Despite hours of interviews with family and friends, a meticulous search for clues, and careful follow-ups on several leads, the Westmont Police Department had gone nowhere with its two-week search for missing schoolteacher Rachel Rachlin.
But there was one place left to try, a place that at once seems odd and obvious. On Sept. 1, detectives tracking the 29-year-old woman called O’Hare International Airport.
An hour later, an airport police officer on the lookout for Rachlin’s 1993 Nissan Sentra found it. In its trunk, authorities found her body.
“We sometimes get this type of stuff out here,” said Chicago Sgt. Angelo Delmarto. “It’s just a big place, and you can’t watch everything or everybody.”
Sitting on more than 7,600 acres, replete with 18,000 parking spaces and serving more than 64 million travelers yearly on more than 800,000 flights, the world’s busiest airport increasingly has become an alluring destination for criminals.
Certainly, violent crime or the discovery of slaying victims remains unusual, but many other sorts of crime not coincidentally are on the rise there. And authorities in missing-persons cases frequently check O’Hare at some point in investigations.
The peculiar combination of O’Hare’s sheer vastness, daily intersection of thousands of strangers and its growing characteristics of a modern metropolis allow criminals to feed on the boredom, confusion and fatigue associated with travel, or use anonymity as a shadow for nefarious activities.
“There are people who prey on travelers,” said Chicago Police Cmdr. Edward Scullion, whose force of 190 officers patrols nearly 5 million square feet of airport. “When people walk into O’Hare, they don’t feel threatened. They’re not thinking of crime. They’re thinking of traveling. And sometimes people get careless and become victims.”
Examples are as plentiful as 747s on the runway waiting for clearance:
– The airport’s sprawling parking lots often are used as dumping grounds for drugs and other illicit materials because the unusual and bizarre can go unnoticed in the seemingly endless sea of autos. Over the years authorities have discovered a number of bodies, including those of a mob henchman, petty thieves and suicides.
– Thieves have stolen millions of dollars in jewelry that has come through O’Hare. In 1983, for example, authorities charged three men and a woman as part of a theft ring that targeted visiting jewelry salesmen. In one three-day period, they allegedly pilfered more than $250,000 by distracting the salesmen then stealing their jewelry-laden briefcases.
– And indicating that crimes against travelers are not the province solely of outsiders, law enforcement authorities conducted a yearlong sting called Operation Rampcheck in 1992 and charged 17 baggage handlers with stealing everything from video recorders to jewelry to handguns from the bags of passengers over a period of several years.
Though officials are quick to say that most travelers will never be touched by crime, according to statistics, more and more people are becoming victims. For example, authorities said, since 1984 crime at O’Hare has risen markedly. And in 1992 the Chicago Police Department logged one of the highest number of criminal incidents in the airport’s history, proving that the skies are friendlier than the terminals.
The majority of those crimes are petty in which criminals rely on distraction or the absence of the traveler: luggage thieves, pick pockets, purse-snatchers, car thieves. The crimes are committed by a motley crew of thieves who range from seasoned professionals traveling the country in search of victims to criminal neophytes lurking in crowds waiting for mental lapses by prey.
Out-of-town or foreign travelers make the best targets, officials said, because they are less suspicious than Chicago-area fliers. And some thieves have become emboldened in plying their craft at airports because many travelers are not willing to suffer through the time and expense of flying back to Chicago to ensure prosecution.
The list of law enforcement agencies on hand is almost as long as some of the airport’s check-in lines: The largest law enforcement contingent is that of the Chicago Police Department, which monitors O’Hare’s terminals, parking lots, traffic and, under federal law, must respond within five minutes to any distress call within the airport.
Add to them Aviation Security, an arm of the Federal Aviation Administration charged with safeguarding the airport’s 11 miles of runways; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Secret Service; the State Department; U.S. Customs Service; the U.S. Postal Inspector’s Office and the FBI.
At any given moment, there may be as many as 100 law enforcement officials prowling O’Hare, not counting airline security. The reason for all the badges is that while airport officials deal mainly with small crimes, it is the uncommon and nastier fare-such as hijackings, large-scale drug- or gun-smuggling and terrorism-that they are intent on deterring.
Airport officials said that their crime problem is mainly a symptom of O’Hare’s size-it is in essence a city within a city-and the number of yearly travelers, roughly the equivalent of one quarter of the U.S. population.
“About the only thing we don’t have is a resident component. It’s not quite a neighborhood,” said Chicago Aviation Commissioner David Mosena. “And we don’t have schools. But when you have the volume that we have, you’re going to have just about everything else.”
That means street musicians, a post office, a dentist, a chapel, restaurants, a homeless problem, massive construction projects, a fire department and more retail outlets than some of its surrounding municipal neighbors. But the items in which O’Hare is truly bountiful are the things that keep criminals happy and employed: money, people and opportunity.
Those things became easier for the criminal element to access in 1984, according to authorities, when the Chicago Transit Authority hooked up an elevated train line to the airport, making a cab or car unnecessary baggage for thieves.
As a result, scams like the Mustard Trick became more commonplace. In that ruse, a thief eating at a restaurant or waiting area will spill mustard or a food item on a traveler’s clothing. Then, while attempting to clean the stain, the thief or an accomplice will lift the unsuspecting victim’s wallet or purse or walk away with a piece of their luggage.
“They get you one way or another,” Scullion said. “And we hope people are more and more cautious.”
On a recent trip to O’Hare, Kathleen Ring said she deliberately sat with her carry-on luggage between her legs, placed her purse in her lap and wore very little jewelry. Ring even asked for identification when approached by a reporter.
“I try to stay very alert,” said Ring, a Connecticut resident who visited Chicago on a business trip. “I’m aware of everyone around me. My son was pickpocketed at another airport because he wasn’t alert. You can’t let all the stuff that’s going on around you let you take your mind off your stuff.”
A word to the spooked, though, even criminals get distracted sometimes.
Take, for example, the time a masked gunman robbed one of the airport’s car rental agencies and stole more than $50,000 in cash and checks. Instead of trying to get as far away from the airport as possible, for unknown reasons he drove into an O’Hare parking lot and, unknowingly, right into the sights of a security camera and police.
He was arrested minutes later exiting an elevator, according to Delmarto.
“No one,” he said, “accused these guys of being smart.”
