Probably one of the most interesting female criminals to come out the 1980s is Laurie Dann. A mentally disturbed woman who grew up in the affluent neighborhood of Glencoe, transferred to the University of Arizona as a young adult, a sorority girl, with aspirations of becoming a teacher, and married a wealthy insurance executive.
However, her marriage to Russell Dann was a storm of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, possession, and odd behavior. Laurie didn’t need to work due to Dann’s salary, which was appropriate, considering Laurie lied on her resumes, stating that she was a graduate of Arizona State, despite never finishing. Laurie spent her days sleeping all day, wearing old “bag lady” clothes, even if her father gave her new clothes, and her car was hoarded with junk. By 1986, Laurie agreed to divorce, but she warned Russel that she hoped to drag out the proceedings for two to three years. Laurie’s obsession with Russell leaving her was a snowball of constant false accusations of abuse for several years afterward. In September of 1986, she broke into Russell’s apartment, and stabbed him with an ice pick, then the annoying phone calls at all hours to Russell and his family began and stretched into 1987, even following the final divorce proceedings.
A year before Laurie’s day of violence, she lived in an apartment at the Kellogg Learning Center at Northwestern University. She made others who lived in the building lives a living hell:
- She stole items from people
- She left rotting meat in couch cushions
- She would ride the elevator in the building for hours, at all hours
Around this time, Laruie decided to become a babysitter. Yeah … she also made some of her clients lives a living hell too:
- Stole frozen steaks from clients’ freezers
- Defaced property
- She stunk
- Used pots and pans, then put them away, unwashed.
Some families though, said that Laurie was an excellent babysitter despite these faults.
When Laurie was kicked out of her university apartment, workers found urine stains on the carpet, and rotting meat on the kitchen counters. At night, she did not sleep in her apartment, but down the street in her car.
In the Spring of 1988, Laurie moved to yet another off campus apartment building popular with Northwestern students. Laurie continued her harassing phone calls to former family members, and former babysitting clients. On March 12th, someone spotted Laurie in a University of Wisconsin Hospital lab—three days later, arsenic was found missing (I still don’t know how she was able to get into the lab). Two days later, she was arrested at a JC Penney for shoplifting wigs. On May 15th, when most students were gone for the summer, maintenance workers found Laurie … wrapped up in a garbage bag in a maintenance room, sweating buckets.
On May 20th, Laurie took off in her Toyota with packages to give to people – packages of Rice Krispies Treats and juice boxes…with t hat arsenic she stole mixed in. She snail mailed two packages of juice and treats – one to Russell and one to her psychiatrist. Now, who would even take treats from someone who was as dirty as Laurie? Laurie was so stupid, so messed up, that she couldn’t even make the treats look harmless, it was reported that the juice boxes were leaking.
Laurie drove her car to a babysitting client’s home, the Rushes, who had told Laurie a few days prior that the family was moving away. The kids mother let Laurie take them on an outing. Laurie took the kids on a tour of arson and poison. Laurie tried catching a school on fire, and left poison at a Jewish day care center – mistakenly thinking that her former sister-in-law’s kids attended these schools. After their trip, Laurie brought the kids back home, locked them and their mother in the basement, and caught the home on fire. 2
Laurie sped to Hubbard Woods School in Winnetka, Illinois, barged in a classroom, and shot at six students, killing one, 8 year old Nicholas Corwin. After her school shooting, she abandoned her car, ran through the woods, and went to a complete strangers house, and knocked on their door, claiming that she was raped. While one of the residents of the house was gathering some clothing for Laurie to change into, the adult son of the home quietly took one of Laurie’s guns. After a long altercation, the mother and father left the home after Laurie wouldn’t give up her other gun (still under the belief that Laurie shot her rapist in self defense), and alerted the police.3 Laurie kept the adult son under hostage, and when she saw the police car lights in the distance, she shot him in the chest (he escaped through the back door and survived), and locked herself up in an upstairs bedroom. By that evening, an assault team had broke into the house to get Laurie. However, Laurie was found dead in a bedroom, from a self inflected gun wound.
Related Links:
Eric Zorn, “Laurie Dann Video Is A Haunting Look At A Tragic Story," Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1989, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-02-24/news/8903080254_1_hubbard-woods-elementary-school-video-abuse#sthash.ELsUoCDz.dpuf.
Eric Zorn, "Chapter 2: The Selling Of Laurie Dann,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1988, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-06-26/news/8801100583_1_story-rights-producer.
Eric Zorn,“Case Is Closing On Laurie Dann,” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1991, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-05-21/news/9102150460_1_mental-hospital-hubbard-woods-elementary-school-safe-deposit-box.
Other Chicago Tribune collection on articles about Dann.
1988 – Commercial – People Magazine – Laurie Dann.
“Mad Enough to Kill,” People, June 6, 1988, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20099121,00.html.
Day of Fury: The Story of the Tragic Shootings That Forever Changed the Village of Winnetka by Joyce Egginton
Murder of Innocence: The Tragic Life and Final Rampage of Laurie Dann by Joel Kaplan
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