Wanted for questioning in Lefkow murders
Posted on 03/02/2005 7:55:29 PM PST by Land_of_Lincoln_John
Investigating a report about two suspicious looking men who were seen in the neighborhood near Judge Joan Lefkow's home hours before the murders of two of the judge's family members were discovered, police released a composite sketch of the men Wednesday night.
Investigators were also looking into the source of several phone calls Lefkow and her family received Sunday night that may have come from a correctional facility.
NBC 5 learned more about the private ordeal that Lefkow is going through from some people who are close to her, and the Chicago Sun-Times published the first interview with the grieving judge Wednesday afternoon.
In the published report, Lefkow says that her greatest fear is that her work on the bench led to the slayings of her mother and husband.
"I fear that to be true, and that's the great tragedy of it," Lefkow told the Sun-Times. "If someone was angry at me, they should go after me. It's not fair to go after my family."
"It's just so cruel," Lefkow told the paper. "He was on crutches after some surgery, and they didn't have a chance. It was just cold-blooded. Who would do this? I'm just furious.”
Earlier in the day, NBC 5's Anna Davlantes spoke with a friend and colleague of the judge's, Judge Wayne Anderson.
In the hours after the gruesome discovery, Anderson, who is also a federal judge, was by Lefkow's side.
He spoke to Davlantes about what happened Monday night at about how the judicial community is especially troubled by thetragic murders of Lefkow's family members.
While no one can comprehend the darkness Lefkow must have faced as she walked from her home Monday night after learning the horrifying fate of her family, but in the hours that followed, Anderson was there for her to lean on.
"I just felt impelled to go there and help console her and her family," he told NBC 5. "I can't explain why, but I just felt this need to go there and put my arms around her."
The judge spoke out Wednesday afternoon, calling on the federal government to provide more security for judges.
But, he said that after the crime, Lefkow didn't talk about security, only about what she could have done to prevent the deaths of her husband and mother.
"She's worried that by her achieving this wonderful position, (by) being a federal judge, that she then has jeopardized the lives of her family," Anderson said. "And that's -- that's something that is going to weigh on her forever."
The judge had four daughters with husband Michael, Davlantes said. One of those daughters also spoke publically about how her mother has been haunted, telling the New York Times, "I think she's very upset with herself, maybe for being a judge and putting her family in this danger. But, there's no way she should have known."
Ironically, some say her father didn't ever think about his own safety.
From his law office, Michael Lefkow could see his wife come and go from the federal building. Friends say he worried about her, not thinking that he and, as fate would have it, his mother-in-law would be targets.
Davlantes said all of the federal judges in the Chicago area, with the exception of judge Lefkow, gathered together for a special meeting Tuesday. Several have spoken out about the need for increased protection, and some are asking the federal government to step up to that task.
Officials said Lefkow returned home Monday evening to find the bodies of her husband, Michael F. Lefkow, 64, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, 89, in the basement of her home.
Both had been shot multiple times, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
Authorities were focusing on the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, where white supremacist Matt Hale is being held as the possible source of the calls, the Sun-Times reported, citing unnamed sources. When Joan Lefkow answered the first call, no one responded.
The Sun-Times also reported, citing an unnamed source, that subpoenas were being issued to "every kind of organization that has absolutely anything to do with a white supremacist or hate group."
Physical evidence found at the house also included a broken window that authorities hoped would produce fingerprints, according to a federal source.
The source, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, would not discuss a possible motive, although police have said they did not believe robbery was not a motive because nothing appeared to be missing from the home.
Authorities said Tuesday they were investigating whether the killings were the work of white supremacists out for revenge. The killings came a month before Hale was scheduled to be sentenced for trying to have the judge killed over her handling of a trademark case involving the name of his group.
Police said the possibility that the slayings of Michael Lefkow and Humphrey were carried out by hate groups was "but one facet of our investigation."
As recently as last year, federal authorities took the murder plot that Hale hatched and was convicted of seriously enough that they provided Lefkow protection for at least a few weeks and Chicago police stepped up patrolling her neighborhood. The Lefkows took their own security measures, installing cameras on their front porch, said Mike Miner, a senior editor at the Chicago Reader and longtime friend of the couple.
