THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE-Renee Fehr

justice prevailed. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Wheels of Justice, the true story of a twenty seven year battle to convict my sister's killer, with my special guest, attorney and author, Renee Fair. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview.

for TV, no video games or anything like that. And my dad farmed and had four girls, so he's still expected us to be outside and do chores and work with him. And that's what we loved. We loved being outside and playing on the farm. Cheryl was the oldest, probably a very stereotypical firstborn. She was a little quiet and shy, very compliant, very sweet. I like to say that if you believe in angels on earth, Cheryl was probably one of those, and that became evident early in

her life. She was the biggest animal lover that ever existed. And there was not a pet or an animal that was found on the farm. You know, a bird that fell out of a nest, or a ground squirrel, or even a raccoon that fell out of a tree that she couldn't adopt and nurse back to health and make into one of our family pets.

Mansfield wasn't even smaller town. The schools had consolidated, so we went to junior high. You went to your own towns for grade school, and then junior high everybody went to Mansfield, and then when you went to your four years of high school, everybody came to Farmer City. So Greg would have been maybe two years out of Cheryl and in high school, so they would have met perhaps in junior high, but definitely by the time they get

to high school they've met. And classes back then were, you know, from sixty to seventy five eighty people, so you know, I think that's a pretty small high school class. So everybody knows everybody, not only within your class, but within the high school. And you know, we first became knowledgeable of Greg because Cheryl started to date him her senior year in high school and he started to come around the house and you know, to my sisters and

I that was fun. We had, you know, not experienced boys and not been exposed to them, and you're pretty secluded out in the country and you know, you're not driving, and all the neighbors that were you know, up and down our road were little girls. We all, they were all little girls in the neighborhood and we played together, but just had not had a lot of exposure to boys.

So it was fun because when Gregs started to come around and pay attention to Cheryl, he had you know, guy friends that came around too, and so Lisa and I thought that was you know, really fun and interesting. And we were getting older and so we were taking an interest in in older boys who you know, would take an interest in us. And with Cheryl, you know, I think that because you know, all she was such a sweet person and she wanted to she was going to go on to be a nurse, and there's no

surprise in that. I mean, she was your typical caregiver, your fixer, you know, an enabler in essence, and she did go to nursing school to nurse babies. So not only did she want to do that, but she wanted to get married and have babies of her own. And I mean that's what she wanted to do because she loved babies, baby animals and baby human beings. And so when Greg took an interest in her, it was a big deal. And I think that was her I finally found somebody, and now I'm going to live out the

rest of my dream. I'll go to college and then I'll get married and have my own babies.

I remember that. And Greg was going to from as far back as I remember, get out of high school, go to a local junior college, become a diesel mechanic, and be a mechanic, not just an auto mechanic like his father, but work on you know, diesel equipment. Either farm equipment or trucks, and he went on to work on trucks. He was kind of a to me, a stereotypical in a sense bad guy or tough guy. He liked fast cars. He had a gold trans am that he set around in and would drive into the house.

He liked big trucks, had a truck that he you know, entered in mud bog races, and you know, did things like that. So definitely, you know, back then I would have said, you know, he was he was cool.

Greg comes around and he's kind of cool, and he's got fast cars, and he's dating our sister, and we think that's neat and he's trying to, I think, win us over because he takes time to pay attention to us and tease us or interact with us a bit. But as we started to all interact more, a lot of his teasing and fun and interaction was at Cheryl's expense. So you know, he he teased her, you know, to the point where you would see that hurt look in her eyes, you know, but he didn't stop, or he'd

tickle her until she cried. You're sitting there going, oh, that must just be how it is. You know, we don't know any different, But we don't really like that because you see the hurt in your sister's eyes. There was it didn't matter how long she spent getting ready or putting. She wasn't a big makeup person, but if she was going out for a date or something, she put on makeup and we would help her put on makeup, and he always found a flaw in it or criticized

her or told her she looked stupid. With makeup on. I mean it just and that again we saw the hurt in her and then we're sitting there going, well, that's not nice, you know, but maybe that's how that's how it is. And as time went on, it got to the point where we would even have the conversation of, look, I don't know that I really like this guy, but if our sister chooses him, we're not. Who are we

