MARK STEPHEN KELLER II

WHITE CO., Ill. - White County State's Attorney Denton Aud has announced a sentencing in his courtroom this morning...and it's the one of the three originally charged in regards to the burglary of the Hank and Donna Matz residence.

Mark S. Keller, 42, of Carmi, was charged with Residential Burglary, a Class X felony, back in August after he was arrested for being one of three to enter the Matz home while family was at the funeral of well-known Carmi businessman, Hank Matz, who died in a car crash the week prior.

For his part in the burglary, Keller will be serving a 17-year sentence in IDOC to be followed by three years mandatory supervised release.

MICHAEL BASSMEMIER

Charla Beth Sullivan

He was also ordered to pay restitution in the following amounts: $4,930 to Donna Matz, joint and several with Michael Bassemier and Charla Beth Sullivan; $43,804 to Donna Matz, joint and several with Bassemier; and $1,050 to Midwest Cash, joint and several with Charla Beth Sullivan.

Residential Burglary is ordinarily a Class 1 felony; however, White County was successful in having Matz sentenced as a "habitual offender" based on his prior criminal history, which allowed for him to be sentenced as a Class X felony.

"Mr. Keller committed not only a serious property offense but did so in a manner that disturbs even the most morally decadent sectors of society. Mark Keller did not merely steal jewelry and things; he stole from a widow and her family what should have been their opportunity to properly grieve the untimely loss of the family patriarch, Hank. Throughout this case, my office has been in constant communication with Donna Matz before ultimately arriving at this disposition; I pray that she and her family will finally be able to begin to grieve the loss of Hank. I would like to thank the White County Sheriff's Department and my staff for their amazing work on this case, as well as the efforts of Donna Matz, her son Joe, the rest of the Matz family and their friends, and the members of the community who stepped up and did the right thing by assisting in this case."

Dylan Gene Desper

WHITE CO., Ill. - A Carmi man was sentenced yesterday morning in White County Circuit Court on a count of Residential Burglary.

Dylan Gene Desper, 30, in exchange for a guilty plea to the Class 1 felony, received a sentence of 8 years IDOC to be followed by two years mandatory supervised release (parole).

Desper must also pay costs and restitution in the amount of $809.94, none of which has been paid.

He owes $2,036.76 in a 2015 case as well.

Desper was recommended to participate in the Impact Incarceration Program, known as "Boot Camp."

The Carmi Police Department was the agency that successfully investigated this case, according to press information received from the prosecutor's office.

Glenn Ramey’s mugshot from the Richland County Detention Center in Olney, which was taken very early in the morning November 27...but, he generally always looks like this.

Thanksgiving eve murder horrifies Olney, but who is to blame?

A series of systemic failures within Illinois agencies, a man whom some describe as pure, calculated evil, and unfortunate timing all combined on November 23 and the end result was one of the most horrific crimes ever to strike Richland County – the allegedly-brutal rape and subsequent murder of an 8-year-old child.

A multi-county convicted felon, Glenn Robert Ramey, 53 of Olney but originally from deep southern Illinois, is in custody, held on a million-dollar-cash bond and charged formally (as of press time) with two counts: a Class X felony charge of Predatory Criminal Sexual Assault of a Child, and a Class M felony charge of First Degree Murder. In these, it’s alleged that Ramey raped the child, Sabrina Stauffenberg, 8, of Olney, causing life-threatening injuries; then, it’s alleged that he suffocated her, causing her death.

Authorities state the crime occurred on Thanksgiving eve of this year, November 23, 2016, at some point in time between 4:30 and 7 p.m., when Sabrina’s body was found in a weedy area behind a building adjacent to the property of Legacy Trucking, located north across the street from Olney’s National Vinegar Company plant in the 200 block of West South Avenue. That area of town has been known for decades as “Goosenibble.” It’s near the railroad tracks…and literally only about a block and a half away from where Sabrina was last seen alive, in front of her own home on the 800 block of South Whittle.

In the wake of the child’s death, authorities scrambled to piece together how it came about and who was responsible. They landed on Ramey after DNA evidence, provided by a “rush” job at the state lab within about 48 hours after Sabrina’s body was found, allegedly linked him to the crime.

But there remained a number of unanswered questions even after Ramey’s arrest and formal charges, most of them having to do with why the man was on the streets to begin with, given his criminal history.

More importantly, the questions surrounding why his criminal history is devoid of actions taken by the law and the courts – and specifically, state agencies in place to prevent such a thing – remain unanswered.

Disclosure dug into Ramey’s history, as well as Sabrina Stauffenberg’s, and learned that at several points along the way, her death could have been prevented had there been a proverbial right turn instead of a left.

It appears the resultant failure of several state agencies to do what they’re tasked with doing – and what taxpayers are paying for them to do – may have been the major factor in this nightmare.

But Ramey, who has been painted out by those who’ve known him as a despicable character, bears the other part of the blame. His history tells the story.

WARNING: Some of this is graphic; some might offend

The graphic nature of this article cannot be understated. Unfortunately, much of the material to be published here is undeniably graphic. Further, terminology will be used that may offend some.

To wit: For the purposes of this article, and for the greater understanding of readers of all ages, it’s been determined that the terms “mentally deficient” or “intellectually disabled” must be used regarding many of those involved in this situation. This term is what has replaced the phrase commonly used for decades until recent years, when it came to be known as a derogatory term – mental retardation.

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders in previous years, mental retardation (MR) is a condition diagnosed before age 18, usually in infancy or prior to birth, that includes below-average general intellectual function, and a lack of the skills necessary for daily living. When onset occurs at age 18 or after, it is called dementia, which can coexist with an MR diagnosis.

The term “retardation,” however, has been so misused and abused in recent years that it’s no longer considered a “fair” word to describe a person’s mental/intellectual status.

Describing Glenn Ramey as “intellectually disabled,” however, very nearly inaccurately describes his functioning…and is almost unfair to Sabrina, who also was intellectually disabled.

According to several in Johnson County, Illinois, nearly every member of the family from which Ramey emerged is intellectually disabled.

His mother is Hannah Gillihand, formerly Ramey, formerly Palmer, age 72, now residing in rural Vienna. Hannah has become nationally known from the airing, back in early 2011, of A&E’s TV series, “Hoarders.” The “Hannah from Vienna” episode of the inexplicably popular reality show has been repeatedly called the “worst case of hoarding anyone involved in the show has ever seen.” The matter was drawn to the attention of the producers by one of Hannah’s daughters, and involved the fact that Hannah, living in rural Vienna in Johnson County at that time in a single-wide trailer, was actually living with chickens in the trailer, stacked in enclosures of some sort. There were about 200 chickens in the trailer, along with goats on the property, and every manner of filth.

Hannah the Chicken Hoarder

When Disclosure’s correspondent visited Hanna, she found a considerably more subdued woman than the character on the TV show, and no animals in the trailer (it wasn’t the same one she was living in when the episode was filmed), but the place was piled floor-to-ceiling with stuff. Fortunately, it didn’t smell. However, the chest in Hannah’s bedroom had phone numbers written on it in black marker. Her bedroom floor had several weak spots, and walking across it was hazardous; at least there was a clear path to walk, it’s just that the weak spots needed to be stepped over and avoided. Hannah actually had been stuck on the commode one of the two days Disclosure’s correspondent was there, and Hannah told her that if she hadn’t showed up when she had, “I would’ve had to call the paramedics.” There were few places to actually sit in order to conduct an interview.

Hannah Ramey/Palmer/Gillihand, 72, is Glenn R. Ramey’s mother. She resides in rural Vienna down in Johnson County, Illinois. Hannah gained notoriety - and the moniker “Hannah from Vienna” (the city’s name is pronounced Vi-ANN-nah) - after one of her children managed to get her a spot on A&E’s “Hoarders” series, wherein she had reporedtly 200 chickens living with her in her trailer at one point. The trailer Disclosure visited her in isn’t the same one as on the show...but it was a hoarding mess, nevertheless.

Hannah recounted the life she had had over the decades, starting with her first husband Robert Ramey and continuing with Everett Palmer (with whom, Hannah said, it turned out she wasn’t legally married) and then Gillihand (whom she met after corresponding with him from an Illinois Department of Corrections facility where Glenn Ramey happened to have been incarcerated).

Glenn Robert Ramey, born in 1963, was a problem child, to hear Hannah tell it.

“When your children are little they step on your feet; when they are grown they step on your heart,” she told Disclosure on November 29, the day Glenn Ramey first appeared in front of a judge in Richland County on the sex assault and murder charges.

Glenn, she said, was born in Massac County Hospital, one of the 10 living children of 16 Hannah birthed.

“Glenn has been picked on his entire life; I had to take him out of Head Start because they picked on and beat on him,” she said.

However, he was, she said, “no angel.”

