NORMAN V.
KELLY
The couple lived together in
a small apartment over on 401 Hayward , just off Madison Avenue not far from Woodruff High School
Every murder poses a lot of
questions for the killer, the major one being what to do with the body? A lot
of killers simply move the body from the murder scene, travel a few miles, dump
the body and hope they are never connected with the killing. Many of these murders
go unsolved. As for the lady there in the Hayward
A GHASTLY
FIND
It was the evening of May
l9, 1983, when the two young men rode their bikes on a long trek in Tazewell
and Woodford Counties
They were not exactly sure
of what they were looking at until they got a lot closer. What they found
stopped their hearts. A moment later they were racing off to tell the police
what they had seen sticking out of one of those bags. The news spread like a
flash flood. It was close to eight that evening as the first police car drove
up to the bridge. The officer reported his exact location.
“I’m two miles north of
Route 116 right here
at Funk’s Run Creek. No
doubt it’s ours here
in Woodford County Upper Spring Bay Road
It’s real rural out here
so we’ll need some lights.”
Before very many minutes
other police cars began gathering from the state,
county, and the Spring Bay
Sheriff Quentin Durst pulled
up to the scene and stood carefully examining the area.
“It’s a murder no doubt, but it
doesn’t look
like the killing was done
here. No, the body
was dumped here.”
The sheriff then contacted
the surrounding towns to report his find. He called the State of Illinois
the crime scene
investigator. The press, the TV media and everyone with any excuse to be there
flocked to the scene. The road was blocked, police cars with flashing lights
sealed the area, and the investigators got to work.
Well into the night they
worked. The coroner came and did his preliminary investigation of the body.
Once the body was taken away the areas under the bags were searched, and dozens
of soil samples were taken, as well as photographs at every angle were
completed. The next morning Durst sent a man back to the scene to make sure
they didn’t miss anything. Finally the road was reopened and the job of
identification was soon underway. It took very little time to discover who the
body was in the green garbage bags. Sheriff Durst, from Woodford County made
the call to the chief over in Peoria, Illinois
“The dead man’s Jeffrey J.
Williams, age 26,
and his listed address is
401 Hayward
there in Peoria
over here, Chief. I think
you got yourself a murder,
but I’ll wait to hear from
you once you check out
his address.”
Once the case was assigned
to detectives here in Peoria ,
Illinois
connection with the man’s
girlfriend was quickly made. The police swarmed
over the apartment at 40l Hayward
SOME PARTS
ARE MISSING
Once the body of Jeffrey
Williams was taken to a funeral home
another horrible discovery
was made. The man’s legs were missing!
The murder now took on a
bizarre twist, and the publicity spread making
It a hot topic not only here
in Peoria , Illinois
The police now had in their
possession blood-soaked towels, the murder weapon, bloodstained samples and
numerous other pieces of evidence. They were convinced that Jeff Williams was
not only shot in his apartment he was ‘butchered there as well.’ Thirty hours
after the body of Williams was found in garbage bags, the police had taken into
custody the lady that had shared the apartment with him. Once the crime scene
was established and thoroughly analyzed the police went out looking for more
evidence. Surely someone in the neighborhood had heard the shots being fired,
or knew of the relationship of these two people.
CONCEALING A
HOMICIDE
I often laugh when I read
that a suspected killer has been charged with concealing a homicide. If you are
a killer what should you do run out and tell everyone you killed someone? Of
course not, you conceal the entire matter, especially the homicide part.
However, this charge will get you in jail quickly and that is precisely what
the police wanted to do. Once they charged the lady with concealing a homicide
the state’s attorney then scheduled an arraignment, which led to another round
of media frenzy.
The setting was the Peoria County
the courtroom quieted down
the judge took his seat behind the bench, and the matter was called for
hearing.
