on County Farm Road south of Oregon. He had been shot five times, according to police reports at the time. Reed’s badly decomposed body was found four days later in a ditch along Devil’s Backbone Road west of Oregon. She had been shot once in the head. The double murder has never been solved, although a new investigation of the case by the Ogle County Sheriff’s Department in 2005 pointed to possible culprits. That investigation concluded that the murders were probably committed by two brothers in a robbery gone bad. Witnesses at the time said Skridla had a large amount of cash that night. Reed’s body was exhumed in August of 2005 after Ogle County Judge Stephen Pemberton granted a petition filed by Arians and Reed’s brother, Warren, Rock Falls. The body was exhumed from its grave in Daysville Cemetery, southeast of Oregon, for a post mortem examination and forensic testing. The body was interred later the same day, except for the skull, several vertebrae, and a femur, which were held for several months for further testing. Pemberton later ordered those remains returned to Warren Reed, Mary Jane’s closest surviving relative, to be reburied. Arians, citing previous examinations by a forensic anthropologist, claims the skull and at least one of the vertebrae Turn to A2
Deaths, B5 Mary F. Copeland, Janice V. Davidson, Vivian M. Unger
Published every Thursday by Ogle County Newspapers, a division of Shaw Media • www.oglecountynews.com