Crime & Safety
How a North Shore Private Investigator Helped Free Eddie Bolden
Bolden was released Tuesday after 22 years in jail thanks in part to Susan Carlson, the late P.I. who worked on his case.
Lifelong North Shore resident Susan Carlson wasn't content doing just one thing for a career. But that didn't mean she lacked focused.
In fact, it was her doggedness that helped gained the release Tuesday of Eddie Bolden, who spent the past 22 years imprisoned in connection with a fatal 1994 shooting. His murder convictions were thrown out in January, and a judge ordered a new trial, which prosecutors will not pursue.
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Unfortunately, Carlson didn't live long enough to see Bolden, 46, embrace his freedom. She died in 2013 at 63 from complications of an asthma attack.
The Chicago Tribune's Steve Schmadeke and Grace Wong take a look at the life of Carlson—a New Trier High school grad who was born and Evanston and also lived in Winnetka and Highland Park—and how her work on Bolden's was instrumental in his release:
"She would be very, very, very happy to know this," her son, William Carlson, who became a private investigator himself after being inspired by his mom's work, said of Bolden finally winning freedom. "It's a shame she's not around to see this."
...
By the late 1990s, she began to assist a private investigator who valued her because of her skill with a camera and intimate knowledge of the North Shore. She opened up her own shop, Carlson Investigations, in 2003 at the age of 50.
William Carlson remembered frequently finding his mom in her bed with case files spread out around her, poring over witness statements. Her bookshelves looked like they belonged to a detective, filled with books on gangs in Chicago, while a map of their different turfs hung on a wall.
"It was definitely different than having a mother who knitted sweaters," he said.
Check out the Chicago Tribune for more about Susan Carlson
PHOTO: Susan Carlson (Wm. H. Scott Funeral Home)
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