The Killer and Final Resolution

On a cold February night in two thousand five, a woman in Chicago was sitting down for dinner when her phone rang. over and saw it was her mom, so she answered it, and her mom, who lived only a few blocks away, she seemed really upset about something And she told her daughter that she needed to come to her mother's house right now And the daughter was like Why What's going on? But her mom cut her off and said, No, you need to come here like right now. You need to run That's when the woman realized that the very thing her whole family had been so afraid of for so long. might have finally happened beforefore we get into today's story If you're a fan of the strange Dark and mysterious delivered in story format Th youve come to the right place because that's all we do. 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Well, there's actually a term for that. It's called inureanoia And if that sounds like something you're way too familiar with, you should really think about getting NJM insurance They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders likeike providing dedicated reps whose priority is you. And that means you'll find more peace of mind with them Relieve your insurania with NjM insurance by visiting njM. com for a quote today On the morning of february twenty eighth, two thousand five, a sixty four year old man named Michael Lefcow limped down the stairs inside of his home in Chicago, Illinois He'd injured his Achilles tendon playing tennis the week before, so now he had a cast in his leg, and he had to get around on crutches When Michael got into the kitchen, he saw his wife Joan making breakfast for the whole household, which included Michael, their teenage daughter, Meg, and Joan's elderly mother, Donna, who had been living with them for the past four or five months Michael said good morning to his wife, and then he hobbled his way through the kitchen. over to the dining room where Meg was finishing up her eggs And they chatted for a few minutes, and then the school bus honked outside, and Meg grabbed her backpack and raced past her dad on her way out the front door A few moments later, Joan walked into the dining room as well with a plate of food for Michael and a cup of orange juice thanked her and then he asked her What's on the docket for you today And he meant that literally because Joan was a federal judge. And you know, she had like a very heavy burden on her shoulders. She was routinely thrust into these cases where it was her job to make these just really difficult decisions, decisions that, you know sometimes were sort of in that gray area between, you know, is this the right moral decision was this the right legal decision? and it was really her job to err on the side of legal. And I mean, the reality was is she was a great judge, but sometimes her decisions would, you know, put her in danger. I mean, this was again a very heavy burden and it was something that Michael, being an attorney himself, definitely understood. He knew what it meant to be a judge. But you know, on this particular day, when Michael asked her what she was up to in court, it just sounded an awful lot like today was going to be very typical, sort of a run of the mill day for her, nothing too crazy, no big decisions looming. And so pretty soon, you know the two of them were just having their breakfast. and it was just a very relaxed morning. And at some point Michael told Joan that because of his injury, he actually was not going into the office today. He was going to be working from home And so pretty soon, they wrapped up their breakfast, they cleaned up and then before long Joan was Ready to go, She she grabbed her stuff and she said goodbye to her husband and then out the door she went, hopped in her car and drove off to court About half an hour later around nine AM Michael was getting ready to start a stay at the house when he saw Joan's mother, Donna, coming down the stairs Donna was eighty nine years old and needed two canes just to walk and she'd been hospitalized for sepsis the previous year. So since Joan and Michael had extra space in their home, they'd offered to let her stay with them so she wouldn't be alone. They could help her if they needed to And so Michael, despite being hurt himself, he immediately got up and hobbled over and helped Donna get down the last few steps, and then he led her back over to the dining room and helped her sit in her favorite chair And then after she was situated and she said that she didn't need anything else Michael thought, o, now I'm going to start my day And so he gathered up his things, and he headed downstairs into the basement where his home office was When Michael reached the bottom of the basement steps He hobbled his way down this hallway that led to a door. He opened the door up and inside was his home office And he went and he sat down at his desk and there was already some files on the desk that he needed to sift through. and so he picked them up and began lookingooking through the files, figuring out where he was going to start for the day And as he was sitting there, he thought he heard something in