From death row to freedom: Inmate N72890

State Journal-Register (Ill.) August 29, 2004
Randy Steidl walked out of the Danville Correctional Center a free man May 28 after spending 17 years in prison, 12 of them on death row, for a gruesome double murder that left a newlywed Paris, Ill., couple dead and their families grieving.

On the day of his release, Steidl was restless. He was up at 2 a.m., back in bed at 3, then up again at 5 to start his day. He ate breakfast, changed into a white golf shirt and tan pants, and packed his belongings - a television, a radio and a few items of clothing.

"I carried it all out in one box. It's not much after 17 years," he said.

A female guard stopped him and asked for his ID number.

"N72890," he answered.

He was led through several doorways and out into the prison lobby, where his friends and family were waiting with open arms and tear-streaked faces. He was given $23.93 to start his new life.

Officially, Steidl still is a suspect in the case. The Illinois State Police continue to investigate the 1986 stabbing deaths of Dyke and Karen Rhoads.

But Steidl's attorneys, the Northwestern University Center on Wrongful Convictions, his family and others believe he spent 6,305 days in prison he never should have.

Paris, population approximately 9,000, is about 10 miles west of the Indiana border and 40 miles south of Danville. It's the kind of place where everyone has either grown up next door to - or gone to school, church or work - with everyone else. People run into each other all the time at the grocery store or church, even when they don't want to.

Paris is quiet and clean, almost the prototypical central Illinois community.

But it has a dark side, too.

On July 5, 1986, newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads had been out on the town for the evening. They were last seen at a local bar just before midnight.

At 4:30 a.m., their home was ablaze. As firefighters made their way through, they found the bodies of Dyke and Karen in their bedroom.

Firefighters also discovered the sheets were bloodstained and that the two likely didn't die in the fire but from what would later be determined to be more than 50 stab wounds.

The fire apparently had been set to cover up their murders.

Paris was shocked, and no one more so than the couple's families.

"I don't think we believed it. We were hesitant to believe that anyone would want to hurt them. As the week went on, we started to realize how true everything was," said Dyke's sister, Andrea Rhoads Trapp. "Who did it? Why? I think about Dyke and Karen every morning when I get up and every night when I go to bed."

Police investigating the murders got a variety of tips from people who knew the couple or thought they had seen or heard something odd.

They checked out a former boyfriend of Karen's. Friends said she was frightened by things she'd seen at work - guns and money being loaded into the trunk of a car at a business that did not deal with cash, as well as other things that made her suspect something illegal might be going on. Neighbors reported a Peeping Tom in the area, and others said they'd seen a suspicious, light-yellow car with Florida plates cruising town.

Karen's boss offered a $25,000 reward.

Police also heard that another Paris resident, a ne'er-do-well named Randy Steidl, then 35, had suggested that something shocking was going to happen the next few weeks.

Steidl was living in a one-bedroom apartment on Douglas Street, driving a 1977 Buick Special and working constructions jobs when they'd come up.

"I was no angel or choirboy by any means," Steidl recalled. "I used to drink quite a bit, been in barroom fights and things like that. I worked hard, and I played hard."

Steidl and Herb Whitlock hung out together often that summer, spending a lot of time in the taverns. A few days after the murders, police pulled the two men out of one, the Tap Room, to ask what they knew of the crime.

Steidl told authorities he didn't know anything; he said a woman had spent the night at his apartment the night the Rhoadses were killed.

"A couple hours later, they cut us loose," he said. "There were still people at the bar. The bar was nothing but a rumor mill anyway. So we spent eight months dealing with 'Steidl and Whitlock' and the repeating of the rumors, and it got bigger and bigger."

In September 1986, Steidl was again at the Tap Room when Darrell Herrington asked him to come outside and talk. Steidl said he didn't know why because the two didn't know each other well.

"He turned around halfway in the middle of the sidewalk and spun me around and pointed his finger at me and said, 'I saw you down there that night. You had blood all over you.' I said, 'What are you talking about? Darrell, you better get the hell away from me.'"

Police recorded the confrontation on videotape, Steidl later learned.

By that time, Whitlock had quit drinking and Steidl rarely saw him.

Steidl knew people were talking around town that the two had been involved in the murders, but police said nothing else to him about it until Feb. 19, 1987.

