Edward Tenney was convicted of three murders committed near Aurora, Illinois, between 1992 and 1993. Jerry D. Weber, 24, was shot and robbed in April 1992. Virginia Johannessen, a widow in her seventies, was killed in Aurora Township in January 1993. Mary Jill Oberweis, 56, a dairy heiress and her neighbor, was killed in October 1993. All three were shot.
Tenney was not charged until 1995. In the Johannessen case, four other men were charged, three were acquitted, and one, L.L., was convicted and sentenced to 60 years. Then, in May 1995, Tenney's younger cousin, Donald Lippert, confessed to taking part in all three killings with him. L.L.'s conviction was thrown out at the prosecutors' own request. Tenney was convicted of the Oberweis murder in 1997 and of the Johannessen murder in 1998, when a jury sentenced him to death. In 2002 the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the Johannessen verdict because the jury had not been allowed to hear L.L.'s own statement about the crime. A second jury convicted Tenney again in 2007. A DuPage County jury convicted him of Weber's murder in 2010 and sentenced him to death, a sentence commuted to life without parole when Illinois abolished capital punishment in 2011.
Tenney lived in Aurora, in Kane County. In 1995 the Daily Herald gave his age as 35 and his home as Aurora. He shared a house in Aurora with his cousin Donald Lippert, according to the Illinois Appellate Court. His uncle told investigators that Tenney sometimes went by the name Christopher Nelson, and a box of false identification papers in that name was among the property the uncle later turned over to the sheriff's department, the Illinois Supreme Court recorded.
Lippert was much younger. The Daily Herald gave his age as 20 and his home as Woodridge when he was arrested in 1995, and the Kane County Chronicle later described him as a teenager at the time of the killings. He had been convicted in 1994 of two burglaries in Warrenville and was on probation, with an order for alcohol treatment. In a letter to the judge in that case he called himself an alcoholic. In court he later admitted addiction to alcohol, marijuana and cocaine, according to the appellate court.
Jerry David Weber was 24 and lived in Aurora, near the line between DuPage and Kane counties. The Daily Herald described him as a carpet installer and the father of two children. He was shot and robbed on April 16, 1992, in DuPage County east of Aurora, the Daily Herald reported in 1995. Some later Daily Herald reports put the killing in April 1993. Prosecutors said his wallet was taken.
Virginia Johannessen had lived in her house in Aurora Township for about 40 years, and by 1993 she lived there alone, according to the Illinois Supreme Court. Two of her daughters later testified about her. Her house had been burglarized twice before, and after those break-ins she installed an alarm system. One of her daughters told a jury in 2007 that her mother "used it religiously from the day she got it." Among her belongings was her high school class ring from 1934.
She was killed on January 2, 1993, the date given in the indictment. Her brother found her three days later. The Supreme Court gave her age as 74; Daily Herald reports gave it as 76 in 1995 and 75 in 2007.
Nearly a year after the killing, a former girlfriend of L.L. went to the authorities and implicated him and three friends, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. The four men were arrested on January 2, 1994. The three friends were tried together in 1994 and acquitted. L.L. had refused a deal to testify against them, saying he could not lie in court, his public defenders said in 1995.
L.L. was tried on his own. On February 7, 1995, a Kane County jury convicted him, largely on the testimony of the former girlfriend and of a jail inmate who said L.L. had told him he had shot an older woman. Judge James T. Doyle sentenced him to 60 years. L.L.'s lawyers maintained his innocence and pointed out that no fingerprints, blood or other physical evidence tied him to the crime.
Mary Jill Oberweis, 56, was described in the press as a dairy heiress. She was Virginia Johannessen's neighbor, living a few houses away on the same road, and she was shot and killed in Aurora Township on October 1, 1993.
In early May 1995, members of an FBI violent crimes task force arrested Donald Lippert. At a hearing before DuPage County Judge John J. Nelligan, prosecutors said he had confessed to three killings near Aurora. He was charged at first only in the Weber case, and bond was denied. Tenney was arrested the same week and charged in the Oberweis murder, and a Kane County judge denied him bail.
Officials at first would not confirm that Lippert had also admitted the Johannessen killing. Kane County State's Attorney David Akemann said any new information would go to L.L.'s lawyers. By May 24, the Daily Herald reported, Lippert and Tenney were said to have told investigators that they alone were responsible for Johannessen's death, and Lippert's statement had been recorded on tape.
Other evidence came from Tenney's own family. On May 8, 1995, his uncle went to the sheriff's department, worried that he could be charged with holding stolen property. After he was assured he would not be, he produced a box and led officers to storage lockers. A box marked "Ed" held items that Johannessen's daughters identified as their mother's, including jewelry and her 1934 class ring. Another cousin, Donald Lippert's brother, said Tenney had talked to him about the Johannessen killing in January 1993. He had denied knowing anything when questioned in August 1994, because, he said, Tenney had threatened his life.