to interfere in her relationship? And so we're going to love our sister and we're going to support our sister, right, Yeah, it really I think that one of the biggest turning events for me was finding out that a cat that I had who went missing that we searched for forever and ever, and finally another friend of Greg's was there and said, stop searching for the cat. The cat is dead. Greg shot it and threw it in the pasture. I'm like,

what are you kidding me? Yeah, walked on his car and he didn't like that, you know, and that was just okay, that's not okay. You don't you don't kill somebody's pet because it walked across your car, and you know, you just didn't even know. I just didn't even know how to how to take that.

What were you doing at this time and where was your career headed?

on with my career. It was expensive. Law school was expensive. So I set forth the schedule and was able to graduate from Illinois Wesleyan in three years and then start law school and Saint Louis and so, you know, I was pretty pretty dedicated and driven and on a career path where you know, I leave to go to college, I leave to go to law school. Law school takes me to Florida because I follow my boyfriend at the time ends up being my first husband to Florida. And

so while we're close, were extremely close family. And I was the only one who moved away, you know, whoever really left, and that was always hard. But we've remained really close. And you know, as Cheryl was, go ahead.

that was the focus. That was fun. And she was the first that had gotten married and was going to go on to live this fairy tale life and live

out her dream, and she would send me. I felt bad because we were a close family, and that meant we celebrated you know, birthdays and holidays and Labor Day and Memorial Day and fourth and everything, you know, together usually met We got together at my mom and dad's house and everybody came over and we ate and we played outside, and they took pictures, and any of those events usually had a phone call during it or after it so that I could catch up on what happened.

And then, I mean I had stacks of pictures that you know, Cheryl would send to me. Back then there was no email or texts, and so she literally would get photos developed and send them to me with a handwritten note of you know, it was the oldest birthday and we had it at Grandma's and here's the pictures and we had a pignotta in here. They are looking like they're going to kill each other with the bat.

It was those fun events that I missed out on, but I never felt like I missed out on them because they were so good about, you know, keeping me included as best they could, even though I lived eighteen hundred miles away.

things in Cheryl's decision to finally leave Greg. And it ends up the cancer diagnosis was a misdiagnosis, so again, you know, a blessing in disguise. But that was before that was in the summer, and by July Cheryl has called me around the fourth of July and asked me for an attorney referral, which wasn't unusual. I was now a year out of law school and the family would call and ask me legal questions for them, you know, not so much for themselves, but for other people or

friends or other family. And she called and asked for if I could help her find a divorce attorney in Champagne, Illinois. And I'm like, yeah, sure, you know, because it wasn't unusual. And I asked her, like I normally would, well who's it for? And she said, with a bit of a pause me, And I was stunned, floored, because I mean, we're Catholic, we don't get divorced. And my family had been divorced and she had three kids, and to me, you have three kids, you can't get divorced, you know,

we had. I had no idea of anything that she was going through. Hindsight's twenty twenty and I look back and signs now that I'm much more educated too. With domestic violence. There were signs there, but we didn't know. We didn't know what was happening, and she was very very secretive about it. And so you know, it starts. The terrifying part of the story starts, you know, with that call and referral and me telling her you can't

get divorced. I told her that, I said, I might help you find atturning, but you have to go to counselor first. Have you been to a counselor? And she was such a compliant, non confrontational person. You know, she didn't even say, you know, Renee, you have no idea what I'm going through. You have to help me get out of this. She just said, Okay, I've been to counseling, but we haven't been together. I guess we can try

going to marriage counseling. And so she did. I mean, she helped her find a counselor and she went off the marriage counseling. And you know, I can remember being very proud of myself because she's now going to go to marriage counseling and she's going to fix their marriage and it's all going to be fine, and she's going to continue her little fairy tale life raising her three boys. And it wasn't too long after that I hear Cheryl tells me, Oh, they've been going to counseling. They're going