From the federal courthouse to the North Side neighborhood where the family lived, speculation was about the white supremacists.
"After everybody expresses how terrible they feel, that's the next topic of conversation," said Thomas Breen, a Chicago attorney who has argued cases before Lefkow. "Everybody is talking about white supremacist groups and how efficient they may be at what they do."
Michael Lefkow was an attorney who often worked with civil rights cases.
Chicago's chief of detectives, James Molloy, said, "We are looking in many, many directions, but it would be far too early to draw any definitive links."
By Tuesday morning, news articles of the killings had been posted on white supremacist Web sites, along with "RAHOWA!", meaning "racial holy war."
In a discussion on a white nationalist Web site in 2003, members had talked about the case against Hale and posted the Lefkows' home address. Anti-Defamation League official Mark Pitcavage said another white supremacist's short wave radio show last April had discussed killing the judge.
Hale's father, retired East Peoria policeman Russell Hale, dismissed the notion that his son was involved in the slayings, saying he is under constant surveillance and the FBI closely monitors his phone calls and visits with family members.
"There would be no way he could order anything," said Hale. "It's ridiculous."
Hale's mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, told the Chicago Tribune Tuesday that FBI agents had come to her East Peoria home to ask where another Hale relative had been Monday. Hutcheson said the relative was at an area business Monday that had a security camera.
Investigators also were looking into a car that was parked in a no-parking zone around 8 a.m. Monday outside a church on the Lefkow's street. The church administrator asked the two men in the car to leave and they did, the Sun-Times reported.
According to Molloy, the two victims were killed between 10:30 a.m., when Humphrey talked on the telephone to one of her grandchildren, and shortly after 5:30 p.m. when the judge discovered their bodies. At 4 p.m., one of the Lefkows' daughters had stopped by the house to pick up a gym bag, but she came and left without seeing her father or grandmother, Molloy said.
Molloy would not provide many details about the killings, but one federal source who spoke only on condition of anonymity said both victims had been shot in the head. Another source said that police found two .22 caliber casings and that a window at the house had been broken.
Investigators believe the two victims were forced to lie on the basement floor and then were shot multiple times, the Tribune reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources.
Authorities also found evidence that suggests the killer attempted to clean up the scene before leaving, according to NBC5.
The two victims would have been easy to overpower. Lefkow family friend Thomas Robb described them as "very vulnerable people," explaining that Humphrey, visiting from her home in Denver, needed two canes to walk, and that Michael Lefkow had undergone surgery last week to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon and was on crutches.
As they looked into a possible motive, a task force of more than two dozen members of the Chicago Police, FBI and U.S. Marshals Service assigned to the case around-the-clock was searching for clues in Lefkow's professional life, including her role presiding over cases involving Hale and others.
Lefkow has presided over a variety of cases since she was nominated to the District Court bench by President Clinton in 2000. She has sentenced defendants in the licenses for sale political corruption case, decided the mental fitness of a man suspected of shooting a police officer and ordered the makers of Beanie Babies to pay $700,000 in a trademark case.
The judge was questioned for hours after discovering the bodies and brought back to the home with detectives to help with the investigation. She and her family were placed under the protection of the U.S. Marshals Service, said Charles P. Kocoras, chief federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois.
Hale, 33, is awaiting a sentencing hearing scheduled to begin April 6. He is under what the Bureau of Prisons calls special administrative measures -- which means he is isolated from other prisoners and when attorneys visit he must be escorted to the meeting in handcuffs by three guards.
Police would not comment whether they have attempted to talk with him.
During Hale's trial, prosecutors contended that Hale was furious when Lefkow ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator because it had been trademarked by an Oregon-based religious group that has no ties to Hale. Lefkow originally ruled in Hale's favor, but the decision was reversed by a federal appeals panel and Lefkow ordered Hale and his group to stop using the name.
Friends of the Lefkows were stunned that anyone would want to harm Michael Lefkow, an attorney, who, with his wife was active in the Episcopal Church.
