User:Dick Wylie

Born in Gary, Indiana, Feb.2,1934, he is the author/publisher of a most interesting autobiography of his exciting life as a news photographer/investigative reporter/NW Indiana bureau chief in which recounts some of the most tragic and important news events in 20 years between 1950-1970 he raced the streets to be on-the-scene for the Gary Post-Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. "LIFE and DEATH, Thru the Lens" is a 330 page, large format (8.5" x11") book using 550 of the best black and white photos from his massive files on Gary/NW Indiana news events he covered, as well as text relating to those events. It is a trip thru history of that period thru the camera lens and recorded on his brain like a giant computer harddrive. From the prize winning photo series of a Lake rescue by 75 year old Fred Carr in 1954 which was used by LIFE magazine, to being the first photographer on a single engine plane over the Standard Oil inferno in 1955, to the first photo of Bill Vukovich's Indy 500 crash which took his life, to many fatal crash scene photos on "Bloody 20" east from Gary to the Michigan line. It also contains closeup photos of celebrities like JFK, Jackie, Bobby K, Ike, Nixon, Lodge, Johnson, Chacharis,Sen. Douglas, Finley,Col. Borman as well as many of the "real heroes" of our society, the police officers, firemen, and medics, at work. He started his news photography career at 16, while a senior at Wirt HS, but in 1969 moved to Florida where he entered a law enforcement career, following his father George, a retired Gary Police officer. The last four chapters of the book follows his career as a police officer, detective, and sergeant/supervisor, where he won Officer of the Year honors given by two civic organizations in his second year on the force, as he fought crime instead of recording it as a newsman. In 2008, his son, Rick, a 27 year veteran fireman and Battalion Chief won the Fireman of the Year award in the same city. Dick's most proud accomplishments in his more than 40 years of two exciting careers are the saving of the lives of seven children, four infants in a 1958 ghetto hotel fire at 13th and Washington street in Gary, two teens blown into the middle of Lake Michigan in a rowboat in a 1968 storm off Lake Street, and the CPR use to revive a dead 13 month old girl who drowned in her Florida pool in 1985.

In retirement, he has spent years using methods,training, and experience received in his career as a police investigator to attempt to solve one of the most baffling missing person cases in American history, the 1966 Independence Day weekend disappearance of three suburban Chicago girls from the Indiana Dunes State Park. He worked on the story from the first hour of it's reporting to the Indiana State Police, joining Trooper Sgt. Ed Burke at the scene on the beach and working closely on the case with Burke for almost three years before moving to Florida. He won a 1966 Emmy award for his reporting on the case thru the Newscope team of WFLD-TV, as well as amassing the most complete file of evidence on the case. Using more than 20 years of his police experience and specialized crime scene training by FBI and other instructors, he dusted off those files which he says spell out the truth of the murder of the three girls, why and who did it. Through the 43 years of the cold-case, other media sources have interviewed him on the case, including a 1994 Dallas Morning News story where they visited the case as one of the nation's most baffling mysteries. He had promised the parents of the girls he would never let the case go unsolved, and at 75 years old, termed his dedication to solve the case as a solemn pledge. In 2009, he met with the Porter Co. Indiana prosecutor and two detectives from the Indiana State Police and gave them all the information before he went public with the evidence in a book on the crime.