For the first time the
curious spectators would get a look at the lady that they had been reading
about. Each person certainly had within their own mind an image of what this
alleged killer would look like, it would be my guess that none of them was
right. A pretty young lady walked in with her attorney and took her seat there
at the defendant’s table. She wore the jumpsuit of the county jail, her hair
was long and she seemed so small. The formal preliminary charges were
concealing a homicide, obstructing justice and theft. The criminal information
filed in Circuit Court revealed that the woman allegedly had “concealed the
death by concealing the body, and attempting to obstruct prosecution by
concealing the physical evidence of the crime.”
So who was this woman that
all the cameras were aimed at and the reporters sought to question? Her name
was Roberta M. McCumber, a twenty-two-year-old lady that worked over at Saint Francis
Hospital Peoria County
Police asked for the keys to
her automobile and had it towed to the police garage where it was gone over
with a fine-tooth-comb. They found stains, bloodstains and from the trunk they
detected a very strong odor. With some trepidation the investigators slowly
opened the trunk half expecting to be greeted by some ghastly sight, but they
found nothing. The smell was very strong and the officers were certainly
convinced that a body, or ‘something dead’ had been in the trunk, and not very
long ago.
Eagerly the officers bagged
the handgun they found in the car and immediately began to trace it. They found
that the gun had been reported stolen by a Mr. D. Jack. Later the police,
through the crime lab, would identify this weapon as the one that fired the two
slugs that the medical examiner had extracted from the torso of Jeffrey
Williams. The lab was working on all of the blood samples, rags, hairs, stains
and water samples the forensic investigators had taken from McCumber’s
apartment and car. It was a very impressive array of evidence indeed.
At the arraignment Attorney
Hafele argued for a bond low enough for his client to be able to raise. The
defendant had a daughter and he argued that she certainly was not a flight
risk. The Assistant
State
the neighborhood, who helped
(McCumber) put large garbage bags with
a foul smell into the trunk
of her car.” He reminded the court that the victim was shot at least twice and
that the legs were severed and hidden away. The
Idea was to impress the
court of the severity of the crime and asked that the bond be set at least
$100,000.00. Judge McDade listened and then set the bond at $50,000.00. This of
course meant that McCumber would have to come up with 10%, which she was able
to do. That afternoon she was free
and walked out of the jail
and headed home.
SO WHERE
IS THE MURDER
CHARGE?
For court observers and
people interested in all the ado over this case
the question was “so why
didn’t they charge her with murder?” Well, the SA’s office as usual, had a
plan. By charging Roberta with the crimes
they did at the arraignment
they were certain of one thing, Roberta was under bond, and hopefully was not
going anywhere. This ploy also gave the fine offices of the SA more time to
cement their case against her. Crime labs
are busy places and
sometimes it takes a month or more to get results.
Also there was that little
problem of finding the legs of Jeffrey Williams.
The police already knew that
the young boys the SA mentioned in the arraignment had helped McCumber put
something long and smelly inside her trunk. That’s what the boys told police
and they believed them. The smell from the trunk told them that, or was that
smell from her transporting the torso out to Upper Spring Bay Road
Once detectives put the
story from the boys together they decided that the killer must have dismembered
the body in the apartment. The legs were then severed and the body parts put in
several garbage bags. The killer then put the torso in the trunk and drove out
to Woodford County
THE SEARCH
FOR THE MISSING
LEGS
Are you folks old enough to
remember this slogan? “Tell It To The Marines?” Well, the Peoria Police
Department did just exactly that. The
detectives were certain that
what their suspect did was take the legs over to her parent’s dumpsters because
the garbage pickup was a couple of days earlier than hers. The legs were then
transported out to the City/County Landfill and buried. In fact they talked to
the garbage man and he remembered picking up something “long and smelly in green
garbage bags”. The man thought that what he had thrown into his truck was a
dead dog. So, there it was all they had to do was go out there and find them.
There was a problem…each night the day’s garbage is covered with tons of earth.
All the police had to do was spend a large sum of money renting tractors and
other equipment to do the job. Instead they called Charlie Company of the local
Marine Reserves stationed out on Plank
Road
THE SCENE
AT THE LOCAL
DUMP
It was Wednesday out at the
dump. The birds were singing, the breeze
was mild, a nice May day.