the closet, the utility closet that was in the home office that he was in door to the utility closet was shot And he just sat there and he listened and again, he heard what sounded like rustling or something inside of this closet. And so he thought, you know, maybe it's the furnace that's you know, working extra hard right now. Mbe it's making some weird sounds or something. but For whatever reason, he's thinking there's something happening in this closet. I want to see what it is. And so he gets up and he hobbles his way over to the closet Right as he's hearing more rustling inside, he turns the doorknob and he opens up this closet. t five PM that night Michael's wife, Joan walked through the parking garage at the federal courthouse and got into her car. She was feeling a bit unsettled Be she had called Michael a couple of times that afternoon, but there had been no answer And this was just really unlike him In fact, this was so unusual that Joan had actually gotten in touch with her daughter, Meg after the school day ended and asked her, you know, have you been in touch with dad? And Meg said that she hadn't, but she had gone home after school and she had grab some work cut clothes in the house before leaving again And she said when she was in the house, she had not seen her dad or, you know, Joan's mom, so her grandmother, Donna She said the house was quiet and I just assumed that dad and grandma were asleep upstairs or something. It took Joan about half an hour to drive home, and when she pulled into the driveway around five thirty that night, it was getting dark She pulls into a driveway, she gets out. She's still pretty anxious because she just hasn't heard from Michael or her mom at this point. and she goes up to the front door, she unlocks it, she steps inside, and right away she calls out for Michael There's no answer. She calls out for her mom. There's no answer And so she walks around the first floor Again, no sign of any issues here. Her husband and her mom are not around. She eventually makes her way upstairs, hoping to find them asleep in their beds, but she gets up there and She checks the bedrooms and all the rooms upstairs and there's no one up there. And so the only place left to look in the house was the basement. At this hour, it just made no sense that Michael or her mom would be in the basement. And so eventually, you know, even though she felt really uneasy back to the first floor, she went to the doorway that led down to the stairs into the basement and she reat She turned on the lights inside of the stairwell down to the basement and she called out for Michael and her mom, but still no answer And then down the stairs she went When she got to the base of the stairs She looked down that hallway that led to Michael's office. and she saw first there was nothing. She didn't see anything, but On the floor right outside of Michael's office, she saw what looked like blood on the ground this point, she panicked. She ran down the hallway. She's screaming for Michael. She grabs the door handle. She opens it up And it's like everything she saw in there was so shocking. It was like her brain couldn't process it. And she just shut the door right away. Like she couldn't handle what she had just seen later, she' had bolted back upstairs and called nine eleven In the late evening of february twenty eighth, two thousand five, spepecial agent Douglas Secom of the Chicago FBI offffice ducked under the crime scene tape around the Lefcow family's home So about thirty minutes earlier, the nine hundred eleven call had come out of this home from Joan about what appeared to be a murder at this address. And since the caller, Joan, had identified herself as a federal judge The Chicago pololice had immediately called the FBI to take part in this investigation And so now, Special Agent Sekum flashed his badge to one of the uniformed officers who was standing outside right near the edge of the crime scene tape. and he asked them, where is Judge Joan Lefcow And the officer said that Judge Joan, along with her daughters, so not just Meg, her teenage daughter, but also Jones's three adult daughters, who no longer lived at home They had all been taken together to a safe house by the U. S. marshals. And so Sekum, after hearing this, stepped inside the house And he found a whole bunch of forensic teams already hard at work, sweeping every room for evidence And as he walked through the living room and the kitchen on the main floor He didn't see any signs of blood or a struggle of any kind, and he also saw that you know TV and other expensive looking electronics were still in place And so he didn't think this was a robbery gone wrong Secom eventually found his way to the stairs that led down into the basement, and so down he went, and he found there were a few officers and a crime scene photographer that were down there gathered around a door that was at the end of the hallway And so Sekum made his way down the hallway, he pushed past the group of people. And there inside of this home office, he saw two dead bodies There was a man who was lying face down and then right next to him was also an elderly woman