Cause of death for a man found facedown on a South Peoria street early Sunday may not be known for at least another week.
An autopsy conducted Monday on Kelvin Mosley, 44, of 1617 S. Stanley St. did not show any signs of trauma or determine a cause of death, Peoria County Coroner Johnna Ingersoll said.
“We believe cause of death may be revealed in toxicology testing,” Ingersoll said of results that will take 1 to 2 weeks to process.
Ingersoll said additional testing also will be done to determine if any underlying illness could have led to Mosley’s death.
Mosley was found lying in the street near his house by a group of teens about 1:45 a.m. Sunday. Mosley had no pulse, and he was pronounced dead at the scene about 45 minutes later.
Read the original article from Journal Star.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services
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Fantasia Barrino is under a self-imposed lockdown — after the “American Idol” champ received a threatening letter.
It all started last night at the Pantages Theater in L.A. — Fantasia was reading her fan mail after a performance of “The Color Purple.”
Fantasia’s manager tells us Barrino became alarmed over a disturbing letter loaded with racial slurs — including the n-word — and a line that read, “go back where you came from and die.”
We’re told the person who wrote the letter claims he used to work as a security guard for Fox while Fantasia was on “A.I.”
Fantasia’s manager tells us the singer immediately contacted theater security — which then contacted the LAPD.
Whoopi Goldberg has chastened Suzanne Somers aft she blamed Patrick Swayze’s demise on his chemo-therapy.
Goldberg was angered after hearing the “Three’s Company” actress, Suzanne Somers who also had breast-cancer, said to the Canadian press that Swayze could have lengthened his lifespan if he had used other options rather than chemo treatment.
Suzanne Somers is alleged to say to the journalist Shinan Govani that they were poisoning Patrick Swayze. How come they did not improved him with good nutrition & did away with the toxins inside him.
Fantasia Barrino is under a self-imposed lockdown — after the “American Idol” champ received a threatening letter.
It all started last night at the Pantages Theater in L.A. — Fantasia was reading her fan mail after a performance of “The Color Purple.”
Fantasia’s manager tells us Barrino became alarmed over a disturbing letter loaded with racial slurs — including the n-word — and a line that read, “go back where you came from and die.”
We’re told the person who wrote the letter claims he used to work as a security guard for Fox while Fantasia was on “A.I.”
Fantasia’s manager tells us the singer immediately contacted theater security — which then contacted the LAPD.
: 20102010
, american idol, death, fantasia barrino, lapd, pantages theater, the color purple, threatThe Threat reviews
A woman was killed and another injured Tuesday night when their car was struck by an outbound Metra train, officials said.
Both women were taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where one was pronounced dead, according to Metra officials. The condition of the second woman wasn’t known. The Cook County medical examiner’s office confirmed the death, but declined to release her name, identifying her only as a woman in her mid 60s.
The collision between the car and the Crystal LakeThe Crystal Lake reviews-bound No. 657 train occurred at about 8:10 p.m. at a crossing on River Road, near Northwest Highway, Metra spokesman Michael Gillis said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the collision happened, though it initially caused delays on Metra’s UnionThe Union reviews Pacific / Northwest Line. Passengers on Train 657 were picked up by a subsequent commuter train, Gillis said.
Drew Peterson’s hearsay hearing has taken Illinois criminal law into uncharted territory, a path that has sparked a lively — and sometimes angry — debate in the legal community as the prosecution nears completion of its portion of the landmark proceeding.
“It’s a miscarriage of justice,” said Leonard Cavise, a DePaul University law professor. “This hearing is not how the American judicial system is supposed to work. It’s ridiculous.”
Nearly 70 witnesses have been called in the unprecedented hearing in which a Will County judge will decide whether hearsay statements condemning former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Peterson for the March 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, are trustworthy enough to be admitted into trial.
The prosecutors are relying on a new Illinois statute, dubbed “Drew’s Law,” that allows them to build their case around comments made by Savio and Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy, who vanished in 2007.
Prosecutors are focusing on 15 so-called hearsay statements, which they say will give the women a voice from the grave. In order to prove the hearsay’s reliability, however, the prosecution had to show most of its hand at a pretrial hearing, a move that gave the public its first glimpse at the state’s case.
The case, so far, seems underwhelming, some legal experts say. None of the evidence physically tied Peterson to the crime or put him inside Savio’s house the weekend of her death. Illinois State Police have admitted they, at best, blundered Savio’s death investigation and collected no evidence from the scene.
So far, at least eight witnesses — including her two sisters, boyfriend and co-workers — have testified that Savio told them Peterson broke into her home in 2002, held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. Savio’s divorce attorney testified that Savio told him Peterson often threatened to kill her and make it look like an accident. And Stacy Peterson’s aunt recalled hearing Drew Peterson, then 54, apologize to his young wife for “burdening her with his past.”
Some witnesses also bring credibility concerns with them to the stand, such as a self-described psychic who says she hears voices from God and a sister of Savio’s who said she has signed a five-figure book and movie deal.
“I would be reluctant to let some of that stuff in because it’s dangerous on appeal,” said Terry Ekl, a defense attorney and former prosecutor. “I’d be cautious about using it.”
But other attorneys said State’s Attorney James Glasgow is obliged to use the legal means available.
“If I were the prosecutor, my attitude would be the rule of law is there … and if it’s a weapon I’m able to use, I’m going to use it,” said Mark Rotert, a former state and federal prosecutor now in private practice. “He’s only using the tools that the law provides to him. People can argue when those tools were put in his toolbox, but those are policy and constitutional questions he should not spend a lot of time on.”