On May 24, 1995, a motion was filed in Kane County asking Judge Doyle to vacate L.L.'s conviction so that prosecutors could drop the charge. L.L. had spent about two months at Pontiac Correctional Center. Johannessen's nephew told the Daily Herald he was surprised; he remembered L.L. showing no reaction at his sentencing in March. Kane County First Assistant State's Attorney John Barsanti moved to vacate the conviction and dismiss the case, and Judge Doyle granted the motion. "It looks like we have a failure in the system," the judge said, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, which lists L.L. as exonerated in 1995. L.L. was shot and killed in 2012 while trying to protect his girlfriend from an armed man.
On May 26, 1995, Tenney was indicted for the Oberweis killing on one count of first-degree murder and two alternative counts of felony murder, based on home invasion and residential burglary. Lippert pleaded guilty and agreed to testify. The State reduced his charges in the Oberweis case and in other pending cases in exchange, and he understood that he would receive a total of 80 years for his crimes in Kane and DuPage counties.
The trial began in Kane County on October 6, 1997. Lippert was the main witness. He told the jury about his deal, his prior convictions and his addictions, and the jury was instructed to view an accomplice's testimony with suspicion. Other witnesses included a neighbor, sheriff's deputies, the pathologist and an Illinois State Police forensic scientist, who linked shell casings to two pistols, one of which police had taken from Tenney when they arrested him on an unrelated warrant. Tenney presented no evidence. On October 17, 1997, the jury found him guilty on all three counts.
The judge, sitting without a jury at Tenney's request for sentencing, found him eligible for the death penalty in November 1997. In May 1999 the State withdrew its request for death, conceding that it had not proved the eligibility factor beyond a reasonable doubt. On June 17, 1999, Judge Donald Hudson merged the counts and sentenced Tenney to natural life in prison, finding that the crime was exceptionally brutal and showed wanton cruelty.
Tenney had been indicted on three counts of first-degree murder in the Johannessen case, and a jury found him fit to stand trial. The case was tried in Kane County in 1998, after the Oberweis conviction, on one count of knowing murder and one of felony murder based on residential burglary, with John Barsanti prosecuting.
Lippert was the central witness. Before he testified, the court held a hearing outside the jury's presence and found him competent. He said he remembered the night only vaguely; he had been drunk and on drugs, and he was a diabetic taking insulin. His account was that the two of them went to the house to rob the woman, that he lost his nerve and was told to keep watch outside, and that Tenney killed her. Lippert's brother testified that Tenney had described taking valuables and the car, and the uncle described the storage lockers. Seventeen latent fingerprints and some hairs taken from the house matched no one.
The defense argued that L.L. and his three friends were the killers. L.L. and his former girlfriend could not be found, though both sides searched for them, so her sworn testimony from L.L.'s trial was read to the jury in edited form. The judge cut the part in which she said L.L. had told her, about nine months after the killing, that he and two of the others had gone into the house and that one of them had fired the shot. A jail inmate repeated for the defense what he had told L.L.'s jury.
The jury found Tenney guilty. At the eligibility stage it found three aggravating factors: conviction of more than one murder, a killing in the course of residential burglary, and a cold, calculated and premeditated killing. A second-stage jury found no mitigating circumstances sufficient to preclude death, and Tenney was sentenced to death.
On April 18, 2002, the Supreme Court of Illinois reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. Justice Freeman wrote for the court. L.L.'s statement, the court held, was against his own interest, was made spontaneously to a close acquaintance, and was corroborated by other evidence. The State had used the very same statement to convict L.L., and the court found it unjust to bar the defense from using it. "We must hold that the exclusion of L.L.'s hearsay statement denied defendant a fair trial," the opinion said. Because the statement was "critical to defendant's ability to present a complete defense," the error could not be treated as harmless.
The court found the evidence sufficient for a rational jury to convict, so a retrial did not violate double jeopardy, but it said plainly that "the evidence against defendant was not overwhelming." It noted that there was "little corroboration that defendant accompanied Donald to the victim's house," and that no fingerprints or hairs matched Tenney. It added that it had made no finding on his guilt that would bind a new jury. Chief Justice Harrison and Justice Kilbride wrote special concurrences giving further grounds for a new trial; Justice Thomas took no part.
Eleven days later, on April 29, 2002, the Second District Appellate Court ruled on the Oberweis case. It affirmed the conviction, holding that independent evidence, including the shell casings and the firearms match, supported Lippert's account. But it vacated the natural life sentence by a 2 to 1 vote, holding under the U.S. Supreme Court's Apprendi decision that the facts needed for a life term had to be found by a jury. The State appealed. In 2003 the Illinois Supreme Court sent the case back for reconsideration, and in 2004 the appellate court reinstated the life sentence, the Daily Herald reported. On October 4, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Tenney's petition for review.
In 2005 State's Attorney John Barsanti took the death penalty off the table for the Johannessen retrial, citing new standards for capital cases and his wish to reach trial sooner. Jury selection began on September 17, 2007, before Judge Hudson. Tenney, then 48, was defended by Herbert Hill of Aurora.
