The "Non-Rape" on McKnight Road

The biggest neighborhood news last week besides the reopening of the highway, was the discovery that the reported rape and burglary along McKnight in Ladue was a complete fabrication. The pictured woman, Virginia Burns, was not even in the area on that evening and made the whole story up. The Ladue Police report they spent about 300 hours investigating the crime, so if use a conservative $50/hr rate that would be $15,000 of police time spent looking into this supposed crime when they could have doing other work. It is hard to imagine what would make someone decide to make up such a story, including pretending to be disabled, and then claiming both a rape and a burglary along a street where very few people even walk during the day, let alone at night. North of the highway there are no sidewalks on McKnight Road. The 400 block where she claimed she was attacked is curved and quite wooded and not pedestrian friendly at all.

I would personally only walk along McKnight down by Tilles Park, preferably on the east side where they have a nice sidewalk. During Winter Wonderland time the west lane is a dangerous place to walk at night with all that traffic. The reported victim claimed she was headed to Winter Wonderland, but the block where she claimed she was attacked is a good mile or two north of the park. She should have said the attack was by the park where there may actually have been more pedestrians, although that is still a very safe area patrolled quite a bit by Ladue, Brentwood and Rock Hill police. If her van had broken down in that area she would have much more likely been picked up by some police force than attacked by any criminals. I noticed there is actually a home for sale close to the park (on the west side of McKnight) that has had a drastic price reduction. It is at 1717 McKnight and was reduced from $465K to $298K. That is quite a price cut!

We actually went through Winter Wonderland ourselves on Friday night and it was quite a nice display and very busy. They even have their own radio station with Christmas music there you can listen to while driving through. The signal started breaking up when we were getting further north and east, but we could still pick it up in Brentwood Forest. I also like the blue lights they have in the trees by Strassner, and with the lights in the trees at Brentwood Square, that corner entrance to Brentwood Forest looks quite festive. And speaking of Brentwood, I never congratulated the Brentwood High School football team for making it to the state championship game. Way to go Eagles! They sure perform more admirably than the Rams!