Judge Stephen White is presiding over the hearing, which has drawn the attention of attorneys across the state, with lawyers popping into his Joliet courtroom to watch the proceedings.
Legal experts describe White as “well-schooled” and “extremely competent.” But he has no road map in which to follow.
The judge, who plans to retire in October, has banned one potentially damaging statement from the trial. He ruled that marital privilege prevents Stacy Peterson’s former pastor from testifying that she told him that her husband confessed to killing Savio.
The statement’s exclusion is a victory for the defense, though White still may allow the minister to testify that Stacy Peterson lied to police about Drew Peterson’s alibi and that she saw him come home at night wearing dark clothes the weekend Savio died.
“I think that the prosecution has a difficult case because they have — according to their case in their best light — an inept investigation and a bunch of hearsay statements, which by law are usually unreliable — a bunch of rumor and innuendo,” defense attorney Steve Greenberg said. “The law disfavors convicting someone because he’s a bad person, and that’s really all they’ve got here.”
In judging whether the statements meet the standard of trustworthiness, White must consider the motives of Savio and Stacy Peterson for sharing their accounts with people, experts said.
Was Savio, as friends and family contend, so terrified Drew Peterson planned to kill her that she wanted to make sure he was held responsible in the event of her death? Or was she, as the defense suggests, angry at Peterson for finding a much younger woman and moving on with his life?
“You’ve got to look at these things very skeptically,” Ekl said. “Two people who are going through a terrible divorce can say a lot of terrible things about each other that aren’t true.”
Other experts said White must consider the witnesses’ state of mind, as well as motives, when deciding whether the statements are trustworthy. For instance, the prosecution’s star witness, Drew Peterson’s stepbrother Thomas Morphey, has been admitted to rehab for alcoholism and battles depression. And several others — including Stacy Peterson’s pastor — broke their public silence on national television instead of in an open courtroom.
“These people put Kato Kaelin to shame,” Greenberg said. “You’ve got a bunch of people saying this guy was scared to death of this guy, and not a single person said a word to anybody. Who could keep that kind of a secret? And everybody kept it. Everybody.”
Peterson’s attorneys argue that the new law, which took effect in December, violates a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine witnesses.
DuPage County prosecutors invoked the hearsay law last year in a murder case with both a videotaped confession and a victim who was gunned down shortly after she filed battery charges against the defendant. In that case, the prosecution intends to use oral and written statements given to police.
In 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that statements to law enforcement officers are admissible as testimony if the defendant has committed a criminal act that made the victim unable to testify. The court did not address hearsay offered by family members and neighbors, as in the Peterson case.
At least 13 other states and the federal courts allow for a forfeiture by wrongdoing, meaning prosecutors may submit a written proffer to the judge that says it wants to include hearsay evidence and that they will prove it trustworthy at trial.
Typically used in conspiracy cases, prosecutors try to enter this type of hearsay only when they are sure they can prove it trustworthy; otherwise a judge may declare a mistrial.
In Illinois, the law calls for the judge to determine whether the hearsay is trustworthy — and the defendant possibly guilty — before the trial begins, said defense attorney Richard Kling, a professor at ChicagoChicago reviews
-Kent College of Law.
“It’s a serious constitutional problem because you’re taking defendants who are presumed innocent under the Constitution and you’re having them go before a judge … who has to decide that they’re probably guilty,” Kling said. “To get hearsay statements (into trial), they have to prove that they’re trustworthy and also have to prove that more likely than not that he’s guilty of murdering to keep them from testifying.”
The judge already has warned 240 prospective jurors to avoid news coverage of the hearsay hearing, but given the attention the case receives, some experts doubt they’ll follow the instruction.
“There’s no way ever that they’ll find a fair jury,” Cavise said. “By the time the pretrial hearing is over, Drew Peterson won’t be able to find two people who don’t know about all of this.”
–Stacy St. Clair and Erika Slife
A 51-year-old man was charged with shooting another man to death in the Woodlawn neighborhood Sunday after the two had an altercation, officials announced this morning.
Elliot G. Mayfield, of the 600 block of South Calumet Avenue, was charged with first-degree murder Monday and was ordered held today by a Cook County criminal court judge on $800,000 bond.
Mayfield is charged with fatally shooting Samuel Fullilove, of the 300 block of East 60th Street, on Sunday.
The shooting occurred at about 9:07 p.m. Sunday on the 6100 block of South King Drive. Fullilove was pronounced dead at 9:47 p.m., officials said. An autopsy on Monday determined that Fullilove was shot in the chest and ruled his death a homicide.
Prosecutors today presented a motive for Kathleen Savio’s slaying, presenting documents showing Drew Peterson and his third wife were fighting over marital assets worth more than $893,000 at the time of her death.
Earlier in the day, a former co-worker of Peterson testified he had been
approached by an intermediary sometime before her death with an offer to kill Kathleen Savio.
Today marked the 15th day of an evidentiary hearing being held in a Will County courtroom to
decide which, if any, of 15 hearsay statements prosecutors may
introduce as evidence at Peterson’s upcoming murder trial for Savio’s
slaying. When Savio’s body was found in an empty bathtub in March 2004,
her death was originally ruled accidental. But after Peterson’s fourth
wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared in October 2007, authorities
reexamined Savio’s death and ruled it a homicide.
The
amount in contention in the divorce settlement between Peterson and
Savio includes nearly $324,000 in Peterson’s police pension, a portion
of which Savio would have been entitled to.
Prosecutors
submitted the financial documents at the ongoing evidentiary hearing
for Peterson in an attempt to show Peterson killed his third wife
because he stood to lose a significant amount of money.
Although
their marriage legally ended in the fall of 2003, the couple had not
settled contentious financial and child custody issues.
