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3rd body dug up at Hammond home
Convicted killer from Illinois held for questioning
By John Bebow and Carlos Sadovi
Tribune staff reporters
Published December 11, 2003
A 49-year-old convicted murderer from Illinois who was released from prison in 1999 has been held for questioning in Hammond after authorities unearthed a third body Wednesday from the basement of his home, sources said.
Two teens who had befriended the man have been missing since September and another teen disappeared in May, relatives and friends said as work crews broke up patches of newly poured concrete in a home on Ash Avenue in a search for more victims.
Lake County (Ind.) officials said dental records or DNA would be needed to identify two bodies found Tuesday, but they reported the victims were in their teens.
The suspect has a long history of violence against teen boys, records show. He pleaded guilty to killing a 15-year-old boy near Elgin in 1981, was imprisoned in Texas for stabbing a young man, and was discharged from the U.S. Army after being convicted of manslaughter for killing a German boy.
Neighbors said the man, whom they nicknamed "Crazy" because he was once seen cutting his lawn with a pair of scissors, lured teens into his home with offers of alcohol and marijuana.
After the third body was found, Hammond Police Chief John Cory said there were still "a number of freshly poured areas" in the basement that would be dug up. Cory said police also were examining other missing person cases.
The suspect rented a second-floor apartment in the small house and had access to the basement, authorities said. The suspect is under arrest, but the Tribune is not naming him because criminal charges have not been filed.
Families of teens missing since September said they feared the remains belonged to best friends Michael Dennis, 13, and James Raganyi, 16, who they recently discovered had been visiting the home of the suspect. The youths lived a few blocks away.
Raganyi telephoned his grandmother on Sept. 10 and said he was running away to Texas with Dennis and another teen nicknamed "Piggy," said Lynn Smith, Raganyi's mother. Caller ID showed Raganyi was calling from a rest stop on Interstate Highway 65 near Roselawn, Ind., she said.
"He never ran away before or did anything like this," Smith said, choking back tears. "He gave me away at my wedding in June."
Dennis' mother, Holly Gilkison, said she grounded her 7th-grade son two days before he disappeared, after she was told he had been seen smoking marijuana and drinking beer with the suspect. She said she thought her son met the suspect at a nearby swimming pool, where he tried to get Dennis to sell marijuana.
Gilkison said she didn't confront the man or notify authorities at the time.
"I'm kicking myself. I don't know why I didn't," Gilkison said. The last time she saw her son was Sept. 10 when she sent him packing for school. "I told him I loved him. I told him goodbye and I never saw him again."
Neighbors said police had the house under surveillance for four or five days before executing a search warrant Tuesday and finding the first two bodies.
Indiana police approached Cook County officials last week for information on the suspect's criminal record, a source said.
The families of Dennis and Raganyi plastered posters of the boys in the area and as far away as Texas, and they stayed in frequent contact with police. On Sunday, investigators asked Raganyi's mother for a sample of her son's handwriting.
Jeremy Hardesty, 16, who lives two doors from the suspect's house, said he was a friend of Raganyi's. He called the missing boy "Jimmy" and remembered him as a fun-loving teen with an ear for rap music and a quick step to the hoop in street basketball games.
Hardesty said the last time he saw Raganyi was in early September.
Standing alongside his mother, Kathy Hardesty, on Wednesday, Hardesty recalled how last year the suspect asked him into his home for beer and marijuana with Hardesty's mother standing by. Hardesty turned him down.
"What kind of a man would ask a child that in front of a parent?" his mother asked.
"That could have been me laying down there under that cement," Jeremy Hardesty said.
The suspect worked at a Dolton trophy shop as a metal sculptor, said Edward Cope, a former co-worker.
"He was a hard worker, but there were always anger problems at work. We never saw eye to eye and never got along," Cope said. "He looked at kids in a way that a man would look at a girl. It was odd to me."
Cope visited Ash Avenue on Wednesday with Denise Moll, 24, of Hammond, who said she feared the third victim was her missing boyfriend, a 19-year-old she would identify only as "Nick." Nick had socialized at the Ash Avenue home, they said. Moll said she last saw Nick on May 2. "He was leaving our house, he told me he loved me, gave me a kiss and said he would see me later," Moll said. "He was a great guy."
According to law-enforcement records obtained by the Tribune, on Aug. 9, 1981, the suspect enticed a 15-year-old boy into his car and drove him to an abandoned quarry near Elgin. He made sexual advances toward the boy, then stabbed him in the abdomen. Ignoring his cries, the man threw the boy into the quarry water. When the boy would not sink, the man held the boy's head underwater until he drowned. He then left for Texas.
In Texas, the suspect was sentenced to 5 years in prison for stabbing a young man. He was in jail there when he was charged with the Illinois murder, records show.
He pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Records show he was released in June 1999. He was on parole until June 2002.
In a 1994 memo obtained by the Tribune, Assistant Cook County State's Atty. James Bailey told prison officials the suspect was "most likely the most dangerous inmate you will house. He has written a diary explaining his episodes of violence toward other men."
Outside the suspect's house, neighbors stood watch over a large red dump truck used for the excavation. Jose Esparza, the 26-year-old father of two, shook at the memory of his children playing hide-and-seek two doors away.
"It makes me very upset," he said. There are "a lot of children on this block. That's why we're all concerned."
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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