Saturday, January 12, 2013
Drew Peterson was in court last week trying to get a new trial, and there were a few other people with cases too.
Drew Peterson was brought into a courtroom packed with reporters and had a hearing to set the date for another hearing to see if he can have a do-over of his murder trial. That was the biggest thing going on at the Will County Courthouse last week, but it wasn't the only thing. Let's look at what else was going on in the week that was:
Friday, January 11, 2013
The Tinley Park man jailed for allegedly bashing his wife's head in with a weightlifting bar was arrested twice before on domestic battery charges.
A Tinley Park man jailed on murder charges for allegedly bashing his wife's head in with a weightlifting bar pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Friday. Bahaa Sam, 47, appeared before Judge Robert Livas via a closed circuit video feed from the Will County jail. Livas allowed the public defender's office to withdraw from the case so Palos Park attorney John Eannace could enter his appearance to represent Sam. An interpreter translated the proceedings into Arabic for Sam, who is being held in lieu of $5 million bond. Sam allegedly bludgeoned his wife, 38-year-old Nermeen Sam, to death Dec. 19, clubbing her in the head at least 10 times with a weightlifting bar. Police and paramedics went to Sam's house after a Tinley Park public works …
Thursday, January 10, 2013
A two-day hearing was set to determine whether wife-killer Drew Peterson will get another murder trial.
Drew Peterson's murder trial lasted 24 days. Now the wife-killer's looking forward to a two-day hearing to see if he gets to do the whole thing over again. Judge Edward Burmila scheduled the hearing for Feb. 19 and 20. If the judge decides after those two days not give Peterson a new hearing after all, Burmila said he will head straight to sentencing. Peterson, 59, faces up to 60 years in prison for the March 2004 murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Prosecutors have subpoenaed Peterson's second wife, Victoria Connolly, and one of his five sons, Eric Peterson, to testify against him at the sentencing hearing. Connolly has said Peterson threatened to kill her and make her death look like an accident. She also told of Drew Peterson …
Friday, January 4, 2013
The Frankfort lawyer charged with trying to hire a hitman to kill his wife got back a cool $2,500 so he can hire a lawyer.
A Will County judge is giving back the bond money he revoked from a Frankfort lawyer so he can hire an attorney to defend him against charges he tried to hire a hitman to kill his wife. The Frankfort lawyer, 50-year-old Robert Gold-Smith, had been out on bond after allegedly attacking his wife outside a Will County courtroom following a November 2010 divorce hearing. Gold-Smith allegedly beat his wife in a courthouse hallway in front of numerous witnesses. According to a psychiatrist's report, Gold-Smith said he "blacked out" during the attack. "I do not remember," he is quoted as saying in the report. "I was on a cloud watching everything; it seems so surreal. It seems as if I was in a dream. From the records it indicated that I hit her. …
Saturday, December 22, 2012
The case of a Tinley Park man who allegedly beat his wife to death with a weightlifting bar was just one of the thing's going on at the Will County Courthouse this week.
The Tinley Park man charged with beating his wife to death with a weightlifting bar had his bond set at $5 million. And if Bahaa Sam, 47, comes up with $500,000 cash he needs to secure his release, he must turn in both his American and Egyptian passports, Will County Judge Roger Rickmon ordered at Sam's bond hearing Thursday. Sam allegedly bludgeoned his wife with a weightlifting bar after they argued over his lack of employment. Sam's wife, 38-year-old Nermeen Gamal Sam, had bitten her husband's finger when he blocked her from leaving the house, police said. Sam then murdered his wife in front of their 4-year-old son, police and prosecutors said. But that wasn't the only thing going on at the Joliet courthouse, although it may have been …
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Quadruple-killer Christopher Vaughn getting sent to prison for the rest of his life was just one of the things going on at the Will County Courthouse this week.
Last week was a short one, with Thanksgiving Day and Thanksgiving Day II giving us a bit of a break from the courthouse. But we got right back to it Monday with the attorney for quadruple-killer Christopher Vaughn blaming the guilty verdict on Drew Peterson and Drew Peterson's lawyers, among other things. The judge didn't buy this line of reasoning and declined to call a do-over and hold a whole new trial. Then he slammed Vaughn with four life sentences. That was rough. But at least Vaughn got an early start at serving all that time, as the county packed him off to Stateville Correctional Center the very next day. But that's not all. Let's look at what else was going on down at the courthouse during the week that just ended:
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Thankfully, it was a short week.
It was a three-day week at the Will County Courthouse, so there wasn't a lot going on. It was nice while it lasted, because that's all going to change next week, starting with Monday's sentencing hearing for quadruple-killer Christopher Vaughn. Vaughn was convicted in September of murdering his wife, 34-year-old Kimberly Vaughn, and three children—Blake, 8, Cassandra, 11, and Abigayle, 12—in June 2007. Vaughn is going to get life in prison. But that's next week. In the week that just ended, we saw Coal City woman Tiffany Unland, 30, fail to convince a judge to further reduce her bond from $120,000 to $50,000. Unland already got it lowered once from $200,000. Unland allegedly killed a Palatine man in a drunken crash on Route 6 in Channahon …
Monday, November 19, 2012
The county and a private nursing company were also named in the suit filed by the attorney for an unidentified man with HIV.
A nurse working at the county jail told an inmate's brother he has HIV, causing him "great humiliation and mental anguish," according to a lawsuit filed in Will County court on Friday. The HIV-infected inmate's name was withheld in the lawsuit. The man's attorney, William R. Cassian, filed a petition to "proceed under (a) fictitious name" on the grounds that the suit "involves very private information that is so sensitive" it is protected by the state's HIV Disclosure Act. The petition says the man is older than 18 and lives in DuPage County. The lawsuit alleges the unidentified man was "confined in the detention center" on Nov. 18, 2011. According to jail records, of the 24 men locked up in the Will County Adult Detention Center on Nov. …
Sunday, July 29, 2012
“In all my relationships, I treated my partners like gold and spoiled them, which was probably a big mistake on my part,” Peterson wrote in one.
You can lock Drew Peterson up for years, but you can’t stop him from sweet-talking the ladies on the outside. Peterson, the 58-year-old former Bolingbrook cop, accused killer and serial marrier charged with murdering one wife and suspected by the Illinois State Police of having a hand in another's disappearance, sent love letters from jail to a 26-year-old DuPage County woman throughout the spring of 2010. “Hello my love,” Peterson wrote to the young woman in one of the letters recently given to Patch. “I really miss you and keep dreaming about holding you … “You still got my heart and I hope you still (have) mine.” The lovestruck Peterson’s letters, all written in pencil on lined notebook paper, depict visions of romance, freedom from the…
K.B.C.
10:56 am on Saturday, January 19, 2013
Did Bahaa Sam plead guilty or not guilty? Confused. Two different articles. two different pleas. more ›