Granite City, Ill., bar buzzes over brush with infamy
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By Shane Graber | Thursday, July 03, 2008 |
Bindy's bar in Granite City, where multiple murder suspect Nicholas T. Sheley was recognized by a patron on Tuesday evening. (AP PHOTO)
GRANITE CITY, Ill. — Bindy’s doesn’t have a sign out front, and there’s a good reason for it.
People need to be headed to this bar and grill to find it. Normally, at least. The owner likes to keep select company.
“I never had a sign because we don’t want to attract people we don’t want in,” Bill Watson said.
Bindy’s is dark and spacious with a high ceiling, green carpet and wooden booths. There’s a balcony with a couple of dart boards. Watson opened the place 19 years ago. His Italian beef sandwich and hot wings are big draws.
Then came Tuesday night. Happy hour, too. For a while, anyway. At a place designed to keep strangers out, the ultimate stranger found his way in. He was a suspect in an eight-person killing rampage that covered two states. And he needed a light.
Nicholas T. Sheley, whose face had been plastered on TV for hours, was arrested outside Bindy’s on Nameoki Road shortly after 6 p.m., when he stepped out for a smoke. Watson had given him a lighter. Gary Range, a regular here, recognized Sheley at the end of the bar. He went outside and flagged down police.
On Wednesday, the brush with infamy understandably was all anyone could talk about. Everyone pretty much knows everyone here, so the conversations flowed easily.
Watson stood outside with a smoke as the lunch crowd started in. The place is in the corner of a brick building. It’s a hangout for cops, firefighters and lawyers.
“The police all hang out here because their customers are never in here,” Watson said.
By 12:30 p.m., Watson had worked up a sweat busing tables and running food orders. Customers asked each other where they were when Sheley got caught, like it was up there with a presidential assassination or the space shuttle exploding. Someone switched the TVs to CNN Headline News. When Bindy’s flashed on the screens, the place went silent. All heads pointed up to the screens.
Keith Fears, an Illinois Department of Transportation worker, has been coming to Bindy’s since it opened. He saw Sheley on Tuesday night. “I said to someone, ‘Wouldn’t it be rough going through life looking just like a serial killer?’”
He didn’t think much more of it at the time. No way would a murder suspect wander in to Bindy’s. After all, everyone knows everyone here.
Shane Graber can be contacted at sgraber@post-dispatch.com or
(618) 624-2571.
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