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The tight-knit community of Divernon, Ill. found itself searching for answers following the arrest of Eric Smalls, area retail employee and alleged murderer embroiled in an ongoing regional investigation.
Last month’s string of homicides concluding in a tense standoff with state and Sangamon County Police outside a Route 66 gas station has left many here wondering how such a thing could happen in their quiet town. However, immediately upon reflection, residents remember Smalls as a socially awkward, ostracized figure, a figure in all likelihood nursing incredible amounts of vindictive vitriol—the exact sort of sidelined, sallow-complexioned misfit who could wind up capable of something like this.
“He just seemed so abnormal,” recalled neighbor Corinne Mayhew. “Eric always struck me as a maladjusted, fringe member of this community.”
From his days at Divernon High School, where he was routinely ignored when not made an object of common ridicule, to his bleak and lonely adulthood, where he moves from one mind-crushingly dull entry-level position to another without hope or possibility of advancement, Eric Smalls has always been something of an outsider. While the deeds of the last few weeks are shocking, most here feel little surprise that Eric Smalls would prove the person to do them.
“When I think of Smalls at all, I think of a frightened, skittish child who grew into a dark and unseemly man,” said Coach Baronet, the suspect’s former geometry teacher. “He was an outcast, a bottom-feeder, a real freakazoid. Eric definitely seems like somebody who would do those things they say he did. Oh yeah.”
Following the release of Smalls’s Illinois Department of Corrections mug shot, many townspeople noted how the picture’s shifty eyes seem to follow you around the room as if sizing you up and down, much like those belonging to the real Eric.