“He wouldn’t mind,” Hannah said. So by the time he had reached age 8, he had to be placed in the former A.L. Bowen Children’s Center in Harrisburg, an establishment created for developmentally disabled children (or, as they were known in 1971, mentally retarded, which is how Glenn Ramey was classified at the time.) There are many horror stories to be told about that place. Many in downstate can remember hearing parents threatening their children that they would be “taken to the Bowen Center” if they didn’t behave. The center broke ground in 1963 and employed around 300 people, closing its doors in 1984 at which time most of the residents were placed in Anna or group homes. The building is now the Illinois Youth Center, known locally as “juvie prison,” and has its own level of horror stories in this incarnation.

Hannah said that Glenn Ramey has “grown up in the system” and has “spent his entire life drawing Supplemental Security Income” from Social Security. However, he has “worked odd jobs here and there to support himself and his family.” 

The emergence of children…and the rumors

Hannah noted that to the best of her knowledge, Ramey has nine children, the first being a boy born to a girl Ramey wasn’t married to; that child was put up for adoption, and Hannah said she couldn’t remember his name.

Ramey’s first wife was Patsy Pinckney from the Vienna area, said one of Hannah’s acquaintances, Donna. Donna told Disclosure that Ramey was older than she, but he “was always a weirdo.” She said she remembered seeing Ramey many times sitting on the side of the road with his old truck out of gas.

Hannah added to the story, stating that Glenn and Patsy were together several years; she bore two children by him; the elder on is Garrett, now 24; the younger is Stetson, now 14.

Neither woman would comment on the multiple reports of sexual abuse alleged against Ramey over the years as regards both boys, except for Hannah to say that all of it was “untrue” and that it was a series of rumors started by Ramey’s second wife, April Coil Ramey.

That, however, isn’t necessarily the end of it. At the time of Disclosure’s correspondent’s interviews with Hannah, Disclosure was researching other avenues of information regarding the two boys. Speaking on condition of anonymity, numerous family members advised that when one of the boys was very small (and it’s unclear which boy, so worried were these people confirming this that they didn’t wish to specify), he was sodomized (anal rape) by Ramey so repeatedly that he had to have reconstructive surgery to correct the damage to his anus and rectum.

These family members also confided that both boys were sexually abused, and stated that one of the two boys is so severely developmentally challenged that he has “about seven words to his vocabulary.” Because the boy was so deficient, there would be no way he could testify as to what was happening to him, a fact, they said, that Ramey was fully aware of and probably was counting on.

Hannah insisted on a couple of different versions of the story about the anal reconstruction surgery: That it “couldn’t have happened” because “Glenn wasn’t around when that was going on,” and that DCFS jumped in the middle of the case after they came to check on the family at one point and found one of the boys on the floor on a blanket, which, along with everything else in the house, was filthy and there was a dog next to the boy, and DCFS got upset over that.

Disclosure’s correspondent stopped short of asking if DCFS believed that the dog sodomized the boy and subsequently lead to the rumors.

Hannah did elaborate, however, that Ramey had told DCFS that the boy’s rectal/anal problems were because he was having terrible constipation and when the feces moved finally, it “tore up” his bottom.

Apparently, DCFS didn’t believe this, according to other relatives. The case was reportedly “founded” for an incident of sexual abuse.

DCFS, when contacted by Disclosure on November 30, 2016, stated they could not comment on that case.

There were no criminal charges ever filed.

However, there is a case on file dating back to 2012 in Massac County – where the boys now live with their maternal grandmother, Deena Witt, to whom the boys went after Patsy Ramey died a few years back – in which Garrett Robert Ramey, then 19, was charged with Criminal Sexual Abuse by Force (Illinois’ watered-down rendition of “rape”) and Unlawful Restraint, dating back to August of 2011. The two felonies against the young Ramey were dismissed by the state in March of 2013.

Frequently, boys who were victims of sexual abuse, without any kind of intervention to help them deal with it, themselves turn to sexually abusing others. That one of the boys is essentially non-verbal is a very foretelling thing into what Ramey would be accused of following the murder of Sabrina Stauffenberg.

Family dysfunction

Dysfunction characterizes Hannah Gillihand and her life – and the lives of many of her children – if nothing else does.

The rest of her interview was taken up with explaining how bad her own life was, having birthed so many children by two men, having lost six to death (some in infancy), and having to deal with the heartache her own children have caused for her, in particular, her daughter Rebecca.

According to Hannah, when Glenn Ramey was serving time in Big Muddy Correctional in Ina for a Forgery conviction out of Pope County, she had the opportunity to meet Richard Gillihand, who became her third husband after he got out of prison.

In 2012, Rebecca (who is commonly called Becky) had been kicked out of an aunt’s home (one of Hannah’s sisters), a statement which Hannah later found out was a lie. Becky subsequently “arrived at my house with a box of stuff and placed it on the sofa and went into the kitchen and jumped right in the straddle of Richard.”

Richard Gillihand divorced Hannah and married Becky.

They all lived together until September 2, 2016, when the newlywed Gillihands reportedly moved to a location in neighboring Pope County.

Hannah said Richard Gillihand has been back one time to “close a window on the trailer” for Hannah that she couldn’t get closed.

She hasn’t seen her own daughter Becky since.

Joey Hancock is one of Hannah’s neighbors. He told about Glenn Ramey mooching off people in order to get his truck filled up with gasoline.

Ramey the Mooch; local input

Hannah’s assessment of Glenn Ramey’s troubled life was substantiated by neighbors, current and former, who had interaction with him.

One neighbor, Joey Hancock, backed up Donna’s information about Ramey taking off with very little gas in his truck and running out of fuel. He added to it by noting that Ramey would then go from house to house along whatever route he was on, mooching gas from people.

“Many times,” Hancock said, “this was being done near shift change at the prisons” in the area, Shawnee Correctional Center and Vienna Correctional Center, “and he preyed on the correctional officers to help him.

“They finally got tired of it and refused to help.”

Hancock also substantiated the dysfunction asserted about Hannah, advising that she got in trouble for “letting people dump stuff at her home” and that some of that “stuff” was “from coon hunters who would throw the meat in the yard, and she would send the kids out to get it.”

But perhaps the former neighbors who were most impacted by the Ramey bunch – and in particular, Hannah and Glenn – were the Gibsons.

Sherry Gibson and her son James both were relatively harsh in their recollection of Hannah and Glenn, and with good reason: They were victims of repeated crimes committed by Glenn Ramey in Johnson County, the matter exacerbated by the presence of the family on their land.

Sherry Gibson said that all she was doing, back in 2004, was trying to be a Good Samaritan to the family, who seemed down on their luck with a lot of “issues” and in need of help. The Gibson family had a business during that time that required strong male employees to operate heavy machinery, and they employed quite a few people. Glenn Ramey became one of those employees at that time.

And things began to go haywire as soon as he was employed.

“Suspicious things would happen,” said Sherry Gibson. “All of a sudden, brakes wouldn’t work on a three-thousand pound machine, or a lifter wouldn’t stop when it was lowering.” The latter of these two incidents created a dangerous situation not only for the operator, but for others in the vicinity of the machine.

“He monkeyed with a log skidder,” Sherry said; “like to flipped two or three times because the operator couldn’t throttle it down. With a three-ton piece of equipment with a load on it…that’s murderous.”

It wasn’t, James Gibson said, like he was out to blatantly kill anyone; “I just think there’s a lot more wrong with him than people know.”

But that wasn’t all that occurred to them over the three or so years that Glenn Ramey was in their employ.

Following his early criminal history in the 1980s (wherein he was charged with and convicted of Theft in multiple cases, catching a sentence in Illinois Department of Corrections out of Williamson County in 1986 after violation of sentence in a Theft case the previous year), Ramey continued this when he got back to Johnson County, and is alleged to have stolen items from the Gibsons that could be resold for a quick buck or two: Chains, tires, batteries, generators and the like.

Gibson said when he confronted Ramey about the thefts, the stealing just got worse.

While the location of this shot wasn’t made clear, a Disclosure reader submitted it to the paper on November 25, just before 6 p.m...when the law came to question Glenn Ramey.

Enter DCFS

All the while, members of the family – Glenn, Hannah, Hannah’s sister Juanita, and another couple of the kids coming and going – lived in a residence on the property the Gibsons owned. And despite the thefts and tampering with heavy equipment, there were other problems with them the Gibsons had to deal with.

Almost immediately after the Ramey family (with Hannah bearing the last name of Palmer at that time) moved in, DCFS came to Sherry Gibson and advised her that if she had any grandchildren, they could not visit her in her home as long as Glenn Ramey was on the property.

“They didn’t explain why,” Sherry said. “They said they couldn’t tell me. They just said that there were to be no children around and if there were, there would be trouble for me.”
This went on for three years. During that time, Sherry Gibson attempted to evict the family from the premises, with the courts failing her at every turn…largely because of the state agencies involved who were, to an extent, protecting the Ramey/Palmer bunch.

