Murder on Skid Row

The homeless and migrants are not new to Chicago. In the 1960s, there was Chicago’s Skid Row, centered at Madison and Halsted Streets. Now an area filled with recently built upscale housing and trendy businesses near Greektown, decades ago it was a downtrodden community occupied by lost souls, mainly veterans from the war nobody wanted to recognize—Vietnam. Mel, a young dentist who believes he can do good for the people living on Skid Row, enters into this world in 1966. It is a community so different than the working-class neighborhood in which he grew up—a world of gangs, bums, politicians, prostitutes, and murderers—and a few kind-hearted souls who want to help. While trying to become one of those kind-hearted souls by providing dental therapy to his patients, Mel becomes a suspect in a double murder. Did Mel do it, or was it one of the Skid Row swindlers and hustlers? Find out in Murder on Skid Row.