War Baby here, hoping you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season. This episode 24 is the last episode of Season 2 and is a collaboration I recorded live with the Pros and Cons Podcast based on the 2015 episode of the TV show Killer Kids entitled The 1% and Why Not? Thanks to Adriana and Bethany, the host of the Pros and Cons Podcast, and everyone at the Mouth Off Network. At the conclusion of the episode, please enjoy the promo for the excellent Murderific, a true crime podcast, hosted by Bernadette, and make sure to check it out next.
Thank you for a wonderful year one of murderous minors. I did it for you, and I absolutely couldn't have done it without you. Episode 24, Stephen Feil.
This week on the pros and cons. We'll take you into one of the darkest and most disturbing cases of a child who kills. Please be advised, disturbing content will be discussed on this podcast.
Listener caution is advised. Hi, we're the pros and cons to expert true crime producers, Bethany Jones. That's me.
And Adriana Padilla. With each episode, we talk to other pros and cons that lived and worked the cases. The pros and cons are available on all the most popular podcast platforms.
Tune in Spotify, iTunes, Google Play and others. We also love it when you subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps other true crime fans find us.
You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at the Pros and Cons Podcast, where you and your fellow true crimeys can hang out with us. And we're so excited today because we have a very special guest, War Baby from the podcast Murderous Minors. Hey girls, it's great to be here. So happy to see you. So happy to have you.
And as you know, one of my first true crime documentary shows was Killer Kids. I do know that. Very exciting. We talked about that way back when I first started.
And it's really been invaluable. I love watching those episodes. And sometimes I'll pull from there to see what I want to talk about.
But it's been a great resource for me. Oh, I love hearing that. Yeah, Killer Kids was the show that you were on when we first met.
It was. Look at this. It all comes full circle. It's the circle of life.
Of murderous children. Oh dear. So, um...
One of my favorite episodes in your podcast is the Jamie Bulger episode. And for those of you who don't know, the case is a very disturbing case out of Bethany's home country, the United Kingdom. Yeah.
So without any further delay, War Baby, why don't you introduce us to this case? Okay, so today's case comes straight out of the suburbs of Chicago in 1993. It's a pretty twisty turny case and one that shocked the community. But it's also a case that's often long forgotten and not talked about on podcasts. And it's the case of Stephen Feil.
Okay, so some background about Stephen Feil. Roger Feil, 42, is a self-made man who's a high-ranking executive at a meatpacking company. And his wife, Gail, 41, is a homemaker.
So kind of a traditional American family. The files literally went from rags to riches, moving from a mobile home community to the affluent suburbs of Palos Park, Illinois. Roger had worked hard and had been able to rise the ranks of his company.
They raised their three children, Roger, 18, Stephen, 17, and Melissa, 12, amongst million-dollar homes with limousines in the driveway. Yeah, right. It was Richie Richardens. Yeah, huge jump in, you know, their situation.
The files, despite the fact they came from, you know, the mobile homes, fit right in with the affluent community. Roger and Gail own a yacht that they keep docked in Chicago Harbor. The boys have access to cars and pretty much free reign over the house. The only thing that was required of them is that they show up for dinner on time. That's quality parenting, if you ask me.
I think so. So they're accustomed to getting whatever they want. Roger and Steve were constantly in and out of trouble.
Kind of reminds me a bit of the Menendez's. Yeah. Oh, definitely.
You'll definitely see a lot of those qualities here. But you can take the boys out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the boys. Evidently not, I would say.
Yeah. When they were still living in the trailer park, the boys would ride their bikes around the neighborhood and throw rocks at the old men to live there. And one day, fed up with their antics, the old man confronted them and said, hey, he said, if you don't stop bothering me, I'm going to tell your parents. I'm an old man.
I just want to be left alone. Out of retaliation, the boys burned his mobile home to the ground. Which seems like a reasonable response to being told, don't throw rocks at me.
So they were a bit of troublemakers. And, you know, they're always looking for something to do. And one day, 11-year-old Steven decides it would be fun to... throw rocks out of an overpass onto oncoming traffic. He hit a pickup truck, cracking the windshield, and caused the driver to hit a mailbox.
As he swerved, the man reported the boys to police. The boys were known amongst their peers as bullies, Roger being the bigger bully than Stephen. They would constantly harass kids at their bus stop, and the behavior got so bad that other children's parents would complain to the school.
As a result, the Feifel boys got their own bus stop to keep them away from other kids. I know. Instead of addressing the issue, the school was like, well, we'll just give the boys their own bus stop. Well, because you can't tell rich kids what to do.
And you can't tell rich parents to take care of disciplining their children either. So it's just much easier to just give them their own bus stop. It's amazing what money can buy.
It really is. And you'll see that later on in the episode and what the parents kept saying was, you know, boys will be boys. And it's like, no, if boys are bullying, they need to be put in their place. Back, you know, it was a different time. It was a different time.
What can I say? You know, it was the 90s. I don't even think we really used the term bullies then. No, no.
You know, unless we were talking about Biff from Back to the Future. You know, that was like the most, that's like the worst kind of person you could be. But back then, I'm really not even sure what they would have done. but But by the time the boys were in high school, they were running with a fast crowd.