“I was told I couldn’t just boot them out and leave them homeless,” Sherry said. “I told the authorities ‘Well, SOMEBODY did, because that’s how they came to be living here!’”

Further, Sherry was attempting to warn the rest of the family about Glenn and his antics with the company regarding tampering and theft….but nobody wanted to hear that, either.

“Here I was helping his mom, and he was robbing us,” Sherry said. “I suspect he’s done a helluva lot more. He’s craftier than anything. But nobody wanted to deal with his kind of filth. The more you helped him, the more he brutalized you.”

Crafty mechanic

The craftiness filtered over into his “work” for the Gibsons and beyond.

Interestingly enough, during her interview, Hannah made this observation about Glenn Ramey’s arrest and charges regarding Sabrina’s murder:

“I don’t believe the charges brought against him,” she told Disclosure’s correspondent. “If it was a grown woman, I can see he might rape her, but not a child; after all, he has a 40-year-old (referring to Ramey’s most recent paramour, Misty Coseboon, which situation will be touched upon later in the article).

“If he did it, then he needs to pay the consequences,” Hannah said. “If he didn’t, they need to let him go and leave him the hell alone. But if he did do it, he will act crazy and get out of it like he has everything else.”

James Gibson said that one of the reasons his family kept Ramey on in the business is that he was a “fantastic mechanic.”

“As long as someone was watching him to make sure he didn’t ‘do something’ to whatever he was working on, he was a great mechanic,” Gibson said, clarifying that ‘doing something’ to a vehicle would be “monkeying with it,” like his mother earlier described, tampering with it to the point that it was dangerous for someone to operate.

This illustrates the level of deception Ramey was capable of: While collecting social security for his ‘disability,’ he was still employable and in fact could likely have earned high-end pay for his abilities as a mechanic, as those are in demand…but instead, he resorted to ensuring he was working the system, and to criminality.

The level of his deception reached an incredible extent when the Gibsons learned that he was claiming to others in Johnson County that he was Sherry’s son (meaning he expected people to believe that she’d birthed him at age 10, a ridiculous notion as most everyone in Johnson knew who she was and that it was a bold-faced lie being perpetuated by Ramey.)

After items missing, the Gibsons having to go to Ramey to retrieve them, the monkeying with the machinery, the floor of the trailer in which the Ramey/Palmer group collapsing under the weight and rot of dead animals (literally…and this was before the “Hoarders” episode) and the Gibsons being unable to have their grandchildren on their premises due to Glenn Ramey’s presence, the Gibsons were finally able to remove the bunch from the property.

Active warrant in Johnson County

And even then, it didn’t end.

As soon as the group was evicted, James Gibson began receiving death threats from people he could only identify as “associates” of Glenn Ramey.

“I put up with it for awhile, hanging up on them when they’d call,” he said, “and then finally I used a few choice words and told em to ‘bring it.’”

Seeing that he wasn’t afraid of them, the threateners went silent.

Then in April of 2009, the Gibsons learned that Ramey was trying to sell one of their trucks used in the business. He had somehow obtained the title from the Gibsons at some point in time, and, passing it off as ‘his’ vehicle, he had been driving it and with the title in hand, was attempting to sell it. He was caught and charged on April 23 of that year with Possession of a Stolen Title. 

By this time, Ramey was living out of the area. He went through a number of court appearances in the Johnson County case in 2009 and 2010, including several ‘fitness hearings’ held to determine his ability to assist in his own defense, a commonly-required action if there is some sort of question about a person’s mental fitness.

Ultimately, Johnson County authorities confirmed in early December of this year, Ramey, having dragged this through the system for seven years, was told to get out of Johnson County and don’t come back…and if he showed up again, he would be thrown in jail.

Disclosure was able to confirm with the state’s attorney’s office in Johnson County that there is an active warrant for Ramey in that case, and that warrant remains unserved and the case open and active in the courts.

Apparently, the Gibsons got their truck and the title back.

Enter the Coils

By this time, Ramey had moved on to other things…namely, perfecting his targeting of certain young females.

His first conquest in this endeavor was April Sunshine Coil.

While Ms. Coil (which is a maiden name; she is currently going by that or Coil-Barr, but was legally married to Ramey, and using his last name interchangeably with Coil), age 27, refused to speak with Disclosure when inquiries were made, and her father, Robert, 53, declined to make any but the most limited of comments, others who knew what was going on – friends and associates of the family –filled in the blanks.

The Coils, who currently reside in Noble in Richland County (they are originally from the Richland/Lawrence counties area), had sought to move to Johnson County at about the time the Ramey-Palmer bunch were terrorizing the Gibsons, about the mid-2000s as best the acquaintances could recall. There was someone selling property there, friends advise, and Robert Coil was seeking to make a land purchase and resettle his family. However, that land deal “fell through” in 2005, and the family had a hard time finding a place to rent in that downstate county, so they at some point moved to Palestine, a village in Crawford County considerably to the north of Johnson.

While in Johnson County, however, April came across Ramey, and this when she was barely 18.

“Robert has said that it’s his belief that Ramey targets overweight women with low esteem and mental disorders,” said an acquaintance. It was noted that April had at one point been tentatively diagnosed with schizophrenia and Attention Deficit Disorder, and had been prescribed medication for both; an accurate description, said the acquaintance, would be that she “can be as different as night and day just a few minutes apart.”

How, exactly, Ramey’s and April Coil’s paths cross was unclear.

However, April does have a misdemeanor conviction from Johnson County in 2007, when she was just 18, for Ramey’s favorite criminal pastime, Theft.

In 2009, April and Ramey were staying with Ramey’s brother Bart Ramey in Eldorado in Saline County. For reasons unknown to the acquaintance relating this, April was kicked out of the residence in Eldorado at about 1 in the morning. She knew where her family had moved to in Palestine, and Glenn Ramey brought her to that Crawford County residence more than 100 miles away.

“At that point, that’s how Glenn knew where to find her,” the acquaintance said, “and that was the beginning of him endlessly hounding them.”

Lots of girls; DCFS steps in again

April and Glenn Ramey were married in January of 2010. The source was unclear of exactly when April’s first child, a boy, was born; it may have been just prior to the marriage.

Almost as soon as the two were married, however, DCFS showed up.

“It was about ten days after they got married,” said the source. “DCFS wouldn’t tell them anything at that time except that an abuse complaint against Ramey had been ‘founded.’”

This has been said to be the reason why the couple’s first child was taken away almost as soon as he was born, and was adopted out.

“April had said she didn’t want a boy anyway,” said the source. “Only girls.”

These she had. In the ensuing years, she had more children…many more, all of them girls. Three of them, the source said, are “for sure Glenn’s,” the rest (the younger ones) the source wasn’t clear on it.

However, “the oldest girl, they weren’t sure if she was his; but he wanted to hold that one all the time,” which apparently made the Coil family uncomfortable. That child was born in 2010. The couple had twin girls in late June of 2012. April also has a two-year-old girl and an infant girl who will be a year old in just a couple of weeks (late December 2016). In all, April lives with the Coils with five girls all under the age of six.

It was DCFS’ intention to ensure that, even though they couldn’t reveal exactly what had happened with Ramey’s boys, Ramey was nevertheless monitored when around his other children.

“One woman that worked with DCFS, all she could or would tell them was that medically, there was no other way that boy’s injury to his rectum could have happened except to have been done by another person,” the source said. “And then they’d just leave it at that.”

Ramey moves to Palestine

Ramey followed the family to Palestine, where he set up a rental from a local man, Jerry Wilson.

He also set up his usual activity of stealing from those who were simply trying to help him.

While living in Palestine in October of 2011, Ramey went to Robert Coil asking to use Coil’s cutting torch. Ramey was scrapping to make money, and he had a bulldozer blade he couldn’t fit in the back of his S-10 pickup, so he figured he could “make it fit” if he cut it up into pieces.

Turned out that the blade was stolen from the landlord, Wilson.

Not only had that been stolen, but also a couple of antique bulldozer jacks dating back to the World War II era had also been stolen and sold for scrap. Coil, as well, had had some tools stolen, and gas was being stolen across the village out of anything that would hold it: lawmowers, boats, cars.

Authorities zeroed in on Ramey, however, because the dozer blade and antique jacks were distinct and the subject of complaints.

After a couple of weeks of investigating the issue, authorities filed charges against Ramey on November 18, 2011 and took him into custody. By this time, Wilson had already started eviction proceedings and he obtained a $700-plus judgment against him right about the time Ramey was arrested. Also by this time, April had filed for divorce against Ramey and had started child support proceedings as well.

But authorities were in for a glitch, courtesy Ramey.

‘Couldn’t remember his name’

Ramey, already an ace at gaming the system in every possible way, upon arrest feigned a much worse mental condition than he had.

“When they went to question him,” advised the source, “even though he was caught with the stolen stuff, he couldn’t remember what happened. He couldn’t even remember his name. He was just mentally deficient. He couldn’t do anything to suit the authorities.”

