Capt. Ronald Jackson, who at the time ran all south suburban criminal investigations for the sheriff`s department, ordered the exclusion of tips incriminating sheriff`s employees, according to James Houlihan, a 20-year sheriff`s police officer assigned to the case from the beginning.
”I felt uncomfortable with it,” Houlihan said. ”But if a boss wants that done, you do it.”
Jackson said the robbery allegations and other leads linking deputies to drug deals were ”all hearsay. This wasn`t stuff from interviews. I said we could not put this in reports unless we received documentation.”
In response to Jackson`s statement, Carl West, Houlihan`s partner, retorted: ”You can quote me on this: It was germane to the case. And these were interviews.”
O`Grady said Jackson never should have issued such an order.
”That information should be recorded and acted on,” he said. ”That`s poor police work, at best.”
In June, 1987, five months after Henderson`s murder, Jackson was promoted to captain, and Lt. John Ross took his place as head of investigations in southern Cook County. The move had nothing to do with the Henderson inquiry.
More Top Picks Best Winter Boots For Women
Immediately, West and Houlihan asked Ross for a private meeting to air their difficulties in the Henderson case.
At first, Ross demurred. ”I told them it doesn`t look right to come in and close the door,” he said. ”But they closed the door because they felt certain names were being mentioned, and they didn`t want it leaking out to certain investigators. They said they were uncomfortable with the
investigation because they were told not to document certain things.”
Ross said he told the two officers to explore any allegations that Henderson`s murder was tied to police corruption.
But as he freed them with one hand, he held them back with the other, according to persons familiar with the investigation. They said Ross ordered the investigators to stay away from at least one potential witness, a jail guard with detailed knowledge of Russell`s relationship with Henderson.
Ross denied giving that order but conceded in an interview, ”It`s kind of hard to be objective when these names are coming up.”
Whether Ross even should have overseen the case is questionable. He was the best man in Martin`s wedding and his partner for 14 years. And Martin`s relationship to Henderson was part of the investigation.
These ties are a conflict of interest that, according to normal police practice, would require him to step off.
Ross said he asked headquarters to take over the Henderson investigation in April, 1988. ”I felt it would look bad. . . . It was not department policy to investigate cases involving relatives or friends,” Ross said.
But other knowledgeable sources said Ross` superiors took the inquiry away from him.
Even after Ross was taken off, the homicide investigation was not pushed. Sheriff`s jail guard Michael Mitchem said investigators never followed up on his assertion that a drug dealer with ties to Henderson had been kidnaped by police in 1986 and held for a ransom that included drugs and money.
Mitchem said he described the incident to investigators in October, 1987, and even gave them the name of the dealer. At the same time, he told them that he himself had extensive knowledge of Henderson`s relationship to sheriff`s employees and of corruption among jail guards. They haven`t interviewed him since, he said.
”I know when they`re being diligent and when they`re not, and they`re not,” said Mitchem. ”If it was so important to find out who killed him, they would have. It would be more intense than what it is. We`re talking about official public corruption.”
Repeated efforts to interview Russell were unsuccessful. Martin said he barely knew Henderson and had nothing to do with any robberies.
Today, any hope of solving Henderson`s murder and clearing up the allegations of corruption by sheriff`s officers may hinge on a single incident, the alleged robbery of a drug dealer on July 12, 1986.
The drug dealer, who agreed to talk to The Tribune only if he was not identified, said Henderson telephoned him, asked to buy some drugs and suggested they meet at Benji`s, a Dixmoor bar frequented by sheriff`s officers. The dealer said that when he arrived, Henderson asked him to step outside.
Suddenly, he said, four or five men wearing suits swarmed around him, identified themselves as sheriff`s officers and took his money and drugs.
”They were just like bank robbers,” the dealer said. ”They were just frantic about it.”
The dealer, enraged, tried to reach Henderson, who was living with his aunt, according to Gloria Payne, a friend of Henderson who also lived there. Payne, a former jail guard, said the dealer complained to her: ”Dwayne set me up. They took an ounce of coke, money, a watch, a ring and gold chains.”
The dealer said he picked Russell and Martin out of a photo lineup presented by sheriff`s police more than a year ago, an account confirmed by sources in the sheriff`s office.
