Mark M. Strothmann, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Wilmington, quoting Mark 10:14. "So just say you did it." He planned to drive the kids to Chicago in the morning to catch Melissa at the finish line. A federal jury awarded Fox and his wife, Melissa, $15.5 million for false arrest and. The men, the family learned, were Will County detectives. ', "I started shaking and crying," she says. Kevin and Melissa have visited it many times, as they have Riley's grave in Wilmington's Oakwood Cemetery. But it slowly dawned on him that the whole thing-the supposed sympathy of the detectives, the "friendship" of "Scott," the seemingly cordial questioning-had been a ruse. . "No." Melissa, who was also told that Kevin had failed, demanded to see the results. Info: 773-581-9000. He took his friend and Melissas brother along while leaving the children in the care of Melissas mother. ", Shortly after the bond hearing, Tomczak, Will County Sheriff Paul Kaupas, and other authorities held a press conference outside the Wilmington police station. "You don't have much time," Hayes warned. Published by Chicago Sun-Times on Mar. Almost immediately after his arrest, Kevin and Melissa brought this multi-count, multi-party lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. Kevin Wayne Fox, 52, of Bunker Hill, WV, passed away December 18, 2020. During that town hall style session, Mayor Ben Dietz delivered a state of the city speech to the more than four dozen people in attendance, laying out . ", They were greeted at the door by Swearengen. Even if Kevin had accidentally hurt Riley, he would have tried to resuscitate her-he was certified in CPR. For all his initial trepidation, Kevin took to fatherhood in a way that surprised even his closest family. What about DNA testing? . "We need you to come to the police station," an officer told them. ", The people of Wilmington seemed to divide into two camps. Melissa was seen getting a fancy haircut at the mall. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Indeed, he had promised to press ahead with the death penalty. If you say it was an accident, it's involuntary manslaughter with a three to five year sentence. (Today, Fox's legal team says that the results were at best unreliable.) Glasgow seized on the charges, suggesting his opponent would be soft on crime. He immediately noticed that the front door and screen were ajar. ", Today, in recalling this part of the interrogation, Kevin weeps. Three miles away, a Wilmington police cruiser returned to Kevin and Melissa's house. Kevin is a producer and writer, known for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), The Negotiator (1998) and Lie to Me (2009). Read More Business Details. ), The detectives then took Kevin back to the interrogation room and resumed the questioning, according to the lawsuit. He would eventually become such a fixture that the family would refer to him simply as "Scott.". The girl appeared "lifeless," and Kevin thought she was dead. With the possibility of a trial, Zellner began to reinvestigate the case. She was three years old at the time of her death. "I hated leaving him there," Chad says. Why did Kevin call the nonemergency line instead of 911 the morning of Riley's disappearance? In one resolved in December 2001, she helped free three men who had falsely confessed to the 1986 murder and rape of a Rush University medical student named Lori Roscetti. Harder still was the family portrait with Riley in her princess dress and white satin slippers. To accommodate the expected crowds, Riley's viewing, five days after the murder, was held at the town's largest church, St. Rose Catholic. Zellner says she also was struck by the unwavering belief in Kevin's innocence by the family, particularly Melissa. I can help this kid if he acts now," the detective quoted the state's attorney as saying. He'd barely had time to grab a bite to eat all day. "And wondering, Why would they lie to me?" While his wife was in Chicago, Kevin, then 27, and the kids spent Saturday afternoon making posters in anticipation of celebrating Melissa's walk at the finish line, where they planned to meet her the next morning. For the briefest of moments, "they were making me question myself. "I felt like I had nothing to hide," he says, and he worried that hiring an attorney might make him look guilty. Panicking, he scooped her up and carried her to his car, retrieving some duct tape from the back. "They thought they had me convinced," she says. That night, before turning in, Chad peeked into the guest bedroom, where Kevin, Melissa, and Tyler had already crashed. At the time, it seemed like a happy though standard family portrait. The media played a role in this suspicion. Dressed in a tuxedo-dapper but slightly self-conscious-Kevin Fox took his place at the wedding altar inside Holy Name Cathedral, awestruck by the majesty that surrounded him: the light slanting through the stained glass windows, the arches soaring up to gilt ceilings, the bas-relief of Abraham offering to sacrifice his child. Select the best result to find their address, phone number, relatives, and public records. But this family's response-and I have to say when I met Kevin I understood-was that it isn't conceivable that someone like Kevin Fox could hurt anybody. "That night she asked me to her homecoming," Kevin recalls with a laugh. '", At this point, Melissa says, she knew something wasn't right. Chad Fox looked on the rumors as confirmation that Kevin-still not represented by a lawyer-was a suspect, perhaps the only suspect. He joined the network in 2014. I wanted to see if I could find anything in those pictures that would help me figure out for myself