Frankfort 2013: Year of the Crocodile

Is there anything scarier than a nightmare flesh-eating terror drug that rots you from the inside out and leaves you looking like a putrid horror movie zombie?

Maybe there is and maybe there isn't. But one things for sure—there was nothing more interesting in the Frankfort news last year.

That's right. The woeful tale of a few women who claimed they unwittingly shot crocodile—a heroin substitute first concocted in Russia—and then found their bodies rapidly decomposing captured the collective imagination of Frankfort. In fact, it was the most popular story on Frankfort Patch for all of 2013.

Strangely, soon after Joliet Doctor Abhin Singla made his shocking crocodile diagnosis, which he based on the "green scaly appearance on the top layer of (user's skin) tissue," and then announced his findings in a Presence St. Joseph Medical Center press release, the specter of crocodile and its ghastly symptoms seemed to disappear. A Centegra Health System doctor said he was treating a patient who was likely suffering from the effects of crocodile up in McHenry County. But a local drug agent and the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency's Chicago Division said they were told the patient actually had MRSA.

A Centegra spokeswoman never responded to the drug agents' MRSA assertion.

So that was 2013's big story. Here are the other nine that made Frankfort's Top 10:

• 2 Killed in Motorcycle vs. Truck Crash on I-80 at LaGrange Rd. (Update)
• Armed Suspects Invade a Frankfort Home (UPDATE)
• Former Providence Student Suing School, Teacher, Diocese & Others
• UPDATE: Fatality Reported in 104th and Laraway Crash
• Cop Impersonators Pull Over Driver, Steal Wallet
• After the Storm: Images of the Damage Wrought by Sunday's Storm and Tornado
• Frankfort Man Slapped With Child Pornography Charges
• Semi-Truck Accident on I-80 near LaGrange Road, At least 1 Injured
• 'It's Not Done Yet'—More Storms in Store After Frankfort-Area Tornado