Outrage in Lindenhurst - Suspect with Violent Past

There was a substantial amount of emotion as I arrived in the Town of Trevor in November as part of team coverage in the Lindenhurst Burger King slaying.

As I made the trip alongside a photographer to gather information about who the victim of the slaying was, I knew it was going to be a tough task, as I had the unfortunate task of approaching the husband at their Kenosha County home.

In the ensuing investigation of the murder case it was confirmed the suspect had a violent past dating back to the year I was born in 1982.

James Ealy went off the hook for a murder offense committed in Chicago 24 years earlier and was able to obtain employment and fly under the radar undetected - all due to a technicality.

Hutchison's neighbors decry violence

November, 2006

By Jason Arndt

The News-Sun

TREVOR, Wis. - A small rural community is beginning to react to the news of a local woman who was killed at a Lindenhurst Burger King Nov. 27. Mary Hutchison, 45, was a Trevor, Wis. resident who worked at two Lake County Burger Kings marred by robbery attempts involving herself. Hutchison was a mother of three children and had a husband, Ken, who was too distraught to speak to The News-Sun late Tuesday morning.

The news of the murder is starting to trickle into the western Kenosha county region as more citizens are hearing the news from others or from news sources.

Hutchison was robbed nine months earlier at the Antioch Burger King, making the woman seek a transfer to another Burger King with less violence.

"People are bringing the big city crime to us," said Antioch resident Ed Simpson, 72, who said he has noticed crime rates going up around his home in the last five years. "They (the community) seem to be taking it very well, but it is disconcerting to them," Simpson said.

Simpson was a former part-time police officer for the police department in far south suburban Hazelcrest and has a theory on how the attack may have occurred.

"Somebody must have waited until they were closed to do the job," Simpson said. "They hung around until everyone was gone and ambushed her. You don't have to be a criminal or rocket scientist to figure out when a place closes."

Simpson has been familiar with western Kenosha County and northwest Lake County region for more than 40 years and owns a nearby airport.

Simpson's friend, Robert Kussmann, was eating lunch with him at the CowMark Cafe and said criminals are left with too many opportunities to commit crimes.

"Anytime you give someone and opportunity to break a law, they will," said Kussman, 81.

Salem resident Terri Miller said more needs to be done to arm managers with protection during late night hours or better train employees to minimize the damage done in violent situations.

"I think all owners and managers should get protection to prevent them from being killed," Miller said. "There is just too much violence nowadays, people want things they can't have."

The 55-year-old Miller suggests adding more employees during late night hours to discourage violence.

Simpson agrees with Miller about staffing situations during closing times.

"One person should not be left alone, man or woman to close a restaurant (or any other establishment)," Simpson said.

Simpson added law enforcement agencies have been more restricted in this era than what he experienced 30 years prior.

"Nowadays police have to handle criminals with soft cuffs" and prosecutors are more limited.

Simpson mentioned many criminals tend to undergo rounds of appeals to prevent them from seeing the death penalty and the extent of their punishments.

"They just die of old age with the time they spend on appeals," Simpson said.

As the community grieves, "time will tell" on how residents of the Trevor and surrounding areas will respond, according to Kussmann.

In addition, both Kussmann and Simpson remember when they were able to keep the doors of their houses unlocked, but in this era they can't.

TEAM COVERAGE REPORTS...

Man held in murder of fast-food manager

December 2, 2006

Lisa Donovan

Chicago Sun-Times

Authorities announced an arrest Friday in the case of a Burger King manager found slain earlier this week inside the fast-food franchise in far north suburban Lindenhurst.

James "Jim" Ealy, 42, of Lake Villa, was arrested Friday and charged with first-degree homicide in the slaying of restaurant manager Mary Hutchison, 45, of Trevor, Wis.

Police said the suspect is a "service worker" for area fast-food and department stores and that he is married.

Reached by phone late Friday, a Lake Villa man who identified himself as Ealy's brother said only: "This is going through his lawyers, but he's totally innocent."

The arrest comes five days after Hutchison was found dead by a fellow employee.

Apparently Hutchison had arrived at work early Monday; by the time a co-worker arrived, she was dead -- apparently the victim of blunt trauma -- lying next to an open, empty safe in an office area, police said.

Lindenhurst Police Chief Jack McKeever said Friday night he was "very, very happy to know the case was resolved in less than five days."