In
addition to sharing his pension with Savio, the law would have required
Peterson to pay more than $15,000 a year in child support or about 28
percent of his police salary after taxes and other deductions,
according to the financial records.
Peterson and Savio also were
battling over their Montgomery bar, “Suds,” which was valued at about
$219,000 when Savio was found dead in the bathtub of her Bolingbrook
home in March 2004.
Savio also had life insurance totaling more
than $1 million at the time of her death. That money was placed into
trust funds for her two children with Peterson.
Peterson also
had non-marital assets worth more than $528,000 in 2004 and his
projected pension at the time was estimated to be more than $97,000
annually.
Earlier in the day, William Green testified that cable
contractor co-worker Jeff Pachter told him in July 2003 that “Drew
would like me to ask you if you would kill his wife.”
He said
Pachter told him that Peterson said he wanted it to look like an
accident and that Peterson wanted to be out of town when it happened.
Green said he didn’t take the offer seriously.
Peterson moonlighted at the cable firm at the same time he was employed by the Bolingbrook Police Department.
Earlier, Pachter testified that Peterson offered $25,000 to help find a
hit man to kill Savio. Pachter said he regarded it as a joke. He said
he never followed through.
Green said today he didn’t remember how much he had been offered. He
also suggested he had been approached because of the Heavy Metal
T-shirts he wore.
Green testified that he didn’t even know that Savio had died until he
read news coverage following Stacy Peterson’s disappearance.
At that point, he said, he called Lombard police and told them about the offer to kill Savio.
An Algonquin teenager has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of a family member, authorities said.
Bond was set at $2.5 million today for David W. Szalonek, 16, of the 1400 block of Westbourne Parkway.
Algonquin police would not disclose the identity of the victim, his
specific relationship to the teen, or the cause of his death. They
described the victim only as a man in his early 50s.
Deputy Chief Steve Kuzynowski said police responded to the family home
around 7:45 p.m. Monday after receiving a report of a suspicious
incident and found the body of the man inside.
The Kane County state’s attorney’s office confirmed Szalonek’s identity and said he had been charged as an adult.
He was taken to the juvenile jail facility in St. Charles after
appearing in Elgin branch court. Szalonek is next due back in court
Feb. 18.
Allison Strupeck, spokeswoman for Dundee School District 300, said Szalonek is a freshman at Jacobs High School in Algonquin, and that he has attended district schools since 7th grade.
Police notified school officials late Monday, Strupeck said, and district officials briefed teachers and staff at a meeting before Tuesday classes. School officials were planning to send a mass-distribution telephone message to parents this afternoon, alerting them to the situation and the availability of counseling.
The message will also emphasize that Szalonek was in custody and the matter was not school-related, Strupeck said.
–Clifford Ward
Shortly before she vanished in October 2007, Stacy Peterson told a divorce attorney that she thought her husband was mad at her because he believed she told his son he had killed his ex-wife, the attorney testified Monday.
She also wondered if she’d be able to extort money from Drew Peterson if she threatened to go to police, the attorney said.
Harry C. Smith, who had represented Drew Peterson’s ex-wife, Kathleen Savio, in their divorce, said Stacy did not seem afraid of the former Bolingbrook police sergeant during their two conversations, saying she told him she had “so much (expletive) on him at the police department, he couldn’t do anything to her.”
Smith’s testimony came on the 14th day of a pretrial hearing to determine whether 15 hearsay statements will be admitted into trial against Peterson, who has been charged with Savio’s 2004 drowning death.
Smith said Stacy Peterson had called him because she was seeking a divorce from Drew Peterson.
“She told me that Drew was (upset) at her because” Drew thought she had told his and Savio’s son Tom that Drew killed Savio, Smith testified. “She said, ‘Could we get more money out of Drew if we threatened to tell the police department that Drew killed Kathy?’”
Smith said he told Stacy Peterson he could not represent her because of the conflict of interest.
Smith represented Savio beginning in January 2002. She was found dead March 1, 2004, in an empty bathtub at her Bolingbrook home. Authorities at the time concluded her death was an accident, but after Stacy Peterson vanished they reopened the Savio case as a homicide. Drew Peterson is the sole suspect in Stacy’s disappearance, but has not been charged.
Smith said that right before Savio died, a divorce judge had recommended Savio be awarded the home, custody of the children, her share of Peterson’s police pension, child support and the proceeds from a bar the couple had owned.
“He was angry,” Smith said of Peterson.
Smith said Savio frequently faxed and called him with complaints about Peterson, including custody matters and alleged threats. Smith said Savio told him Peterson had threatened to kill her and make it look like an accident, but he had believed she may have been “paranoid.”
After she was found dead, Smith said, “I thought I’d done a poor job of listening to my client.”
Savio had told him that if she died, “to let people know that Drew did it,” Smith testified. So Smith said he called Illinois State Police but the officer he spoke with was “not prepared for that kind of conversation.” Smith said he was told someone would get back to him, but no one ever did.
Illinois State Police have already admitted shortcomings in the investigation.
Smith became at least the eighth witness to testify that Savio said Peterson broke into her home, put a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her.
The Bolingbrook police sergeant who took Savio’s report said Savio refused to include in her written statement the detail about Peterson using a knife. Teresa Kernc, who retired as a lieutenant in 2005 and is now mayor of DiamondBlood Diamond reviews, Ill., said Savio was worried that detail could cost Peterson his job.
When interviewed by Kernc, Peterson denied attacking Savio, said she had invited him over and alleged that Savio exposed herself to him and asked if he “missed this.”