The Marines, six strong from Charlie Company had landed and they brought a
tractor and an end-loader with them. They were greeted by a few police officers
and then they got to work. Their job was to get the newly dumped dirt off the
garbage so the officers could look for the bags stuffed with the dead man’s
legs. Before the search was over as many as seventeen officers would be out
there at the dump. Nice work if you can get it. Once the Marines finished their
job the officers began the job of looking in garbage bags. I doubt they
mentioned this type activity in the recruiting brochures they hand out to potential
recruits but it was part of the job.
Wednesday through some of
Friday they diligently searched, turning up everything imaginable but the
severed legs of Jeffrey William. A tipster called in about a particular item
that he knew was out there. The officers found that item giving them the clue
that they were in the right section of the dump. However, they finally gave up.
Peoria
THE LULL
BEFORE THE TRIAL
The appetite for exciting
news is insatiable as far as the public is concerned. Once the bizarre details
of the murder of Jeffrey Williams were known the interest died down. The legs
had not been found and it looked like they never would be. If McCumber were
indeed the killer she could tell the police nothing more than what they already
knew. The legs were in the dump and that is where they would have to stay
A few things came out about
the victim. He was a musician of sorts and lived at one time with McCumber over
at 609 Tracy here in Peoria , Illinois
He was twenty-six and did
have a minor police record which the press was glad to supply to its readers.
In 1978 Williams spent a year in Vandalia for possession of marijuana. His
arrest in 1975 was not brought to trial. His sentence in 1976 for breaking into
the Chart House was four months on a work-release. Over in Woodford County ,
when he lived in Washington ,
Illinois
The couple moved over to
Apartment A at 401 Hayward Saint Francis Hospital Peoria
IT WON’T
PLAY IN PEORIA
The final indictments were
filed and the murder charge against Roberta McCumber sparked another round of
hearings concerning her bond. Once the first-degree murder charged was served
on her the first bond was revoked. McCumber
was then held on a half-million-dollar bond. Hafele argued for a reduction and
the bond was finally lowered to $300,000,00, that would require a ten-percent
cash amount to get her out of jail. Also, if the defendant had a bit of real
estate worth $600.000.00 she would be free to go home and live in it. But none
of that took place and Roberta McCumber remained in jail waiting for her trial.
This trial too would be one of those hot tickets I told you about. With all the
gruesome details the local folks had read about, they could hardly wait.
Mr. Hafele had other ideas
than to try the case here in the Peoria, Illinois
The issue of a change of
venue was now before the court. Every person at the hearing remembered that the
Alan Taylor murder trial had been reversed over the venue question, and once
the arguments were over, the judge agreed to take the trial out of Peoria , Illinois
DECEMBER 4, 1983 WHEATON , ILLINOIS
Judge Peter Paolucci would
hear the case up in Dupage County , quite a trip northeast of Peoria
Before the trial McCumber’s
friend got himself in trouble for attempting to create an alibi for Roberta. He
was charged with obstruction of Justice and was later sentenced to a two-year
term. Mr. Theinert told the press that he liked Roberta “she helped when I was
down, and I wanted to do her a favor.”
With a packed courtroom the
trial against Roberta McCumber for the murder of Jeffrey Williams began. The
opening arguments gave an outline of what the defense and prosecution intended
to prove. For the People was an Assistant
State
Hafele told the jury that
McCumber shot Jeffrey Williams in self-defense during one of the frequent
arguments the couple had. Hafele told the jury that the gun went off during the
struggle.
The prosecution had a
different view, of course, telling the jury that Williams had been shot twice
deliberately by the defendant. The burden of proof rests with the prosecution
and once the arguments were out of the way an array of witnesses took their
turn in the witness box.
The pathologist explained
that the upper torso of Williams contained a bullet that lodged near the spine.
Mr. Williams had also been hit in the head. He then told the jury for the
record that the victim’s legs were missing. It was a grisly account of the
murder and one that certainly had its affect on the jury.
