A 72-year-old Lake Forest man is facing felony charges after allegedly threatening to kill three Lake County judges, authorities said Friday.
Herbert Gefvert, of 495 S. Green Bay Rd., spent 16 days in Lake County Jail–mostly in the infirmary, according to his wife, Virginia–until he was released Friday afternoon after posting $3,000 of a $30,000 bond.
Gefvert is accused of sending copies of a two-page letter to three judges saying that “if they did not read and consider his letter, they would die,” said Lake County Assistant State’s Atty. George Strickland, chief of the Felony Division.
Gefvert was unhappy with the outcome of a lawsuit against his brother over the estate of their parents, Henry and Ellen Gefvert, Strickland said. In his letter to the judges, Gefvert asked them to freeze some of the family assets.
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The judges who received the alleged threat were Terrence Brady, Emilio Santi and Bernard Drew.
But Gefvert’s overtures to the judges went awry when they gave his letter to Lake County sheriff’s police, who arrested Gefvert Sept. 24 and detained him on $2 million bond.
A Lake County grand jury indicted Gefvert Wednesday on a charge of threatening public officials, a Class 3 felony that carries a sentence of probation to 5 years in prison, Strickland said.
At Gefvert’s arraignment Friday morning, Lake County Judge John Goshgarian reduced the bond to $30,000, Strickland said. A trial date has been set for Nov. 4, he said.
“It was just a misunderstanding,” Gefvert’s wife said when contacted by telephone Friday evening. “He’s home, and it’s all done and over with.”
Gefvert’s wife declined to put Gefvert on the telephone and his attorney, Christopher Cronson, could not be reached for comment. But Virginia Gefvert said: “He shouldn’t have done it, of course, but it wasn’t any criminal thing. . . . He just wrote a silly letter to a judge.”
Virginia Gefvert described her husband as a former Rhodes scholar who holds 57 patents and “has never been in trouble in his life.”
“He’s horrified, and so am I,” she said.
Virginia Gefvert summarized her husband’s legal dispute with his brother this way: “His brother was getting more than his share, and (Herbert) couldn’t get anyone to listen.”
The brother’s name is not listed in the Criminal Court file, Strickland said.
According to Strickland, the three judges who received copies of the letter each had worked on the estate dispute in some manner.
Gefvert owns Technisound, an Antioch stereo-speaker manufacturer, where he works, his wife said.
Gefvert was “doing pretty well” Friday evening, his wife said, despite suffering from diabetes and other ailments.