who was lying face up And there was just a big pool of blood underneath both of them. Sekum immediately noticed that both the victims had fairly obvious gunshot wounds to their heads And then when he knelt down to get a better look, he also found shell casings scattered around on the floor. So he figured that very likely These two clearly have been shot, but more specifically They've been shot and killed in this room On the other side of this office Secum saw there was a closet and its doors were open, and it appeared to be a utility closet so seek him, he walked over and he He stepped inside and inside of it was this big furnace and then next to it on the ground He found there was a twelve pack of beer bottles, except one of the bottles was missing And so Sekum looked around inside the closet. He didn't see the twelfth bottle And then he turned around and looked back into the office. And as he's looking back into the office, he notices there's this window high up inside of the office and it actually was out to the ground floor because this is a basement, right? This is a window that leads to the the first floor of the house, if you will, And there's like a cutout Inside of the office, like a window sill, almost like a ledge that is part of this window, right? So you could actually place things on this window sill if you wanted to And he looked up into this window and he saw there was a single beer bottle sitting on that window sill on that ledge. And also he saw the window itself was shattered And so right away, Scom's thinking like, okay, did the killer leave behind this beer And if so Why? Like is this a message? Are they leaving the bottle here on purpose for us to find it? or is this a mistake? And so Secum, he called for a forensics officer to come over and bag this additional bottle, the the twelfth bottle and swab it for DNA and fingerprints in case you know, this was left by the killer And so the forensics officer, he placed this bottle inside of a plastic bag And then he asked Skum to leave the office and head upstairs for a minute so that he and his team spray the entire basement with a chemical called Lucorystal violet which can illuminate traces of blood that are not necessarily visible to the naked eye And so as Secum left the office and began making his way upstairs He began thinking about what he had just learned So you have a broken window leading into the home office where it appears the shooting took place And the fact that, you know, the window was broken does suggest that's how the killer or killers got in. And if that's the case, it likely means the killer or killers did not know The victims personally, you know, they didn't have a key to the house, for example, or they weren't going to be let in if they showed up at the front door. But then you have this weird beer bottle thing Like if the if the killer left behind beer in that utility closet and this extra beer bottle up on the ledge of the window That feels really sloppy. And so that's sort of at odds with the idea that this was like an intentional outsider coming to do this hit. And then he's also thinking like, you know, the elephant in the room here is that Joan, you know, judge Joan Lefcow. this is her husband and her mother. You know, was that intentional? Were they trying to sort of indirectly hurt Judge Joan? or was Judge Joan the target? Or was this coincidence? 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Balland Pod An hour later, while forensics teams were still searching the crime scene, Secum went out to canvas the neighborhood The chemical spray that the forensics team had sprayed in the basement after Skum had left had in fact, revealed additional traces of blood all over the basement hallway So it looked like at least one of the victims had actually been shot in the hallway and then moved into the office. And then the killer apparently had clean the hallway afterwards, but obviously this chemical had still revealed blood traces. And so Secumb thought to himself that if if the killer or killers stuck around to clean up after themselves It suggests that they went into this home with the intention of committing murder. It was just a matter of Why Was it Joan the target? Was it her loved ones Why did that happen Wh would want? to harm the left couse. And so Secum went down the street, knocking on doors and speaking to various neighbors trying to get a feel for, you know, what the left cows were like But you know, after speaking to many people on the block who tried to be very helpful, You know, Skum really hadn't learned much of anything. Like no one really had all that much to say But eventually, Sekum found his way to a church that was in the neighborhood and he knocked on the door. And a moment later, the pastor opened the door and Sekum explained that, you know, unfortunately, a double murder had taken place down the block And they were here investigating. And have you seen or heard anything unusual in the past you know, several hours pastor at first is just totally taken aback by what he's been told. He can't believe it Th then he's like, you know what? actuallyctually, yeah, something