Former Peterson friend Ric Mims testified Monday that he helped Peterson follow Savio around, once sitting in a parked vehicle outside her office while Peterson told him he was removing papers from Savio’s house. Mims testified the National Enquirer paid him $17,500 for his story.
Prosecutors, who have called 60 witnesses, said they have six more to call. Defense attorneys said they plan to call about 20 witnesses.
–Erika Slife and Steve Schmadeke
Authorities today identified a Stickney man as the person found strangled and beaten in the city’s Little Village neighborhood over the weekend.
An autopsy performed this morning determined that Luis Rodriguez, 25, died of strangulation and blunt head trauma in an assault and the death was classified a homicide, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Rodriguez’s body was discovered in an alley at about 6:45 a.m. Sunday in the 3000 block of South Christiana Avenue, ChicagoChicago reviews police said. He suffered from obvious trauma to his head and upper body, police said. Rodriguez, of the 4000 block of Oak Park Avenue in Stickney, was pronounced dead at 9:15 a.m., a medical examiner’s spokesman said.
Police today had no new details on the case, adding that no arrests had been made.
DNA evidence helped authorities charge a South SideSouth Side reviews man in connection with an unsolved 25-year-old homicide.
Authorities identified the victim as Sheila Johnson, 24, who was found stabbed to death in her apartment on March 17, 1984, in the 5800 block of North Winthrop Avenue on ChicagoChicago reviews’s North Side.
Authorities could not discuss the circumstances that led to the stabbing. But first-degree murder charges were lodged against 44-year-old Melvin Green of the 1500 block of West 87th Street, police said.
The Chicago Police Department’s cold case squad revisited the case in 2008 and were able to obtain evidence, which was submitted for DNA analysis. A DNA match led police to Green, who was subsequently taken into custody, police said.
Court information for Green was unavailable.
–Staff report
Kathleen Savio’s 2004 bathtub drowning death was murder, a state-hired pathologist testified Friday, in part because he believed injuries to the front, back and sides of her body could not have been caused accidentally.
Dr. Larry Blum performed a second autopsy on Savio’s body when it was exhumed in 2007 after the disappearance of Drew Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy.
Savio was hopeful a property settlement in her divorce with Peterson was near when she was found drowned in her Bolingbrook home. A coroner’s jury ruled her death accidental, but Peterson was charged last year with Savio’s death. Testimony Friday was part of a hearing to determine whether hearsay evidence will be allowed at Peterson’s trial.
Blum said the position of Savio’s body in the tub — facedown with both feet pressed hard against the tub wall, her toes hyperextended — made it “highly, highly unlikely” she drowned accidentally.
Judging from the flow of blood, it appeared a 1-inch gash on the back of her head was inflicted after her body settled in the tub, Blum said.
The pathologist said he also reviewed 43 cases of bathtub fatalities in Illinois and that Savio’s death “falls so far out of the pattern for accidental.”
Peterson leaned in and squinted when autopsy photos of his third wife were shown on a computer monitor. He seemed to take copious notes.
Blum testified the alleged murder scene was “pristine” with little blood, no splashed water and nothing around the tub knocked over, but he could not say whether the scene was staged.
He faulted investigators for failing to perform a rape kit on Savio’s body but noted that the pathologist who did the original autopsy, Dr. Bryan Mitchell, was told by police “there was no sign of foul play.”
“They used tunnel vision and didn’t look at the whole picture,” he said of investigators.
Under questioning by defense attorney Joel Brodsky, Blum said possible defensive wounds on Savio’s hand could have been caused by her cat or by careless workers removing evidence bags on her hands.
Also Friday, Mary Parks, who took nursing classes with Savio at Joliet Junior College, testified that Savio showed her red marks on her neck in late 2003 and said Peterson choked her.
Savio told Parks that Peterson came into her home, pinned her down and asked, “Why don’t you just die?”
Parks said Savio was convinced she could not escape Peterson, who Savio said had “his own little mafia.”
After Savio died, Parks said she called the Will County state’s attorney’s office to report the apparent attack. A woman who took the call told Parks that Savio’s death was “not under investigation at this time.”
A state police crime scene investigator said Thursday that he gathered no evidence after Kathleen Savio was found drowned in her bathtub in 2004, and a state trooper there that night testified he was “disgusted” by how the investigation was handled.
A self-described psychic, meanwhile, testified at the hearing in Joliet that Stacy Peterson said during a reading that her husband, Drew, threatened he could kill her and hide her body where it would never be found.
The pretrial hearing in the murder case against former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson, charged with Savio’s murder, will determine what hearsay statements can be heard at his trial.
Robert Deel said he had been handling crime scene investigations for about one year when he was called to Savio’s Bolingbrook house in the overnight hours of March 1, 2004. He said he did not test for the presence of unseen blood in the bathroom, collect a blood sample from the tub, dust for fingerprints and did not take into evidence a glass of orange juice in the kitchen or a bottle of cleaning fluid on a dresser in Savio’s bedroom.
“There wasn’t really anything to look for,” he said of evidence in the bathroom.
Savio’s fingernail clippings — sometimes a source of crime scene DNA — were never tested, Deel said.
Deel said he also did not notice that night any of the documented injuries Savio suffered, but said it would not have changed his investigation.
“The bruises on the body are insignificant to me,” he said.
He contradicted earlier testimony by head investigator Sgt. Patrick Collins, who said he decided after speaking with Deel within 40 minutes of being on the scene that Savio’s death was accidental.
Deel said he believed her death was accidental but didn’t reach that conclusion until after reviewing autopsy and toxicology results.
Deel also testified that after Stacy Peterson’s disappearance in 2007, he was asked by Will County prosecutors to never again process a crime scene in their county.
