Dec 5, 2006 8:00 pm US/Central
Burger King Suspect Has Shocking Criminal Record
Prosecutor On Latest Murder: "I Wasn't Surprised, I Was Disgusted"
CBS 2's Mike Parker and Kristyn Hartman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
LINDENHURST, Ill. (CBS) ―
Shocking information has been brought forth about the criminal record of a man now charged with killing the manger of a Burger King in far north suburban Lindenhurst.
James Ealy, 42, is accused of strangling the 45-year-old Burger King manager Mary Hutchison last week. Authorities say Hutchison was killed during a robbery. Ealy, now of Lake Villa, had previously worked there.
But in 1982 when he was 17 years old, Ealy was convicted of strangling his neighbor and her two teen-age daughters and her 3-year-old grandson.
Court records show that Ealy was charged with strangling Kristina Parker, 33; her two daughters Mary Anne, 15; and Cora, 12; and Mary Anne's 3-year-old son, Jontae. The boy also was molested.
The attorney who prosecuted that case said Ealy was out on bond for the rape of a woman when officers tied him to the strangulation murders.
He was sentenced to life without parole for the murders. But the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction, saying Ealy was arrested without probable cause. It threw out virtually all of the evidence against him, including a 26-page confession.
"I was astounded when it was overturned -- honestly," said retired detective Vic Switski.
Switski was a young homicide detective in 1982 when he arrested Ealy. It took a jury just 40 minutes to find Ealy guilty and he was sentenced to life.
Questions concerning police procedure in the investigation were the basis for why the Appellate Court overturned Ealy's conviction.
Attorney Brian Telander prosecuted the 1982 strangulation case.
"I wasn't surprised, I was disgusted," Telander said. "We had always felt – by me, I mean the prosecutors, the judge, the entire state's attorney's offce -- that he was an extremely dangerous person."
Telander said evidence and a confession led to an early conviction, but the appellate ruling prompted unusual action from the original trial judge in the case.
"I have no second thoughts or no regrets on anything I had done during that investigation. And I know in my heart of hearts that we acted judiciously," Switski said.
Cook County Criminal Court Judge Thomas Maloney said there was "an avalanche" of evidence against Ealy in the four strangulation deaths, but the appeals court "removed the avalanche and there can be no retrial."
"When this dangerous man is released from the penitentiary, the state should rent every billboard in the county and state to announce that he has been turned loose," Maloney said at the time.
R. Eugene Pincham was one of the justices on the Appellate Court at the time. He said, "I have no recollection of the case, but we don't predicate a decision on what a defendant may do in the future."
Pincham says the ruling was one of law, pure and simple. The judge in the original murder trial, Thomas Maloney, condemned the Appellate Court for letting "this monster loose."
As to his employment at the Burger King where he is charged with killing Hutchison, franchise representatives confirmed that Ealy falsified his application.
Hutchison's family held a news conference Tuesday evening.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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