strange did happen earlier today Pastor said he had seen this red car just loitering nearby that had two men inside of it and they were apparently smoking and drinking cans of what appeared to be Coca Cola. but they just sort of didn't fit in with the neighborhood. Like the pastor didn't know who they were and it just It just seems sort of odd that they were here And so just considering what he's been told about this double murder He basically said, you know, you might want to look into who those guys were. And so Skum as the pastor, if he gotten a good enough look at these two men, to maybe be able to help their sketch artist come up with a composite sketch. And the pastor said, yeah, I think so. And so Sekum's like, okay, great, we're gonna do that. But also can you specifically point out where this car was, like outside so I can go look at the area. And the pastor, he pointed across the street and he said, you know, right over there. And so Sekum, he looks where the pastor is pointing, and sure enough He could see on the ground there were all these cigarette butts and clearly an empty coke can And so Skum called over a forensics team And they scooped this stuff up and they sent it off to be tested Later that same night, Secom sat down at a table at the safe house where Joan and her daughters were all staying Joan, she walked over and set a glass of water in front of him, and then she sat down across from him And Sechum thought Joan seemed surprisingly calm and composed considering her husband and her mother have just been brutally murdered, but he also could sense that underneath the surface of Joan's sort of calm affect, she seemed furious. And so Secum and Joan, they spoke a little bit about you know, this great tragedy and how awful this was. However, pretty quickly, Sekum just sort of got into asking pointed questions of Joan and Joan answered them. Sika asked Joan about the twelve pack of beer that was in the utility closet in the basement, and she told him it was left over from a party that they had thrown earlier that same week. And she said, she was the one who actually put those beers in the closet. And when she did, she said they were all unopened And this was great news for Scum and the investigation because that meant that the beer up on that windowsill in the basement almost certainly was handled by the killer or killers But still, the idea of somebody breaking into this house and stumbling across some beer in the closet and stopping to actually have a drink right in the middle of committing a double murder and then leaving the beer bottle behind It just felt like a really weird decision to make. And so Skum wondered if maybe there was something at play here literally prevented the killer from thinking clearly in the moment, like mental illness or maybe drug use So at this point, Sekum had already come to the conclusion that very likely, Donna, Joan's elderly mother, was not the intended target. She's eighty nine. She doesn't have any known enemies. She's not hurting anyone. like she's not a target here perhaps Michael, Joan's husband, could have been the target. After all, at one point he'd actually run for Cook County Judge a few years ago. and even though he had lost, entering politics was a sure fire way to make enemies, so it was possible he could have been the target and Donna was collateral damage, but most likely of all still was that Joan was the one being targeted Secum knew that as a federal judge, there could be literally hundreds of people holding very serious grudges against her. And so Secum told Joan that back at the command post, there was a team of detectives going through her entire docket and making a list of everyone who might have had a ruling that they were not happy with in the past few years Maybe to help speed things along, he asked Joan if she could think of anybody off the top of her head who might have been responsible for this? And Joan, sort of without hesitation, said, yeah, In fact, there were three cases that came to mind. The first case was about a guy named Sean Peters, who was the leader of a local gang Joan had given him a very lengthy prison sentence, and so she said any of his fellow gang members in theory could have come after her in retaliation. The second case she brought up was about this armed robber whose name was Richard Young And she said he just really scared her in the courtroom. Like he himself was just a very intimidating and sort of threatening person. And so he seemed capable of doing something like this And she said the third case was about Matthew Hale before she even got into the explanation, Sekim recognized the name becausecause at the time, Hale was one of the most notorious white supremacists in all of Illinois Six years earlier, one of his followers had committed this horrible shooting spree that left two people dead and nine others injured Joan said that Hle had actually targeted her a couple of years ago in the wake of this trademark dispute. church in Oregon with the same name as Hale's group had sued them, and Joan had actually enforced a ruling that forced Hale to change his group's name Joan said that just the