Woman looks to get conviction dropped in Joliet double-murder case

A woman serving life in prison for the 2013 murder of two men in Joliet has filed a new petition that asks a judge to vacate her conviction or her sentence under claims that her constitutional rights were violated.

The Sept. 12 amended petition for post-conviction relief from attorneys for Bethany McKee, 30, formerly of Shorewood, claims that McKee is innocent of the 2013 murders of Eric Glover Jr. and Terrance Rankins, both 22.

The petition also claims that McKee’s prison sentence is unconstitutional and her trial attorneys were “constitutionally ineffective.” McKee had been represented by attorneys Chuck Bretz and Neil Patel at her trial.

McKee is scheduled to return Oct. 31 to the Will County Courthouse in Joliet. Will County Judge Sarah Jones has not ruled on McKee’s new petition and prosecutors have not responded to it.

Jones had denied McKee’s first petition for post-conviction relief in 2019, but an appellate court overturned the judge’s decision in 2022, which allowed McKee to file a new petition Sept. 12.

Since late 2014, McKee has been serving life in prison after a bench trial in which a judge found she was accountable for the murders of Glover and Rankins. Both men were strangled to death by Joshua Miner, 36, and Adam Landerman, 31, who also are serving life in prison for the murders.

In 2013, Rankins and Glover were lured into a North Hickory Street residence with the expectation that they would party with McKee and Alisa Massaro, 30, prosecutors said.

Miner, Landerman, McKee and Massaro had plotted to attack and rob Rankins and Glover, prosecutors said.

Massaro evaded the fate of her co-defendants by agreeing to testify against them. She was sentenced to 50% of a 10-year prison sentence for robbery and concealment of homicide. She was released in 2018.

Rachel White-Domain, an attorney with the Illinois Prison Project in Chicago, has been serving as McKee’s attorney in her post-conviction bid to vacate her conviction or her prison sentence. The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law also is working on McKee’s case.

In the Sept. 12 petition, White-Domain argues that McKee’s due process rights under state law were violated because “newly discovered evidence shows she is actually innocent.”

White-Domain claims that Miner submitted an affidavit stating there was “no plan to rob the victims and that [McKee] was never part of any plan to rob or hurt the victims.”

White-Domain contends that the only evidence of McKee’s intent to rob Glover and Rankins was based on Massaro’s testimony. White-Domain claims that Massaro did not remember a “single statement made by [McKee] agreeing to this alleged plan.”

White-Domain claims that McKee’s rights were violated under state law because her life sentence is unconstitutionally “disparate” to Massaro’s prison sentence, despite the similarities of their cases.

White-Domain claims that McKee’s trial attorneys failed to present evidence showing she experienced sexual assault, sex trafficking and violence when she was younger.

The petition argues that those experiences “thwarted [McKee’s] psychological development” to the point where McKee was “actually operating like a juvenile at the time prior to her arrest,” which makes her life sentence unconstitutional.

The petition argues that Illinois courts have recognized that mandatory life sentences “may be unconstitutional in cases involving emerging adults, like [McKee],” who were older than 18 but developmentally “akin to a juvenile at the time of their alleged offense.”

White-Domain argues that McKee’s trial attorneys failed to investigate her mental health history that would’ve revealed she has autism spectrum disorder, which would’ve made her unable to understand the alleged plan to rob Glover and Rankins.