On Memorial Day weekend in 1998, 14-year-old Nicole Van Hyfte was attending church in Danville, Illinois. It was where she and the other members of her youth group gathered every Sunday.
As the pastor told congregants to bow their heads, pain ripped through her body, smoke filled the church and her friends ended up covered in blood.
Nicole eventually learned that a local man, angry with the church and the community, placed a pipe bomb next to the building.
I know all of this because I am a producer, and I conducted a preliminary interview with Nicole before the start of filming for an upcoming episode of a true crime show.
Such an interview typically involves a phone call to introduce myself as a producer and learn more about the person and the case I am covering.
Normally, I eagerly take notes during such an interview, but that day, I was staring out the window. Nicole finally asked, “Are you there?” I answered: “I grew up in Highland Park.”
It was July 5, and the reality of how I make a living and the call I was on were too much to handle. I started to cry, and Nicole comforted me in a way only someone who has been touched by this kind of violence can.
Unlike Nicole, I am not a victim, but my hometown is. People were viciously attacked on the Fourth of July — and I know what comes next.
The eerie similarities between what I do for a living and the horrific events in my hometown are almost too much to bear. From a TV perspective, it’s a “great story”: Book the camera crews and plan your travel. You’re going to Highland Park.
But I was already in Highland Park. I stood in front of a memorial, but only this time, my mind wasn’t wandering off to the best time of day to film it. I was in a different head space: It was tragic, all too familiar, and blocks from where I grew up.
The words “this doesn’t happen here” were ringing in my ears.
If you produce true crime stories long enough, they become a blur, but what you do stays the same. Here’s a glance at how it plays out.
I sit across from someone who has been affected by a murder, and now he or she is talking to me, a stranger, about the worst moment of his or her life.
The room is silent; my camera crews know how this dance goes. We start off slow: “For people who will never travel here, tell me about your hometown.”
Then we look the person in the eyes as we move from question to question, working our way to what we both know is going to be a painful recollection of the time the interviewee’s husband, wife, son or daughter violently lost his or her life.
The people in the seat across from me can’t hear my inner monologue; they can’t hear my panic or self-loathing for being the person to rip off the Band-Aid, yet again.
Producers of true crime stories have the “luxury” of time. We go deep and stay there for a while. We don’t emerge until all of our questions have been answered, and the complete story is told.
There aren’t enough drinks to wash away the memory of asking a 10-year-old girl to walk me though her memories of watching her father be brutally beaten after a hockey game.
I tell myself: These are more than stories. These are human beings — and if I treat them with respect and honor, maybe it will be a bit cathartic for them?
I am mostly invisible. Those sitting across from me have several lights pointed at them, and while I do my best to make eye contact and guide them, I can lean a little one way or the other and become a blur. They can’t see the fear in my eyes or my tears as we work our way toward the crescendo.
This is when the room starts to get “church quiet.”
“Does a crime like this happen here? How has this murder (or crime or bombing) changed your town?” (Insert the name of the town.)
These questions are already being asked about Highland Park, and they will again when the true crime shows make it to town. “How has this changed Highland Park? Does this kind of thing happen here?”
Standing in front of the memorial on Central Avenue, I want to be angry at the loss of innocence in my hometown. It will never be the same. Highland Park is tarnished.
Going back to my preliminary interview with Nicole, her words and ideals are what I choose to guide me. Instead of focusing on a single negative moment in her town’s history, she shifted her focus to the many positives to make sure people remember the good that makes up her hometown.
“I really think that, because of what happened, is where I’m at today (as head of the Vermilion County Chamber of Commerce),” she said. “Going through that showed me how amazing Vermilion County really is. I’m really blessed to be in the role that I’m in today because I can give back to the community that gave me so much as a young adult.”
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ABOUT THE WRITER
David Wallach, a Highland Park native, is an Emmy Award-winning true crime producer. He is working on a reboot of the series “City Confidential” about the 1998 church bombings in Vermilion County.
