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A well-financed plan to polish the public image of a
wealthy businessman suspected of involvement in a notorious double homicide
may have backfired this month when details of the scheme surfaced in a
civil lawsuit.
The businessman, who has generally been unnamed in
media reports, was once considered a “person of interest” in
the murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads, who were stabbed to death as they
slept in their Paris, Ill., home in 1986. Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock
were convicted of the crime, but both men were eventually freed due to a
lack of evidence. In May 2005, Steidl filed a federal lawsuit against the
city of Paris, Illinois State Police, and Edgar County, claiming those
entities had conspired to frame himself and Whitlock. In May 2006, the
businessman passed a polygraph administered by ISP.
Documents produced in Steidl’s case this month
show that the businessman had paid public relations consultant Daniel D.
Curry $8,000 per month to counteract “false rumors” and burnish
his image in the Paris community. Curry, a veteran journalist who spent 10
years at the Daily Herald prior to starting his own public relations firm, came up
with strategies ranging from a grassroots letter-writing campaign to an
elaborate proposal to hire Rick Reed — the man behind the Swift Boat
ads that torpedoed John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign — to
create a documentary.
“I’m quite proud of the work I did for my
client in this case, because he was being viciously and unfairly smeared in
the community,” Curry says. “I was able to help him fight back
against these false allegations.”
Curry’s defense of the Paris businessman
included offensive tactics meant to discredit key witnesses including David
Protess, the Northwestern University journalism professor whose students
investigated the Paris crime; Michale Callahan, the now-retired ISP
lieutenant whose efforts to reopen the murder investigation resulted in a
successful lawsuit against his superiors [see “Badge of honor”
Aug. 25, 2005]; as well as Steidl’s Springfield attorney Michael
Metnick and private investigator Bill Clutter.
Curry suggested “baiting” Callahan into
making public statements that would subject him to litigation, and hired
someone to record a speech the former cop gave at University of Illinois at
Springfield. Curry also monitored Callahan’s posts on an ISP-oriented
Web forum.
Curry consistently coordinated these efforts with the
businessman’s financial and legal “team” and with the
private lawyers hired to defend Paris, ISP and Edgar County. These
attorneys retained a private investigation firm Delorto, Mazzola &
Associates, and fed Curry information collected by those investigators.
E-mails and letters documenting these efforts were attached to
Steidl’s Aug. 7 motion for sanctions against the defendants.
Curry started working for the businessman around
April 2005, and advised the businessman to keep a list of supporters who
could be quoted by the media and encourage them to write letters to the
editor. At that point, Curry was on a one-month retainer, and so unfamiliar
with the issues that he had not even learned the proper spelling of the
dead couple’s name.
A month later, despite the meager results of his
strategizing (the businessman had garnered “a handful of positive
letters” published in the Paris paper, according to Curry’s
subsequent memo), the businessman offered Curry a six-month contract paying
him $8,000 per month plus expenses through November 2006. Since then, he
has worked for the businessman “sporadically,” on an as-needed
basis.
Some of the ideas Curry pitched the
businessman’s team were for public, official actions —
submitting a formal opposition to Steidl’s clemency petition then
pending before the Prisoner Review Board, filing a clemency petition asking
Gov. Rod Blagojevich to “clear [the businessman’s name] from
the false rumors,” and hiring a law firm to sue Callahan, none of
which ever happened. Curry also suggested a variety of behind-the-scenes
maneuvers, such as arranging private meetings with representatives of
Blagojevich and Attorney General Lisa Madigan, providing
“support” for the defense team in Steidl’s civil lawsuit,
and making efforts to “cultivate columnists” to report the
businessman’s perspective. Reporters who weren’t easily
cultivated were sent letters warning of legal action “if they
unfairly print/air sketchy rumors, innuendos that smear [the
businessman’s] reputation,” Curry advised.
The media outlet that concerned Curry most was CBS,
whose newsmagazine 48 Hours Mystery featured the Rhoads homicides three times. In a June 2005
email to 48 Hours producer
Douglas Longhini — as well as attorneys representing Paris, Edgar
County, and ISP — Curry warned that the network should expect a
“vigorous legal reaction” if the show implied that the Paris
businessman had any involvement in the Rhoads murders. “The real
story here is that those who want to set Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock
free are churning up a delusional subplot that is smearing a man with not
only a clean record but a remarkable one in the manufacturing world,”
Curry wrote.
Six months later, in an attempt to dissuade CBS from
running an update on the case, Curry sent Longhini and his superiors a copy
of a court pleading claiming that Northwestern professor Protess had
“framed an innocent man” to gain the exoneration of Anthony
Porter, who had been sent to Death Row and served 17 years in prison for a
shooting in a Chicago park. The “framed” man, Alstory Simon,
had confessed to the crime multiple times, but had recently changed his
mind, and filed a post-conviction petition asking for a new trial. In his
email to CBS, Curry wrote, “We know the attorneys filing the action,
and they are highly respected in the Chicago area legal
community.”
Representing Simon in this pleading were James Sotos
and Terry Ekl – who also happen to be the attorneys defending the
city of Paris and Edgar County, respectively, in Steidl’s lawsuit.
Taking the Alstory case marked a change for both attorneys. Ekl, a former
DuPage County prosecutor, managed Republican Joe Birkett’s campaign
for State’s Attorney. Sotos is the attorney for Jon Burge, the former
Chicago police lieutenant who led the violent crimes unit alleged to have
tortured approximately 200 suspects to gain confessions. The city of
Chicago recently paid $20 million to settle the claims of four of
Burge’s victims.
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Aug 14-20, 2008.