to take a little trip to Peoria. They're going to take the boys and stay in a hotel and they're going to swim and go to the zoo. And I thought, Oh, that's so awesome. They've fixed it. They've worked this out. And then I called Lisa and I'm like, hey, Cheryl went, you know, to Purit for the weekend. Did they have a good time? And I'll never forget she said, Renee,

she came back with hickeys all over her neck. I'm like, ah, what, yes, And that was just another like major moment in my life of oh my god, he's just her like she's like he's a dog and she's a piece of property or something. And that wasn't Cheryl. Cheryl was a professional. She was a nurse. She was self conscious enough. You know, she was married, she had children. I'm sure she would have been horrified. I'm sure she was horrified and embarrassed

by that. But that's you know, that's when again things changed for me. And I called her back and I'm like, okay, well I've got this guy where he's really good. And her biggest concern was is he going to be good with custody? Because if I leave Greg, he's going to fight me to the bitter end for custody. And nothing was more important than her babies. And by now she has three of them, and she's like, I can't I can't lose my babies. There's nothing more important to me

than those kids. So you know, now she's got a good divorce attorney and she tells him she wants to leave him. And you know, it's really from that moment on from early in July until October fifth, where everything just was escalated and almost like some horror film because he's not going to lose control, there's just no way.

He He is so angry with her that he ends up filing for a divorce first and then begs her to stay, you know, and it's like, well you just filed, but it was all, you know, and then she starts to confide just little bits and pieces in us. And that's when we really, you know, little by little, start to realize that she's been living in a secret hell. And now we're seeing it play out because now it's not behind closed doors. It's happening in other places. And Cheryl's letting us in.

so I had coached her on that. Get a notebook, I don't care what it is, and write it down, write it all down, just keep track of it because someday, if you have to testify it or comes up, it's going to be really important. And again, very dutifully, she picked up her kindergartens spider Man notebook and started taking notes in it, dating it and taking notes. And she's a nurse, and so you read this, and you know,

I call it her journal. It's really not a diary, and it's written a lot like you know, she's documenting a case, you know, in the hospital, or document patients care. And she even uses some of the same symbols and stuff. But she's she's because she is a nurse. I think she's able to be very factually detailed and she's very graphic, but it's unemotional that she just documents everything. So she has started to document all of this and so now she's telling me a bits and pieces. But in hindsight,

I've been able to read the entire journal. And he knew the kids were her soft spot, and so he just kept telling her, you know, you're a bad mother. Every time they get a bruise or a cut or a scratch, I'm taking a picture. I'm going to tell everybody you've abused your children, that you're abusive I'm gonna tell people that you're using drugs. An accused her of drug abuse. You know, I'm going to tell people you're

having an affair. It was just I think, in my mind, in hindsight, I think everything that he was doing he accused her of and said she was doing. And so she was always on the defensive, and it was always about, oh my god, I can't you know. This child's falling down. He's got a bruise on his face. He takes a picture of it. She's like, you know, he just fell. He's three years old and he's rambunctious and he fell,

you know. But she was always on the defensive and just trying to be perfect and starting to run around and go, Okay, he's saying I use drugs. I'm going to go have a drug test and you know, find out that I don't use drugs, and he says I'm doing this and I'm going to prove him wrong. And it just was continually escalating with to the point where

there's altercations, the cops are called. There's a battery charge against him, but he files the first motion for a restraining order because she fought back right, and he gets the first restraining order. It's like here, he is always kind of one step ahead of her. But then there's there's more abuse, and and she goes and gets a restraining order, and then there's you know, more abuse, and

the judge enters a mutual restraining order. Buddy says, Okay, I'm going to leave the kids in the house, but both of you and you will rotate in and out out of the house every three and a half days. Very different back then, they wouldn't do that today. But now you've got the same people living in the same home with the same access you know, in and out of the house. And then you know, so and while

all this is happening, she's she's calling me. She's given me permission to talk to her attorney so I can try and you know, cut through some of the legal jargon or help him help her. Because she also didn't have, you know, any money, and I wanted to save her money if I could help, you know, say, fees and expenses.

