Editors Note:
We will to post as much detail as we have available about
these 103 cases in Illinois, but we do not have a
complete picture about the cases. A detailed study of all cases is pending and
should be released for public examination sometime this year. We will publish
all information as it becomes available.
Meanwhile, some information that we have become aware of
is outlined below.
IllinoisVictims.org is relying on
the accuracy of the source material cited here for the following descriptions of
some of the juvenile life without parole cases in Illinois:
PETER SAUNDERS
Peter Saunders, age 16, sexually assaulted and bludgeoned and stabbed to death
an elderly woman, Elisa Totoni in Chicago in 1983. He made a full statement
implicating himself. He was convicted for murder, home invasion, armed robbery
and attempt rape. He was sentenced to life without parole on the murder
conviction and an aggregate consecutive term of 75 years on the remaining
convictions. (Source: Illinois Appellate Court decision in People v. Peter
Saunders, 235 Ill. App. 3d 661, 601 N.E.2d 1038, 1992 Ill. App. LEXIS 1483, 176
Ill. Dec. 340 (Ill. App. 1s Dist. 1992).
In October 1995, while Saunders was an inmate at Stateville
Correctional Center in Joliet, he sent a threatening letter and then a bomb-like
device to Federal Judge Blanche Manning. Judge Manning received a letter from
Saunders on October 30, 1995, in which, among other things, Saunders threatened
to “put a nine millimeter slug right in your head.” A device in a package
capable of detonating arrived for Judge Manning at the United States Courthouse
in Chicago the next day, October 31, 1995. Saunders admitted to the FBI sending
both the letter and the package. He told the FBI he was furious with Judge
Manning for affirming his conviction when she had been an Illinois Appellate
Court judge and for dismissing a civil suit he had filed in federal court
alleging inadequate medical care by the State of Illinois. (Source: U.S.A. v.
Peter Saunders, U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Appeal from the
United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern
Division, No. 96 CR 584—Rudy Lozano, Judge. Submitted October 30, 1998, Decided
February 2, 1999).
SCOTT DARNELL
Scott Darnell raped and murdered a 12-year-old girl,
Victoria Larson, one month after he was released on parole in connection with
juvenile court proceedings on another case. The victim’s mother, Dora Larson,
sued the parole officer and the Illinois Department of Corrections for failing
to properly supervise and control Darnell. She lost. (Source: Larson v. Darnell,
113 Ill. App. 3d 975, 448 N.E.2d 249, 1983 Ill. App. LEXIS 1678, 69 Ill. Dec.
789 (Ill. App. 3rd Dist. 1983).
CURTIS CROFT
Curtis Croft was one of three young men who raped
16-year-old Kim Boyd at Croft’s home in Chicago in 1986. When the gang-rape was
over, the men debated what to do with the victim. Miss Boyd was blindfolded with
a brown rag that belonged to Croft, laid down in an alley, and run over five
times with a car in which Croft was a passenger. One of the others then finished
Ms. Boyd off with a knife. Coronor Dr. Mitre Kalelkar testified at trial that
Ms. Boyd suffered 40 stab wounds, a broken thigh bone, several fractured ribs,
and “skin slippage” on her face which could have been caused by coming into
contact with the hot metal underside of a car. Croft was sentenced concurrently
to natural life for murder, 45 years for aggravated criminal sexual assault and
10 years for aggravated kidnapping. (Source: People v. Croft, 211 Ill. App. 3d
496, 570 N.E.2d 507, 1991 Ill. App. LEXIS 369, 156 Ill. Dec. 31 (Ill. App. 1st
Dist. 1991)
JOHNNY FREEMAN
This is a quote from the “Overview” section of the legal
opinion in People v. Johnny Freeman, 182 Ill. App. 3d 731, 538 N.E.2d 681, 1989
Ill. App. LEXIS 538, 131 Ill. Dec. 306 (Ill. App. 1st Dist. 1989):
“Defendant took a five-year-old girl from the fifth floor
to a fourteenth floor apartment [of Henry Horner Homes in Chicago]. After
sexually assaulting the girl, he shoved her out of a window. When the girl
grabbed the edge of the window and screamed for her mother, defendant shoved her
a second time and she fell to her death. Defendant was convicted of criminal
sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and
murder. Defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, a
consecutive sentence of 60 years, and another consecutive sentence of 15 years.”
EVAN GRIFFITH
While serving a natural life sentence in Pontiac
Correctional Center for murders he committed as a juvenile, Griffith killed
again: he stabbed a fellow inmate, James Jones, to death with a shank in 1990.
