Art Petacque

Raised on the Northwest Side of Chicago, Petacque was the son of a well-known Chicago police captain.[1] He graduated from Chicago's Austin High School in 1942.[2]

Petacque began working as a copy boy in 1942 for the Chicago Sun, which was one of the predecessor newspapers to the Chicago Sun-Times.[3] He was with the Sun-Times from its inception in 1948 until retiring in 1991.[4]

From early in his career, Petacque covered the crime beat.[5] He became an investigative reporter in 1957 and a columnist with Hough in 1974.[6]

In 1974, Petacque and Hough won the Pulitzer Prize for their work in uncovering new information about the murder of Valerie Percy, the daughter of U.S. Sen. Charles H. Percy.[7] She had been murdered in their family home in Kenilworth, Illinois, in 1966 during his senatorial campaign.[8] Although the murder was never solved, Petacque and Hough's work prompted police to reopen a probe into the death.[9]

Petacque often wrote about the mobsters of his day, including Joseph Ferriola,[10] Sam Carlisi,[11] Joey Aiuppa,[12] Joseph Andriacchi,[13] Jackie Cerone[14] and Tony Accardo.[15]

Petacque also worked for Chicago's WLS-TV as a commentator on the station's afternoon newscasts, and won a local Emmy in 1984.[16][17]

After Petacque's death, Sun-Times reporter Neil Steinberg remembered him as "a colorful presence from a vanished age, with wild, unkempt eyebrows and a soggy cigar, drawing scraps of paper and matchbooks out of his pockets, reading notes on the doings of mobsters and madams...Art Petacque was a police captain when he needed to be a police captain, and a doctor when he needed to be a doctor. He could be a burglar, too, if necessary, slipping into a basement window to snatch a photo for a story."[18]

Petacque retired from the Sun-Times in September 1991.[19] The paper's editor at the time, Dennis Britton, told the Chicago Reader after Petacque's death that "I had problems with some of the ways Art pursued his job."[20]

Petacque died on June 6, 2001, after suffering a heart attack.[21]