Challenged early in their term: Past 4 La Salle County state’s attorneys have murder cases in first year

Dating back to 2000, newly-elected La Salle County state’s attorneys either inherited a pending murder case, had one in the first year, or both.

La Salle County State’s Attorney Todd Martin has not bucked this trend. He inherited a pending murder and recorded another just months after his 2020 election.

Martin can’t comment on pending cases and he has two murder cases. There already was one on the books when he was sworn in, Kenneth Herbst of La Salle, and now there’s Donald Fredres of Sandwich.

Martin isn’t the first La Salle County prosecutor to be called to a homicide scene soon after taking office. It’s happened to three of his predecessors dating back 21 years.

Karen Donnelly, Martin’s predecessor, was handed her first murder case in January 2017, her first full month on the job, when Carl Lenard was charged with fatally stabbing a Streator woman and sexually assaulting a young witness.

Lenard pressed for trial in 120 days, perhaps trying to test the newly-sworn state’s attorney. If so, it backfired: Donnelly convicted Lenard of five of his six charges, including murder.

“Close enough for me,” Donnelly said after the near-sweep verdict. Weeks later, Lenard was sentenced to 120 years.

That wasn’t Donnelly’s first murder case as state’s attorney – that was her first-ever murder as an attorney. For her predecessor, the first one as state’s attorney was less of a baptism by fire.

Brian Towne was appointed state’s attorney in December 2006 after many years as assistant or first assistant, during which he assisted in numerous murder cases. He was seven months into his dream job when told police found a Seneca couple fatally bludgeoned in their home.

“I knew eventually something like this would happen,” Towne said he remembers thinking when alerted to Seneca.

Towne sought the death penalty for suspect Keith Mackowiak; but Illinois abolished capital punishment while the case was pending. In 2012, Mackowiak was sentenced to life.

Towne’s predecessor inherited two murder cases upon winning election in 2000.

Joe Hettel, now a judge, got three convictions from the Dustin Bee murder and from the murder-dismemberment case at Peru motel, both filed in 2000 but while predecessor Mike James still was in office.

And Hettel wasn’t on the job long when, in early 2001, Ryan Hayes of Ottawa stabbed friend Richard Schultz to death in plain view of a witness. A judge found Hayes, who had a long history of mental illness, not guilty by reason of insanity. Hayes’ lawyer was as unhappy with that outcome as Hettel.

“Nobody won,” lamented defense attorney Fred Morelli. “This is not a victory for anyone.”

Murders are not rare in La Salle County, though it’s difficult to assign a statistical rate or frequency. Neither the La Salle County Coroner’s Office nor State’s Attorney’s Office maintains a homicide rate.

Unofficially, there are 25 inmates from La Salle County serving murder sentences in the Illinois Department of Corrections dating back to 1985, when Ronald Barrow was taken into custody for a Cedar Point murder. On paper, that equates to an average one murder conviction every 17 months.

That figure was extrapolated from limited and incomplete data with significant room for debate. Several killers are no longer in active custody having died, completed their sentences or granted early release — Dennis Wilson, Megan Priebe and Chester Weger, to name three — and many of those incarcerated were not directly responsible for the murders.

Marcus Samarripa, for example, was convicted of felony murder for participating in a rural Earlville home invasion, during which the homeowner shot and killed another intruder. Ashanti Roberts and Jamie Lomeli were likewise convicted as accessories to murder even though they neither fired the fatal shots nor delivered the lethal blows.