So as a result of his freshly-constructed ‘mental condition,’ and after repeated status hearings, it was determined that Ramey needed to be institutionalized until he could gain some semblance of mental faculties so that he could aid in his own defense. Off Ramey went to Choate Mental Health Center in Anna, long known as the downstate mental hospital.

He was there for a couple of years, avoiding prosecution, not paying bills or child support, and generally, it’s said among his own circle, “getting away with it again.” Friends of Coil’s said that Ramey had told the family the way he got SSI was that he would “deliberately flunk out on tests” (what kind of ‘tests,’ they didn’t or couldn’t say) and “play stupid so he wouldn’t get in trouble with the law if he got caught doing something criminal.” In the situation with the Crawford County case, that worked out to his advantage.

The one good thing about it however, acquaintances advised, was that Ramey wasn’t on the streets and able to offend. His criminal record slowed down, of course, and the Coils were able to get a bit of a reprieve from being dogged by the man.

They moved to Oblong in Crawford County, then moved to Noble when they sold the house in Oblong.

And when Ramey got out of Anna in November of 2013, he was right there in Noble, catching up to the Coils once again…and, as multiple OPs filed throughout 2014 indicate, harassing them endlessly.

The battleground is set up

Friends of the Coils once more described an ongoing battle between that family and Glenn R. Ramey, this time in Richland County, where do-nothing prosecutor David Hyde held sway and wouldn’t bother with reports of harassment, even if they were made to his office.

As a result, the participants in this drama, which was careening rapidly toward an inevitably bad outcome even in 2013, were forced to take civil action in the form of Orders of Protection through Richland County court.

Interestingly, a number of the OPs were filed by Ramey himself against members of the Coil family, as well as against others in Noble.

No one in the interview process could advise whether or not Ramey is functionally illiterate. He can sign his name. However, all the OPs he filed were apparently filled out by someone else; the record sheet shows that this was accomplished by a SWAN advocate (SWAN being an Olney-based agency, “Stopping Women Abuse Now,” which misguidedly also assists the ‘disabled’ and ‘elderly,’ although not always those who are really in need of assistance; over the years, the agency has been subject to abuse by people who, like Ramey, know how to game the system and use any well-meaning resource out there to advance their own agenda.)

Friends of the Coils said that Ramey had been allowed around the children he shared with April Coil, but that DCFS had once again stepped in and restricted his contact to certain conditions: He couldn’t be in the house after 10 p.m., so at that time, he needed to go elsewhere. He didn’t have anywhere to go, apparently, so he just slept in his truck parked in the village of Noble within the vicinity of the Coil household, this in the early part of 2014.

Somehow or another – possibly through his stay at Choate, considering the timing – Ramey came to be represented by Adult Protective Services (APS), yet another Illinois state agency developed for the Department of Human Services ostensibly for the people who “fall through the cracks” between DCFS for children and senior citizens for the elderly. Created under the bleeding-heart liberal administration of former Illinois governor Pat Quinn in 2013, APS “serves disabled adults ages 18 through 59 living in the community.” The latter phrase is the point that kept Glenn Ramey where he was and terrorizing everyone around him – “in the community.” APS, established the year he got out of Choate, was just the instrument a person like Ramey who was gaming the system needed to “stay in the community.” While the agency was likely well-meaning and probably was never really intended to perpetuate the criminally-inclined mentally ill, that’s just what they ended up doing for Ramey.

Apparently emboldened by his “support” from APS, Ramey, still under restrictions from DCFS, saw ‘offense’ in everything everyone around him did if they weren’t ‘supporting’ him and his every want and need. This included Robert Coil, as well as another Noble resident, Galen ‘Bud’ Price. In effect, he was perpetuating the same whine he’d had as an 8-year-old when Hannah had him in Head Start: They were “picking on him.”

Price and Coil were the first two people Ramey filed OPs against, in August of 2014.

Ramey’s petition for OP state that on August 1, Price had left voicemails for him saying “get your ass over here if I have to run you down you won’t like it” and “get your ass over here now don’t make me come look for you.” He also claimed he saw Price in front of Noble Foods, at which point Ramey alleged Price said “You don’t have any friends, you’re a liar, I’m mad at you because you called the law on my son.”

Then Ramey claimed that on August 1 through 3, Robert Coil and his son Charles “drove by my house five times on Saturday flipping me off and yelling out the window saying ‘we want our child support’” on August 2nd and 3rd. He also claimed that the two went to where his paramour at the time, Tina Beeler, worked (Noble Foods) “saying that her and I owed them child support.” His final claim of stalking was “I think this all started when I changed my mind about buying his truck. Leaves me voice mails telling me his daughter is pregnant with triplets calling me a rotten son of a bitch.”

Ramey was able to convince Judge Larry Dunn that he was so picked upon by these two men that Dunn signed an emergency ex parte order (meaning no notice to Price or Coil). A couple of weeks later, a hearing was held (August 20). The order filed against Price was dismissed for lack of grounds (Price, interestingly enough, had on Aug. 6 filed his own OP against Ramey, claiming the guy had made sexual advancements toward Price’s daughter Kaitlin and was a “known thief.” That, too, was dismissed.)

But despite the fact that Coil, an over-the-road truck driver, wasn’t even in the state of Illinois, but was in Georgia on the days Ramey claimed he was harassing him, a six-month order was issued against Coil, largely based on the voicemails, which were never effectively proven to be Coil at all.

Once again, Ramey came out ahead via subterfuge…and using agencies improperly.

Bessie prevails

While he was on a roll, Ramey apparently also thought it would be a good idea to get an OP against his ex-wife, April.

In a pleading that would probably have been better served being petitioned under the Crawford County 2011 divorce case, he stated that on August 1, 2014, “she wanted money for child support from me even though I never see the girls (twins). I went to a friends they showed me where April had posted on Facebook that I was a gas thief – I steal anything I can get my hands on and that I was no good. In the past she has slapped me, hit me, kicked me in privates. Her mother and father harass me as well.”

With all of these likely being easily proven simply by Ramey’s multi-county felony convictions, April opted not to do so, and failed to show on the August 20 hearing date, resulting in the OP being ordered against her.

Once again, an agency designed to protect those who can’t protect themselves ‘protected’ the wrong person.

But April’s mother Bessie Coil would prove to be the voice of sanity in the flurry of OPs that flew among the group in August of 2014.

Seeking protection for April, her brother Charles, and the then-only-three little girls in the household, as well as for herself and her husband, Bessie Coil was granted a hearing on Aug. 25, a few days after Ramey had prevailed in a couple of his ridiculous petitions.

Dunn heard the case, which was based on the following pleadings: On July 29 of 2014, she had told Ramey “not to pick up my 4-year-old grandchild so much” and he refused to listen. He was not allowed to come into the house by himself, she said, but he did, and would “hover around me as close as he could get and would not move away and would want to pick up the 4-year-old too much.”

She also claimed that Ramey would “pick verbal fights with my pregnant daughter (April). It made me feel as if he was trying to stress her to the point of going into preterm labor and lose the baby. I fear he is extremely mentally unstable, is supposed to be on meds after being released from Anna but he’s not.

“Glen Ramey drinks all the time and I’m afraid he would get too drunk and explode and hurt me or a member of my family because he is mentally unstable. Glen Ramey just got out in November. He carries empty bottles in his truck but doesn’t take them because he drinks beer all the time never saw him without a beer in his hands. He has been indicated for child abuse in Massac County, Illinois, and tries to pick up my 4-year-old grandchild. He lives a half a block from the school she will be attending August 13 and I fear for her safety.”

In one of the remedies for which Bessie Coil was petitioning, she asked that he be further ordered and enjoined in the OP “because he just got out of Anna in November and thinks he can rub up against any woman he wants and should be able to pick up my 4-year-old grandchild whenever and as often as he wants to. He is not my 4-year-old’s legal father.”

After hearing testimony from Ramey, April, Robert and Charles Coil and a Gwen Osborn, Dunn granted Bessie Coil’s OP on August 25, 2014, entering a two-year order.

Much has been made of this particular OP filed in late September 2014 by Brenda M. Harmon, who apparently had some kind of association with Ramey (here, it indicates he hung out with her brother). The impact is that she claimed rape and no one in a position of authority did anything about it, this fact somewhat sensationalized by mainstream media. What they won’t tell, however, is that since he took office in 2004 and until his resignation in 2015, former Richland County state’s attorney David Hyde had a record of ignoring sexual assault complaints made by women if they were made in the realm of Stalking/No-Contact Orders (OPs), even though there’s a provision in the S/NCO specifically for sexual contact, generally regarded as an indicator for authorities to examine the matter and see if further charges are warranted. So whether this actually happened to Harmon or not has not been formally established, but Harmon did get her S/NCO ordered, and Ramey apparently didn’t bother her again.