Lippert, now serving his sentence, did not want to testify. His lawyer reminded him that he was under subpoena and could have time added to his sentence. On the stand he was uncooperative, often said he could not recall, and at one point mixed up the killings. Prosecutors read his 1998 testimony and played a police recording of his 1995 statement, made when his memory was better. Johannessen's daughters identified the property from the storage locker. Hill argued that no fingerprint, footprint, shell casing or fiber placed Tenney at the scene and that Lippert could not be trusted. "He vacillates like a chameleon," Hill said. Tenney did not testify.
On September 27, 2007, after less than six hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty. The verdict carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole. "I felt that this case was strong," Barsanti said.
While Tenney awaited sentencing in the DuPage County jail in Wheaton, deputies found a large hole in the wall of his cell on December 26, 2007, the Daily Herald reported. He was charged with criminal damage to state-supported property and moved to a disciplinary section of the jail, and State's Attorney Joseph Birkett said further charges such as attempted escape were under review.
On January 3, 2008, Chief Judge Donald Hudson of the 16th Judicial Circuit sentenced Tenney to life in prison without parole. He first rejected Tenney's claim that his lawyer had been ineffective, saying Hill had represented him "more than vigorously and more than adequately" for about ten years. The judge called the killing a "glimpse into the very depths of human cruelty." Asked whether he wished to speak, Tenney shook his head and said, "It wouldn't do no good anyway." In March 2008 Hudson denied a motion to reconsider the sentence.
Lippert had been charged in the Weber killing in 1995, and Tenney later faced the same charge in DuPage County, where prosecutors said they would seek death. In March 2010, a DuPage County jury in Wheaton convicted Tenney of Weber's murder and, after about two hours of deliberation, returned a death sentence. Prosecutors described it as his third murder conviction. Lippert had testified against him in all three trials.
Tenney was one of 15 men on Illinois death row when Governor Pat Quinn signed the law abolishing the death penalty on March 9, 2011. Quinn commuted all 15 sentences to life in prison without parole.
Lippert pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 80 years in exchange for his testimony, according to the National Registry of Exonerations and most Daily Herald reports; one 2007 Daily Herald report gave the figure as 60 years. In 2008 the Daily Herald described him as 32 and serving 80 years as an accomplice in both Aurora Township killings.
The date of Jerry Weber's death is reported two ways. The Daily Herald in 1995 (April 16, 1992) and in January 2008 (April 1992) and the Kane County Chronicle in 2010 (1992) place it in 1992; several Daily Herald reports from 2007 and 2008 say April 1993. Virginia Johannessen's age is given as 74, 75 and 76 in different reports. The National Registry of Exonerations dates Lippert and Tenney's indictment in the Weber case to March 1996, after its own date for L.L.'s exoneration in May 1995; the 1995 press reports show the confession and the Oberweis charge came in May 1995. In its account of the Johannessen trial the Illinois Supreme Court described the Oberweis conviction as resting on accountability for Lippert's acts, while the appellate court summarized Lippert's testimony that Tenney himself fired. Lippert's sentence is reported as 80 years in most sources and 60 in one.
April 16, 1992: Jerry D. Weber, 24, shot and robbed in DuPage County near Aurora (date as given by prosecutors in 1995; some reports say April 1993).
January 2, 1993: Virginia Johannessen killed in Aurora Township; found by her brother three days later.
October 1, 1993: Mary Jill Oberweis, 56, her neighbor, killed in Aurora Township.
January 2, 1994: L.L. and three friends arrested in the Johannessen case; the three friends are acquitted later in 1994.
February 7, 1995: L.L. convicted of Johannessen's murder; sentenced to 60 years.
May 1995: Donald Lippert arrested and confesses; Tenney arrested and charged in the Oberweis murder.
May 24 to 28, 1995: motion filed and granted to vacate L.L.'s conviction.
May 26, 1995: Tenney indicted for the Oberweis murder.
October 17, 1997: Kane County jury convicts Tenney of murdering Oberweis.
1998: Kane County jury convicts Tenney of murdering Johannessen; death sentence.
June 17, 1999: natural life sentence in the Oberweis case after the State withdraws its request for death.
April 18, 2002: Illinois Supreme Court reverses the Johannessen conviction and death sentence and orders a new trial.
April 29, 2002: appellate court affirms the Oberweis conviction and vacates the life sentence.
2004: life sentence reinstated; October 4, 2004, U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
September 27, 2007: retrial jury convicts Tenney of Johannessen's murder.
December 26, 2007: hole found in his DuPage County jail cell wall.
January 3, 2008: life without parole for the Johannessen murder.
March 2010: DuPage County jury convicts Tenney of Weber's murder and sentences him to death.
March 9, 2011: Governor Pat Quinn abolishes the death penalty and commutes Tenney's sentence, with 14 others, to life without parole.