Ex-Joliet mayor refiles conspiracy lawsuit in Will County court

A former Joliet mayor has refiled his conspiracy lawsuit in Will County after losing the case in federal court.

The March 13 lawsuit from Bob O’Dekirk once again claims that he was “publicly defamed” and suffered “extreme emotional distress” as the result of an alleged conspiracy in 2020 by six people to either remove him as mayor or cause him to lose the 2023 election.

O’Dekirk was a two-term mayor who lost his third term to Joliet Mayor Terry D’Arcy in a landslide election.

O’Dekirk’s second term was punctuated by controversies that led to frequent turnover in the offices of the city manager and police chief.

O’Dekirk also was sued three times as mayor, and two of those cases resulted in settlements against the city totaling $143,000.

O’Dekirk’s lawsuit claims that retired Joliet Police Chief Al Roechner and five other people formed a “cabal” to manufacture political backlash to destroy his mayoralty and subject him to a criminal charge.

O’Dekirk claims that the members of this “cabal” include Roechner, Roechner’s wife Nancy, retired Joliet Deputy Police Chief Marc Reid, Joliet City Council member Pat Mudron, former Joliet City Council member Jim McFarland and Shaw Media executive editor Joseph Hosey.

The lawsuit claims that the “cabal” used Don Dickinson, a former Joliet City Council member, as a “puppet” to get him to make a false claim that O’Dekirk was going to ruin Dickinson’s political career by publicly releasing intimate photos of him.

In February, a federal judge dismissed O’Dekirk’s lawsuit on legal grounds but allowed him to refile state claims against the defendants in Will County.

Most of the defendants have recently claimed that O’Dekirk should pay the cost of their fight against what they contend was his frivolous, harassing lawsuit.

A 2023 report of an investigation conducted by former Joliet Inspector General Sean Connolly claimed that Roechner, Reid, McFarland, Mudron and Hosey attended a Nov. 1, 2020, meeting at Roechner’s house to conspire against O’Dekirk.

The report said Dickinson told Connolly’s colleague, Martin Walsh, in a 2023 interview that those people were at the meeting.

But O’Dekirk’s new lawsuit said it “appears McFarland himself was not at the meeting.” Yet the lawsuit claims that McFarland “likely” had a role in organizing the meeting.

McFarland’s attorney, John Schrock, said in a letter to O’Dekirk’s attorneys that Dickinson would testify that McFarland was not present at the meeting.

Schrock has denied that McFarland played any role in the alleged conspiracy.

Dickinson admitted that Reid also was not at the meeting, according to a 2024 court filing from his attorney, Frank Andreano. The filing was in Dickinson’s Will County lawsuit case against Roechner and Reid over the same 2020 incident.

At a 2023 City Council meeting on Connolly’s report, Mudron said the only people at the meeting were Roechner, Dickinson, Hosey and himself.

Mudron said Dickinson wanted him there for moral support.

“That day, Mr. Dickinson said he thought Mayor Robert O’Dekirk was blackmailing him,” Mudron said.

Mudron said he told Dickinson that if he “tells the truth, he has done nothing wrong.”

Dickinson was charged in 2022 with making a false accusation against O’Dekirk to an Illinois State Police agent who investigated the incident.

But a Will County judge dismissed the case after a special prosecutor did not object to a defense motion to dismiss the case.

Retired Illinois State Police Lt. Samuel Thomas was reportedly upset that the special prosecutor did not charge Roechner and Reid with their role in the alleged conspiracy against O’Dekirk, according to Connolly’s report.

An attorney with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office said Illinois State Police “made conclusions independent of any other entity” in their investigation of the incident, according to records in Connolly’s lawsuit against Illinois State Police.

In court filings in Dickinson’s case, Roechner and Reid said they did not threaten or pressure Dickinson into filing a complaint against O’Dekirk.