2014-16: Ratcheting up

In those two years, Ramey began ratcheting up.

It didn’t take him long to do something allegedly drastic, either.

But because David Hyde was still in office and still ignoring most legitimate complaints in his county, on September 29, another woman was forced to file an OP against Ramey.

While it’s unclear whether or not Brenda Harmon, who is the same age as Ramey, ever actually approached authorities about what she put in her OP. It’s also unclear exactly what her status with Ramey was, if anything. But apparently, she was at least acquainted with him, and had had enough contact with him so that he evidently believed he was acquainted with her, too.

Harmon wrote on her petition for a Stalking/No-Contact Order that on September 29, 2014, at her home on Kitchell Avenue in Olney, Ramey “came into my home without knocking. I was laying on the couch. He forced himself on me. He raped me.”

The next day, she said, Ramey “came by the house drunk. He told me he had been drinking whiskey with my brother. Told him to leave.”

Then on October 6, 2014, “Glenn came into my home again wanting sex. I told him to leave. Kept hugging me trying to kiss me. I told him I didn’t want it. He pulled down his pants. I told him NO, he left.” Harmon then stated Ramey called her that same day, and five times the next day.

A plenary (two-year) order was entered on Oct. 29, 2014.

Despite the matter being determined as “non-consensual sex” in the OP, no charges were ever filed against Ramey to that effect.

Old habits

Ramey, who apparently lost his license to drive long ago (his traffic citations across about eight counties in southern Illinois indicate that he has something close to 70 tickets for one thing or another), was driving drunk near Noble on January 30, 2015. He was stopped by a deputy and blew .083 on a portable BAC. He was charged with misdemeanor DUI, as well as Operating Uninsured and having one of his vehicle lights out.

He entered a plea to the DUI and got the other citations dismissed, this on October 16, 2015.

In 2016, Ramey apparently couldn’t stay out of trouble.

Having moved to the trailer park just adjacent to SWAN, B&W, Ruth Harmon, 62, filed a Stalking/No-Contact Order against Ramey on behalf of herself and a Joe Maxey Sr.

She claimed that “Friday night at Bingo April 8, he said I gave out his phone (number, ostensibly). Take us court because he got beat up at our house, which he didn’t. Past couple months came over to our house and beat up Joe. He calls my phone and says stuff all about me and Joe. I have voice mails when threaten us. He makes threats to Joe, he turned us in about our lawn.”

She was granted the OP on an emergency basis; Ramey appeared on the next setting for the case, April 27, and only an extension order was granted, with a plenary set for May 25. On that date, no one appeared and the OP was dismissed.

On May 5 of this year, he caught several traffic citations including No Valid Registration, Driving Suspended, and Operating Uninsured.

On June 7 he was popped for Driving Revoked on one of the ratty lawnmowers he used in odd jobs.

On August 3, after aggravating the residents of the trailer park driving up and down the street on a loud lawnmower with the singular purpose, said residents there, of annoying them, he ran a truck into a vehicle owned by Larry Harmon. He was cited for Failure to Notify about Damage of an Unattended Vehicle and Operating Uninsured. It’s unclear where he obtained the vehicle he was driving when he accomplished this, a 1986 Ford; working as a mechanic for Charley Cohen at Charley’s on Illinois Route 130 north of Olney, he had vehicles in his possession that weren’t his but which he was tasked with repairing, so he was, as he had two decades ago in Johnson County with the Gibsons, driving the vehicles and telling people that they were his. One of them, belonging to Aaron Hackney, was parked at the trailer Ramey was by this time sharing with another female fitting the profile of those he targeted, overweight, mentally deficient and low esteem, Misty Coseboon.

According to Larry Harmon, he couldn’t make his deductible, so Ramey, in possession of the RV and not a lot of money, later gave that RV title to Harmon as he had nothing else of value to his name. Harmon was able to sell the RV for just enough money to make his deductible and get his vehicle fixed.

The day before damaging Harmon’s vehicle, however, Ramey had gotten into an altercation with a 16-year-old, Jeffery C. Owens, at Ramey’s trailer. On August 2, it’s alleged that Ramey battered Owens by punching him in the lip, causing a red mark. As of press time, Disclosure had been unable to track down Owens and there’s no indication in public documents what happened to provoke the altercation, nor who Owens is to Ramey.

Coseboon was able to post the $150 cash bond and Ramey was out and set to go to court on Sept. 6, 2016.

Small claims in court November 23, 2016

Then finally, on November 1, 2016, Ramey, acting pro se (as his own counsel), filed a small claims case against former Olney mayor Tom Fehrenbacher.

In his suit, Ramey claims that Fehrenbacher had contracted with him to cut down ten trees (another odd job Ramey was doing – whether under the table or not – was cutting down trees and splitting the logs to sell as firewood) at $500 a tree. Ramey claimed that he’d sought payment but Fehrenbacher hadn’t submitted it. He was seeking $5,000 plus costs of suit.

In the late morning of Wednesday, November 23, Ramey appeared in court, cleaned up, not smelling, his hair combed and his clothes neat. Judge Kim Harrell heard the beginning of the case on its first appearance; Fehrenbacher was represented by current Olney mayor and attorney Ray Vaughn. The hearing was brief; the case was set for a bench trial to commence January 11. Court officials said Ramey walked out of the courtroom at 11:16 a.m.

Eight hours later, Sabrina Stauffenberg’s body was found near the rail line running through Olney, raped and dead of suffocation.

Little Sabrina Stauffenberg, in her last couple of years, finally landed in a loving home...only to have even that taken away from her the day before Thanksgiving 2016.

More than enough blame to go around

Despite the multiple millions of tax dollars and charitable donations poured annually into children and family services, child advocacy groups, children’s and women’s shelters, and other agencies and “feel-good” entities on the fringe of them, everything set up to tend to a child in an abusive and/or endangered and/or questionable life situation failed Sabrina Stauffenberg from the moment she was born.

Upon the death of Sabrina, Disclosure was contacted by a number of people who were aware of the circumstances into which Sabrina was born, and much of what she endured until she found a loving home with an Olney couple, her aunt Margie Vaughn and Margie’s boyfriend Tim Eads in the last couple of years of her life.

Much has been made in mainstream media about the positive aspects of this unofficial guardianship placement.

However, literally nothing has been stated about the circumstances that lead to that placement.

Those who contacted Disclosure did so asking for strict confidentiality. They have had backlash from certain ones in the mix and others associated with them. Apparently, some among that number don’t want the truth to emerge.

‘Get that thing away from me’

Disclosure learned that in 2008, literally within hours of Sabrina being born to Nancy Vaughn Stauffenberg, now 47, and ostensibly Glenn Stauffenberg Sr., now 51, a family friend approached an Olney woman who not only had special needs children of her own, but had successfully raised other special needs foster children, and asked her to step in.

This woman, who will for the purposes of this article be referred to as Regina, was told by the Vaughn/Stauffenberg family friend that upon Sabrina’s birth, Nancy Stauffenberg had got up and walked out of the hospital, stating about her daughter “Get that thing away from me.”

“The individual contacting me about this asked if my husband and I would be interested in adopting Sabrina,” Regina said, “because of how (mentally challenged) those in the immediate family are.”

The words “mentally challenged” were not the term utilized by this individual, Regina said. The actual term used by this individual was ‘retarded,’ the use of which has been already addressed on page 2 of this issue.

Nevertheless, the clarification here on the words used in this August 2008 exchange is important, because this is how it was presented to Regina – who didn’t know any of the Vaughn/Stauffenberg group – and illustrates the level of concern at least one person in the mix had about the newborn Sabrina.

Stepping in to help

Regina and her husband had a child born with multiple birth defects; and, she said, “with physical therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy he is a fairly normal child. So this family member knew that we had been through the system as far as having a special child,” and that was what brought the individual to Regina’s door.

Regina immediately went to the family’s aid, arrived at the hospital, made the appropriate arrangements with authorities there, and brought Sabrina home with her.

Regina and her husband had contacted Olney lawyer and former Richland County State’s Attorney Chuck Roberts, who drew up the standard paperwork for an uncontested guardianship with a view toward adoption. Under this standard paperwork, if the matter is uncontested, the parents merely sign an affidavit giving the prospective guardian their consent to have the child become their ward. That material stays on file and doesn’t even have to become a court case if all parties agree; an adoption is a little more complicated, but runs along those same lines. An adoption is required to be filed in the county in which it’s executed, but those records are sealed, and only a court can order them opened.

Regina said that it didn’t even get to that point.

“When we filed the paperwork to adopt her,” Regina said, “the grandmother showed up and asked a caseworker how much money she could get if she took her.”

The misfortune in this circumstance was that DCFS was involved. Prior to 2011, DCFS wasn’t required to be in the midst of guardianship probate cases and adoptions as they weren’t a statutorily-recognized entity, and even nowadays, most of these cases can be handled without the interference of DCFS.