year before Hale had actually been convicted of plotting to kill her over this issue Jones said he was still in prison for those charges, so Sekin realized he could not have pulled the trigger himself Clearly he had many followers who were willing to do things like this for him. The next day, so march first, Seekam sat down from notorious white supremacist Matthew Hale in a visiting room at the prison in Chicago where he was incarcerated. Hale was this very clean cut, very stern looking man in his mid thirties, and he didn't seem remotely rattled to be sitting across from an FBI agent who basically was insinuating that Hale was a potential suspect in a double homicide And so Secum told Hale about how Joan Le Cow's husband and her elderly mother had been brutally murdered inside of her home and in response, Hale just laughed He said that he and his followers had nothing to do with those murders. But, you know, this was more or less what Sekum had expected Hale to say, because Hale was actually still awaiting sentencing for having tried to kill Joan. So of course he's not going to admit here to arranging another murder. He's going to say no, I had nothing to do with it Secom told him that it really didn't matter if he denied this, because at this very moment, agents were seizing his phone and computer records And if he had said anything at all about Joan Lefcow and her family to any of his followers They would find out But Hle, he just sat back and smiled and continued to insist that he's like, look I really had nothing to do with this one. like nothing at all. you will find nothing. And Secum couldn't help but think that Hale seemed so calm and so confident that really deep down, he thought to himself Maybe he's telling the truth Later that same afternoon, Secum hunched over a desk in the corner of the Chicago pololice command post. At this point, the police, the FBI, and the US. marshals were all working on this case as part of a joint task force all the officers on the task force had moved their equipment into the police precinct so the investigation could be centralized. In a conference room to his left, Secom could see police officers comparing photos of Matthew Hale's followers to the composite sketches of the two men in the red car who the pastor had seen near the crime scene and at a desk to seekam's right. There was another FBI agent who was listening to a recording of a phone call that Hale had recently made to his mother FBI at this point was taping all of Haill's phone calls in case you said anything incriminating And meanwhile, other task force officers were sorting through this huge pile of letters that Hale had received in prison. However, after going through these letters, there was no mention of the left cows anywhere However, at some point, Sekum would join these other officers and continue to sort through all this mail in case something got missed as he was sorting through, you know, months worth of mail somethingomething actually did catch his attention For months, Hale had been exchanging letters with this woman whose name was Kathleen Robert Totzo Basically every other day they were speaking. And Hale did not write to anybody else nearly that often, not even his own family. So this woman was clearly very important On the surface, nothing in these letters between Hale and Kathleen was incriminating However, given the frequency of communication, Secum had to wonder if maybe these two could be talking in code. Like maybe they are talking about the left cals, but We just can't tell. 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Patio season is here and these deals won't last Head to wayayfair. com right now to get your outdoor space ready for way less. That's wAYfaR. com Wayfair every style, every home. The next evening, march second, two thousand five, Special agent Douglas Secom led a team of FBI agents up the driveway of a suburban home just outside of Chicago And as they made their way up the driveway, they saw the car parked there was read Just like the car, the pastor had seen outside the church that had been loitering near where Michael and Donna had been killed. Sekum made his way up to the front door and he knocked. And then a moment later, a woman answered And he said, Are you Kathleen Rober Totso And she said, yes And He said, OK, and held up a search warrant. And he said, We're here to search your house Secum stayed outside with Kathleen while the other agents went inside and swept the whole house. And Kathleen seemed really annoyed by this whole thing. definitely not that surprised. And so while the team was searching the home, Secom turned to Kathleen and asked her about her relationship with Matthew Hale. And he also asked her if she agreed with his, you know, white supremacist views. And Kathleen admitted that, you know, she did have a relationship with Matthew But she corrected Scom and said, you know, I'm not a white supremacist I'm a white separatist. Seek himide and moved on to asking Kathleen about her whereabouts on the day of Michael and Donna's murders. Kathleen insisted that she had nothing to do with that. She gave Sekum her alibi for the whole