Lawyer For Woman Charged With Hickory St. Nightmare Murders Wants Case Dismissed

Just last month, the lawyer for a woman charged with the grisly Nightmare on Hickory Street murders claimed he was ready to go to trial.

A few weeks later, attorney Chuck Bretz blinked, saying he wasn't prepared after all and asking the judge to postpone the trial he had requested.

Now Bretz wants the murder charges against his client, 20-year-old Bethany McKee of Shorewood, dropped.

Bretz filed a secret motion to get the case kicked out of court Thursday. While the filing is under seal, it was labeled, "Motion to dismiss or impose sanctions."

McKee is due back in court Monday and Bretz is expected at that time to argue for the case be dismissed or sanctions be imposed, presumably against prosectors.

Bretz was sanctioned when he was a prosecutor, losing his law license for three years after he was was "found guilty of attempted official misconduct for filing a false felony charge against a young Joliet man who had impregnated the daughter of one of his private clients," according to a 1995 Chicago Tribune story.

Bretz was sentenced to two years' probation, a $2,000 fine and 800 hours of community service, the story said. His law license was suspended from May 1996 to May 1999.

McKee's two co-defendants, Joshua Miner, 26,  and Adam Landermn, 21, both of Joliet, are also scheduled to appear in court Monday. Another woman who had been charged with the killings, 20-year-old Alisa Massaro of Joliet, copped a plea to charges of robbery and concealing a homicide to slither out of the murder case. Massaro was sent off to prison for three and a half years in exchange for her future testimony against McKee, Miner and Landerman.

Landerman, Massaro, Mckee and Miner allegedly had a hand in the January 2013 strangulation murders of Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22.

Massaro and McKee lured Rankins and Glover to Massaro’s home on Hickory Street, where Miner and Landerman throttled the two men to death, according to police reports obtained exclusively by Patch.

After the killings, Massaro and Miner had sex atop the dead men’s bodies, the reports said. The four then concocted a plan to dismember the corpses of their victims and began procuring supplies, including a blowtorch, to carry out the plan, the reports said. Miner reportedly intended to keep the dead men’s teeth as trophies.

McKee was at Massaro's home with her baby daughter but left the room before the killings, the reports said. McKee later took off from the house and met with her father, Bill McKee, in hopes he would help get rid of the bodies, police said. Bill McKee instead called the cops.

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