The testimony was that the
legs had been chopped or sawed off by some instrument, perhaps an axe or a
hacksaw. Actually it was a hatchet and a hacksaw that were owned by the
landlord, Frank Purple.
Kim Roberts, a forensic
expert explained that the gun that was marked as the murder weapon had a
five-pound pull, double action pull as well, resulting in a fourteen-pound pull
on the trigger. He doubted that this gun could be accidentally fired. He then
held up the gun for the jury and pointed out that the gun had a working safety
on it.
McCumber’s friend came to
the stand. Ms. Riopell said that she had visited Roberta in her apartment about
four days after the murder and that she could smell a terrible odor in the
house. She testified that she had asked Roberta what the terrible smell was and
Roberta told her ‘It’s burnt transmission
oil.’ The witness then told
the jury that Roberta had confided in her telling her that she, Roberta, was a
suspect in the murder of her boyfriend.
Dramatically the witness said “I asked her, Oh, my God, Roberta, was
that his legs?”
“What did the defendant say
when you asked her that question?”
“She said, ‘Yes.’ ”
A Rantoul, Illinois
man, a Mr. Voyles, testified that he had met Roberta in some kind of
lonely-hearts club and had driven up here to Peoria
The defense put on a rather
famous psychiatrist, famous in that he had testified at the Richard Speck
trial. Later the People would show that he
had testified at many trials
and always he told the jury that the killer was not responsible for the murder.
The doctor’s name was Ziporyn and he told the jury that Roberta McCumber was
mentally ill when she shot and killed Jeffrey Williams. He referred to her
‘Pyschokenic Amnesia’ and that although she was mentally ill at the time of the
shooting she was not suffering from mental illness today. The question of the
tools used in the dismemberment was brought up and the landlord, Frank Purple
might have supplied the answer. He told the jury about some missing tools of
his and where they might have gone. As the trial went through its natural
process the evidence against McCumber grew.
The question of
whether or not she had shot Williams was not the issue, but under what
circumstances. There is premeditated murder, as well as other degrees of
murder. The jury could consider several types of manslaughter as well as
acquitting her completely. What appeared to be a slam dunk case at one time for
the prosecution now took on a different complexion. McCumber was a sympathetic
figure sitting there in her white dress, appearing a bit shy and maybe even
confused.
WHAT WOULD
THE JURY DO?
The ordeal was over for
McCumber now all she and her family could do was wait to see what the jury had
in store for her. The sentencing for murder would be substantial, and the other
charges were not exactly a walk in the park. They went back to the hotel room
to wait. No human on earth can predict what a jury will do. Well, if they stay
out a long time that’s good. No, if they stay out a long time that’s bad. Hell,
nobody knows, especially the lawyers trying the case.
In this case the jury was
out a long time, or was it a short time? Truth is it was eleven hours. A lot of
that time was spent going over the documents, taking votes, electing a foreman,
going to lunch or supper, but it all added up to eleven hours. So what is your guess? Guilty on all
counts? Not guilty?
What do you think?
Roberta McCumber was
acquitted that Tuesday up in a Wheaton, Illinois Wheaton Peoria
The eight-women and four-men
of the DuPage jury had listened to the evidence, they had heard all the
arguments, and their decision was now a matter of record. They had spent the
better part of eleven hours and two days deciding the verdict. They found her
guilty of concealing a homicidal death and obstructing justice because she
severed the victim’s legs to conceal the killing.
.
Roberta burst into tears
upon hearing the verdict. Were these tears of pain or joy? Did she understand
what had just taken place? Later her attorney told the press that she was
simply confused. After all, she was not found guilty of murder. However,
voluntary manslaughter carried a possible probation for four years or l5 years
in prison. No wonder she was confused. As for the murder charge that could
carry 20 to 40 years with no hope of probation. Hafele hugged his client as her
parents joined in. They were a happy group since he had saved her from the
dreaded penitentiary.
