DCFS Wants Alleged Hickory St. Killer's Kid Stripped Naked For Exam

The parents of one of the four alleged Hickory Street killers have refused to let the Department of Children and Family Services strip their granddaughter naked for an examination, and the agency now wants a Will County judge to order them to hand the child over.

But Judge Paula Gomora wouldn't go along with the DCFS bid to strip-check the 18-month-old daughter of Bethany McKee. Gomora said DCFS failed to provide any information about the abuse allegations they are investigating.

"Maybe that's what I'm supposed to be, the rubber stamp so you can gain entry, but I'm not convinced from what's been provided that that's what I'm supposed to be," the judge told DCFS attorney Cynthia Gonzalez.

"You have to give me at least something to hang my hat on," said Gomora, who allowed Gonzalez to refile her petition with details about the alleged abuse.

McKee, 18, is locked up at the county jail and was not present for Thursday's lengthy hearing. Her parents, Bill and Teresa McKee of Shorewood, attended. Bethany and her baby have lived in Bill and Teresa McKee's Shorewood home their entire lives.

During the hearing, Bethany McKee's attorney, Chuck Bretz, compared DCFS workers on his client's case to Nazis.

"This is the Department of Children and Family Services, not the Gestapo back in Nazi Germany," Bretz said.

Standing alongside Gonzalez, Bretz said, "In her world, which I'm glad I don't live in ... they can roll in and do anything they want to because they're DCFS."

Bethany McKee was arrested in January along with three others—Adam Landerman, 19, Joshua Miner, 24, and Alisa Massaro, 19—and charged with murdering two men in Massaro's Hickory Street house.

Bethany McKee and Massaro lured the two men, Eric Glover and Terrance Rankins, both 22, to the house by leading them to believe they were going to have sex with them, according to police reports obtained exclusively by Patch. But when Rankins and Glover got there, the reports said, Miner and Landerman strangled them to death.

Massaro and Miner then had sex atop the dead men's bodies, the reports said, and the four hatched a plot to dismember the corpses, with Miner planning to keep the teeth of the murdered men as trophies.

McKee left the house and went to her father to see if he would help butcher the bodies. Instead, Bill McKee alerted police to the killings.

Officers sent to the Hickory Street house found the bodies and took Landerman, Massaro and Miner into custody. Bethany McKee was captured later in Kankakee, where she had gone to see the father of her child. Her daughter was in the back seat of her car when she was pulled over.

Gonzalez said the DCFS investigation was prompted by two calls to the agency's child abuse hotline. The first call, on March 8, accused Bethany McKee—who had been locked up in the jail for nearly two months at that point—of neglecting her daughter, Bretz said. The second call, Bretz said, accused Teresa McKee of neglecting and abusing the little girl.

Bretz also said DCFS wants to check out not only the girl, but Bethany McKee's brother and sister, 15 and 17. One reason DCFS is interested in the children, Bretz said, is that their father pleaded guilty to a sex crime in 1995.

"They've known about that for a long time," Bretz said.

Bill McKee said DCFS has investigated him on at least six occasions over the years and that each time the case was determined to be unfounded. The numerous probes have been hard on the McKee children, said Teresa McKee.

"My kids are tired of it," she said, "tired of being interviewed."

The investigations are also a source of embarrassment for the McKee children, said Bill McKee, who claimed he is innocent of the sex crime he pleaded to.

"I pleaded because, one, my attorney gave me bad advice, and No. 2, I had no idea what I was doing as far as the law," he said.

Bill McKee also said he faced up to 30 years in prison and that his plea resulted in a sentence of only four years probation. He had been in jail for four months before pleading guilty, Bill McKee said, and his pregnant wife was left to care for their daughter Bethany, who was only a year old at the time.

Gonzalez said DCFS is mandated to check on children when abuse is reported.

"We have an interest in protecting the safety of the children," she said. "We shouldn't have to go in and litigate the merits" of each individual case in court.

But Judge Gomora told her to come back with specific allegations.

"I don't take this stuff lightly, when you go into someone's home," the judge said. "This is a huge invasion."

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