The Department of Human Services, however, the agency that provides “assistance” for “entire families of mentally-challenged individuals” (as it was put by the person who initially contacted Regina), became involved because the grandmother was Susan M. Vaughn, 67, mother to Nancy, Margie and Danny Vaughn.

Regina said that during a court setting at the Richland County courthouse, Sue Vaughn told the caseworker – whose name Regina couldn’t remember but whom Regina described as “a young thing, fresh out of college, no practical experience, just going by the current social worker view of the day” – that she (Sue) couldn’t take care of baby Sabrina, but she “wanted her anyway.”

The caseworker advised that Sue could get an additional $150 in state support of whatever sort she was getting, and that was enough for Sue, Regina said.

“I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open,” Regina said. “Sue told the caseworker she had a bad heart and walked with a walker, but she said she wanted Sabrina. And the caseworker was all for it because she was blood family.”

Sue Vaughn, Regina said, had custody of the other child Glen Stauffenberg, Jr., who at that time was 12 years old.

Dragged on a blanket behind a walker

After Regina having had paperwork drawn up and expending the money for this, as well as making preparations to have a newborn special needs infant in her home, DCFS sent baby Sabrina to Sue Vaughn, and that, Regina said, is where the nightmare intensified.

“Sue physically could not carry Sabrina due to using a walker,” Regina said, “and would put her on a blanket and pull it behind her. She was an infant. Sue was going down steps with this baby’s head bumping the steps as she pulled her on that blanket.”

Horrified, Regina complained to the caseworker about it.

“She actually told me what Sue was doing was ‘pretty ingenious,’” Regina said of the vapid caseworker assenting to an act that, if a person who wasn’t receiving DCFS/DHS’ ‘services’ had committed it, would likely be considered child abuse.

Apparently, however, DCFS/DHS view Sabrina as just another client, as they did Vaughn and the family, and they weren’t going to do anything that might get a client off the rolls…just like Glenn Ramey was, and how he came to be a ‘protected’ person through Adult Protection Services.

Ultimately has to bow out

“So they handed her over to grandma Vaughn,” Regina said. “The house was filthy and full of cockroaches. Sabrina always had head lice. In Illinois, that’s not considered to be neglect, though; that is a ‘nuisance,’” this, despite the fact that head lice is considered a communicable disease by public health standards, and that lice can cause fever infections as they are bloodsuckers and carry bacteria, and these conditions are hazardous to human health, especially in very young children…as Sabrina was.

Vaughn became a ‘nuisance’ to Regina, however.

“The grandmother would call me constantly, telling me that she couldn’t take care of Sabrina, she needed formula, she needed diapers,” Regina said, noting that she would go and get these items because her concern was with the child. 

NORMAN ANDY DEISHER

Then Vaughn got to where she would allow – and actually request – that Regina would Sabrina for long stretches of days at a time, up to two weeks (“and then she’d call, wanting the baby back,” Regina said of Sue Vaughn), and so the two women were basically sharing the baby, which required Regina to travel to the Vaughn house to get Sabrina.

“When I would pick her up and take her home with me she would be so filthy that I would strip her and put her in the bathtub,” Regina said, noting that Sabrina’s brother, Glenn Jr., “always stunk so bad at school, they would physically take him out of class and make him shower in the PE room and put on PE clothes.”

When Regina inquired of the family about this, she learned that upon the school contacting the family, Sue Vaughn had told them that there was “something wrong with our water” and that was why Glenn Jr. had the odor he had.

Constantly after money

Since Vaughn had learned that Regina, by this point, would pretty much do anything for Sabrina just to keep her safe and well, “It got to the point that they would constantly ask me for money,” Regina said.

“This went on for quite some time until my husband finally said that’s it, you cannot pick Sabrina up anymore. He said I would be upset for a week after I had to take her back. So I had to slowly back away from that family. Eventually I had to block them on Facebook too,” she said, noting that the constant pleading for money and other things was getting ridiculous as Sabrina got older.

It was questionable, Regina said, as to how disabled Sabrina really was as she got older, as this wouldn’t necessarily be something the intellectually-disabled group would be on the watch for. As well, it was questionable as to how much concern was being shown for the child’s eyesight, as Regina was told by Margie Vaughn (“who is probably the highest functioning in the family,” she said) that Sabrina was legally blind – and in particular, how it was impacting her ability to learn and to function.

What became even more questionable, however, was what happened when Sabrina was four years of age.

Nancy’s distractions

By that time, Regina said, Sabrina was living with her mother, who apparently had gotten over her aversion to “that thing” and was having her back around.

Nancy Stauffenberg, however, had some distractions in her life.

A local county official who knows the family filled in some of the blanks that Regina was hesitant to be quoted on. This individual, who also wished for anonymity due to any public backlash by those who don’t understand the family dynamic, said that Nancy Stauffenberg was addicted to online dating sites and, having divorced Glenn Stauffenberg just a few months after Sabrina’s birth, was running around with some highly questionable individuals who were taking advantage of Nancy’s diminished mental capacity.

One of those was Norman Andy Deisher, this public official said.

Deisher, 45, is known locally in Richland as the Noble man who in July of 2012, was arrested on five counts of sex-related crimes with a child: Two Class 2 felony counts of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse of a Victim under the age of 13, and three Class X felony counts of Predatory Criminal Sexual Assault of a Victim under the age of 13.

All of the counts had to do with Deisher making sexual contact with a young boy while in Noble.

In February of 2013, Deisher entered a plea to one of the Class X felony charges and received 28 years in IDOC, where he remains today.

The suggestion, said the anonymous county official, is that while Deisher was abusing the little boy, he was constantly in contact with Sabrina Stauffenberg, as Deisher was on and off with Nancy, which may have lead to the Stauffenberg divorce…and which may have lead to certain members of the Stauffenberg family declaring that Sabrina was not fathered by Glenn Sr., but was in fact the offspring of Deisher.

On Monday, November 28, this was the scene on West South Street in the middle of Olney, Illinois: A memorial on the city’s right-of-way (public property) right outside of Legacy Trucking, with toys, dolls, stuffed animals and balloons placed there several yards away from the location where Sabrina Stauffenberg’s body had been found the previous Wednesday night. In the background is the National Vinegar Company; the location is not far from the rail line, and is known locally as “Goosenibble.”

The suggestion was further made that Sabrina was at some point molested by someone – it’s unknown whether it was Deisher or not – while she was in her mother’s care.After the situation with Deisher some years back, Sabrina officially went to live with Ken Schanda and his wife as guardians. That didn’t work out, for reasons that Disclosure is currently investigating and couldn’t firm up before press time, Sunday, December 4. 

Whatever the case, Sabrina most recently and finally went to live with Nancy’s sister Margie Vaughn, who later hooked up with Tim Eads.

The arrangement would have been ideal, as Margie had, according to Regina and the public official, “always wanted kids of her own and couldn’t have them,” and Margie loved Sabrina as if she were Margie’s own.

The one problem, however, is that Nancy was recently residing with Margie and Tim Eads in an Earl Tannahill rental at 823 South Whittle in Olney …and Margie and Tim, trying to encourage mother-daughter bonding and interaction between Nancy and Sabrina, didn’t quite realize that Nancy simply wasn’t capable of such a thing.

Waiting for the church bus

On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 23, the day before Thanksgiving and a couple of hours after Glenn Ramey had appeared in court to get his case against former Olney mayor Tom Fehrenbacher rolling, the Stauffenberg/Vaughn/Eads group on South Whittle was prepping Sabrina to be picked up by the church bus for Calvary Baptist Church on the northern end of town.

In the house, according to Eads himself (who spoke with Disclosure before Richland County’s Victim’s Advocate herd shut down all interviews with the family) were Sabrina, Eads, Margie and Nancy.

“We were always trying to get Nancy to pay attention to Sabrina,” Eads said, “but she was always on the computer with those dating sites or playing games on her phone.”

At about 4:30 p.m., as it was getting dark outside and in a steady rain, Sabrina went out on the small stoop that serves as a covered step up to the front door of the house, to wait for the church bus, which picks up those who want to attend if they get themselves on the list.

Sabrina had a cell phone with her; Eads didn’t say whose phone it was. Other published reports have it that the phone belonged to Eads, but that’s not been independently confirmed.

After being out on the stoop for a few minutes, in the dark and in the rain, Sabrina used the phone she had to call in to someone – possibly her grandmother, Susan Vaughn; the stories differ depending on who’s disseminating the information – to find out why the church bus hadn’t arrived.

Whomever it was who received the call didn’t know. It’s uncertain what Sabrina was told.