Meanwhile, Master Sgt. Bryan Falat testified that Peterson and his new wife Stacy appeared to be lying in interviews with state police after Savio’s death. But Falat said his concerns were ignored.
“Quite honestly, I was sort of disgusted with” how the investigation was handled, Falat said.
Despite Falat’s objections, Collins interviewed Peterson in the lunchroom of the Bolingbrook Police Department, and Peterson was allowed to sit in on an interview with Stacy to check Peterson’s alibi.
“I thought it was ridiculous,” Falat said.
Stacy Peterson appeared “scripted” and often looked to Drew Peterson when she was unsure of an answer, Falat testified.
The couple gave a very detailed timeline of their activities that Sunday, the day before Savio’s body was found, but they were more vague on what they did in the days just before and on March 1, 2004, Falat said. Peterson showed several signs of lying — volunteering information that wasn’t asked for and becoming very still while giving an account of his activities that Sunday, Falat testified.
Falat said he wanted to re-question Peterson and his wife separately and suggested that Peterson’s children also be interviewed. They never were, he said, and Falat was taken off the investigation March 10.
Authorities concluded Savio, 40, accidentally slipped in the bathtub and drowned.
But once Stacy Peterson vanished in October 2007, authorities reopened the investigation and reclassified Savio’s death as a homicide. Peterson is the sole suspect but has not been charged in Stacy’s disappearance.
Psychic Irene Lalagos testified that she read Stacy’s cards at least twice and fielded a call from Peterson, who asked for help with the couple’s marital problems.
Lalagos said Stacy Peterson told her in June 2007 that Drew Peterson “could kill her and hide her body where nobody would ever find it.”
–Steve Schmadeke and Erika Slife
After the discovery of the body of a resident at the Leaning Tower YMCA in Niles, village police officer William Christie reached out to the man’s sister, offered to clean out the room and later even sent her $274 in cash he said he found among the possessions.
But Christie’s gestures didn’t turn out to be so magnanimous, authorities charged Thursday.
Instead, the veteran officer had himself pocketed about $1,700, including more than $500 in coins he carted off in a cardboard box from the dead man’s room, the charges alleged.
Investigators captured the theft on a video camera hidden in the YMCA room, authorities said. YMCA staffers had grown suspicious and alerted Niles police after Christie attempted to access the room repeatedly in the days after the resident’s death. In a sting operation, police had even added marked bills to the stash left by the resident.
Christie, 48, a Niles officer for 27 years, surrendered to authorities Thursday at the Skokie Courthouse on theft and official misconduct charges following an investigation by his own department and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. He was released after posting 10 percent of $50,000 bail. His attorney, Terry Sullivan, declined to comment.
“We take these types of allegations very seriously,” Niles Police Chief Dean Strzelecki said in a telephone interview. “If we had not acted immediately, (the money) would have been all gone.”
Christie resigned from the department in late November, just a day before Strzelecki was expected to present evidence of the theft to the village’s police and fire board.
Court records show that Christie was facing severe financial difficulties. Last March a bank moved to foreclose on his $680,000 Niles house, saying he and his wife hadn’t made a mortgage payment for almost a year. That lawsuit is still ongoing in Cook County Circuit Court.
In mid-2008 Christie and his wife filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. He reported more than $750,000 in liabilities, including $81,000 in credit-card debt. His mortgage payment totaled $3,742 a month, according to the records, and he said he and his wife had only $20 cash in hand.
Police and prosecutors declined to release the name of the resident whose decomposed body was discovered Nov. 9 at the YMCA at 6300 W. Touhy Ave. in Niles, but records from the Cook County medical examiner’s office identified him as Larry Pollak, 57. An autopsy determined he had died of cardiovascular disease.
On the night Pollak was found, authorities alleged, Christie made an odd request. He told YMCA staff that he would be off-duty for the next three days but that if anyone wanted to gain entry to the room, he should be notified immediately. He provided his personal cell phone number and told employees to keep the room sealed.
But the only one trying to enter Pollak’s room was Christie himself, even after he’d been instructed to withdraw from the routine death investigation, Strzelecki said. On Nov. 17, YMCA staffers called Christie’s supervisor, saying something was strange about the officer’s repeated attempts to enter Pollak’s apartment.
“He’d been told to let the detectives handle it and then the Y called,” Strzelecki said. “That kind of raised everybody’s suspicions.”
The next day, Nov. 18, investigators hid a video camera in the room and tallied how much cash had been left behind by Pollak, according to the charges. They found more than $1,000 in coins and an additional $768 in currency. Investigators added an additional $355 in marked bills.
They didn’t have to wait long, authorities said. Later that same day, Christie entered the room and was caught on the covert camera emptying numerous containers of coins into a cardboard box, they said.
The next day, video at a credit union allegedly captured Christie carrying a cardboard box. Records at the credit union showed he deposited $501.27 in coins in the morning and cashed an additional $40.49 in coins later that day.
He later mailed $274 to Pollak’s sister in California, telling her that was all the money he found, authorities said.
On the night of March 1, 2004, when she and a neighbor discovered Kathleen Savio’s body curled in a fetal position in an empty bathtub, Mary Pontarelli ran screaming from the bathroom into Savio’s adjoining bedroom.
“I threw myself down and started hitting her bed with my fists,” Pontarelli testified today.
The two women had been close ever since Pontarelli brought a poinsettia to her new next-door neighbor in Bolingbrook just before Christmas in 1999. Their families went on vacation and spent holidays together. And Savio shared her profound fears that her ex-husband, Drew Peterson, would eventually kill her, Pontarelli testified.
