Murder of Lee woman in ’96 remains unsolved

SHABBONA – Stanley Todd has advice for parents: Hug your kids.

“Because you never know,” he said.

On Jan. 11, 1996, Amy Todd Fleming, Todd’s daughter, failed to show up to work at Indian Creek Middle School in Waterman. Two of her teaching colleagues worried about her, so they checked on their friend around 9:30 a.m. at her rural home on U.S. Route 30, near the town of Lee.

They found her strangled to death.

No one has ever been charged, and the Lee County Sheriff’s Department considers the murder an open case. In 2007, in his first year in office, Sheriff John Varga vowed that his department would do all it could to solve the case.

When Sauk Valley Newspapers ran a story on the case in 2007, his department received a couple of calls, Varga said last week.

The department looked into them, but nothing turned up, he said.

“We will continue to follow through on anything that comes in,” he said.

Todd, who lives in Shabbona, said he hadn’t heard anything about the case in a couple of years.

“I don’t know why they don’t keep touch with us more. But what can you do? The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but if I were there all the time, I would make them mad,” he said.

Fleming’s mother, Susan Dalen, of DeKalb, said she believes the killer knew her daughter. Asked why she thought that, she said, “It’s just things that we know that the public doesn’t know that makes you think it was someone she knew.”

Dalen said she couldn’t say too much about her belief because it would hurt the investigation.

“Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. They set out to do this. This was planned all along,” she said.

The sheriff said his investigators have found that certain people interviewed in the case haven’t been forward, and they’ve been surprised by the way these people have reacted to their questions.

“At this point in the case, we’re hoping for that one little piece of the puzzle,” Varga said.

Fleming, 25, last was heard alive about 8:30 p.m. on the cold, snowy night of Jan. 10, 1996, during a phone call with a family member.

Her husband, Derek Fleming, was at an out-of-state cattle show.

The FBI helped with the investigation, creating a behavioral profile of the killer.

By the agency’s reckoning, the responsible party was familiar with Fleming and had attempted to stage the crime scene. A microwave oven and VCR were stolen, possibly to make the crime look like a burglary, according to investigators at the time.

Two years after the killing, then-Lee County Sheriff Tim Bivins told Sauk Valley Newspapers that investigators had conducted more than 500 interviews and spent thousands of man-hours in the search.

Later, Varga said the original task force ended up devoting 20,000 man-hours, compiling seven volumes of case data.

Todd said he prays all the time that the case will be solved.

“I think of her every day,” he said.

Sherry Newman, of Shabbona, also misses her sister, who would be 40 now.

“She was just a wonderful teacher and compassionate about the people she helped,” Newman said.

“She would have continued teaching and had a family of her own. I miss her laugh and everything about her,” she said.

“I have two boys of my own. I wish they could have known her.”