What is known is that at the time Sabrina was on the front stoop, there was a Facebook argument going on and distracting at least the women inside, if not all three individuals, Nancy, Margie and Eads. Started on the basis of a post made by a Kim Anderson regarding a woman named Annette (Mayberry, King, Bloomfield), the participants were being brutal and making nasty comments about each other. The thread currently has nearly 200 comments, some of them being issued by Glenn Stauffenberg Sr. and his current wife Irene. Eads confirmed that both women in the house were “distracted” by something but stopped short of saying it was this particular thread; he did intimate that Nancy, at least, was “on the phone” and they all kind of lost track of Sabrina.

Apparently the family believed she had been picked up by the church bus. She had, in fact, not been picked up by the bus: The service that night had been canceled.

When the family found out that there was no service (it’s unclear how they learned this), Sabrina was already gone. They called authorities to report her missing.

Vague answers

Tim Eads said that this past summer, the family had allowed Sabrina to ride her bicycle in front of the house, and pointed out to Disclosure where she would ride on the sidewalk, between two trees as her boundaries, one to the north of the house just before the building that houses a liquor store, then the one to the south effectively at the end of the 800 block of South Whittle.

He then added that “once in a while,” she would be allowed to ride around the entire block to the west of and behind the little rental house, which is West South Avenue to the north running east-west; South Camp Avenue behind the house running north-south; and West Lafayette Street to the south, running east-west.

The somewhat forlorn-looking yard display in front of the house on South Whittle in Olney, about a block and a half away from the vinegar plant, where Sabrina Stauffenberg was last seen: On the front stoop of the house, sheltering herself there while waiting on a church bus that never came. To the right is the tall fence where someone could have been waiting and observing Sabrina; although authorities haven’t stated how Sabrina went missing, it’s believed by the family that she may have been lured off the stoop.

That route is still several blocks away from the trailer where Ramey had his most recent residence.

So Disclosure asked Eads if Ramey had ever been there at the family’s house on South Whittle.

Eads didn’t answer that directly, but did say that Sabrina might have been familiar with Ramey since he was “sometimes in the neighborhood.”

There were a host of dogs and cats in the rental house; Disclosure’s correspondent attempted to count the individual animals and literally lost count as they moved around.

So Disclosure asked Eads if he believed Ramey might have passed by and had seen Sabrina standing on the stoop, and maybe appealed to her love of animals, possibly telling her that he knew where one was injured or needed her help; Eads said that that was very possible.

“But she didn’t have any fear,” Eads said. “She was just a trusting child,” a situation that someone looking to prey upon her would certainly take advantage of. A tall wooden fence is located on the north side of the property; it’s possible that a person could have hidden himself on the north side of the fence and watched until an opportune moment.

Authorities, however, aren’t revealing what they believe occurred…and Eads didn’t really voice an opinion. No one else in the family made a comment on it.

Found within a short period of time…and not far from home

Whatever the situation of Sabrina’s disappearance was, at the point the family realized there was no church, no bus, and the child was missing, they notified authorities and the search was on, this occurring around 6 p.m.

There was no alert issued as to the missing child. That may have been due to many factors, one of them being that most of the people in the family – with the exclusion of Eads – have a severe speech impediment and they are difficult to understand, so authorities may not have been able to obtain details in a short period of time.

It’s unknown whether authorities were focusing on the area immediately around the home on South Whittle or not.

However, Disclosure learned that the body was found to the north of a metal building on the premises of Legacy Trucking (owned by the now-notorious Jeff and Stacey Stevens/Thacker/Cowman, notorious due to Stacey’s involvement with her ex’s criminal antics in Jasper and Lawrence counties earlier this year), which is located across West South Avenue from the National Vinegar Company in the part of town known for decades as “Goosenibble.” The location of the body, according to Eads, is shown on the accompanying map, and is literally about a block and a half from Sabrina’s home.

Some of Legacy’s staff were still in the building when authorities began searching for the child and they were detained for a little bit, in order to be questioned about what they may have seen at the time the child went missing.

It’s unknown whether they had anything critical to offer; as well, it’s unknown whether anyone in the vinegar plant was able to tell authorities anything, either.

Reports have surfaced that a local man’s dog was actually attributed to the discovery of Sabrina’s body; not during a search, but because the dog was out running around, came upon the body, and the dog’s attention to the body was what drew authorities to it, this at about 7 p.m. that Wednesday night. That the body was discovered within an hour of the search commencing may have been another factor as to why there was no alert going out about a missing child.

Dispelling the rumors

Many rumors surfaced in the wake of Sabrina’s death, some of them almost immediate.

One was that Sabrina had been struck by a car and the man who had been driving the car enlisted Ramey’s aid in hiding the body.

Another was that Ramey was viewed on surveillance video from the liquor store, walking with bloody boots. This one had some great detail: That Ramey had secured the aid of two locals to assist him in getting rid of the bloody boots, and they took him to Walmart, where they purchased new boots for him, as well as a holiday ham and some breath mints.

That one had a little bit of validity to it; there was a man who had bloody boots at Walmart, but it was deer blood from hunting. As to the rest of it, authorities to a man have told Disclosure that there was nothing to either rumor.

It’s unclear how the focus came to be on Ramey.

However, he was taken into custody at the trailer he was sharing with Misty Coseboon, 40 (his most recent paramour, although friends of hers advise that he was also seeing Tina Beeler at the same time as Coseboon) at about 6 p.m. Friday, November 25, at the same time everyone at Sabrina’s house was taken in for questioning.

Coseboon, it might be noted, fits the description of paramours Ramey prefers; she too has developmental issues.

She reportedly wasn’t told what the questioning was for, and was busy trying to scrounge up bond money, as Ramey had several pending cases (including the felony from Johnson County) in case he was jailed and held pending bond on any one of them.

Hannah Gillihand told Disclosure’s correspondent that Ramey “called her on Saturday morning,” Nov. 26, “and told her he was in jail.”

Authorities have advised Disclosure that Ramey was NOT in custody nor charged with anything on the morning of November 26, so Gillihand might either have been confused…or Glenn Ramey might have been lying to his mother.

If he were, it would have been prescient.

Amazing job by state lab

Richland County State’s Attorney Brad Vaughn said that once the evidence was in the night Sabrina was murdered, he called the state police in District 12. MSgt. Ryan Shoemaker marshaled the forces and they met at an undisclosed location, about 40 troopers/investigators, and began processing the evidence and scheduling interviews, this on Thanksgiving.

The crime lab was also opened up – on the holiday – at the behest of Shoemaker, and DNA evidence, which sometimes takes days to analyze, was processed in about 48 hours.

Reportedly, everyone brought in for questioning – including a couple of people who were just “hanging out” at the Vaughn/Eads residence, specifically Josh Harmon – had swabs taken for DNA analysis.

It’s unclear whether Harmon is related to the earlier Harmons mentioned in Ramey’s article – Larry Harmon, Brenda Harmon, or Ruth Harmon; Richland County is filled with Harmons – and whether that might’ve been what caused the authorities to turn their attention to Ramey, through his interaction with any of them.

Whatever the case, the DNA evidence came back, and everyone was cleared…except Ramey.

When asked how much of a match the DNA was, Vaughn would not comment.

Another authority, however, speaking on condition of anonymity and pressured due 

An overhead view of the area where Sabrina Stauffenberg lived and died: The Vaughn/Eads house where she had been residing is marked by the red hexagon; the rest are as indicated. The blue hexagon is only approximate, as it was Tim Eads who advised of where he was told, by authorities, that Sabrina’s body was found. The hot pink dotted line is the first route Eads said Sabrina rode her bike; but he later noted that they’d let her ride around the block, denoted by the blue dotted line. It’s possible that Ramey as well as an untold number of others would have observed the child riding in this neighborhood.

to the fact that locals wanted to know whether citizens had anything to be concerned about, stated “We believe we have the right person in custody.”

Arrested at trailer

Ramey, confirmed Olney and Richland County officials, was thus taken into custody a second time, shortly after 2 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, November 27, by the Richland County Sheriff’s Department at the trailer he shared with Coseboon.

He was jailed on charges of Class X felony Predatory Criminal Sexual Assault, in which it’s alleged that “on Nov. 23, in the 200 block of West South Avenue, Ramey, being 17 years of age or older, committed an act of sexual penetration with S.S., who was under 13 years of age when the act was committed, in that he placed his penis in the vagina of S.S. and in so doing, caused great bodily harm to S.S. that was life-threatening.”

He was also charged with committing the offense of First Degree Murder in that on the same day and at the same location, Ramey “knowingly and without lawful justification and with the intent to kill S.S., suffocated S.S., thereby causing her death.”

Rarely is it that prosecutors file only one murder charge; often, three or more can be charged, as separate actions taken by the alleged perpetrator can lead to the person’s death.

That only one murder charge was filed is clear indication that authorities are certain of the cause of death and the actions a person would have to take in order to bring it about.

That the words “caused great bodily harm to S.S. that was life-threatening” were used in the sex assault charge indicates something somewhat unusual, too: Likely, injuries she sustained in the alleged rape were so severe that had she not been suffocated, she would have died of them in short order.

