Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Mystery lurks: Killer at large

DNA clears father in slaying of girl, 3

By Deborah Horan, Jo Napolitano and John Biemer, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Steve Mills contributed to this report

June 19, 2005

After an emotional year of terror and then relief, the rural Will County town of Wilmington is back to the same question this weekend that haunted it last June: Who killed Riley Fox?

Kevin Fox, who police said had confessed to the sexual assault and killing of his 3-year-old daughter, was set free Friday after DNA tests failed to link him to the crime. The DNA testing, State's Atty. James Glasgow said, resulted in an "absolute exclusion of Kevin Fox as a donor."

Sheila Rodgers, a neighbor who had helped in the search last June when Riley disappeared, said her neighborhood is once again filled with suspicion and fear.

"If Kevin didn't do it, somebody did," Rodgers said. "There's still a killer on the loose. ... We're back to square one. Today, it's the exact feeling we had when it happened."

Fox emerged a free man after nearly eight months in jail. He left jail with an arm around his wife Melissa and 7-year-old son Tyler at his side. His lawyers, Kathleen Zellner and Paul DeLuca, also accompanied him.

He said he was eager to spend the night with his family in his own home. "I dreamed of that every night, every single night," he said. "Finally, it's here."

Fox turned aside questions about the videotaped confession at the heart of the case, saying "it was a nightmare and I don't want to relive it right now." But later, in an interview with the Tribune, he said he was "fed lies and threats the entire time." His wife, who stood by him through his arrest and time in jail, said that when she was questioned "they messed with my mind so much in what little time they had, so I couldn't even imagine what they did" with him.

"Basically these men enabled someone to get away with murder," she said. "And I just pray that whoever was responsible for Riley's death has not in the meantime harmed somebody else."

Fox's release sidetracked a case that was contentious from the start and focused renewed attention on the issue of false confessions, which has plagued the criminal justice system in Illinois. The Fox case appears to be the second in which a videotaped confession proved false.

In January 2002, Cook County prosecutors dismissed the murder case against Corethian Bell after DNA undermined a videotaped confession that he had killed his mother. Like Fox, Bell said police coerced him to confess. He spent 17 months in jail before he was released.

Though DNA cleared Bell and connected another man to his mother's slaying, police said they have no suspects in the Fox case. Glasgow stopped short of saying Fox was innocent, and said he could not explain why Fox confessed.

"Numerous confessions are made without coercion," Glasgow said.

In court, the case was marked by contentiousness, as Zellner took an aggressive tack to fight the charges. She criticized investigators for botching the investigation and took the unusual step of filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Will County sheriff's office and several detectives, alleging they had coerced Fox's confession.

Zellner also investigated the case on Fox's behalf in an effort to develop other suspects, and she sought the DNA tests that led to Fox's release. She alleged sheriff's investigators and prosecutors had rushed to judgment, relying on the confession without waiting for the tests.

"The ultimate thing to learn is, do the tests before you make the arrest," Zellner quipped after the hearing at which the charges were dropped.

Even after evidence was sent to the FBI lab at Quantico, Va., Zellner said sheriff's officials told the agency not to pursue the testing. A report from the FBI lab indicates that a sheriff's officer told FBI analysts in November to stop testing.

"Once they got a confession, they told them to stop the testing," Zellner said. "There's absolutely no excuse for not having those tested."

The decision to release Fox followed a meeting Thursday evening between Glasgow and Zellner, who recounted the discussion and described the county's lead prosecutor as "flabbergasted" by the DNA results.

Zellner criticized the Illinois State Police lab for failing to get a genetic profile when analysts at the Joliet lab examined the vaginal swab.

Lt. Lincoln Hampton, a state police spokesman, said the lab did only preliminary work before the evidence was sent to a private lab, and so it never had the opportunity to try to isolate the DNA--an explanation Zellner challenged.

With the case against Fox dismissed, Glasgow said prosecutors and sheriff's detectives--although none whose work led to charges against Fox--will reopen the case and investigate it with renewed vigor.

Additional DNA testing also will be performed, he said.

"A vicious sexual predator murdered Riley Fox last June and we are making it our No. 1 priority to reopen this case and aggressively investigate it ..." he said, adding that there were a "number of leads" investigators were reviewing.

Sheriff Paul Kaupas declined to answer questions about the case but read a brief statement in which he said that "... if evidence presents itself, we'll keep an open mind, continue the investigation and follow any and all leads."

The case began on a quiet Sunday last June. Fox was home with Riley and Tyler, while his wife was in Chicago taking part in a charity walk.

The night before, Fox told police, he had gone to a festival. He had left the two children in the care of their grandparents.

After he picked them up around midnight, he put them to bed.

In the morning, the front door to the home was open, but Kevin Fox said he did not know whether his daughter had opened it and wandered off.

Between 500 and 600 volunteers took up the effort, and her body was found later that day in Forked Creek, 4 miles from the family's home.

An autopsy determined that Riley Fox had been drowned.

Kevin Fox, then 27, was arrested four months later after the sheriff's office said he gave a videotaped statement implicating himself in the crime.

According to sheriff's officials, Fox said in the videotape that he accidentally killed his daughter but tried to make her death look like a murder and sexual assault so police would not suspect him of the crime.

Some observers charged that then-State's Atty. Jeff Tomczak, who was in a tight race for re-election against Glasgow, filed charges against Fox and quickly decided to seek the death penalty only to quiet criticism over the failure to make an arrest in the case.

Tomczak denied the allegations but eventually was beaten by Glasgow.

Zellner praised Glasgow for his handling of the case.

The confession was the most contentious piece of evidence and, from the start, Zellner aggressively challenged how the police obtained it.

Fox, according to Zellner, confessed only after he was questioned for 14 hours and was exhausted, and because authorities allegedly promised him that he would face lesser charges and quickly be released if he said his daughter's death was an accident.

Melissa Fox said she never thought her husband killed their child. "... there was nothing that triggered in my mind or my heart that he had ever done anything wrong," she said.