THE SENTENCING
PHASE
The “guilty but mentally
ill” verdict meant that the Illinois Department of Corrections had to provide
psychiatric treatment for Roberta not for just a couple of months but until she
was cured. Of course the downside for her was the moment they pronounced her
‘cured,’ that would be the moment she would be off to prison to complete her
sentence. So it would seem that the critics of the verdict could not say that
she ‘Got off Scott free.’
The testifying doctors told
the jury that McCumber was suffering from
extreme anxiety at the time
of the murder brought on by the years of abuse from Jeffrey Williams. However,
one of the prosecutors, James Miller told the jury that McCumber had lied about
everything she said on the stand.
Another of McCumber’s
defense team, Florence
Judge Peter J. Paolucci set
the sentencing hearing for January 20, 1984.
It was a new-year and time
had elapsed since the date of the verdict, and most of the press had vanished.
The coverage had been rather extensive and newspapers around the country had
reported on the bizarre case. Now Roberta stood facing the judge. What would
the sentence be?
Hafele allowed the defendant
to make an appeal directly to the judge asking for help in dealing with her
emotional problems. She did not tell the judge that she regretted killing
Williams, telling the judge this instead.
“To say I’m sorry for what I
did to Jeff wouldn’t
even be right. But I’ll say I
hate what I did to
Jeff and I will know I’ll
remember it the rest of
my life.”
McCumber, a high school
dropout and the divorced mother of a three-
year-old daughter, fought to
control her emotions. “I know I need help
and I just hope you help me
get it.” Roberta had no past criminal record and had a good work history.
McCumber admitted that she
shot Williams during an argument and then used an axe and a hacksaw to chop off
his legs. She went on to explain that the torso was dumped in Woodford County
He told the defendant that he had
listened to her friends, co-
workers and therapists, but that was
all one-sided evidence.
“Justice is a two-way street. Society,
the State, and the family
of Jeff Williams also have their
rights. Sometimes we forget
about those.”
The judge said that he
placed great weight on a pre-sentence report
prepared by the probation
department “as to the moral conduct and
character” of McCumber. In
open court the judge commented about the moral conduct of the defendant. He
discussed the fact that Roberta had had three abortions in three years,
including the last one that she had while in jail following her arrest.
“Taking that in conjunction with taking
the life
of Jeff Williams, what value,
may I ask, does
she place on human life?”
He told the spectators that
a probation sentence would ignore the
seriousness of taking a
human life. The judge had the option of
sentencing the defendant to
20 years in prison if he chose to do so.
Assistant SA James Miller
argued for penitentiary time:
“Nowhere in this report has the
defendant shown any
remorse, she’s never said she’s
sorry that a person died.
She’s glad he’s dead, judge.”
James Hafele countered
“sending Roberta McCumber to prison is exactly the wrong thing to do.”
The judge then pronounced
sentence handing down a thirteen-year prison term. Roberta gasped and began
crying as she was handcuffed and led away. Her distraught family watched in
despair.
Her time served was
automatically deducted and off she went to the
Illinois Department of
Correction in Dwight , Illinois
WHAT ABOUT
THAT APPEAL?
January 14, 1986
PEORIA , ILLINOIS
Close to thirty-three months
had gone by and a lot of legal wrangling had taken place. I think it is time we
ended this story, so I will jump to what Judge Calvin Stone said when the case
came to him.
“I certainly would have
considered more severe
sentences had the court not
been limited by law.”
He continued as he looked over
the record in front
of him. “The court is unable to
determine if the
defendant’s criminal conduct
was the result of
circumstances unlikely to
occur. However it
seems that the defendant has
not come to grips
with the fact that she is the
one who caused her
criminal conduct.”
Judge Stone then reinstated
a 10-year voluntary manslaughter prison
sentence upon the now
twenty-five-year-old defendant. His honor
then re-imposed a three-year
term for concealing a homicide.
Judge Stone refused to make
the terms consecutive, stating the law
did not require her to serve
the sentences one after the other.
Actually, in essence, about
one and a half years were knocked off of the defendant’s term. With time served
Roberta could find herself out of
Jail In about two more
years, say late 1988 or early 1989.
END
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