I may have found Stacy Peterson’s Blue Barrel?

Posted on April 22, 2008
Filed Under Crime |

I may have found Stacy Peterson’s Blue Barrel? This story submitted by Dave the Gitride.com guy

This is a picture of the Blue Barrel Located on The I&M Canal Towpath

I ride the Grand Illinois Trail. I do it almost every day -weather permitting. The Illinois and Michigan Canal joined Lake Michigan with the Illinois River and eventually to the Mississippi river in the mid 1800’s. By some accounts, the I&M canal made Chicago the Midwest trade center that it is today. As the railroad took over as the preferred means of transportation, the trail fell into disrepair. In the last couple of decades it has been rediscovered as a nature preserve and has a bike path that follows it almost the whole length (at least 70-80 miles of it anyway.) Along the path it would not be uncommon to see geese, beavers, woodchucks or deer. It is truly an Illinois prized possession and best kept secret.

It’s normal to see something that was deposited from decades ago; remnants of tractors, oil tanks, cars in their rusty remains but to see a bright shiny blue barrel is just simply out of place. Maybe someone was putting on a joke and left this blue barrel out there, but it would appear that it has been out there for a while and the overgrowth of the local fauna could have concealed it.
This is a map that shows where the Blue Barrel is located The barrel is located about half way down the trail between the map stand off McClindon Road and the Dresden Mule Barn. If you look towards the Des Plaines River you can see it plain as you can in the ledad picture. This is just downstream from where the police were hunting a few months earlier.

I thought I would do the right thing and call this into the police. It seemed like nobody wanted to talk to me!

Knowing it is probably not the right office, but that they could point me in the right direction, I called the Joliet Office of the State’s Attorney James W. Glasgow. They suggested I call the Joliet Police. I called the Joliet Police and explained that I found this blue barrel and they said I would have to talk to the County Sheriff. They gave me the number for the Sheriff, I called them and gave them the information; after which they told me it is a State Police issue, and gave me the State Police number, but the number they gave me was the emergency number, so I had to make my fifth call to the State Police’s non emergency number. The non-emergency number was a recording. I had to wait for the recording to finish before I got a live person on the line. I told that person the information, and then she said she would connect me with the Stacy Peterson Hotline. At the Stacy Peterson Hotline, I recorded the story and left a number on which they could call me back. I don’t think they really need to, since I had rehearsed the story five times with the other law enforcement operators in the moments before. I don’t think this blue barrel will really lead to anything but …you just never know…

We’ll keep you informed of this and other entertaining news.

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Comments

9 Responses to “I may have found Stacy Peterson’s Blue Barrel?”

Stacy Peterson Blue Barrel | theFutonPoncho on April 22nd, 2008 3:01 pm

[...] UPDATE: BREAKING NEWS 2008 APRIL 22 [...]
WhoWantsToKnow on April 22nd, 2008 10:07 pm

“overgrowth of the local fauna” ? Dude, I think you mean Flora as in flora and fauna. flora is plant life and fauna is animal life.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fauna

Sounds like the local police are very interested in tracing this down!
Lavanda Dolce on April 24th, 2008 5:53 pm

Well??? What is the update? Many are of the belief that this is just a joke and if it were not a joke, why would you post something like this when folks could go to the scene and tamper with evidence? I will look forward to your reply.
Dave Gitride on April 24th, 2008 11:53 pm

Saw a blue barrel in the woods next to the Des Plaines River. Don’t know how long it’s been there. Took pictures. Reported it to police: Joliet City, Will County, and Illinois State. Submitted story and pictures to this website. Plan to ride past this location next week. Will note changes.
Liz on April 26th, 2008 1:56 pm

When did you first notice the barrel? How long have you been trying to contact authorities?

I don’t think this is a joke. Obviously the police aren’t taking it very seriously though.

Makes you wonder how many other tips have been ignored?
MissC on April 29th, 2008 3:47 pm

Any news on this barrel??? I really hope this is being taken seriously.
Anne on May 27th, 2008 8:44 am

have you sent the info to the e-mail listed on the findstacypeterson.com website??
Dave Gitride on May 27th, 2008 9:52 am

No Anne, I did not contact the findstacypeterson.com website. I alerted a bunch of local law enforcement agencies and posted the story of my findings at this website.

For what it is worth, I rode by the site about two weeks later and saw that the barrel had been moved so I am assuming law enforcement had a look at it. I forgot to bring my camera on this ride, but I also noticed that about 100 feet upstream there seemed to be something else that was blue, it looked crumpled up so it might have just been one of those blue tarps. After your message though, I did check the website you mentioned and saw that the people responsible for that website used some kind of sonar device to uncover more than just a couple of these blue barrels in the area around Channahon Ill.

In response to the other comments:

MissC: I suppose it was taken seriously
Liz: I don’t think the tip was ignored.
Lavanda: Not a joke, sorry you took it as such.
WhoWantsToKnow: Hell, I don’t know, I just got the word out of a Frank Zappa song, thanks for the clarification.
MissC on May 29th, 2008 7:16 pm

Hello Dave…Thank You so much for your reply! When you went back to see if the barrel was still there, by any chance did you notice if there were any markers tied to any branches? The reason why I ask is because I have felt for months prior to your findings that, that area needed to be searched and was passed on to the searchers, but never got an answer back to whether or not it was searched yet. I would be extreamly grateful if you could let me know or even next time you go out there take a look? Thank you and Many blessings to you!