Cindy Niezgoda remembers the last time she ever spoke to her son.
She called him to see what time his shift ended at the Ford Assembly Plant in Chicago’s Hegewisch section, where they both worked. The plant was shutting down for the July 4th holiday.
Her son, Larry Niezgoda, never returned her call.
She got home, read her mail and turned on the news, which was reporting that a child had died on a carnival ride during the Town of Highland’s annual July 4th Festival.
Niezgoda, of Schererville, tried him a second time and thought maybe he was spending time with his girlfriend. It was the morning of July 2, 2005. She turned off her phone and went to bed.
At some point during the night, Larry Niezgoda’s house at 8134 Wicker Park Drive in Highland caught fire with him in it. The case, ruled a homicide, has never been solved..
His mother said her 27-year-old only son had everything to live for – a good job and two young children. For 10 years she’s been asking herself why anyone would want to kill him.l
She’s heard the stories — that he was in a gang or a police informant. She’s been asked he was shot in the head or stabbed before the house was set ablaze..
The insinuations insult her and the callousness of the questions crush her, she said.
“People will say to me, ‘Oh wow, I thought that case was closed already,'” she said, near tears. “It’s like once a person is buried, the whole thing is solved just like that, but it’s not.
“My life ended that day. I just go through the motions.”
The case was strange from the start.
Highland firefighters didn’t find anything that would indicate how the fire started; neither did state fire marshals, according to Highland Fire Chief Bill Timmer.
“There was an issue as to whether it was an arson, then there was a question of an accelerant. That’s when we turned it over to the fire marshals and the (U.S.) Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,” said Highland Police Chief Pete Hojnicki.
He confirmed the case is still open, with leads a mere trickle now.
“We just sent a couple of our investigators down to southern Indiana on some information we received; it unfortunately didn’t pan out,” Hojnicki said. “There are not a lot of tips on it, maybe two to four a year, but they tend to come from the prisons, where people talk about things and get situations confused.
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“But it is an open case. It’s just sometimes, the pieces we have of a puzzle fit in, and we have to wait for the next piece.”
The waiting rips at Niezgoda, who couldn’t bear to celebrate her 50th birthday without her son. She is frustrated at the process and feels the police haven’t done enough.
“(Highland Detective Ralph) Potesta was the first detective on it, and we’ve been through four or five detectives (over 10 years),” Niezgoda said. “You call them them and they don’t know anything. I even tried to call (Lake County Sheriff John Buncich) to see if he could help, but ‘it isn’t his jurisdiction.’
“I’m tired of calling. If they’d just do something about it, I could say they’re doing their jobs.”
Every so often, her grandson will tell her he wishes his father were there because “things would be different.” She never knows how to console the young man.
“He’s only 17. This is not the attitude he’s supposed to have at 17,” she said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.