KELL, Ill. -- When school let out for the summer, Kell was just an average farm country village, neighbors stopping to chat, kids riding bikes and frolicking about on playgrounds.
Those were the 'good old days' -- before 10-year-old Amy Schulz was found murdered.
Now playgrounds are deserted, doors are locked, youngsters are kept off the street and volunteers have mounted a 'citizen's patrol.' Oldtimers doubt life in Kell -- a Marion County community of 200 to 300 residents -- will ever be the same.
The metamorphasis of Kell -- from friendly southern Illinois village to wary, fearful enclave -- began simply enough.
The Schulz family dog, Biscuit, wandered away from home July 1.
Ryan Schulz, 13, went into the village to look for Biscuit but had no luck. He gave up and stopped at his grandfather's place to visit.
Late that evening, Amy went into Kell to look for Ryan and the dog.
After she left for the village, Biscuit wandered home. But Amy never returned.
The following day, an oilworker found her body alongside a road in a Jefferson County oilfield about 8 miles south of Kell. Authorities said she had been sexually assaulted and murdered.
'Everybody is scared and mad,' said Mayor Virginia Wilkins, a grandmother who operates the Kell beauty shop. 'I don't think it will ever be the same even after they catch whoever this is. People are going to be more cautious as they well should be.
'I don't think it will ever go back to being like it was. Time heals all wounds, they say, but as far as it being the same, I don't think so. It's scary, scary.'
Police are checking out hundreds of tips from the public in the search for Amy's killer.
State Police Director Jeremy Margolis announced that the state is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. Townspeople started another reward fund July 6. Wilkins said the fund was nearly $9,000 by Friday.
Wilkins said Amy disappeared around 9 p.m. on the night of July 1 - as she headed home from Kell. She apparently was last seen at 4th and Jefferson streets, heading south.
The home of the Schulz family -- Dennis and Esther Schulz and their three children, Amy, Ryan and Adam -- is about a half-mile south of Kell.
Since the killing, Kell has come to resemble a city under siege.
On a hot summer afternoon, children are nowhere to be seen, Swings and slides on the school playground have no takers.
'Right on our block, we have approximately 15 kids,' said Stan Rollinson. 'Normally, they would all be out riding their bikes or playing, but there's nothing right now.
'They are staying pretty close to the inside. When all the parents get home and the parents are outside, the kids will venture outside. That's about it. I think they are watching a lot of TV and doing a lot of coloring right now.'
Rollinson, 39, who works at a magazine printing plant in Mount Vernon, is one of the organizers of a citizens patrol -- volunteers who use their own CB-equipped vehicles to patrol the village and its environs day and night.
Guidelines developed with the assistance of authorities require that at least two people, including one adult, be in each vehicle and that they have no weapons of any kind.
'We are not a vigilante group. We are a watchful and caring group,' said Rollinson.
At least 39 people in Kell and nearby communities have volunteered for the patrols. They report any suspicious vehicles or persons to authorities.
'I've lived here all my life and it's nothing like the good old days,' said Rollinson. 'There's never been anything like this (the slaying).'
At Wilkins' urging, Rhea Ellen Alvis is organizing a neighborhood watch group that will include block captains. Neighborhood watch signs will be posted in Kell and the surrounding area.
'I don't know if bigger communities understand this, but when something like this happens in a small community, it doesn't happen to somebody -- it happens to your neighbor, your close friend, your child's schoolmate, your student in your Sunday School class. People are close-knit out here. We have to turn to ourselves for support, for security,' said Alvis.
Investigators saidthey are seeking a white male suspect with light-colored hair and who may have been driving a beige to light-brown older model car with rust spots and a horizontal taillight assembly.