So it was just it was very intense where she's calling me, and then she's also leaning a lot on my mother, and my mother's calling me, you know, so oftentimes it would be you know, a call from Cheryl and a call from my mother, and it was almost the same story. Cheryl would never ask for help, but she's telling me these things that I'm trying to help her. And then my mother would call and say, did you talk to Cheryl today? Do you know what happened to

her today? And what he's doing? And you know what can we do about this? And we've got to make him stop. This is awful. You know, bad things are going to happen. And that just takes that escalation path up to the point of I like to say there was an altercation where now I refer to it as the first time he tried to kill her. She he's in the home, he's got the children, her smallest one have has asthma, and he calls and says, you know, he's coughing. He probably should come by on your way

home from work and check on him. She's like, well, no, I really shouldn't. I'm it's not my turn to be in the house. Oh it's okay. I promise, it's okay. You can come in the house. She calls a couple of times. I'm gonna I'm not going to get off on time. I'm going to be too late. I shouldn't come.

He begs her to come. So she ends up stopping by and the lights are off, but she walks in the house and he you know, she doesn't even know that anybody's really there, and he comes up behind her and gets her into the bedroom where he has already tied yellow rope to the head of the bed, to the headboard, and you know, ends up tying her up on the bed and sexually assaulting her. And you know, the the kids are there, all three of them are there.

She was allowed at one point early or to soul a child and put him back in bed, but they're they're you know, this is a small house. There are just a few feet one door, you know, down in another bedroom. So that she writes of that, and in in her journal she actually says, you know, I've always been able to talk him down and talk him out of it, but I saw the look in his eyes and I knew it could really kill me. And so to me, that was the first time where she really was.

She always thought she could handle him, and she would say that to me, I can handle him, I can I can handle it. I can deal with this. But I think she really this time gets scared. She has managed to get away, he grabs her. You know, it's like a horror movie. She's trying to run to the door and he's grabbing her jacket and stuff and gets her and bends her over the back of the couch and has a piece of paper and he's written on there, I consented to have sex that consensual sex with you.

And he wants her to sign this paper and she's like, I'm not signing it. I'm not signing anything. And they're fighting to get away. She finally gets out a front door and doesn't get in her car, which is sitting in the driveway. I think she's just too terrified. And she runs like a quarter mile down the road to the neighbor's house and bangs on the door and they open it and let her in, and the cops are called. And now he's arrested again and this time charged with

aggravated criminal sexual assault. You know, so again this case is really escalated. But I could remember calling her like the next day and hearing this all from her, hearing this from my mother and saying, but Cheryl, I know that was awful, but sometimes bad things have to happen. Before something good can happen. And I'm sorry, but with that having happened, you are not going to lose custody to your kids. This is it. He's done himself in and that was her biggest fear. So to me, this

was okay, he's now shown himself. She doesn't have to worry about custody, so she was. She's pretty thrilled with that. Then she goes at her attorney's requests to get an emergency order, you know, of custody. This guy's trying to

kill her. He shouldn't have custody of the kids. And so there is a hearing which ends up being super instrumental because they put her on the stand and she testifies to that night, you know, very immediately after it happens, and goes through everything personally about what he tried to do to her and her injuries and how terrified she was of him, and that hearing happens, and the judge at the end of it grants her temporary custody, sole and exclusive cussy of the children in the home and

only awarded him supervised visitation, so he didn't even have just standard visitation. He had to be with another member of Department Children Family Services to visit the children. So again, Cheryl and I are pretty elated with you know, now this has happened, and we're it looks like she's things are going to fall in place. And she started to get a little bit i'd almost say cocky because she was proud of herself. She didn't know that she could

get through this. It was awful. And now she's kind of got the upper hand because she's got cussy of the kids and you know, he's that's she's going to win on that point. She's going to get the kids. And you know, now we know right when you're trying to get away, that's probably the time when you're in

the most danger. But she started making plans for the future and you know, getting very excited, started packing his things and putting him in in an area of the house, and started even delivering, you know, having his mother come pick up some things of his. She started to I need another car because I my car does a good, good gas mileage, and I'm afraid I won't be able to afford it on my own, So she was looking for that. She knew she couldn't afford the house, so

she was looking for an apartment. She had gone to a local furniture store and put a bed on layaway because it was super important to her not to sleep in that same marital bed. She wanted a new bed. You know, Halloween is coming up, and she's ordered the kids Halloween costumes and she's really starting. I'm starting to see my old Cheryl back where there's a little sparkle in her eye again and a little spunk, and I think she sees light at the end of the tunnel, right.