About 9 p.m., someone knocked on the frosted glass door of Steidl's apartment.

"Chuck Jones of the Paris Police Department," the officer outside said. "I need to talk to you."

Steidl opened the door. Several officers were waiting, guns drawn.

"All I could think of was them having come down to the tavern and about the town drunk accusing me of murder and that something was coming to a head real quick. ... It was just the beginning of a torturous ordeal," Steidl said.

He later learned that in the months since his July 1986 interview with police, Herrington and Deborah Rienbolt, another regular of the Paris bar scene, had both, on separate occasions, told police they had been at the Rhoadses' house the night of the murders and that Steidl and Whitlock were responsible.

Steidl's brother, Rory Steidl, was a trooper with the Illinois State Police. Rory got a call at home that night, telling him his brother had been arrested for murder. He went to the jail.

"He said, 'They have something on you. You have to know something,''' Randy Steidl recalled. "I was pleading my case with my own brother."

Steidl's mother hired an attorney - John Muller of Charleston - and paid him $15,000 up front. At the initial court hearing, Muller said he wanted the balance of his payment, another $17,000, in full.

"Right then and there, I got a bad feeling," Steidl said.

His family paid, and Muller immediately bought a brand-new Buick, the family learned.

It was a sign of things to come.

In Herrington and Rienbolt, police and prosecutors believed they had two eyewitnesses. Rienbolt said she'd seen Whitlock and Dyke Rhoads arguing over a small drug debt earlier the day of the murders, and she even turned over a knife she claimed was the murder weapon.

Prosecutors felt they had eyewitnesses, a motive and opportunity - three key elements for conviction.

The trial started a few months later.

Each morning, Randy Steidl's attorney would come to court carrying a briefcase. Inside, according to Steidl's family, were the morning newspaper and a pack of cigarettes.

The prosecution presented its case, with Herrington and Rienbolt as the star witnesses.

They were stars in another case, too.

Whitlock also was tried for the murders. On May 22, 1987, a jury found him guilty in Karen's death but not Dyke's. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he remains today. His attorneys continue to appeal his case, arguing that Whitlock was convicted using the same tainted evidence used to convict Steidl.

Herrington went to authorities on another matter in September 1986, police said, and, without prompting, told them, "Just don't ask me about the murders."

When they did, he said he was passed out in Steidl's car and awoke to hear a woman screaming, went to investigate and saw Steidl covered in blood. Steidl, he said, threatened to kill him if he ever said anything.

Rienbolt visited police, also without being asked, in mid-February 1987.

She confessed that she'd had a friend forge her signature at her job at a nursing home so she could go out the night of the murders. She said she drank, took some codeine pills and ended up at the Rhoadses, where she provided the knife used to commit the murders and even held Karen down while she was being stabbed. To prove she was there, she mentioned a broken lamp on the floor.

Steidl said his attorney never informed him of any of the evidence prosecutors had gathered prior to the trial. Instead, as each witness took the stand, Muller would give him their pretrial statements to read.

"I was trying to tug on his sleeve to tell him things were not right. I was telling him the names of people he needed to talk to to show that they were lying," Steidl recalled.

"By then, it was too late."

No physical evidence was ever presented to link Steidl or Whitlock to the murder scene. And the woman who spent the night of July 5 at Steidl's house testified he was there with her.

"It's like you're sitting at home watching television, but you're in the show. It's surreal," Steidl said.

It was a long day in July 1987 when Steidl sat by himself for nearly seven hours, waiting to see what the jurors would decide.

He entered the courtroom. It was silent. The verdict forms went from the jurors' hands to the bailiff's and on to the judge's.

Guilty.

"You just feel like someone just closed the door on your life," Steidl said. "The best way I can explain it: You're sitting there on hot coals, but you can't yell out. Everyone's looking at you. First thing, I looked back at my family and saw how bad it hurt my mother. The anger part comes back. I just shut down on my attorney except to ask how long an appeal would take."

The next day, the death penalty portion of the case began - much to Muller's surprise, he later told investigators. He thought he would have a week or two between the trial and the time the jury would decide whether to put Steidl to death.

But that's not the way it works in death penalty cases in Illinois. The death penalty decision takes place immediately after the trial.

