BELATED OUTRAGE FOR GIRL X

Girl X was like a lot of young kids in her neighborhood. Relatives say the nine-year-old liked to play, skate and tutor younger students. Her favorite subjects at school were math and English. And she would frequently go up and down the stairs to visit her grandmother, Zater Bolhar, who lived just a few floors away in the same apartment building. But Girl X's neighborhood is the partially vacant Cabrini-Green housing project on Chicago's near North Side, and the child's current anonymity is an apt symbol for the forgotten lives--and forgotten crimes--in this desolate inner-city area.

On January 9, Girl X...