Martin says he was present at Benji`s bar, but he gives a different account.
Henderson lured the dealer to the bar, he said, so that Russell could arrest the dealer during a drug sale. By Martin`s account, Henderson left without making the drug buy.
Martin said Russell and other officers searched the dealer for drugs but found none.
Russell and another deputy then put the dealer in a car, saying they wanted to question him, and drove off, according to Martin, who said he then went back to sheriff`s headquarters in Maywood.
Neither Martin nor Russell ever filed a report, as required by department policy. Martin said it was Russell`s responsibility.
”I don`t believe he was robbed,” Martin said of the dealer. ”I`m almost definite about that.”
He said the current investigation is politically motivated, because both he and Russell were aligned with former Sheriff Elrod.
But he said Russell may have made matters worse when he told several investigators: ”Be careful. There are some important people involved in this.”
Late Friday afternoon, shortly after being told that The Tribune was to publish an article about the department`s inaction in the Henderson case, O`Grady announced that Martin and a sheriff`s jail official were being suspended for failing to file a police report on the incident at Benji`s.
William Currie, a spokesman for O`Grady, said the timing of the decision was coincidental to this article.
More Top Picks Best Folding Power Racks For Apartments
– – –
The corruption that has dominated the sheriff`s office did not begin with the Elrod or O`Grady administrations.
Through the 1950s, one scandal after another rocked the department;
motorists accused sheriff`s officers of shaking them down, and prostitution and gambling flourished in the unincorporated areas that made up the sheriff`s jurisdiction.
In 1963, attorney Richard Ogilvie, a future governor, was elected Cook County sheriff on a reform platform, pledging to establish professional standards. Ironically, he made one political move that unwittingly placed the sheriff`s office squarely in the corner of organized crime.
Ogilvie turned to the Chicago Police Department and tapped a hardworking political supporter for the sensitive job of chief investigator-Richard Cain. Cain, it turned out, was one of the most corrupt police officers in the history of the county.
One year after his appointment, he was fired after being implicated in the $240,000 burglary of a drug company warehouse. He was later convicted of using his badge to help plot the robbery of a suburban bank.
After his three-year prison term, Cain openly became chauffeur and adviser to legendary Chicago syndicate leader Sam Giancana. In December, 1973, two masked men gunned Cain down in a Near Northwest Side restaurant. The murder has never been solved.
Though Cain departed the sheriff`s department after only one year, his absence apparently did little to erode organized crime`s influence.
In vivid detail, Operation Safebet, an early 1980s FBI sting operation aimed at suburban vice activities, portrayed the sheriff`s department as the main protector of the vice lords who ran brothels and gambling parlors in unincorporated areas of the northwest suburbs. Ten sheriff`s police officers were convicted as a result of that operation.
The key corrupt figure was Lt. James Keating, who federal investigators said was Cain`s successor as organized crime`s link to the sheriff`s department. Keating, who joined the department in 1964, was an affable officer who for years postured to the media as a leading expert on organized crime, but secretly was controlled by the mob.
Keating`s conviction earlier this year of conspiring to murder Dianne Masters, wife of prominent suburban attorney Alan Masters, was the culmination of one of the more egregious police scandals to hit Chicago. During the trial, Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas Scorza said Keating tried to thwart the murder inquiry.
But Dianne Masters` killing was not the only murder case in which Keating became involved.
A Tribune investigation shows that Keating obstructed the inquiry of at least two other murders and suppressed evidence that police, prosecutors and judges had fixed dozens of criminal cases in Chicago and the suburbs.
An examination of Keating`s career and the power he wielded in the sheriff`s office is crucial to understanding why, while gangland killers have been repeatedly prosecuted in other cities, Chicago`s crime syndicate has dodged successful prosecution for an estimated 70 murders over the past 20 years.
Until he was dismissed in 1986, the same year he was convicted of taking payoffs to protect suburban vice operations, Keating ran the Criminal Intelligence Unit, an elite cadre of 10 officers who investigated major organized crime and drug rings, a glamorous assignment in a department where most officers are poorly trained and receive far less pay than city police.