The next day, sheriff's deputies brought Steidl to the courthouse in handcuffs. The judge, Muller, Edgar County State's Attorney Mike McFatridge and Steidl, who had been uncuffed, sat at a card table in the judge's office to discuss the instructions the jury would get to determine whether Steidl was eligible for the death penalty.

The hearing took about five minutes. As they stood to leave, Steidl looked at McFatridge and punched him.

"I just did it. I didn't really remember hitting him until later," he said. "I'd like to think it's a sure sign of my innocence, but I'm sure you could find 100 prosecutors who would say, 'See, I told you he was bad.' And that's exactly what he said to the jury."

Into the courtroom they filed so McFatridge could present to the jury the reasons Steidl should be executed. Normally, the defense would present witnesses such as friends or family to attest to the kind of person the defendant is, present medical records or other reasons his life should be spared. Muller offered nothing, court records indicate.

The proceedings were over in an hour.

"I joked for years that there were guys on death row who got there for free. It cost me $32,000," Steidl said.

"Anybody who says prison isn't a very frightening experience would either be lying or a fool," Steidl said as he remembered being booked into death row at the Pontiac Correctional Center.

"It was quite an experience those first few weeks knowing when they shut that door that you're in a cage 23 hours a day, and when you wake up, you know the state wants to kill you and there's nothing you can do about it."

The cage was an 8-by-4-foot cell that housed him and another prisoner. For one hour daily, they were allowed out to shower and to go to the yard. Noise was constant. He'd watch television 14 or 15 hours a day or read a book. There was no privacy.

He remembers, too well, asking God not to let him wake up the next morning.

"Then you get up and there's those bars again," he said.

Steidl saw the worst of human nature: lots of extortion, guys who couldn't read or write taken advantage of, discrimination of every race.

"Back then, there was so much stress, hostility, anger and rage among everyone that it was a very violent and dangerous place," he said. "It was gladiator school for real."

There was one thing that everyone had in common; no one discussed their case.

"Guys would look at you and say, 'I didn't do it.' I'd say, 'OK. I know how you feel. I didn't do it either. Nobody cares.' That's the problem."

On March 30, 1989, Steidl wasn't worrying about being put to death by the state. He was sure he was going to die another way.

About 2 p.m., he was taking a nap when he awoke to the smell of smoke that was thick, black and acrid. He put a wet towel over his face and got down on the floor. Two inmates had set some Styrofoam on fire.

"Everything got real quiet and very dark. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face," he recalled. "I heard cells being opened, but I didn't know where or who was doing it. I was taking very short breaths because at this point I only felt I had two or three minutes to live."

When he made it outside, he collapsed. The next thing he remembers is being given oxygen by a medical technician.

After six years at Pontiac, Steidl was moved to Menard in southern Illinois along the Mississippi River. The Flood of 1993 had swallowed the death row cell house, making the roach and rodent problems worse than ever.

"There was still mud caked on my bunk. At night, here come the roaches. Wake up at night and a roach was running across my face or the back of my neck. I slept with toilet paper shoved in my ears so I wouldn't have any go in. After the roaches subsided somewhat, a wave of mice came in."

There was also a pecking order, with four gangs in charge. A few inmates, including Steidl, didn't join any of them. Generally, they were left alone.

But there was one occasion, he said, where not going along almost cost him his life.

In May 1994, the gang-bangers on death row staged a protest by refusing to shower, eat or go to the yard - all because John Wayne Gacy was being put to death involuntarily.

Steidl went about his normal routine.

"I said, 'Look, I don't care if they execute John Wayne Gacy 33 times. Anyone who did what he did, I didn't care about. So I went to the yard. I ate. I showered. I did all the things they weren't, and it was more or less an affront to them."

On May 17, they sent a couple of their members to the yard when Steidl went out for exercise. They'd fashioned knives out of razors on toothbrushes.

The first cut was to his neck. Then they pushed him up to the fence and jabbed him on the left side. After what seemed like forever, he said, Steidl heard the guards' gunshots. The other inmates backed off.

He'd been stabbed seven times. The wounds took 36 stitches to close.

In the meantime, Steidl's case went through various appeals, getting shot down each time.

In 1997, though, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Steidl should get a second sentencing hearing because he was inadequately represented at the first one. This time, prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty, and in 1999, Steidl was released into the regular prison population and sent to Stateville prison in Joliet.