Friends and neighbors gathered Tuesday night at North Shore Baptist Church to pray for the Lefkow family, while others attended services at the family's Evanston church.
"Your could not imagine a nice family, and just a sadder event," neighbor Michael Callahan said.
The grief also reached Denver where Humphrey lived in a high-rise building with another daughter.
"Surely this person could not have known her, because there's not any way they could have harmed her had they known her," the building manager said.
The sketches look kind of indeterminate as to ethnicity. I wouldn't rule out Islamicists or some kind of Islamicist/neonazi fusion. McVey hinted as much in some of his jailhouse letters.
Execute them, even if they're minors
Moe and Shemp?
Is this supposed to be two different people, it looks like twins to me except for shape of face.
but in this case, where two people are killed pretty clean compared to the family of four, immdiately the whole country is looking for "white" terrorist......
what?...no burglary?.....this was a rich couple that lived in Chicago....
I feel the way the MSM and the various policing groups are talking, that they intend to make some white guy responsible no matter what....
how can this be?
how can they be so loudly condemning someone...Hale....and others without so much as a preliminary investigation .....let alone a trial.....
Way more speculation than usual. Knee-jerks already screaming for more security at federal buildings.
?......His entire 'case' (client) History must be 'completely' investigated....He really may have been the primary target...all along.
I saw the movie,...'Collateral'...(NOT 'collateral damage')....a 3rd world, non-christian film,....3rd world evil
this movie showed a typical 'non-western world view'....one of the 'despotic' 'EAST'.....etc.
....Joseph Stalin adopted this violent (non-christian) way to 'solve' his problems....
Just my opinion......I'd certainly investigate her husband's old world 'connections'....
anyone who has NOT seen the movie in this day and age should see,..."Collateral"....weird stuff, scary too.
Thanks for the ping!
Talking about grasping at straws! Some people on this thread seem pretty desperate for the crime not to be traced to white supremacists. An early composite sketch of possible suspects, one of whom may have a tan, hardly gets Matt Hale off the hook. But, Muslims did it, they say. (Hey, people like these usually blame white people's crimes on blacks, so it is at least a change of pace.) There is no evidence of any Muslims having a vendetta against Judge Lefkow, but plenty of evidence that the Creators, who have a history of violence, did. Though the investigation is fresh, I believe authorities are right to consider that angle most seriously. As a judge who handled mainly civil matters, it is doubtful that Lefkow had angered many people to the extent they would engage in such irrational behavior.
As for claims about robbery and the Lefkows being wealthy, both are false. Authorities say nothing was taken from the house. Mr. Lefkow spent his entire career as a Legal Aid Society lawyer, hardly the road to riches. Parents of five, the Lefkows were middle-class at most.
While we are debunking nonsense, also note that the Lefkows are Episcopalian, not Jewish, as members of the 'white nationalist' movement have claimed.
I can solve this murder now. Take Hale into a isolation cell and ask a few Jewish and Black inmates to join him. I would anticipate a full confession within, oh say, 30 seconds!!!!!
If you have seen video of this total a-hole accusing her of being a Jew, of her husband being a Jew, and of her children as being half black (I cleaned that one up) you would realize he ordered his mutant bottom-feeders to kill the entire family. You guys dense or something??????
Probably because this was an assassination of the family of a federal district court judge, in what was probably an attempt to intimidate her off the bench for rulings that someone obviously disagreed with. This gets so much attention because it has a profound effect on the American system of justice.
what?...no burglary?.....this was a rich couple that lived in Chicago....
Correct, this was not a burglary. Nothing was reported missing from the house. And by the way, Edgewater is NOT a wealthy neighborhood.
I feel the way the MSM and the various policing groups are talking, that they intend to make some white guy responsible no matter what....
how can this be?
how can they be so loudly condemning someone...Hale....and others without so much as a preliminary investigation .....let alone a trial.....
Well, it probably has something to do with the fact that Hale, a scumbag white supremecist, is currently awaiting sentencing for previously conspiring to have Lefkow killed. Do you get it now?
This is really sad. So many lives affected.
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