I was excited to go to the movie theater again and I wanted to see a movie. And I saw Stillwater and I was dying to go to the beach again and swim and I saw some stand up comedy. All of these businesses reopening means that millions of jobs will need to be filled, or whether these businesses turned to to fill these roles fast ZipRecruiter, and right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter dot com

slash murder. When you post a job on ZipRecruiter, they send your job to over one hundred top job sites, giving you access to their network of millions of job seekers. Ziprecruiters matching technology scans resumes to find qualified candidates for your open roles and proactively presents them to you. Ziprecruiters technology is so effective that four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the

first day. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. That's ZipRecruiter dot com slash m u r d e d r m r d e er. Just go to ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire now, Renee, we were just talking about the lead up to this incredible murder let's talk about what happens just before this October fifth, nineteen ninety leading up to this, tell us what happens and how you hear about it.

He'd made, you know, very specific threats to her. So I'm now thinking though that there's a bit of a reprieve, and my parents are too. But October fifth, I'm in

Florida working for a law firm. I remember specifically the case I was working on, and I just hung up the telephone and you know, felt somebody looking at me and looked up in my doorway and there was my husband, he was standing there, and for him I'm like, what in the world, because that was very out of place, right, he didn't belong in my doorway and shorts and a T shirt during the middle of the morning. And I could tell that he had, you know, like tears. I

dried tears on his face. And I looked at him, and I mean, my initial reaction was I I screamed. I screamed he killed her, didn't he? I knew he was going to kill her. I told you he was going to kill her. He killed her, didn't he? And he just looked at me and shook his head. Yes. So, And he hadn't even said anything. He just appeared and I gathered my things and ran out of there. And you know, back then, we didn't have cell phones, and so I'm like, you know what happened. He's like, Lisa

called me, they found Cheryl dead. We've got to go home, pack our stuff and get to Illinois. And you know, right then, I'm trying to, okay, trying to figure out the details. He doesn't know many of the details. I have an hour drive from where he picked me up back to where we live, and I'm like, what about

the boys? Who has the boys? Does my mom and dad, know, I had fifty thousand questions, and the poor guy, you know, a shell shock to hear and then had to drive an hour to come pick me up and take me back, and you know, we're trying to figure out how we're going to get plane tickets that day back to Illinois, and I had just gotten out of law school and worried about the costs and all of that. But we when I get back to our condo, I call my sister and the first thing was where are the boys?

And she said, you know, Jackie has them, that's the neighbor. And I'm like, okay, you gotta go get them. You got to go get the boys and hide the boys. I don't know what's happening, what's going on, but we've got to keep them safe. And I'm thinking in my mind, you know, Greg may have taken them from the scene or not, and we need to make sure that they're safe. Because I then find out that that morning, Cheryl didn't show up for work. She was a nurse, She was

supposed to be there for her shift change. She was always you know, timely and didn't ever not show up. And the nurses that she worked with, you know, she can find a little bits and pieces in a lot of different people, but not a lot in everybody or any one person. And when she didn't show, one of the ladies got so concerned that she called Cheryl's house and nobody answered, and so that concerned her, you know,

even more. She hung up, called back and let it ring again, and this time a child answered, and she recognized it as being Cheryl's oldest, so he would have been six, And she asked, you know, where's your mommy. He said, I don't know, and she said, well, put down the phone, go look for your mommy. Find your mommy. Neither bring her back to the phone or come back to the phone and tell me where she's at. And so he was gone for what she says, seemed like forever.

