It never has.

Schook widened his reach over the next year, according to police who described him as ambitious and willing to sell out or rip off associates to become a bigger wheel in St. Louis gangs. He had traded hijacking for the more lucrative world of prostitution and narcotics.

The end to his story was abrupt.

On Oct. 20, 1969, East St. Louis firefighters were called to the scene of a burning Cadillac near the intersection of Exchange Avenue and 11th Street. After the car was towed to a garage, Schook’s body was found in the trunk, wrapped in a sheet.

Police said they were confused by the method of Schook’s death. He had been shot once above the right eye, in typical gangland style, but he also had been stabbed in the chest, neck and back, far too crude for a professional hit.

Still, investigators wrote the case off as a dispute with established East Side drug dealers angered by Schook’s attempts to bring drugs and prostitutes across the river.

So Schook’s murder case died in the Cadillac trunk and his name never appeared in the Post-Dispatch again.