Tommy Degen was a likable Boy Scout, a mathematics buff and a poet, a computer nut even in the early days of PCs.
He was 14 when he was stabbed in the throat as he stood in line at a Waukegan McDonald’s.
Twenty years have passed since his parents received a call, just three days after Christmas, saying their only son had been slain in a random crime. On Wednesday, a Downstate judge is expected to decide whether the killer, Steven Palmer, 52, should be released from a Randolph County mental health facility.
“I know in my heart I’m not the only person in the world who’s lost a child,” said Thomas Degen Sr., who keeps in a closet the hiking boots his son received for Christmas in 1983 and wore the day he died.
“You have to go on,” Degen said. “But it eats at you little by little.”
Palmer’s trial affected even seasoned lawyers like Fred Foreman, who prosecuted the case in 1984 when he was Lake County state’s attorney.
“It’s one of those cases that in my 30 years of practicing law was very disturbing to me,” said Foreman, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois who is now in private practice. “It had a personal impact. It was an unprovoked attack against a young person.”
Most lawyers familiar with the case predict that Palmer will not be released. Yet even a hearing is difficult, family members say.
“Unfortunately … this is going to dredge up horrible memories,” said Lake County Public Defender David Brodsky, who handled Palmer’s case years ago.
The case also touches on the complexity of dealing with the mentally ill in the criminal justice system. Lake County and Randolph County prosecutors are working together on the case.
“A crime like this, although rare, is extremely shocking because this is just an innocent little boy,” Brodsky said. “Although it happened a long time ago, I’m sure his family has felt the pain of this thing every day.”
Tommy would have turned 15 in April 1984, the same month that Palmer, an unemployed Waukegan man, was found guilty but mentally ill in the teenager’s murder. Palmer was later sentenced to life in prison.
Changed on appeal
But the sentence changed through the appeals process. In 1987 the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the verdict, finding Palmer not guilty by reason of insanity.
The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that Palmer should not be committed to the state Department of Mental Health for more than 40 years, the statutory term for murder at the time. Because the law at the time required that half the sentence be served, Palmer became eligible for release after 20 years.
Doctors at the Chester Mental Health Center have petitioned to have him recommitted, said Michael Burke, assistant Randolph County state’s attorney.
“We believe he’s mentally ill and dangerous,” Burke said.
Palmer’s case highlights the controversy surrounding criminal laws regarding the mentally ill.
In 1981, two years before Tommy was killed, Illinois changed a law to include the “guilty but mentally ill” verdict, in part because of the mood after John Hinckley Jr.’s shooting of President Ronald Reagan. Across the nation, people were outraged when Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
But critics call the law meaningless.
“You are sentenced identically to someone who is [just] found `guilty,'” said Richard Kling, a Chicago-Kent College of Law professor and criminal defense attorney. “You serve the sentence [in most cases] without any mental health treatment.”
Palmer had a history of mental illness dating back to age 17, according to court records. In 1981 he was accused of threatening two people in a Waukegan restaurant with a hatchet, according to records.
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On Dec. 28, 1983, Palmer entered the McDonald’s restaurant at 1939 N. Lewis Ave., where Tommy was on his lunch break from a part-time job. Tommy, working for a family friend, hoped to earn money to buy parts for a computer he was tinkering with at home, said his mother, Pam Seveska.
According to police reports, 20 customers watched in horror as Palmer took Tommy by the neck, pushed him to a window and stabbed him in the neck and the back.
Tommy, a freshman at Warren Township High School in Gurnee, had been a Boy Scout, played basketball and loved fishing and physics. “He was a very deep thinker, very well-rounded,” said his mother.
She carries his picture in a locket. Tommy’s father still recites a poem that he wrote and that was etched on his gravestone.
“He would be 34 now,” said Degen, 53, a retired ironworker. But when he thinks of his son, “I see him at 14. The picture’s stuck.
“He was the last of the family name. The last Degen.”
Tommy, whose parents divorced when he was 9, lived with his mother and younger sister. After his murder, “it was very tough for us, having an empty place at the dinner table every night,” Seveska said.
`A lot of sleepless nights’
For Tommy’s father, the murder sparked a nightmare of mourning and rage. “I drank a lot. A lot of sleepless nights. It tore up my second marriage,” he said. “The rage, the anger just didn’t go away.”
Support groups helped both Seveska and Degen, but the loss remains.
“It’s my duty as a human being” to see that Palmer remains in custody, Degen said. “The system was wrong for not institutionalizing this person long before he committed murder.”
Before his conviction, Palmer successfully fought involuntary hospitalization three times but was sentenced to one year’s conditional discharge and ordered to seek treatment from the Lake County Mental Health Department, according to news reports.
Palmer is one of 10 mental health patients scheduled to appear before Judge William Schuwerk Jr. at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday in the Randolph County Courthouse.
A public defender in Randolph County assigned to represent Palmer declined to comment.
If committed, Palmer will have the right to another hearing in 90 days. If nothing changes, he may again appear in court 90 days after that. Then, if he still is committed to the facility, he will have hearings every 180 days, officials said.
“I can’t grieve as intensely as I did” after the murder, said Tommy’s mother. But this week, “You kind of re-live everything again.”