I'm sure it wasn't that long. But he came back to the phone and almost he was almost proud. He says, I found my mommy. She's asleep in the garage with a rope around her net. And immediately the nurse kept him on the phone and then had another nurse dial nine one one. Now. That night, interestingly enough, Greg had stayed overnight with his grandparents, who lived about you know, a block or two little blocks in Mansfield, away from

his parents, where he'd been staying. He later testifies in a deposition that he hasn't stayed with his grandparents since he was like eleven, so now he's stayed overnight with

his elderly grandparents who are hard of hearing. And that morning, he was on vacation because it's fall, and he's a big hunter and he always goes hunting, but he took the vacation, he didn't go, and he and his grandfather go to the firehouse where he's a volunteer fireman and a volunteer EMT And at six am, you know, they're there at the firehouse washing his personal vehicle because it

has mud on it. And he's there and takes the call that comes in that there is an emergency at this presidence, which he recognizes as his residence, and so he is in an emergency vehicle and one of the first people to respond to the scene. The guy that's with him wasn't driving. Greg was driving, and he recalls very clearly having to tell Greg when they're speeding out of town towards their house, you know, shift the truck. You don't have it in the right year. You got

to put it in the right year, you know. And they get out there, and as soon as he puts his feet on the ground. Now mind you, there's no call that has been made that says something's happened to Cheryl or a female is unresponsive or anything. And there's three little boys that live in the house and one has asthma, and Greg puts his feet on the ground and wants to know what she did, now, you know, And so people at the scene who have now you know, the neighbor is there too, he's the EMT. He knows

prior stuff. And they are like Keick being Greg away. And they run in the house through a garage and don't find Cheryl, but bring the boys out and don't realize until like a second attempt into the house that she's in the garage. And there was a rope or a metal pipe over rafters in an opening in the garage where he used to hang in dress deer and

there was a nylon rope there. And at first they don't see anything, and there's a ladder there, but then there's Cheryl, you know, with her rear end on the floor but her torso suspended about six inches from the ground with the rope rapperal tight three times around her neck. You know of looks like, you know, there's a ladder.

Did she commit suicide? What happened? But she's laying on the ground, you know, And so the county cops had come, but they Gregg's family was involved with the county police force, and so Illinois State Police had been called in for the crime scene. So, you know, this investigation starts. And to me and the others who knew the story of what Cheryl had been going through, there was there was no question in the beginning. We never questioned any of it.

Of course, he was going to be arrested for her murder, right but that didn't happen right away.

And the other piece of evidence they found was a tip of a rober glove and the wraps of rope around her neck, but yet she didn't have rubber gloves on. And then another little piece was found under the ladder. Another tip of the rubber glove was found under the ladder, And so with just you know, those few little pieces of evidence, I'm like, oh my god, you should arrest him. He's he's killed her this time. I mean, we all know he tried to kill her a few weeks ago, and this time he was successful.

You know, they were like little pieces of property. They just automatically reverted to him because she's now dead, and at that time, in Illinois, grandparents didn't have what we call standing, which is really the right to bring a suit if a parent was alive. You know, it was presumed in Illinois that the parents should have custody, not a grandparent. And so we took the kids, We hit the kids out, and we went to court and it was the same judge that had been involved in everything.

And you know, you have to know that this guy has now listened to her testimony and he probably has a pretty good suspicion too of what happened, and he just does award custody, temporary custody under shelter care. Hearing to my parents, so we have temporary custody of the kids. So there's so much going on. We're trying to protect children, were trying to grieve, We're trying to bury my sister. He's not been arrested. We're terrified of him. We personally

were afraid of him. We knew he had killed her, like, oh my god, my parents were afraid of him. So they're just all these dynamics going on. It was again just intense and crazy. We'd live that, you know, a few weeks from I'm leaving him. So he tries to kill her, so he kills her of intensity, and now it seems like it's starting all over again, and this time we're afraid for the children, were afraid for ourselves.

