18 years later, justice poised to be served

By Eric Zorn
Chicago Tribune
March 25, 2004

Signs point to a dramatic development this week in a controversial 18-year-old double-murder case in Downstate Paris.

Relatives of the victims--newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads--had an unpublicized face-to-face meeting in Champaign with Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan Wednesday afternoon to hear why Madigan's office has decided not to appeal a ruling last year by a federal judge who vacated the conviction of one of the defendants, according to several sources close to the case.

The ultimate result is very likely to be exoneration and freedom for yet another former resident of Illinois' Death Row: Gordon "Randy" Steidl, 52, whose sentence was reduced to life without parole in 1999.

The case against Steidl and his co-defendant, Herbert Whitlock, 58, was based almost entirely on the far-fetched, contradictory and ever-changing accounts of a notorious alcoholic and an admitted drug addict, both of whom claimed several months after the crime to have witnessed Steidl and Whitlock butchering the Rhoads couple.

In ordering the state to retry or release Steidl last year, U.S. District Judge Michael McCuskey concluded that "acquittal was reasonably probable if the jury had heard all of the evidence."

Madigan, to her credit, neither surrendered to nor reflexively challenged McCuskey's ruling. Instead, she and her staff gave the case a thorough review that one of Steidl's attorneys, Michael Metnick, gratefully deemed "absolutely startling."

No physical evidence in the case has ever linked Steidl or Whitlock to the crime, but Madigan asked defense attorneys for several extensions on the deadline for filing an appeal so she could be sure that every last scrap of crime-scene evidence that could be DNA-tested was DNA-tested.

That effort was an indication that Madigan shared at least some of the skepticism that McCuskey and numerous advocates for Steidl and Whitlock had expressed over the years, and was inclined to send the case back for retrial.

It was also an indication that Madigan knew her decision would be all but final, given that it will be extremely difficult to put Steidl on trial again: One key witness, the admitted drug addict, has recanted, then un-recanted her testimony twice; her job supervisor, who did not testify at the original trial, has since sworn the woman was at work at the time she claimed to have seen key events the night of the crime.

An Illinois State Police investigation four years ago concluded that earlier investigators had blown the Rhoads case and helped put the wrong men in prison.
It's not clear what motivated the person or people who broke into the Rhoads' home in the middle of the night in July 1986, stabbed the young couple in their bed 54 times, then used gasoline to set the house on fire and cover their tracks, but it's a good bet that the secret still lives in Paris, a crossroads town of 9,000 about 20 miles northwest of Terre Haute, Ind.

A March 12 court filing said the final round of DNA tests showed nothing of value.
If all goes as anticipated, the case will now return to the state appellate prosecutor's office in Springfield. There, attorneys "will review the case," said Edwin Parkinson, the prosecutor who has lately been overseeing the state's end of Whitlock's appeals and petitions for clemency. He declined to speculate Wednesday whether his office will attempt to try Steidl again or what his exoneration might mean for Whitlock, given that the case against Whitlock is nearly identical.

Andrea Trapp, sister of victim Dyke Rhoads, would not discuss what Madigan told the families Wednesday, but after the meeting, Trapp said, "We have confidence in the attorney general."

Letting go will be a courageous, smart and just move by Madigan, who approached the Steidl case with exactly the combination of toughness and fairness that we expect from our prosecutors.

Some say justice delayed is justice denied. But this week, it simply looks like justice.
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My columns telling this story in far greater detail are archived at http://ericzorn.com/columns/paris/

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