Entrepreneur and former Will County Coroner Robert Tezak was sentenced Friday to serve almost 13 years in prison and pay $1.25 million in fines and restitution for arranging a fire in a bowling alley he owned and trying to silence witnesses in the case against him.
The punishment fell just short of the maximum that federal District Judge Wayne Andersen could have imposed on Tezak, 46, who sat impassively with his attorneys during the sentencing late Friday afternoon.
“I imagine there have been a worse pair of arsons, but these were horribly mean crimes,” Andersen told the court in explaining the sentence, which includes 5 years of probation.
Tezak, who was once prominent in Will County Republican politics, pleaded guilty Oct. 25, 1993, to charges that he arranged a 1987 fire that damaged a bowling alley he owned in Crest Hill and that he tried to arrange the killings of his former daughter-in-law and a co-defendant to prevent them from providing information against him.
He also admitted plotting a 1987 fire that destroyed the offices of the Will County Private Industry Council in a downtown Joliet building that he owned, but charges in that fire were dropped in exchange for his guilty pleas on the other charges.
Tezak said his motives in the Joliet fire were to collect insurance money and to frustrate a federal probe of political corruption in Will County by destroying records that the Internal Revenue Service had subpoenaed.
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On Friday, Tezak was sentenced to 5 years’ probation for conspiracy to commit arson, 9 years in prison for arson and 3 years and 10 months in prison for obstruction of justice, to be served consecutively. Each count also carries a $250,000 fine.
Andersen also ordered Tezak to pay about $500,000 in restitution.
After Andersen announced the sentence he planned to impose, Tezak’s three attorneys pleaded unsuccessfully to have it reduced.
“What ray of hope is there for this man 9 1/2 years from now?” said Dan Webb, a former federal prosecutor. “Nine-and-a-half years is a lifetime for this man.”
Marcia Shein, another of Tezak’s attorneys, said no decision had been made about whether Tezak would appeal.
Law enforcement officials praised the sentence, which was one year short of the maximum.
Dean Polales, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Tezak, said the sentence was an important warning to others.
“We’re very satisfied with Judge Andersen’s sentence,” said Polales. “He dispensed justice with mercy, and he sent a message to the community that the abuse of wealth and power will not be tolerated.”
Special Agent Jerry Singer of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which investigated the case, said, “These were serious crimes that created fear in the community, and the sentence recognized their severity.”
Tezak likely will serve 3 to 6 years of the prison term for arson, Polales said, and at least 85 percent of the 46 months for obstructing justice.
The government charged that even after Tezak’s guilty plea, he tried to silence witnesses.
Prosecutors accused Tezak of offering a cellmate at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago $1,000 as a down payment for a contract killing of his daughter-in-law and his co-defendant, Kenneth Floyd, who admitted setting the bowling alley fire, Singer said.
Friday’s sentencing marked a dismal end to the public life for the flamboyant Tezak, a onetime multimillionaire who made his fortune marketing the popular card game UNO.
He was once a force in Republican politics, often seen as a behind-the-scenes power broker who anointed candidates and bankrolled their campaigns.
Now, said his attorneys, his legal fees, combined with deferred taxes and poor investments, have virtually wiped out a personal fortune once estimated at more than $40 million.
The two radio stations he owns in Joliet are in receivership, and Tezak and his wife have declared personal bankruptcy.
A Joliet funeral director and embalmer, Tezak was the youngest coroner in the state when he was first elected to office in 1976 at the age of 28.
Some 11 years later, four days after the fire at the Private Industry Council, Tezak announced he would not seek re-election.
After a lengthy investigation, Tezak was indicted in September 1992 in connection with the bowling alley fire. According to court records, Tezak owned the building through a secret land trust and hired Floyd to torch it for $15,000.
But the fire did only minor damage, and Tezak allegedly asked Floyd to return the money because the job was botched.
Less than three months later, and almost five years to the day after fire at the Private Industry Council, Tezak was indicted for that crime.
And in September 1993, while he was free on bond after that indictment, he was jailed for threatening to kill his former daughter-in-law.
Afterward, his son’s former wife, Nikki Leber, told authorities that she had an eight-year love affair with her former father-in-law and that she frequently used cocaine with him, including on a number of occasions when he was out on bond.
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Tezak’s son had cooperated with investigators, and he admitted that his father warned Leber, through him, not to cooperate or she would “get a bullet.”
Although Tezak’s attorneys vigorously denied the allegations, he pleaded guilty to the charges of burning down the bowling alley and engineering the other fire.