'Told me the guy confessed'

About 25 investigators on the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force have been working on the case, examining restaurant security video and other leads in the case.

Authorities weren't talking Friday night about what led them to Ealy but said the motive was robbery. Ealy was in the Lake County Jail.

Hutchison worked 14 years for Burger King, family said. She started in Lindenhurst in June.

Hutchison had been the victim of a robbery and pistol-whipping at another Burger King where she had worked.

"I'm just glad. . . . Leaving someone out there like that is just wrong," Hutchison's ex-husband, Grant Nothnagle of Milwaukee, said Friday night.

Their son Richard, 22, had told Nothnagle of the arrest and charges. "He told me the guy confessed," Nothnagle said.

Murder suspect had violent past

'He should not have been on the street': former Cook County prosecutor

December 5, 2006

By Eric Herman and Annie Sweeney

Chicago Sun-Times

Two decades before he allegedly murdered Mary Hutchison in a Lindenhurst Burger King, James Ealy was convicted of murdering a pregnant woman and three children on Chicago's West Side. But an appellate court threw out his conviction - and left prosecutors no evidence to try him again. 

"He should not have been on the street," said Brian Telander, who prosecuted Ealy as an assistant Cook County state's attorney. "He was an evil, evil person."

Telander, 54, said he felt "sick" when he heard Ealy had allegedly killed again.

"I'm a defense lawyer now, and obviously I recognize that the law has to be followed," he said. "But this was a person that there was just no doubt he was guilty."

Last week, a co-worker discovered Hutchison's body inside a Burger King in Lindenhurst. Hutchison, 45, was found next to an open, empty safe. She had been strangled with the bowtie from her uniform, prosecutors said.

On Saturday, a Lake County judge ordered Ealy held without bond after prosecutors charged him with murder. Prosecutors said Ealy, who had formerly worked at the Burger King as a maintenance man, killed Hutchison after robbing the restaurant.

Ealy "made incriminating statements" during videotaped questioning, Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller said. And a search of his Lake Villa apartment yielded currency linked to the Burger King robbery, as well as clothes he purportedly wore during the murder.

For Telander, hearing how Hutchison had been strangled brought back memories - horrible memories - of the Parker case.

On Aug. 16, 1982, police discovered the bodies of Christine Parker and her three children - Mary Ann, Cora and Jontae -- in a seventh-floor apartment in the Rockwell Gardens housing project. The victims had been strangled, and Jontae, a 3-year-old boy, had been raped. Christine Parker was pregnant.

Ealy, then 17, had been dating 15-year-old Mary Ann Parker. Police questioned him and searched his bedroom, where they found evidence linking him to the crime, including a length of khaki material similar to what was found embedded in the neck of one victim.

During 18 hours of interrogation - during which Ealy claimed he was deprived of sleep and food - police say Ealy confessed to the murders. A jury found him guilty, but the Illinois appellate court reversed the verdict.

In an opinion written by Justice James C. Murray, and joined by fellow justices Francis Lorenz and R. Eugene Pincham, the court found Chicago Police lacked probable cause when they tookEaly into custody. 

Since the confession and searches of his bedroom stemmed from the faulty arrest, that evidence should have been excluded from trial, Murray wrote. Without that evidence, prosecutors decided not to retry the case.

Cook County Judge Thomas Maloney, who had presided over Ealy's trial, expressed horror when the decision came down, Telander said.

"Maloney said from the bench that the appellate court should take out billboards warning the people of Chicago that this monster had been let loose," he said.

Maloney was convicted in 1993 of taking bribes to fix cases.

Murray died in 1999. Lorenz and Pincham could not be reached for comment. Grant Nothnagle, Hutchison's ex-husband, said he was "stunned" to learn Ealy had gone free in the 1982 case. "I just hope at this point the system does not allow another loophole like that," he said.

At the time of his arrest in 1982, Ealy was on bond for a rape committed in the same Rockwell Gardens building, Telander said. Catholic Charities bailed him out. The prestigious law firm Jenner & Block represented Ealy on his appeal in the Parker case.

Ealy's mother, Katherine, who lives on the South Side, said her son is innocent of the homicide charges. But the shadow of the Parker case never left him, she said.

"It's been a struggle," said Katherine Ealy, adding that "society" failed to land him a good job, which is "what happens when people are wrongly convicted."

Contributing: Lisa Donovan and Dan Rozek