Lake County announces new arrests in killings once linked to other men

Lake County announces new arrests in killings once linked to other men



By Dan Hinkel
Tribune reporter
4:06 p.m. CDT, May 15, 2012

Lake County prosecutors this afternoon announced new murder charges in two notorious slayings that had been attributed to other men until DNA pointed away from the suspects.

The announcement comes on the same day prosecutors dropped rape charges against a man whose case was also torpedoed by DNA evidence.

Prosecutors have charged Jorge Torrez, 23, with killing 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias in a Zion park in 2005. Jerry Hobbs, Laura’s father, spent five years in jail awaiting trial for the crime before semen evidence found in one girl’s body was matched to Torrez, according to court records, and Hobbs was released in August 2010. Hobbs had confessed to the crime, though he said his confession was coerced during nearly 24 hours of interrogation.

Torrez, once a close friend of Tobias’ brother, is currently serving five life sentences in prison for a separate series of brutal attacks on women in Virginia. He also faces federal murder charges in the 2009 killing of a 20-year-old Navy petty officer in her Virginia barracks, and federal authorities are seeking the death penalty.

In a second written statement released to the media simultaneously, prosecutors announced charges against 42-year-old Hezekiah Whitfield of Chicago in the 1994 bludgeoning death of 71-year-old Waukegan appliance store owner Fred Reckling. Whitfield was arrested this morning and a judge ordered him held on $3 million bail, according to the news release.

James Edwards was convicted of that crime in 1996 after he confessed. The case was recently called into question by blood evidence linking the crime to another man but Lake County had not named any alternate suspect until this afternoon. Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Waller personally helped to prosecute Edwards, who is now serving a life sentence at Menard Correctional Center.

Edwards is set for a hearing in Lake County on May 25. He is not expected to go free, however, because he has yet to begin serving a life sentence for a 1974 murder in Ohio, a crime to which he confessed at the time of his arrest in the Reckling case.

“I would anticipate…charges will be dismissed against James Edwards,” said Paul DeLuca, Edwards’ defense attorney. “Everyone who doubts false confessions exist, here is another example.”

On Tuesday morning, prosecutors dropped charges against 52-year-old Bennie Starks in the 1986 rape of a 69-year-old woman in Waukegan. Starks has been free on bond since 2006 when the appeals court ordered a new trial after DNA evidence was found to point away from him, but prosecutors had not announced whether they would retry him.

The three cases are especially noteworthy because, in each one, prosecutors continued to insist on the original suspect’s guilt after DNA evidence suggested his innocence.

Freelance reporter Ruth Fuller contributed.

dlhinkel@tribune.com


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-lake-county-announces-new-arrests-in-killings-of-laura-hobbs-and-krystal-tobias-as-well-as-fred-reckling-all-once-linked-to-other-men-20120515,0,5372500.story