what had happened, who had done this to my baby. Some questioned why a reward had never been offered. Thus, he contacted the police on the non-emergency phone line (an action that would later raise suspicion against him). But if he felt out of place as the ceremony began, his discomfort melted at the sight of his two children now making their way down the aisle. "It's all right to say you did it." Find a suspect, any suspect, abd mail him/ her. "We were still young, so it was scary," Kevin says. You can tell me," she says. It is owned by American Spirit Media, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Gray Television, owner of NBC affiliate WECT (channel 6), for the provision of certain services. None was available. Yet, despite the overwhelming implication of guilt produced by the hearing, a number of troubling questions lurked within the prosecutor's case. They simply broke him down psychologically to a point where he believed that the only way he was going to get this nightmare to stop was to confess. "I'm not saying he shouldn't have been . He knew he was innocent, he says. The FBI would be returning the DNA evidence within a week, he said. Most of those who knew Kevin and the rest of the Fox family believed in his innocence. "If you saw one, generally the other was right behind," Curt Fox says. This time there were no cameras or tape recorders. She put her hand on Kevin's leg. ", Kevin began to pound the walls. She quickly became known around town as the precocious little girl who loved Dora the Explorer, the kind of child who insisted on picking out her own flower girl dress-only after plis and curtsies in front of a mirror. "We really tried to stay the course," he told reporters. the cops, the judge, the seeming confidence of the state's attorney, and, most of all, the confession. When Zellner told Chad, the older brother laid his head down on a table and wept. $271,900. Instead, going on a "gut feeling," he said, they "rolled bones" in the hope they could elicit a confession. The resident's face was blocked out, but the message clear: the anonymous source clearly spoke for most everyone in Wilmington, and most everyone in Wilmington believed Kevin Fox was guilty of murdering his daughter. "So when you send something to the lab, you monitor it," the Tribune quoted Glasgow as saying. Kevin knew virtually nothing about such statistics or the theories of interrogation techniques. Beyond that, she says, the details left several obvious questions unanswered. The aftershocks of his arrest, however, reverberate in the form of a lawsuit he and his wife have brought against Will County authorities. "I tagged around when we were in high school. He began having nightmares in which he would see Kevin strapped to a gurney, about to receive a lethal injection. We found 59 records for Kevin Fox in Wilmington, IL. One study suggests that, though rare, it happens. Zellner insists that there was exculpatory evidence-in the so-called rape kits with material taken from Riley. Maryland Man Arrested After Crashing Stolen Vehicle. Did he know his car had been spotted passing the Mobil station at four in the morning? According to court documents about the case, Kevin Fox's wife Melissa was in Chicago for a two-day breast cancer research walk and he had gone out on the evening of June 5, 2004, with his. While Chad talked about leaving for the big city, Kevin couldn't imagine living anywhere else. But as the summer wore on, they came to believe that the investigation was dragging. Why would a father with CPR training make no attempt to revive his daughter? A break in the case could well tip the scales. But the parents believed they had cooperated in every way possible, including providing DNA samples, consenting to searches, and answering questions. A Wilmington crime scene investigator arrived within minutes. It had all happened so quickly-had seemed to make so much sense in the moment. Later, when speaking about his experience after getting out of jail, he said, I still had people coming up to me and saying I was a child killer, child molester and threatening to shoot me and my dog. Melissa added to this by saying that people ceased to trust them, and children werent allowed to have sleepovers at their house. Kevin says he was incredulous. ), The exam began at just before one in the morning and took a little over an hour. Kevin, 20, was overwhelmed by the sudden turn of events, and the two broke up for a short period. Finally, Kevin claims in the suit, he was shown pictures of his dead daughter, her mouth still covered with duct tape, nude from the waist down, taken moments after she had been pulled from the creek. "I feel sad for the whole community that we were betrayed." The Kevin Fox they knew was a wonderful father, devoted to his wife and son and daughter. From 1997 to 1999, more than 50,000 children in the United States were abducted by persons other than family members, according to a 2002 study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. 79/63F. Pluth starts off with basic questions about where Tyler lives and what kind of sports he likes. Facebook gives people the power to share. I had never been treated like that before. The girl's body lay in a small polished white casket with stainless steel handles. As far as Glasgow knew, the little girl's rape kits had not contained sufficient genetic material to yield a usable profile. Some expressed bitter feelings of betrayal to reporters. By now, hundreds of townsfolk were clawing through brush and woods. In addition, Corke serves as a recurring guest-anchor on FOX News @ Night (weeknights . "Are you kidding me?" . . 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