When Pontarelli returned to the bathroom that night, she checked Savio’s wrist for a pulse. She ran her hand through Savio’s wet hair and noticed it wasn’t pinned up like normal.
She saw no towels, bathrobe or clothes. A rug Pontarelli remembered sitting next to the tub was gone.
On Monday, for the first time since a pretrial hearing on charges that Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant, killed third wife Savio began nine days ago, testimony centered on her 2004 death. Much of the prior testimony has been about the 2007 disappearance of Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy. Peterson is the sole suspect in her disappearance but has not been charged.
Witnesses testified that Savio, fearful of Peterson, always kept her front door and screen door locked when she was gone or inside her home. But locksmith Robert Akin Jr. said only the front doorknob — one of at least three locks on the two doors — was locked when he was called to her home that night.
Mary Pontarelli’s son Nick, 19, testified that Savio said Peterson would try to kill her. Pontarelli, then 14, said Savio was terrified of Peterson in the months leading up to her death, which happened just weeks before a property settlement between her and Peterson was to be decided.
“If anything ever happened to her, it wasn’t an accident,” Savio told Nick Pontarelli, who considered her “a second mom.”
After her ex-husband moved out, Savio had Nick Pontarelli install a new lock and deadbolt on the home’s front door. His father, Thomas, installed a deadbolt on Savio’s bedroom door at her request after she said items were missing from the room.
Savio told Nick Pontarelli that Peterson had bugged the home and was recording phone conversations, showing him a little black box attached to a phone in the basement where Peterson slept before he moved out, he testified.
Savio played two of the tapes, Pontarelli testified.
In late 2003, Nick Pontarelli said, he took photos of damage inside Savio’s home that she said was caused by Peterson, including a drilled hole and scratches above the deadbolt on the bedroom door, and repairs from a large hole cut into the drywall of the garage that Peterson has admitted making to gain access inside the home. Pontarelli said Savio was planning to use the photos in the property dispute.
Mary Pontarelli told the court that one day in 2001, Savio called her to say Peterson was trying to kill her. When she went outside, Savio ran out and shoved a letter that she had been trying to fax to an attorney down Pontarelli’s blouse.
Peterson then came up to her and asked about the letter, in which an anonymous writer told Savio that Peterson was having an affair with a girl named Stacy Yelton, referring to Stacy Cales, who became Peterson’s fourth wife. “Protect yourself and your family,” it said. Pontarelli told Peterson she didn’t know about the letter.
Nick Pontarelli also testified that he’d heard stories from Savio recounting alleged abuse by Peterson, including a 2002 incident when Peterson allegedly put a knife to her throat and held her hostage for a couple of hours. Nick said he talked to her afterward and that “she was crying, very upset.”
Emergency medical technician Louis Oleszkiewicz testified that a towel shown in crime scene photos alongside the tub was not there when he arrived. Under questioning from a defense attorney, he said he did not see a bathrobe and two towels shown in a photo, hung on the inside of the bathroom door, which were not visible when the door was open.
On Friday, Stacy Peterson’s pastor testified that she told him how Peterson disappeared from their house the night before Savio’s body was found and how he coached her to lie about his whereabouts.
–Steve Schmadeke and Erika Slife
Click HERE for a WGN-TV report on this story.
Mayor Richard Daley angrily denied Saturday that his longtime friend Michael Scott’s suicide was related to an investigation into the ChicagoChicago reviews
school board president’s use of a district-issued credit card or a City Hall meeting set up to talk about the probe.
The denial marked the first time the Daley administration publicly acknowledged that top aide Jacquelyn Heard had scheduled the meeting with Scott about the credit card inquiry for the day Scott was found dead in November of what was ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
At the time, Daley said little about the hours before Scott’s death. Police also denied media attempts to get more information about their investigation of Scott’s suicide.
Behind the scenes, however, the mayor’s office told police about the meeting Heard had set up with Scott to discuss the probe by the Chicago Public Schools inspector general into Scott’s use of a taxpayer-funded credit card to pay for travel, meals, gifts and artwork.
Saturday’s disclosure adds a new element of controversy to the mysterious Scott story.
Before Scott’s death, the Tribune sought records about his use of the credit card to pay for a 2016 Olympics bid trip to Copenhagen.
The Tribune also published several stories last year related to Scott’s key role on Chicago’s Olympic committee and the real estate dealings of his company.
And earlier this month, the Tribune reported investigators from the inspector general’s office were scheduled to interview Scott on Nov. 20, four days after he died.
On Saturday, Heard said she called Scott the morning of Nov. 15 and made an appointment to meet the next morning with Scott to talk about district Inspector General James Sullivan’s ongoing inquiry.
But before that meeting could take place, Chicago police found Scott’s body in shallow water near a River North bridge. Later, authorities declared Scott died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Daley insisted Saturday that the series of events are unconnected.
“It had nothing to do with it. It had nothing to do with it,” the mayor said at a news conference after he dedicated a new senior citizen housing development in the Kelvyn Park neighborhood. “They’re trying to say that Michael Scott committed suicide over that. I mean, you people are just – I guess you want to dig him out of the grave or something. It had nothing to do with it. If you could predict why someone committed suicide, you’d be the greatest psychiatrist in the world. It had nothing to do with Michael’s death, suicide.”
The mayor also chastised the media, saying reporters are acting irresponsibly while trying to ascribe motives to Scott’s actions. The Sun-Times first reported Heard’s scheduled meeting with Scott.
“You people wish it had something to do with his suicide. I think you’re trying to throw him over the ridge or something, over the mountain,” Daley told reporters.
But he also insisted Scott would have been made to answer for any credit card irregularities.