(Source: People v. Evan Griffith, 158 Ill. 2d 476, 634 N.E. 2d 1069, 1994 Ill.
App. LEXIS 62, 199 Ill. Dec. 715 (Illinois Supreme Court 1994)
Griffith’s juvenile murder was commited when he was 16
years old. On May 11, 1985, in Chicago, he used a hammer, scissors, and two
knives to kill Leroi Shanks. (Source: People v. Evan Griffith, 334 Ill. App. 3d
98, 777 N.E.2d 459, 2002 Ill. App. LEXIS 815, 267 Ill. Dec. 656 (Ill. App. 1st
Dist. 2002).
WAYNE ANTUSAS
Wayne Antusas ordered the shooting that killed two eigth-grade
girls, Helena Martin and Carrie Hovel, on Dec. 14, 1995, when they were sitting
across from their school, Nathan Hale Elementary at 6100 S. Melvina Avenue in
Chicago.
DAVID BIRO
For this case we are reprinting here
testimony submitted to the Illinois Legislature by one of the victims' sisters:
Statement of Jeanne Bishop to the Juvenile Justice Reform
Committee
March 14, 2007
My name is Jeanne Bishop, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have my
testimony presented to this committee. I apologize for not being present; I
learned of this hearing too late to change a longstanding out of town meeting.
What you are considering here today is of such critical importance that I feel
compelled to address you in the only way I can.
I was told—and perhaps you were, too-- that House Bill 1695 was meant to address
the issue of 13, 14 and 15-year-olds being given mandatory sentences of life
without parole. I learned only a few days ago that the truth is that no one who
committed a crime at age 13 is serving that sentence in Illinois. Of
14-year-olds, only four are serving that sentence. Of 15-year-olds, only eleven
are serving that sentence. The remaining cases involve inmates who were 16 and
17 years old when they committed their crimes. Thirty people serving a life
sentence in Illinois were 16, and 58 were 17, the age of legal adulthood.
That means that the clear majority of people serving natural life sentences
which would be retroactively altered by this bill were adults when they received
their sentences.
And you will be told that there are some inmates serving natural life sentences
who were disadvantaged, abused, who had bad childhoods in bad neighborhoods with
bad schools, who came from broken homes, who received shoddy legal
representation.
I have a different story to tell you. It is a horror story, a true one, about
David Biro, who slaughtered three of my family members in 1990, when he was only
one month shy of his 17th birthday.
Mr. Biro was not disadvantaged: he grew up in the best neighborhoods, living in
a nearly million-dollar home in Winnetka. He had the best schools: he was a
student at New Trier High School when he murdered my family members. He did not
have a broken home: he came from an intact family of a mother, father, sister
and brother. He was not abused; rather, he abused others, trying to poison his
own family by tainting their milk and shooting at passers-by with a BB gun out
of the window of his home. He had the best of legal representation at trial; his
lawyers were the respected defense attorneys Robert Gevirtz and Dennis Born.
Indeed, the Illinois Appellate Court described the trial which Mr. Biro received
the fairest that our jurisprudence could offer any defendant.
Mr. Biro apparently was dissatisfied with his quiet suburban life of safe
streets, clean parks, and good schools. He aspired to be a serial killer. He
started, as I mentioned before, with his own family and with random bystanders,
with small weapons like BB pellets.
That wasn’t thrill enough for him. So he used his ingenuity to forge the
application for an Illinois Firearm Owner’s Identification Card, which would
entitle him to buy an arsenal of real weapons. When his attempt was successful
and his mother found out about it, she sent the FOID card to a lawyer. When Mr.
Biro learned that the lawyer had his FOID card, he broke into the law office by
removing the hinges from the doors, and, while searching for the FOID card,
found a .357 Magnum, speed loaders and bullets in an unlocked drawer. He had
found what he wanted.
Two days later, he used that gun to execute in cold blood my younger sister
Nancy, the three-month-old baby she was carrying in her womb, and her husband
Richard.
Mr. Biro planned the murder carefully. He brought a glass cutter to their home,
quietly cutting the glass of a sliding glass door rather than breaking it out
and causing a sound which might alert neighbors. He positioned a chair in the
middle of the ground floor of my sister’s home so that he could see every
entrance. Then he sat in the chair and waited for her to come home.
When she and her husband walked through their front door, he pointed the gun at
them, handcuffed my brother-in-law with cuffs he had brought for the occasion,
and terrorized them. A neighbor said she heard my sister begging Mr. Biro, “No,
not again!”
My sister offered him all the money she had with her, $500 in cash from the
paycheck she had just cashed, to leave them unharmed. He threw the money on the
ground and told her that wasn’t why he had come.
