Reporter Karen Hansen has counted the murders that have taken place in central Illinois involving multiple family members. It is shocking, but not surprising, how involve dads and/or court-ordered visitation. These cases are highlighted in bold below. Still think that murders by dads with unsupervised visitation is just a "minor" issue?
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/article_447967ea-a826-11de-a7f6-001cc4c03286.html
Other family tragedies in Central Illinois
By Karen Hansen
Posted: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 4:45 am
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The Gee family homicide in Beason had the largest number of victims -- five -- from a single family slaying in recent Central Illinois memory. Other high-profile murder cases involving multiple family members include:
1976: Lloyd and Phyllis Schneider, 44 and 45, and their 17-year-old daughter, Terri, were stabbed to death in their rural Lincoln farmhouse. Michael Drabing, a 21-year-old house painter, was convicted of their murder and is serving three 75- to 100-year terms. Drabing committed the murders after seeing the movie "Helter Skelter," which details the 1969 Charles Manson-led slayings in California, and reading the book four times.
1983: Robert and Marcia Edwards were gunned down in their rural Pontiac home. Police have long suspected the couple's adopted son, Joseph Edwards, then 18, but he has vanished without a trace, despite the crime being featured five times on "America's Most Wanted."
1983: Susan Hendricks, 30, and her three children, Rebekah, 9, Grace, 7 and Benjamin, 5, were axed to death in the bedrooms of their east Bloomington home. A month later husband David Hendricks was charged with eight counts of murder. Hendricks was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but he was acquitted in a retrial in 1991. He now lives in the Orlando, Fla. area and runs an orthopedics company.
1995: Lincoln residents Keith and Lyla Cearlock, 61 and 59, were fatally shot in their home, and their 14-year-old grandson, Jon Morgan, was convicted of the crimes. Morgan, tried as an adult, admitted the killings, but said his grandparents physically and emotionally abused him during the nearly 10 years he lived with them. He is serving a 58-year sentence for first degree murder and a 17-year sentence for second-degree murder. A state appellate court reversed his conviction in 1999, but the Illinois Supreme Court reversed that ruling two years later. A Logan County judge denied another request for a new trial in 2005.
2002: Dwight youngsters Ashley Gleeson, 5, and Joshua Gleeson, 3, were shot and killed outside the Holland, Mich., home of their father, Patrick Gleeson. The 48-year-old Gleeson failed to return the children to their mother after a scheduled visitation, and three weeks later their bodies were recovered in the Des Plaines River near Channahon. Gleeson, who also was charged with killing his girlfriend, pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in Michigan and was sentenced to life in prison.
2003: Clinton children Christopher Hamm, 6, Austin Brown, 3, and Kyleigh Hamm, 23 months, drowned after a car belonging to their mother, Amanda Hamm, rolls down a Clinton Lake boat ramp and sank. Hamm's boyfriend, Maurice LaGrone - the car's driver - was convicted of murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Hamm was convicted of a lesser charge of child endangerment. She served about 19 months in prison before her release in August 2008.
2006: Katie Griffieth, 29, seven months pregnant and a mother of five, was stabbed to death in the Hallsville home she shared with her four other children. Her 8-year-old son, Kendall, also was killed. A rural Clinton man, Arthur Thomas Massey, pleaded guilty and is serving two life terms on the murder charges and 60 years in the death of the unborn child.
2007: Seneca residents Aloysius Twardowski, 84, and his wife, Catherine, 87, were beaten to death with a shovel during a burglary at their home. Another Seneca resident, Keith Mackowiak, 41, of Seneca faces trial on murder charges.
2008: Brothers Calvin Walls, 42, of Bloomington and his brother, David Walls, 40, of Jackson, Miss., were shot to death, and a third brother injured, in an argument among several people at the Bloomington apartment of Michael B. Brown. Brown, 31, received two life sentences for the deaths and a concurrent 30-year sentence for injuring brother Lavar Walls.
2009: Seven-year-old Jack Leichtenberg and his 9-year-old brother, Duncan, were found dead in the backseat of a car belonging to their father, Michael Connolly, in a remote area of Putnam County. Authorities believe Connolly, 40,of Bloomington, killed the boys and then committed suicide after failing to return the children to their mother following an unsupervised weekend visit.