LCCC Criminal Justice dedicates bench to slain women
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GODFREY – A bench and a memorial garden were dedicated Thursday outside of Haskell Hall at Lewis and Clark Community College (LCCC) in memory of two women murdered half a century ago.
On May 30, 1969, Elizabeth Perry, of Excelsior, Minnesota, and Susan Davis, of Camp Point, Pennsylvania, both 19, were killed while on vacation in Somers Port, New Jersey. Both were students at Monticello Women’s Junior College, an all women’s school whose building is now part of the LCCC campus.
According to court documents, the two were headed back to Pennsylvania in hopes of beating the traffic, but stopped on the Garden State Parkway to have breakfast at the Somers Point Diner. What happened after they left the diner about an hour later is uncertain.
A state trooper found their powder-blue 1966 Chevrolet convertible abandoned by the parkway around noon that day and had it removed. Three days later, the bodies of the two young women were found hidden under piles of leaves in dense woods about 200 yards from the parkway, about 150 yards from where their car had been abandoned.
The case has not been solved, and the investigation remains open. LCCC Criminal Justice Associate Professor and Program Coordinator Jessica Noble discovered the women’s story two years ago.
“I decided that my students would really benefit from doing a service project for these two young women,” she said.
According to Noble, she filed applications for two grants, one from the Illinois Education Association (IEA) Region 45 and the other from the IEA 45 Retired Chapter. The bench and garden project cost around $400.
“The area will help the community at large have a place to reflect and take a moment of silence for the two women and other crime victims,” she said.
To learn more about the murders, Noble recommended people read “The Garden State Parkway Murders” by Christian Barth. The non-fiction work provides information about the two students and the investigation.
For more information about L&C’s Criminal Justice program, contact Noble at (618) 468-4524 or jb******@lc.edu.
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