Friday, April 12, 2013
Charles McCullum now faces two counts of aggravated battery in addition to the murder and concealing a homicide. His mother's body still remains missing in the Des Plaines River.
A Joliet man charged with dumping his mother into the Des Plaines River after strangling her and hammering a knife into her body with a baseball bat now faces additional charges. An indictment filed Thursday in Will County court against 21-year-old Charles McCullum includes two counts of aggravated battery on top of the murder and concealing a homicide charges he already faced. McCullum is scheduled to be arraigned Friday morning. A prosecutor said McCullum killed his 54-year-old mother, Jeanie Parker, after she "upset" him last month. The upset McCullum strangled Parker, said Assistant State's Attorney Peter Wilkes, and left her for dead in the Fifth Avenue apartment they shared. When McCullum returned he realized his mother was still …
Saturday, January 5, 2013
The New Year didn't start out all that great for everyone.
The New Year turned five days old today. And out of those five days, the Will County Courthouse was only open for three of them. That may not be a lot of days, but they were still action-packed and exciting. How action packed and exciting? Well, let's take a look: Are you a fan of true crime? Then come like our Facebook page.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Missing mom Linda Fellenbaum took a job as a live-in housekeeper for a Georgia man after she disappeared from Joliet.
For more than a month, the police hunted for some sign Hinsdale mom Linda Fellenbaum was still alive after she ran barefoot into the night during an argument with her boyfriend. Detectives are still piecing together why Fellenbaum dropped out of circulation for 38 days in October and November, and what exactly she was up to all that time. But for about a week and a half between Fellenbaum disappearing from her boyfriend's Joliet home and turning up in a Georgia jail, she hung out under a fake name in a small town south of Atlanta where she worked as a live-in housekeeper for a retired truck driver. The trucker, a 48-year-old Sharpsburg, Ga., resident who says he owns rental properties and dabbles in the movie business, told how he met …
Monday, December 17, 2012
Joel Brodsky slapped back with a bizarre court filing just days after getting blamed for blowing the Drew Peterson case.
Last week, one of the lawyers working to get wife-killer Drew Peterson a new murder trial blamed attorney Joel Brodsky for blowing the case. On Monday, Brodsky slapped back, filing a court paper claiming former co-counsel Steve Greenberg "suffers from a severe mental illness." Mentally ill or not, Greenberg is still on Peterson's defense team. The same can't be said for Brodsky, who tearfully claimed in October that he was voluntarily withdrawing from the case. In last week's memorandum penned by Greenberg, which paints Brodsky as a delusional, petty, fame-hungry liar, it alleges that Brodsky was "discharged" from the defense team. Brodsky has followed his withdrawal—or discharge—from the criminal case by pulling out of a wrongful death …
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Quadruple-killer Christopher Vaughn getting sent to prison for the rest of his life was just one of the things going on at the Will County Courthouse this week.
Last week was a short one, with Thanksgiving Day and Thanksgiving Day II giving us a bit of a break from the courthouse. But we got right back to it Monday with the attorney for quadruple-killer Christopher Vaughn blaming the guilty verdict on Drew Peterson and Drew Peterson's lawyers, among other things. The judge didn't buy this line of reasoning and declined to call a do-over and hold a whole new trial. Then he slammed Vaughn with four life sentences. That was rough. But at least Vaughn got an early start at serving all that time, as the county packed him off to Stateville Correctional Center the very next day. But that's not all. Let's look at what else was going on down at the courthouse during the week that just ended:
Friday, November 30, 2012
The Hinsdale and Joliet resident was arrested in Fulton County, Ga., and used a fake name but was identified through fingerprints, police said. Detectives believe her missing son is safe, too.
Missing mom Linda Fellenbaum has turned up in a Georgia jail cell and detectives believe her toddler is safe as well. Fellenbaum, 33, who recently lived in Hinsdale and Joliet, was last seen the night of Oct. 21 when she ran barefoot from her boyfriend's Joliet home. Besides her shoes, Fellenbaum left behind her cell phone and Toyota Camry. The whereabouts of Fellenbaum's 2-year-old son, Jonathan, also were not known. Joliet police Cmdr. Brian Benton said it appears the boy had been legally adopted and that detectives are currently confirming this. Benton said he is not aware whether the couple knew police were searching for the boy. “We’ve had no contact with the adoptive parents and we don’t plan to,” Benton said. Benton also did not …
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Missing mother Linda Fellenbaum—who is wanted on an arrest warrant—was tossed out of her Hinsdale apartment a month and a half before she vanished. Her toddler son remains missing as well.
Just a month and a half before she supposedly ran barefoot into the Joliet night, never to be seen again, DuPage County Sheriff's deputies served an eviction order at missing mom Linda Fellenbaum's Hinsdale apartment. Fellenbaum's possessions were carried from the apartment on Sept. 5 and left outside. By then, according to police, Fellenbaum, 33, was living with her new boyfriend, Donald Wolak, in his house on Joliet's west side. According to the report, she did not return to collect her things. Wolak and Fellenbaum's relationship started after they met online in late August, police said, but the affair had apparently soured by Oct. 16. That was when Wolak, 40, told police Fellenbaum stole a "large sum of cash" and one of his handguns. …
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
The toddler son of missing mother Linda Fellenbaum has not been seen by his family in months.
OUTSIDE CHICAGO, IL -- Detectives trying to unravel the mystery surrounding a local woman who vanished nearly a month ago now are also trying to track down her youngest child. "There's some question as to his whereabouts," Joliet police Cmdr. Brian Benton said of Linda Fellenbaum's toddler son Jonathan. Fellenbaum, 33, of Joliet, was last seen Oct. 21. At the time of her disappearance, she was living with her boyfriend of two months, 40-year-old Donald Wolak. Benton said Wolak told detectives he and Fellenbaum argued and she fled his 3608 Crockett Court home barefoot, leaving behind her shoes, cell phone and Toyota Camry. Fellenbaum has not been seen since. But her 2-year-old-son Jonathan has apparently been missing for even longer. READ …
Saturday, November 10, 2012
The five day search for Stacy Peterson in Shorewood's Hammel Woods ended in failure.
After tromping through Hammel Woods for five days looking for missing mom Stacy Peterson, the FBI and Illinois State Police have called it quits. The massive FBI mobile command center set up in a parking lot off a Black Road entrance to Hammel Woods was gone by Friday afternoon and there was no sign of federal agents or state troopers lurking around the Shorewood forest preserve. District 5 state police spokeswoman DeAnn Falat failed to return calls Friday about the aborted search effort. Coroner Patrick O'Neil confirmed no remains were discovered during the week-long operation. The search attracted a great deal of attention, as a couple dozen agents and troopers showed up, put a boat in the water and poked around the park with dogs Monday…
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Federal agents and Illinois State Police were back at it again in the Shorewood forest preserve Thursday.
For a supposedly routine search, the FBI and Illinois State Police are sure investing a lot of time, effort and money. A couple dozen federal agents and state troopers spent a fourth full day in Shorewood's Hammel Woods, poking around the park for some sign of missing mom Stacy Peterson. A state police source close to the five-year-old Stacy Peterson case said on Monday the operation was just one of numerous searches conducted periodically in locations investigators believe Stacy's body may have been left. But the agents and troopers—along with high-tech equipment and cadaver dogs—returned the next day, and then came back again Wednesday and Thursday, leaving many wondering just what exactly has been happening in Hammel Woods. Cable news …
koko
1:32 pm on Saturday, April 13, 2013
I fully agree with that! more ›