Cicero town officials are trying to unravel how a private investigator with a criminal background ended up working for the town and how his private detective agency was paid about $300,000 in town funds over 14 months.
The firm, Federal Investigation Service, was hired in January 1997 to provide bodyguards for Cicero Town President Betty Loren-Maltese and to investigate members of the town’s own police force, who were suspected of violating its residency requirement.
What town officials did not know at the time was that the man they believed ran the agency, Eugene Kuhrmeier, had been convicted of battery in 1994 and had a weapons conviction 20 years earlier. And later, town officials found out that another man actually is the president of the corporation that held the private detective’s license.
Officials learned of Kuhrmeier’s criminal history last August when the man, who has used several aliases over the years, was arrested again, this time in Hinsdale, and charged with battery and unlawful use of a weapon. Those charges later were dismissed in DuPage County Court with the help of Cicero officials.
But despite learning about his background, Cicero officials kept Kuhrmeier on the payroll until March 1998, records show.
Last week, attempts to reach Kuhrmeier for comment were unsuccessful.
But Merrick Rayle, a town attorney, defended his decision to retain Kuhrmeier even after learning of his brushes with the law, saying Kuhrmeier’s work was reliable and inexpensive.
In April, the town’s newly appointed acting police superintendent resigned after disclosures of his personal and business dealings with a former Stone Park police officer who was convicted in a mob-operated marijuana operation.
Not only did Kurhmeier continue to work for Cicero after his arrest, but he also played a behind-the-scenes role in William Bacon landing a brief and embarrassing stint as police superintendent.
Rayle said it was Kuhrmeier who introduced town officials to Bacon. Bacon worked for the private detective agency in 1997, serving in Loren-Maltese’s security detail for six weeks during her campaign for re-election. Several months later, town officials tapped him to head internal affairs for the Cicero Police Department.
After Loren-Maltese dismissed police Supt. David Niebur in the wake of his public charges about towing irregularities in the town, she appointed Bacon to the post of acting police superintendent. But within seven days, Bacon was forced to step down after revelations of his relationship with former Stone Park police officer Richard Lantini, who was convicted in 1994 of helping to run a marijuana growing operation in Inverness.
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Rayle said he conducted a background check in late 1996 of Kuhrmeier that revealed no criminal cases and he urged the hiring of Kuhrmeier after two other attorneys, whom he would not name, recommended his work.
Rayle said his initial check on Kuhrmeier had failed to turn up any criminal cases against Kuhrmeier because he had been given the wrong Social Security number as well as a different birth date for Kuhrmeier. He declined to identify the person who provided him with the incorrect information.
Meanwhile, state officials knew of a 1974 conviction on a weapons charge and a 1987 arrest for battery when Kuhrmeier applied for his private detective license, according to state officials. But the conviction didn’t disqualify Kuhrmeier under state law from being licensed because officials have the option of disregarding certain crimes.
However, the state’s background check that was conducted missed a 1992 arrest and subsequent conviction for battery that could have resulted in a license denial. In addition, records show Kuhrmeier didn’t even obtain his personal private detective’s license until five months after he began working in Cicero.
“If he could pass muster of the (state) board, that was good enough for me,” Rayle said. “I exercised the highest diligence.”
Last August, Kuhrmeier was arrested in Hinsdale after police were called to his girlfriend’s apartment.
Court files show that Kuhrmeier had allegedly struck her child after he attempted to intervene in a fight between Kuhrmeier and the woman. A police search of his car found a .45-caliber pistol, and he was charged with unlawful use of a weapon and battery.
Both charges against Kuhrmeier were dismissed last December, records show.
Rayle agreed to testify on Kuhrmeier’s behalf and various documents were submitted to the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office to indicate that Kuhrmeier was working for Cicero and authorized to carry a gun, supporting Kuhrmeier’s defense that his possession of the gun was lawful, according to officials in the state’s attorney’s office.
Authorities said at the time of Kuhrmeier’s arrest that he wasn’t carrying any identification indicating he was working for Cicero in any official capacity. But in the ensuing court case, the defense offered an identification card indicating Kuhrmeier was a worker in the “special investigation division office of the president of the Town of Cicero.”
Although Rayle continues to vouch for Kuhrmeier’s performance, a spokesman for the town said last week that the private detective was dismissed earlier this spring because Loren-Maltese was “not satisfied with his work.”
The spokesman charged that no Cicero official had issued Kuhrmeier an identification card.
“The town never issued him any card or badge,” said spokesman David Donahue. “He made that on his own.”