So it was just crazy. And that aggravated criminal sexual assault case was pending and it was supposed to be going to trial, and I had told the state's attorney, I'm like, well, you know, if you're not going to charge him with murder, you got to take this to trial. I mean, we know he did this. You can't let that go. And so he did take that to trial. There was a lot of publicity on it. It got moved to a different county. There was a lot of arguments over whether the jury should be told by the

victim isn't at her trial. You know, well, of course you need to tell them she's dead. She can't be there. She just you know, you think, well, she doesn't want to cooperate, she doesn't want to pursue the charges, so she doesn't show up. No, she can't show up. She's dead. So finally the jury has read a statement that says she's deceased, but nothing else. That trial lasts a week and he was acquitted. He was acquitted of that. Those

aggravated criminal sexual assault charges. And I think that's another instrumental part to me because I think the state, the state's attorney was devastated. I'm sure he was. I was devastated. How could that have happened? How could the jury let him go? And back then we you know, I don't ever remember. I don't think we ever talked to the jury or pulled the jury. I don't know anything. But I think that kind of played into the length of time because the state's attorney would say to me, Renee,

there's no murder. There's no statute of limitations on murder. Meaning if we don't arrest him in a year or five years or ten years, it doesn't matter. You can always be arrested for murder, you know, no matter how much time goes by. And that's he would say, you know, we believe other people are involved or know something, and they're going to break and they're going to that's going to make the case, and that's when something's going to happen.

woman challenges him the assistant, and becomes state's attorney. The interesting thing is this young woman, whose name is Dana Rhodes, was a senior in Illinois State University when Cheryl was killed, and she had had aspirations to go to law school and to be a state's attorney and even maybe a judge in that county. She'd had family that had done

that and she wanted to follow in those footsteps. And she remembered standing in her kitchen home on break and her parents talking about Cheryl's murder or Cheryl's death, and she remembers her parents saying that poor girl didn't commit suicide, because Hawser's always said she committed suicide. You know, she was murdered. And Dana vowed at that time that if she ever did become state's attorney in that county and this case was still pending, she would solve it. She

would take it to trial. And that's what she did. She became state's attorney. Unknown to us, she picked that case back up and started literally going through the file and dusting it off and working with the Illinois State Police and really getting the case ready to go to

be charged and go to trial. We don't know any of this until she comes to me and says that she has picked the case back up and she needs DNA evidence from the boys, And I'm like, what, we're really the far along and why would you need their DNA evidence. Well, there's a spot of blood that's been found on her nightgown and we can't match now any DNA to anybody, you know, So who's to her? That was the reasonable doubt that could be raised in the case.

And she really wanted to nail that down, zip that up before she went to trial so she didn't have to worry about them saying the killer still out there, here's the blood, you know, and raising that reasonable doubt.

And so then I'm left to call the boys, who are you know, now in their late twenties and who have never been told that we think their dad killed their mom because you can't tell them that, and then put them in a car and say have a good visit, because they were still having to visit him because he'd never been arrested or convicted and she we worked on that. We've all started to get involved. I dusted out my

files again. Dana literally made a personal trip to my home and picked up everything I had saved and including boxes from Cheryl's divorce attorney who had passed away, and as the guy's wife had given all the files to my parents. And now I'm re engaged and we're gonna I think it's going to happen. It was terrifying. I had conversations with my sisters on should we do this? Is it worth it? Can my parents take this? What if we go to trial and he's acquitted again, is

it worth it? Can we take it? You know, all these different emotions going through you and all these years, and it was what my mom had lived for and justice for her daughter, you know, and to see that, and she's now in her eighties and she didn't think she would ever see that. And so while they were afraid, they were we were all in. The whole family was in, and we're going to support the state's attorney and go

forward with this. So by July of twenty seventeen, Greg had been arrested in I think it was twenty sixteen, and the case went to trial, almost twenty seven years to the date after her death, went to trial and he was finally convicted.

disturbing event for him to consider. But there was also a person named Walt Rhor tell us about Walt Rohor and what Elizabeth and what Elizabeth finds out and her boss about his role in this.