There, things were much different.

There was more freedom, and he was able to work his way into getting a prison job to earn some money.

Eventually, Steidl was sent to the Danville Correctional Center, a lot closer to home in Edgar County.

All the while in prison, he sat and waited, watched appeals in frustration and hoped that one day, people would realize he was innocent.

In 1991, the case was assigned to Michael Metnick of Springfield through the Capital Resource Center. He and his investigator, Bill Clutter, worked on it for years, as did other Springfield attorneys: Kathy Saltmarsh, John Hanlon and Peter Rotskoff.

The private investigation of his case intensified and with each new discovery, Steidl's case grew stronger and began to attract wider notice.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University and the school's investigative journalism students took on his case as did Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn and the CBS television program "48 Hours," among others.

Through those investigations, the original case appeared to develop holes.

In November 1988, more than a year after Steidl was convicted, Darrell Herrington recanted his testimony.

When Herrington initially went to police, private investigators learned, officers were suspicious of his story and state police even gave him a lie detector test to see if he was telling the truth. He failed. In his first statement, he'd told police that the perpetrators were "Jim" and "Ed."

It was only after Deborah Rienbolt came forward in February 1987, eight months after the double slaying, that police decided Herrington was a viable witness.

When Rienbolt came forward, investigators discovered, she gave police three separate descriptions of events that night.

At first, she told police that Whitlock told her he was going to get his "dream girl," Karen Rhoads. By the third statement, she told police that the murders were over a drug debt Dyke Rhoads owed to Whitlock and that she was actually there and participated in the murders.

Shortly before the trial, the prosecution had Rienbolt, an admitted alcoholic and drug addict, check into an alcohol rehabilitation facility.

Prosecutor McFatridge used a combination of all her stories in court. She ended up spending about two years in prison for concealment of a homicide, since she claimed to have witnessed the murders.

Rienbolt recanted her testimony in January 1989, while still in prison. She continued to change her story over the years. Investigators have since cast doubts upon her whereabouts the night of the murders and all her versions of what happened.

Rienbolt told Attorney General Lisa Madigan's investigator that McFatridge held her hand through about 10 mock trials in an attempt to solidify her testimony before the trial. In 2000, the CBS news show "48 Hours" reviewed the case through the eyes of some Northwestern University journalism students who spent months in Paris investigating the crime based on flaws in the timeline.

Among their discoveries was that a car with Florida license plates had purchased several containers of fuel at a gas local gas station just prior to the fire at the Rhoads' house and a woman in the neighborhood who had seen two strangers in a car from Florida hanging around near the house before the killings.

During the trial, Steidl's attorney, Muller, a father of eight, kept a gun in his motel room because someone in a yellow car with Florida plates had been following him each night and had shone their headlights into his window, he later told investigators.

The show cast some serious doubt on the case in the public eye.

The Illinois State Police was asked to reinvestigate. Lt. Michale Callahan of District 10 based in Pesotum was asked by then-Gov. George Ryan's chief of staff to do so and did. What he found was apparently very different from the original investigation. After Callahan made his findings known, he was moved out of the investigations division of that district. He has since filed a lawsuit.

In court documents filed in that suit, Callahan says there was a meeting with Ryan's chief of staff and high-ranking state police personnel in December 2002.

"In that meeting," according to court documents, "Callahan indicated that his investigation had provided him with strong reason to believe that both Steidl and Whitlock were in fact innocent and that they had not participated in the Rhoads' murders. Callahan further advised the high-ranking ISP personnel that there was strong evidence to link another individual to the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Rhoads. This position conflicted with the conclusions of the previous official Illinois State Police investigation."

The lawsuit also states that Callahan learned that an Illinois State Police captain was allegedly engaged in unlawful activity by "deliberately impeding a criminal investigation."

Callahan's lawsuit asks a court to put him back in his regular duties and to compensate him for any economic loss.

Even with those findings, Steidl sat in prison. His biggest break was yet to come.

On June 17, 2003, U.S. Judge Michael McCuskey ruled that Randy Steidl should either be released or retried within 120 days based on his own review of the case.

