JOLIET, Ill. (AP) — Within an hour of finding the body of 3-year-old Riley Fox in a Wilmington creek, authorities pulled a pair of shoes from those waters. Written inside each was the last name of the man charged six years later with her murder.
Police placed the shoes in evidence, but never pieced that lead together with other clues — a call to police from the man’s home and signs of a burglary preceding Riley’s abduction — that could have led them to Scott Wayne Eby in the hours and days after her sexual assault and slaying.
Instead, Will County sheriff’s detectives focused almost exclusively on Riley’s father, Kevin.
DNA evidence excluded Kevin Fox after he spent eight months in jail, but authorities didn’t declare him innocent until last month, when Eby allegedly confessed to the slaying and the partial DNA sample from the crime scene matched his.
“Looking at all of the information that we now have about Eby, he could have been apprehended the day after the murder, and he probably would have confessed,” said attorney Kathleen Zellner, who won an $8 million federal civil court judgment on behalf of Kevin Fox and Riley’s mother, Melissa.
Investigators’ photos and notes obtained by the Tribune, as well as interviews with people involved in the case, shed light on evidence made public for the first time Tuesday on chicagotribune.com.
During the civil trial, an FBI agent testified that then-Sgt. Edward Hayes, who led the investigation, ordered that DNA testing be stopped after the arrest of Fox, who incriminated himself in a statement made after 14 hours of interrogation. The civil jury found Fox’s statement was coerced and held Hayes and Deputy Scott Swearengen mainly responsible.
Zellner, who compared the shoe evidence to “dropping your driver’s license at the (crime) scene,” also said police failed to search a forest preserve bathroom near the creek. Eby confessed to sexually assaulting Riley in that bathroom and disposing of her underpants in a nearby garbage can, she said.
“There were probably five possibilities where Eby’s name could have surfaced very early on during the investigation,” she added.
“I think it’s an example of really shoddy police work.”
She also said that Eby, who lived about a mile from Riley at the time of her slaying, in December 2005 was convicted of sexually assaulting a relative.
If police investigating Riley’s killing had then obtained his DNA and compared it with the partial sample, that would have been key evidence against him, Zellner said.
Pat Barry, spokesman for the Will County sheriff’s department, declined comment on specific evidence, but reiterated the apology Sheriff Paul Kaupas gave last month.
Kaupas said he’s interviewing companies, whose employees include retired FBI agents and chiefs of police, to do an extensive review of the Riley Fox investigation.
“There were some mistakes made in the case,” Kaupas conceded. “That’s what we’re trying to avoid, any of these things (happening) in the future.”
He said investigators did swab “anybody and anything” for DNA after Riley’s death, but did not specify when; a crime sample was identified in June 2005. But Kaupas also acknowledged that they did not search for people who lived in the Wilmington area at the time of the crime and later became sex offenders, which could have led to Eby. He said the sheriff’s department didn’t have enough personnel.
Charles Pelkie, spokesman for State’s Attorney James Glasgow, also declined comment. Glasgow freed Kevin Fox, who was charged under Glasgow’s predecessor, and oversaw the investigation that eventually led to Eby.
Henry Weidling, former volunteer director of the Wilmington Emergency Services and Disaster Agency, said he found a pair of white athletic shoes in the creek fewer than 100 yards from the crime scene and less than an hour after Riley’s body was found on June 6, 2004. Weidling said the shoes looked like they hadn’t been in the water long.
Photographs of the shoes show “EBY” on the inside of their tongues, according to case documents. Although the name is hard to make out in the photos, handwritten police notes clearly note “EBY” and list the brand.
Eby, who was on parole for burglary when Riley was killed, said during his confession that he discarded the shoes in the water when they became muddy after drowning Riley in a section of Forked Creek, Zellner said.
The morning Riley went missing, Wilmington police were called by Eby’s mother to their home for a “wellness check,” Eby said during his confession, according to Zellner and Melissa Fox, who were both briefed by the FBI.
Police were visiting Eby’s home to see if he had “thoughts of suicide,” said Chief Darin Plotts, one of two officers who responded.
When police arrived, Eby, now 38, was agitated and vomiting. He asked police if they had found “that little girl yet,” Melissa Fox said.
Barry, of the sheriff’s office, said many agencies had pieces of information about Eby, but “nobody put it together.”
“We don’t have an answer for a lot of this stuff,” Barry said. “There were definitely, definitely communication lapses. There were definitely things not done.”
Kaupas said his office never had contact with Eby. Wilmington police handled that aspect, he said.
But James Metta, the chief at the time, said once her body was found and her death became a homicide investigation, he turned the case over to the sheriff’s office.
“Our part in it ended,” said Metta, now living in Florida. “Our case was solved, unfortunately, by finding (Riley).”
During his recorded confession last month, Eby said that before entering the Fox home, he burglarized a home across the street, where he cut a screen to gain entry to a patio door, Zellner said. That screen also was in evidence, but an evidence technician dismissed the cut as storm damage, records show.
Melissa Fox said the shoe evidence, combined with the other details, should have led police straight to Eby, not her husband.
“It’s amazing to me,” she said, referring to the shoes. “They had the evidence to solve the crime within the first 24 hours. It’s all right there.”
She said that Swearengen, who testified at trial that he immediately suspected Kevin Fox, often told her the evidence would do justice for Riley.
“The evidence has spoken,” Melissa Fox said. “It’s too bad that six years ago, he wasn’t willing to listen.” Information from: Chicago Tribune