“The credit card, that’s all it was. It wasn’t much, when you look at it,” Daley said. “But, again, that doesn’t — I don’t condone it. He can be accountable. If he was lying, he’d be accountable for it.”
Heard said her conversation with Scott the day before his death was “routine.” The credit card investigation was in its early stages, Heard said, and Scott did not seem at all worried about meeting the next day to discuss it.
“I didn’t know if anything that I was hearing was true. . . . I didn’t detect anything about him that could lead me to believe he had any concern about anything,” Heard said.
Chicago police declared Scott’s death a suicide based largely on physical evidence. No note was ever recovered. And since making the ruling, Supt. Jody Weis has maintained that police do not know — and might not ever know — what led to his decision.
A law enforcement source said Saturday that Scott also had recently gotten word that he had lost a consulting job.
But neither the Heard conversation nor the loss of the job was enough to suggest this might have contributed to his suicide, the source said.
Tribune reporter Hal Dardick contributed.
–John Byrne and Annie Sweeney
A minister who counseled former policeman Drew Peterson’s fourth wife before she disappeared is set to take the witness stand at a pretrial hearing on hearsay evidence.
Neil Schori says he met with Stacy Peterson a number of times after she asked him at the Bolingbrook church where he once worked to provide her marriage counseling.
Drew Peterson is charged with the 2004 slaying of Kathleen Savio, to whom he was married before he married Stacy Peterson.
He’s been named a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson but has not been charged. The testimony scheduled to take place Friday is considered significant because of widespread media reports that Stacy Peterson told a minister that Drew Peterson confessed to her that he killed Savio.
The testimony is part of a hearing to determine what hearsay evidence prosecutors can present to jurors when Peterson stands trial in Savio’s death.
On Thursday, a former co-worker said Peterson offered him $25,000 to find a hit man to kill Savio shortly before her death.
Jeff Pachter, 35, who worked with Peterson when he moonlighted at a local cable outfit in 2003, said the Bolingbrook police sergeant “wanted her taken care of” because Savio knew a secret about him that could get him kicked off the force.
The alleged proposition took place in late 2003, just a few months before Savio was found dead in the bathtub of her Bolingbrook home. Her March 2004 death was originally ruled an accidental drowning, but her case was reopened and ruled a murder after Stacy Peterson vanished.
Peterson, 56, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Savio’s death. He is also considered the only suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.
– Associated Press
A minister who counseled former policeman Drew Peterson’s fourth wife before she disappeared is set to take the witness stand at a pretrial hearing on hearsay evidence.
Neil Schori says he met with Stacy Peterson a number of times after she asked him at the Bolingbrook church where he once worked to provide her marriage counseling.
Drew Peterson is charged with the 2004 slaying of Kathleen Savio, to whom he was married before he married Stacy Peterson.
He’s been named a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson but has not been charged. The testimony scheduled to take place Friday is considered significant because of widespread media reports that Stacy Peterson told a minister that Drew Peterson confessed to her that he killed Savio.
The testimony is part of a hearing to determine what hearsay evidence prosecutors can present to jurors when Peterson stands trial in Savio’s death.
On Thursday, a former co-worker said Peterson offered him $25,000 to find a hit man to kill Savio shortly before her death.
Jeff Pachter, 35, who worked with Peterson when he moonlighted at a local cable outfit in 2003, said the Bolingbrook police sergeant “wanted her taken care of” because Savio knew a secret about him that could get him kicked off the force.
The alleged proposition took place in late 2003, just a few months before Savio was found dead in the bathtub of her Bolingbrook home. Her March 2004 death was originally ruled an accidental drowning, but her case was reopened and ruled a murder after Stacy Peterson vanished.
Peterson, 56, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Savio’s death. He is also considered the only suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.
– Associated Press
A ChicagoChicago reviews man wanted in connection with a 2008 slaying is in the custody of federal authorities after FBI agents found him in a public laundry in the Bronx, officials said.
David Bell, 20, whose last known address was 5814 S. Indiana Ave., became the subject of a nationwide manhunt after he fled the state when charged in Cook County with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Isiah Stroud, FBI officials said.
Bell and Jarvis allegedly got into an argument in the 1500 block of West Jarvis Avenue in December 2008, according to the criminal complaint against Bell.
Bell was charged in the incident a month later, but authorities were unable to find him.
Investigators from Chicago’s FBI Violent Crimes Task Force, which includes federal agents, Chicago police and the Cook County Sheriff’s Department, eventually tracked Bell down in New York. Special agents and New York police arrested Bell in the Bronx, where he was doing his laundry.
Bell is being held without bond in New York City at Manhattan Central Booking, pending extradition to Illinois, the FBI said.
The family of a man fatally shot by ChicagoChicago reviews police last September filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, claiming reckless conduct.
The suit, filed today in Cook County Circuit Court, claims police used excessive force in the shooting of Juan Robles and failed to provide timely medical attention after he was wounded.
Shortly after the Sept. 27 shooting, police released a statement saying they fired on Robles, 28, after he turned and pointed a handgun at them as he fled on foot in the city’s Ashburn neighborhood.
Prior to being shot, Robles — who police said was a suspected gang member who had a weapons violation in another police district — had refused to pull over for a traffic stop in the 7900 block of South Kedzie Avenue and crashed into two other vehicles. The three-page suit, claims the unnamed officers shot Robles multiple times in the back.
The shooting was investigated by the Independent Police Review Authority, who haven’t yet released the results of their probe. A city spokesperson was unavailable.
The suit seeks at least $100,000.
