A Kane County judge Thursday denied convicted killer Edward L. Tenney’s request for a change of venue for his scheduled Aug. 31 trial in the slaying of 76-year-old Virginia Johannessen, who was found fatally shot in her Aurora Township home in 1993.
During an hourlong hearing in the courtroom of Circuit Judge Donald C. Hudson, Tenney’s attorney, Herbert Hill, sought the change of venue. Hill cited extensive publicity surrounding the case in October 1997, when Tenney was convicted of killing Johannessen’s neighbor, Jill Oberweis.
Oberweis was slain in a similar attack about nine months after Johannessen was killed in January 1993.
Tenney and Don Lippert were arrested in May 1995 and charged with killing the women and Jerry Weber, 24, who was found dead on an Aurora roadside in April 1992.
Hudson said he did not believe the Kane jury pool would be tainted by the publicity in the Johannessen case, which he said has not received “saturation coverage” in recent months. He said that for the Oberweis trial, many prospective jurors from outside the Aurora area said they were not familiar with that case.