In his ruling, McCuskey said that "acquittal was reasonably probable if the jury had heard all of the evidence" and that Steidl's attorney, John Muller, did not properly defend Steidl because he didn't seek out any evidence to prove his innocence. Muller died in the 1990s.

"I'm the first person to solely examine the record on the ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim," McCuskey said recently of his decision.

"Something I think people miss is that I did not rule on whether or not he was guilty. I ruled that he was entitled to a new trial and his release comes about because the prosecution decided not to retry him. I did not release him from prison. In my mind, he was going to be retried."

After McCuskey's ruling, the case was turned over to Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office. Madigan assigned investigators who fashioned a "war room" on the case, thoroughly reviewing the evidence. Her office also met with the victims' families.

"The case was weak, especially in today's society and today's technology," said Andrea Rhoads Trapp, Dyke's sister. "We met with the attorney general who took the time to come and meet with us face to face. My entire family was impressed because they took that time. We do believe they did a very thorough investigation."

In the end, Madigan decided not to appeal McCuskey's decision and the Illinois Appellate Prosecutor's Office said 120 days was not enough time to prepare for trial.

"Our action is in no way a declaration of Steidl's innocence," a statement from David Rands of the appellate prosecutor's office read after the final decision was made to release Steidl at the end of May.

"We are continuing to investigate this case and the action taken today does not preclude charges against Steidl in the future. There is no statute of limitations on murder and Randy Steidl remains a suspect in this case."

Michael Metnick, a Springfield attorney who represents Steidl, said he doesn't believe the appellate prosecutor's office didn't have enough time to put together the case.

"That's an absolute misstatement," he said. "They had all the materials in the case for four years."

Rands said last week he can honestly say that he has only had the case since April and that it was not enough time to prepare the case for trial. Up to that point, attorneys in his office had been reviewing the case for different reasons and had not considered a trial.

"It's different than setting up a case to try it."

Steidl said he was upset by being characterized as a suspect because he believes prosecutors tried to put a cloud over his head as he walked out the door.

"They didn't succeed. I welcome a new trial if that's what they want. I have nothing to hide.''

I'll get up on their witness stand for another two or three hours, or however long they want me, and answer any questions they have to ask."

Rands said last week that Illinois State Police are investigating the case.

McFatridge, the prosecutor of the original case, said he believes the original jury reached the correct verdict.

"Steidl says he wants to be retried. I hope there is a retrial as do many people in Edgar County. If he wants to be retried, I'd like to see a retrial, too. That's one thing we can agree on," McFatridge said.

"There was motive, opportunity and two eye witnesses. I agreed with those two juries' verdicts."

Metnick, one of Steidl's attorneys, characterized McFatridge's comments as "the standard prosecutorial line. ... I have great faith and great confidence in the jury system but when the jury is only given a portion of the evidence, the jury is not going to make the correct decision."

It took nearly a year after McCuskey's June 2003 ruling for the doors to the prison to actually open. In that time, Steidl waited, anxiously, with little sleep for months wondering when, or if, the day would come. In that time, he married a longtime friend, Patty, dreamed of eating a steak dinner with "a real nice salad" and worried what he would do if he did get out.

"Every day feels like a week and every week feels like a month," he said in early May. "After all these years, you'd think I'd be used to doing the time. It's scary in a way to think they could open the door today and say 'get your stuff and get out of here.'"

The days passed slowly.

On the day of his release, they put him in the same gray holding cell where he'd married Patty nearly nine months earlier. There he sat from 8 a.m. until nearly lunchtime, waiting with two documentary filmmakers, a reporter and a photographer and a guard.

While he waited for escorts to take him out of the jail that sunny May day, the guard noted he was in seventh grade when Steidl went to prison.

"There's a long-standing joke among inmates. When you discuss your case, they'd say: 'Your parole officer hasn't even been born yet,'" Steidl laughed.

Prison officials came in and told him his attorneys were there to have some final words with him before he left. He met with them and started to walk out of the holding cell and into the lobby where they met his mother, brother and wife, among others.

They said a family prayer, walked out to a crowd of media, gave a few statements and left to have that long-anticipated steak and salad dinner.

He was no longer "N72890." Now, he was Randy Steidl.

As the family's car drove away from the prison that Friday before Memorial Day, Steidl's brother Rory waved his arm in the air and said, "Let freedom ring!"