The Jackson Brother’s announce their plans to do a 40th Anniversary Album, but all of this falls into jeopardy when Jackie erases
Jermaine’s vocals, infuriating him. To get back to their roots the brothers visit Gary Indiana. When Jermaine confronts his brothers
about his departure from the Jackson 5 over 30 years ago, unresolved issues surface. The untimely death of their brother Michael puts
their dream of a Jackson 5 reunion on hold…indefinitely.
: 40th Anniversary Album, JackieJackie reviews, Jackson 5, Jermaine, Marlon, The Jackson Brother’s, TitoTito reviews, reunionReunion reviews
The last person known to have spoken with Stacy Peterson before her 2007 disappearance testified Monday that she was so desperate to leave her husband that she considered sleeping with someone else “so he wouldn’t love her anymore.”
Bruce Zidarich, 45, of Downers Grove, said he and Stacy had grown closer in the weeks before she vanished because they both were having relationship problems — he with Stacy’s sister Cassandra Cales and she with Drew Peterson, then a Bolingbrook police sergeant.
“She said she didn’t want anything — she wanted out,” Zidarich said. But Stacy told him Peterson, who had been tracking her whereabouts with a GPS system on her cell phone, wasn’t about to let her go, telling her that even if she slept with someone else in front of him he would still love her.
Monday was the fourth day of a pre-trial hearing on whether certain hearsay statements will be heard in the trial of Peterson, who is charged in the 2004 drowning death of third wife Kathleen Savio. As expected, much of the testimony so far has been about Stacy’s disappearance. Prosecutors are trying to convince a judge that Peterson caused Savio’s death or Stacy’s disappearance in order to have hearsay admitted under a new state law.
Zidarich said he was increasingly worried about Stacy’s safety. He recalled a July 2007 incident when Peterson came to his Yorkville home looking for Stacy, who had left 10 to 20 minutes earlier. Peterson asked to see a computer, and Zidarich said he took him to his home office.
“He showed us how he had all the phones on GPS,” Zidarich said. Peterson showed him where Stacy was on the map.
On Oct. 27, the day before Stacy vanished, Zidarich talked to Stacy about her increasing desperation to leave Peterson. They exchanged a series of text messages just after midnight, where Zidarich suggested they meet for coffee. Stacy asked if they could “go to breakfast in the morning w/my babies instead” because it had been a long day.
But the planned meeting on Oct. 28 never happened. Instead, Zidarich spoke to Stacy by phone later that morning about helping him repaint the inside of his Yorkville rental home.
Stacy never responded to his 4:30 p.m. text message — “Whatcha doin 2marrow?” and within a few hours Stacy’s family and friends were frantically searching for her.
Zidarich said he and Cales drove past the Petersons’ home, spotting both of their cars in the driveway — and when he called Peterson about 2:25 a.m. Drew Peterson told him that Stacy had taken $25,000 and gone to Jamaica with her boyfriend.
Sharon Bychowski, Stacy’s friend and next-door-neighbor, broke down Monday and had to be helped from the witness stand as she recounted seeing Stacy sobbing in the parkway outside her home shortly before her disappearance.
“Drew won’t go — he won’t leave,” Stacy said, according to Bychowski, showing her 10 boxes of his stuff she’d packed in their garage.
“If I disappear, Sharon, it’s not an accident — he killed me,” said Bychowski, crying and holding her hand to her chest.
When she urged Stacy to write down what was happening, Stacy told her: “I’m already dead,” Bychowski said. “He’s going to kill me.”
In 2006 and 2007 before she disappeared, Stacy got a tummy tuck, liposuction and breast implants.
“She told me that’s what Drew wanted,” Bychowski said.
But if Stacy had hoped it would improve things at home, friends said it didn’t work. In the days before she disappeared, Stacy showed Bychowski a ring that Peterson recently had given her and commented: “He thinks it’s going to keep me. No way.”
Stacy also showed Bychowski a hole in the garage ceiling she said was made when Drew fired a gun through the bedroom floor.
Prosecutors on Monday also called three Bolingbrook residents who testified they saw Peterson on Oct. 28. One woman who saw him walking away from a car parked about a mile from Peterson’s home around 6:30 p.m. said Peterson seemed extremely suspicious, testifying that she later told her daughter, “It was as if he had killed somebody.”
One of Peterson’s defense attorneys questioned Bychowski about her numerous television appearances and whether she had enjoyed or stood to profit from them.
“There’s nothing in this two and a half years that makes me feel special, sir — it makes me feel sick,” she said.
– Steve Schmadeke and Erika Slife
Click HERE for a WGN-TV report on this story.
A 19-year-old man is accused of shooting and killing another man last weekend on the West SideWest Side reviews, ChicagoChicago reviews police said Monday night.
Kwmane Boyd, of the 700 block of North Trumbull Avenue, has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the Saturday night shooting death of 21-year-old Elzie Johnson.
Police said a flash message was sent out over the radio describing the shooter for responding officers. Boyd was eventually apprehended in the 3700 block of West Congress Parkway.
Police responded to a call of shots fired in the 900 block of North Hamlin Avenue at about 6:50 p.m., police said. When they arrived, they found Johnson shot in the back.
Johnson was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 8:59 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Boyd is scheduled to appear for a bond hearing Tuesday in Cook County Criminal Court.
A body was discovered this morning in a burning car on ChicagoChicago reviews’s far South SideSouth Side reviews, officials said.
At about 1:15 a.m., firefighters and police responded to a call of a burning car at 116th and Morgan streets, said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford. Once the fire was extinguished, a dead body was discovered, he said. Langford said the gender of the body was not clear.
The body was sitting in the front driver seat of the vehicle, said Police News Affairs Officer Ron Gaines. The incident is being classified as a death investigation, Gaines said.
–Deanese Williams-Harris and Pat Curry WGN-TV
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