day of february twenty eighth While Secom was writing down the details on his notepad, The other agents came back out of the house, carrying a computer. When Kathleen began complaining that she needed that computer for her work, Sekam told her that they'd return it as soon as they searched it And then before S can put his noteepad away, He looked down to the driveway and he looked at Kathleen's red car. and he remembered that he actually hadn't written down the license plate or the make or the model. But as he's looking at this car He's realizing that there's no way this car matched the description of the pastor's red car that he had seen loitering outside of the church. like this was Definitely not. the same car that was suspected of being involved in the murder Two days later, on the evening of Friday march fourth, so now four days after Michael and Donna were killed Special Agent Secom carried a cup of coffee into a meeting room with the other officers on the task force. he looked around the room and everybody just looked completely exhausted It would turn out Kathleen's alibi had checked out And her red car was definitely not the red car that had been spotted by the pastor And there had been nothing on a computer that they had taken to search So basically she was cleared. And so Skum and his fellow FBI agents over the past couple of days, this is right after Kathleen was cleared, they had gone ahead and expanded their search and began interviewing more and more of Matthew Hale's followers. And a lot of them were very confrontational and at least three people were detained for starting fights with the investigators. But one by one, their alibis began to check out, and so none of them were tied to Michael and Donna's murders, at least not yet Now, a lot of Hle's followers had criminal records, so Sekin was hoping that Maybe once fingerprint evidence came back from the crime lab, it would turn up a match. But deep down, realistically, Sekon was starting to doubt that anybody in Hale's Circle was behind this. Additionally, the task force had investigated that gang leader Joanad Bention, Sean Peters, as well as that armed robber, Richard Young And they both also had been cleared as suspects. And so now, you know, SCum couldn't help but feel like, you know, we're four days into this investigation, this pretty high profile investigation And it sort of seems like we really don't have much to show for it Now, it was the case that there were still dozens of other people on Joan's court docket that maybe could have wanted to kill her that Joan was not aware of. but You know, it was going to take time to keep sorting through all these people and right now they just They didn't have traction in any one direction. It was like everything was sort of becoming a dead end And so as Sekum is sitting in this room full of the other agents and they're all sort of at a loss for what to do next, he was thinking to himself, possible that we've all just sort of wrongfully jumped to conclusions. We all basically assumed that This attack was, you know, targeted at Jones But Skum's thinking to himself, he couldn't remember any other case where a judge's family was killed and not the judge themself Just then, Sekum's supervisor from the Chicago FBI office kicked off the meeting By announcing that the agency was putting up a fifty thousand dollars reward to the public for information on the murders. Now, the task force by this point had received over two hundred tips The supervisor said, like clearly, that wasn't enough. And so we're going to use this reward to try to entice people who might have been too afraid to come forward too come forward, we'll pay them. And so hopefully this leads to better tips The next Tuesday, so nine days after Michael and Donas's murders, Secom walked into the command post. The task force had been working all weekend, following up on hundreds and hundreds of calls that had come in since the reward money was announced It still didn't really seem like they were getting anywhere. And so Sekum, he sat down at his desk and he opened up a folder and he was about to get started when his cell phone rang And he answered it and it was the deputy director of the Crime Lab And so Secum's heart began to pound with anticipation as the deputy director told him that they had analyzed those fingerprints found on that beer bottle in the basement of the crime scene up in the window ledge. and after they had run it through the database, they had found basased on forensic evidence and a confession from the killer This is what police believe happened to Michael Lecow and Donna Humphrey on february twenty eighth, two thousand five At Around four thirty AM, while everybody in the left cow house was still asleep, the killers smashed through that basement window and climbed down into the basement, and with them was a gun plan was to hide in the utility closet all day and then once everybody inside the house cleared out, They would leave the utility closet, sneak upstairs And they would wait time was right, they would jump out ambush the person that they wanted to seek revenge on Things did not go according to plan