He forced them into the basement. He shot my brother-in-law once in the back of
the head, execution-style. Then he turned the gun on my sister. She told him she
was pregnant and begged for the life of her baby. He fired into her abdomen and
side and left her to bleed to death.
She tried desperately to survive, dragging her body to the basement stairs,
which she was too weak to climb. She tried banging on a metal shelf to call for
help. No help came. Finally, when she must have known she was dying, she dragged
herself over to her husband’s lifeless body and drew in her own blood a heart
and the letter “u.” Love you. It was how Nancy had signed her letters to her
husband over the years. Then she died beside him.
Mr. Biro attended my sister’s funeral, presumably to enjoy the spectacle of our
grief. He kept a trophy notebook about the killings, with press clippings and
his own poems about killing my family members, in which he compared himself to
the Biblical character of Cain, who kills his brother, Abel.
Mr. Biro would go to school and start to speculate with other students about who
might have killed this innocent young couple: the Mafia? Terrorists? At the end
of the conversation, he would tell his classmates with a smile, “Actually, I did
it.” They would laugh off his suggestion as creepy and ridiculous.
Finally, Mr. Biro apparently got tired of not having anyone who could truly
appreciate his genius. He told a close friend, in detail, about killing my
family members. And he told of a plan to kill again.
The next victim was to be a bank guard in Winnetka. Mr. Biro had already started
the process of engineering a break-in at the bank. His plan was to enter the
bank at night, when no one was on duty, take some money, wait till a guard
arrived in the morning, kill the guard, and leave a note. The note would say
something to the effect of: “Ha ha, I didn’t have to kill the guard to take the
money. I just killed him because I wanted to.”
And this is the hallmark of David Biro. He wants us to understand that he is
killing not for a particular reason, but for no reason. He wanted to be sure
that his break-in at my sister’s home wasn’t misread as a burglary gone bad:
that’s why he left all the money on the floor. It was meant to be a message, as
clear as the message he intended to leave at the bank.
And the message is this: I want you dead. I want you dead for no reason other
than that I want to kill. It is not merely senseless killing; it is killing Mr.
Biro means us to see and understand as senseless.
Fortunately, the friend turned in Mr. Biro before he could take another innocent
human life. I have no doubt that, were he released from prison by this
irresponsible bill, he would take up where he left off and kill again.
And if that happens, I fear less for my family members, for my husband and two
small sons, than for your family members. Because it would make perfect sense
for Mr. Biro to come and find me and finish the job of killing my family if he
were let out of prison. It would make no sense for him to kill your family. And
Mr. Biro is the master of the truly senseless killing.
Mr. Biro not only received a mandatory sentence of life without parole for the
double homicide and home invasion. He also received, from Judge Shelvin Singer,
one of our most respected jurists, a discretionary sentence of life without
parole for the intentional killing of an unborn child.
Judge Singer could have sentenced Mr. Biro to a term of years, but he chose not
to. And in his remarks from the bench at sentencing, Judge Singer noted what I
did before you here today. That Mr. Biro had every advantage. That he had grown
up not with violence, but with peace and security. That he possessed
intelligence which he had turned to evil. That he had acted in a calculated
manner which was sophisticated far beyond his years. That the killing was
exceptionally brutal and heinous.
Enough of my horror story,
My question is this: why is this horror story the only one you will hear today
from victims? Why are you not hearing from the hundreds and hundreds of other
family members of the many other victims?
The answer is simple: because they were never even notified of the bill’s
existence. They were never notified about this hearing. (We have heard it said,
without any confirmation, by one of the bill’s proponents that perhaps one
family has been told, but he and other of the bill’s backers concede that they
have notified no other victim).
I found out about the bill by an accident of fate, not by design of those who
advocate the wholesale reintroduction of parole to killers who were never
supposed to be paroled.
How many other horror stories from victims might you hear today if they knew
this hearing was taking place? Did no one think those victims’ families deserved
to be told that their loved ones’ killers might walk the streets again unless
they were here today to raise their voices against it? Does anyone here really
believe that all those victims chose to remain silent in the face of a bill
which would annually threaten them with release of their loved ones’ murderer?
The stench of injustice surely must permeate this room sufficiently for you to
smell it. It is the rank smell of unfairness, of the lack of the most basic
consideration for innocent people who have suffered enough.
This bill was badly conceived, drafted by a criminal defense lawyer with no
input from victims. It was introduced without knowledge of victims or even of
some of the respected experts on juvenile justice who have been painstakingly
studying this issue. This bill does not deserve your vote. The inquiry into this
issue can and will go on, but this deeply flawed bill should end here.