So that was another instrumental piece of evidence in the trial is that it's not all circumstantial. You have physical evidence now that connects him to the scene. And so this starts to come out about this DNA evidence. And when we were trying to figure out the DNA from the blood stain on the nightgown, there were lots of people who were requested to provide blood samples that had been around her because it could have been the boys, it could have been my father, it could have been

other male friends. And we had asked them, and people were very cooperative, and everybody was excluded. Walt Rohrer, who had been in Muhammad, which is a neighboring town of Pharmacity of Mansfield on the fire department, but new Greg and new Cheryl and was a friend of Cheryl's, came forward to Elizabeth and was concerned that his DNA might

be discovered. He didn't understand DNA and he was concerned, and so he approached Elizabeth and confessed to her that he had had a sexual encounter with Cheryl once that he was consoling her, and you know, one thing led to another and it went, you know, to the point where they had a sexual encounter, and he was concerned that perhaps they would find his DNA and he didn't

want to be accused of her murder. And so here we find out that I was adamant, way back when Greg had been accusing her of having an affair, that there's no way she had an affair because when would she have time. I mean, she's working, she's got three boys, and she's fighting him off on all these different things. So we kind of had that to face. It was a little shocking at first, but then you know, I

had moments where I thought, well, good for her. I hope she had a one sexual encounter that wasn't just a flat rate, because so many of them that were chronicled in her journal were just it was nothing that rape. Yeah, so that was an interesting fact that came came out in the trial. But he, you know, he did testify and the jury didn't it wasn't his DNA. His DNA didn't match the spot on the nightgown or you know, in the condom or outside the condom or anything else.

So he was never never a suspect in the case. Felt I felt bad for him, though we didn't really know him, and I always wanted to talk to him. I did afterwards sent him a thank you note because I know from her notes and some notes that I found later that he he listened to her, and I think he did provide her with a lot of empathy and compassion and showed that to her. And up until the book was released, I had had out on my

list and I wanted to talk to him. But Walt has since passed away, so I will never get that opportunity, right.

or would he look at them? He had no problem staring right at the big screen where those pictures were being displayed, without any look on his face, just nothing, And that always just was I don't know, I don't even know how to describe that, but how can you do that to somebodey and then you know have had their three children with them and have no emotion. But there was nothing. And when he was convicted, there was really nothing, nothing from him. They led him away, put

him in the policeman outside sentencing hearing was scheduled. That was fascinating because you get the call witnesses for sentencing and we got to read impact statements and prior girlfriends came kind of out of the woodwork and testified at a sentencing hearing as to their subsequent relationships with him and their abuse, the abuse they suffered at his hands and subsequent relationships. It was really I mean again, I felt terrible for these women, but yet thankful that they

came and testified on our behalf. And again he has no emotion during any of this. My mom, who was eighty eighty years old, read her own impact statement right there to the judge and just talked to him. It was amazing. She did an incredible job. And then at the end of it, she held up a big photograph of my sister and her nurse's outfit and you know,

he just nothing, nothing from him. But the judge was incredible and just very you could tell he put so much time and attention and thought into every word he said during the entire trial and all of his motions and his final ruling for the sentencing. He had to be sentenced under the guidelines that were in place back then, so they were not near as strict as they would

be today. But he calculated all the time that he had already served and that he might get for you know, good behavior and all these various credits that he could get against his sentence, and he sentenced him it was actually four years ago yesterday, the sixth of September, to

fifty four years in prison. And he explained that he came up with those fifty four years because with all the credits that he could possibly get, he would spend he would have to spend at least twenty seven years behind bars, and the judge thought it was important that he spent one year behind bars for every year he'd walked free since he killed her. And it's just an amazing, an amazing end to the long story. And I think it was with that sentencing that these weights that we

didn't even realize. I didn't realize that we're sitting on my shoulders just just lifted. And my sisters and I look back and we say often that you know, that sentence added ten years to my mom and dad's life. And my mom has even said to me recently, it used to be that there wasn't a day that went by that she didn't think about Cheryl and have tears for Cheryl. And now some days go by and she doesn't even think about her. Wow, and it you know,

it's not because she's forgotten about her. It's just because it doesn't weigh on her like it used to. And you don't realize, we didn't realize how impactful it all was until it wasn't.

and I know it's a wild Blue Press release. Is there a Facebook page for this and was there any website people might find out more about this book.