They're part of a clique of stoners. And all they did was look for places to get high and drink. Their rebellious nature knew no bounds. Steve would even sometimes put lettuce in the driveway in front of his car at dusk and wait for animals to come eat it so he could hit them with his car. Yeah.
So very extreme that, you know, they're even hurting animals. and You would think with all that money they would have had other things to do so that just leads you to believe that this might be something a little bit more than just boredom, you know? I think so. So it's the summer of 1993 and 13-year-old Hilary Norskog is excited. Graduating from the eighth grade, all she can think about is attending Stagg High School and fitting in with her new life as a high schooler.
She's a little bit on the shy side and she's really, really tiny, too. And she's just beginning to break out of her shell. Known for being warm and friendly, Hillary befriends a girl that not many people like, and we'll call her Kim G. Kim has an older brother who runs with a group of high school kids who are known to party.
A group that includes Roger and Stephen Feil. Kim introduces Hillary to Roger and Stephen and the gang and Hillary is impressed. They're older, they can drive and they can make her transition into high school a lot easier.
And hanging out with them makes her feel like she's grown up. So she starts hanging out with Kim in the older crowd. Stephen shows an interest in her and Hillary's flattered and he shows up at her house one night pretty late. Her mom, Marsha, is shocked and she's like, Stephen, it's rather late for you to be visiting Hillary, don't you think?
And he looks at Marsha and he's clearly put off by her comment, but he leaves. Later, Marsha pulls Hillary aside and begins to complain to her daughter about Steve. And she's like, I don't think that you should be hanging out with that boy.
He's rude. And Hillary's like, Mom, you just got to get to know him. He's really cool.
Just give him another chance. He's so sweet, Mom. Look at him.
No. He comes over in the middle of the night to visit your 13-year-old. Yeah.
My mom would be... at me with the jungle she's like why would this guy show up at your house no yeah yeah he's like 16 years old ridiculous listen to your mom kids yeah so it's july 1993 and kim tells hillary she's like really excited she's like hey hillary so a group of my brother's friends are going to be hanging out at hidden pond tonight so she wants her to come and she's like yes that would be awesome i'm going to ask my friend vicky if she wants to come is that okay hillary asked Kim tells her no and tells Hillary that she'll see her later that night. So Hillary tells her mom that she's going to a sleepover at Vicky's.
Marsha says okay, but to make sure that if she decides not to sleep at Vicky's, to make sure she's back home by 10. Hillary kisses her mom goodbye and leaves, and Marsha heads out as well to meet her friends for dinner. Hillary shows up to Hidden Pond with Vicky and they hang out a bit, and she notices that a lot of kids are really drinking and smoking pot, because, you know, they're only 13. These other kids are driving and just doing a lot of things that these little girls should not even be like witnessing, much less involved in. And Stephen Feil is there and he's getting high and drinking as usual in his car and he sees Hillary and he smiles at her.
And Vicky, you know, she's just not into it. And so she tells Hillary, listen, I'm going home. And Hillary says, you can go, but I'll wait and leave with Kim and then I'll just head home and make sure I get home by my curfew. By the time Hillary's 10 o'clock curfew rolls around, Kim isn't ready to go home.
But the kids tell her not to worry. Stephen will take you home. So Stephen, you know, he smiles at Hillary and tells her to hop on in. So she's really grateful and happy.
Stephen is willing to leave the party with his leaving all early, leaving his friends there and all the fun. So he can take Hillary home. But she slides on in the car.
So Marsha returns home from her evening out. and is surprised to see all the lights turned on at home. She looks around the house and sees that Hillary is not home, and so Marcia figures that her daughter Hillary had just decided to sleep at her friend Vicky's house. She turns off the lights and goes to bed.
The next morning, around 10 a.m., Marcia calls Vicky to see if Hillary is ready to be picked up, and that's when Vicky informs Marcia that. that Hillary isn't there and that she never slept over. Panic sets in for Marsha and she begins calling everyone in her phone book to figure out where Hillary might be. And she learns that Hillary left the party at the Forest Preserves with Stephen Feil.
So Marsha calls to the Feils' home and speaks to Stephen's mother, Gail. Gail tells Marsha that her son is asleep and cannot talk to her. Which is so selfish.
Your kid's missing and it's like you're not going to wake up your son just to ask him a simple question. Exactly. So Marsha begs Gail to wake her son up and ask about Hillary. Gail finally complies and tells Marsha that Stephen dropped Hillary off at home last night and she hangs up the phone.
And see, this was back in the day where you had actual... physical landline so you knew when someone hung up on you it's the one thing i miss the most about it you get that satisfying slam satisfying slam yeah yeah nowadays you're like hello hello did you did you drop my call i'm going through the canyons um so frantically marcia begins calling other people to see if they had seen hillary and everyone begins to say the same thing the last person we star with Hillary was Stephen. So Marcia calls the files again, and this time she demands to speak with Stephen. And Gail, you know, allows her son to speak with her.
Stephen tells Marcia he dropped Hillary off at her house at 10 p.m. Marcia asks him if he stayed to make sure she got in the house, and Stephen tells her no, then hangs up the phone on her. So we've got a lot of polite. Got a lot of phone.