An autopsy was performed the day before Ramey was arrested; more details will likely come out if there is a preliminary hearing held on the next scheduled court date, December 16.

Ramey remains jailed at the Richland County Detention Center in Olney on a $10 million bail; that means that if someone wanted to post bond for him, they would have to post one million dollars in cash or real estate.

It doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere soon.

Due to the amount of vandalism at the property in Olney lived in by Glenn R. Ramey, 53, Disclosure agreed with the owner of the structure not to publish the exact location.

Once that agreement was made, Disclosure was granted access to the structure for an exclusive look at the condition of the living quarters of the man believed to have brutally sexually assaulted and then smothered to death 8-year-old Sabrina Stauffenberg.

The outside of the structure appeared to be fairly secure, despite a van and passenger car both having had all their windows busted out (see coverage of this in the main article).

Past the three riding lawnmowers, access to the trailer was gained by walking up an aged wooden ramp in need of treatment. 

Once at the top of the ramp, the door to the trailer positioned to the right.

Walking through the door, the trailer’s kitchen was located to the right.

On the floor were at least three weed eaters, a car jack, an orange cord plugged into the outer wall and stretched across the kitchen floor, itself filthy with entire patches of linoleum flooring gouged or worn down to the wooden floor base.

Numerous miscellaneous items were tucked into an off-white plastic tub, located under a round wooden kitchen table.

On top of the table was an old Coleman camp stove, a box of Corn Flakes, trash bags and several cast iron skillets, one containing rusty water.

To the left of the table, in the middle of the floor, was a cardboard box and a metal basket containing kitchen items.

A dish drainer, full of what appeared to be clean dishes, was located atop a dirty white gas stove.

The counter to the left held a grubby white stained coffee maker, situated next to a sink with dirty dishes in it, next to a microwave.

With a circuit of the kitchen complete, the living room made little-to-no sense as far as anything resembling organization.

Traveling from the kitchen through the living room, a couple mis-matched kitchen chairs surrounded a baby stroller, with a number of boxes and buckets filled with numerous items stashed throughout the living room. 

The old couch was covered with a thin, flowered blanket and had a pillow at one end.

A children’s movie-themed blanket was hung over the window behind the couch.

There were several bags with what appeared to be clothing stuffed in them piled in corners.

A curio cabinet stood in the corner filled with tiny ceramic figurines.

A battered coffee table was located in front of the couch and held an ash tray filled with butts of both filtered commercial cigarettes and cigarettes rolled by hand.

The electricity was still on as ‘INPUT3’ bounced across the television screen sitting opposite the couch.

Several boxes of lice treatment were stacked beside the television.

At least 10 fishing rods were leaning against one wall, an old air conditioning unit was sticking out of an old stereo cabinet, there were two old citizen band radios sitting among a heavy equipment car jack, near what appeared to be a furnace.

An old mattress and box springs partially blocked the hallway leading past a non-descript bathroom and into Ramey’s bedroom.

There were two windows in the bedroom, including one covered with a Tweetybird blanket and the other covered with a Hello Kitty blanket.

The mattress on the bed had been at least partially covered with clear plastic; no blankets were to be seen, but a pillow, with a child’s boy-band pillowcase, was on the bed.

A plastic tub served as a bedside table on which an ashtray and a child’s trashcan sat.

-A small VHS television sat atop a dresser with the DVD for “Friday the 13th” inserted in the player.

The room was a general mess with a jar of Vaseline and its lid lying in the middle of the floor, and clothes stuffed/hanging in a closet with no doors and piled into at least one dresser.

The ceiling in the room was spray-painted with graffiti that would be seen by anyone lying on the bed, looking up. 

On the way back out of the trailer it became clear that all the walls were lined with one pile of something or another with little more than room to walk.

It is unclear if the condition of the trailer had anything to do with authorities searching or taking certain items (maybe bed sheets) as evidence.

On the way out the door more graffiti was found on the inside of the front door, this time done in pink. (Publisher’s note: photographs of the front door graffiti have been altered with censor bars over curse words/vulgar language).

Despite the condition of the trailer, with dirty dishes, what looked like grease in a least one skillet, and numerous cockroaches running about, there was no real odor to the place.

It is unknown what will happen to the contents of the trailer.

The preceding three pages (8, 9 and 10) show the photos taken of the place, with the above descriptives basically laying out what could be viewed there on the day Ramey appeared in court for the first time, Tuesday, November 29, 2016.

On the afternoon of Sunday, November 27, at about 1 p.m., neighbors of the trailer in Olney where Glenn R. Ramey had been residing with Misty Coseboon for the past eight or nine months heard what sounded like thuds and crashes.

A neighbor across the roadway from Ramey’s trailer, who told Disclosure he was just going by “Cliff” (which is probably for the best, as there doesn’t need to be any hounding of the man), said “I thought it was car doors slamming at first. Then it was more than four, so I knew it wasn’t car doors. Then I thought maybe it was Grandma Sue (another resident of the trailer park just to the west of Cliff’s trailer) banging on something.”

So Cliff went to the door to see if he needed to go help Grandma Sue, and he saw a blue 2002 Ford Windstar minivan, which he knew Ramey to have been driving in recent months, being busted up by “a kid, probably in his mid-20s,” Cliff said, “with a reddish-colored aluminum baseball bat.” Cliff described the young man as wearing a net stocking cap with his hair sticking out of it, blue jeans and a dark shirt. Cliff didn’t recognize the man at all; had never seen him before in the trailer park or otherwise.

Cliff said the man was somewhat systematic in swinging the bat and connecting with the windows of the blue minivan, striking many of them until they completely busted out; and then, when he seemed satisfied with his job on that vehicle, he went to the tan Chrysler passenger car and began busting out the windows on that vehicle.

“He was obviously upset,” Cliff said. He noted that the man took off and apparently, authorities were notified.

Upon a little bit of investigation, it was discovered that the guy had seen somewhere on Instagram that someone had posted a photo of the trailer where Ramey resided, with a caption “This is where the monster lives.”

His emotions were understandable. That he took it out on what he believed were Ramey’s vehicles, however, is just more perpetuating of the sickness surrounding the man and the case….because that vehicle wasn’t Ramey’s. As he’d done to the Gibsons in Johnson County, Ramey was driving around in a vehicle belonging to someone else. He was actually supposed to have been repairing the minivan for a man he was employed by to do mechanic work; the vehicle actually belonged to Aaron Hackney, who showed Disclosure his title to prove it on the day Ramey appeared in court, Tuesday, November 29, for the first time.

Cliff volunteered some information about how Ramey had been at his place just six days earlier, on Wednesday, November 23.

“He was here around noon Wednesday talking about what he had to do that day; it was nothing out of the ordinary,” Cliff said; “He wasn’t nervous; he wasn’t anxious. He was just Glenn. He would come over here nearly every day.”

It’s unclear whether Ramey is fully aware of what kind of a predicament he’s in.

What seems to be coming out about the situation, however, is that Ramey may already be playing his “mental” card.

During the Nov. 29 hearing, Ramey, not yet represented by counsel, sat alone at the defense table, shackled and in jail togs, with a county correctional officer behind him to shield Ramey from anyone who might come out of the audience and take a lunge at him.

When Judge Larry Dunn asked Ramey if he had any questions, the man asked one.

“So everybody done made up their mind?” he posited to the judge and a deep-southern Illinois drawl that only added to the tenor of Ramey’s voice, which sounded for all the world like he was sitting there seething anger at the proceedings.

Dunn had to carefully explain to Ramey that that wasn’t the case at all, and that it was his duty as the judge in the case to make sure Ramey understood that he was considered, under the law, innocent until proven guilty.

Ramey didn’t appear as though he believed that, and kept his head down and his expression stony, even after he emerged from the hallway behind the courtroom and entered the elevator.

There, he tucked himself face-first into a far corner, but just before the doors closed, cameras rolling from mainstream television stations caught Ramey glancing over his right shoulder, and it appeared the man allowed a grin to slide over his face.

Was he playing the camera? It’s hard to say. Ramey has a serious scar under one of his eyes, suffered in some kind of altercation years ago that causes some slackness of musculature in his face; it could very easily have been a twisting of those muscles that made it appear as though the man was smiling.

Or it could very easily have been Ramey pulling out the “poor picked on mental guy” that folks like James Gibson and Robert Coil as well as countless others have had to put up with over the years because nobody could “do anything with” Glenn Ramey.

As mentioned previously, Coil didn’t want to comment much, but he did volunteer this assessment of Ramey, and of the situation:

“He’s the best liar you could ever meet,” Coil told Disclosure in a phone interview. “He plays this poor lil mental boy everybody is picking on.”

Coil also opined about the state agencies that either handed Ramey off each time he caused trouble for himself or others, or utterly failed at stopping Ramey at whatever juncture they could.

“They’ve got blood on their hands,” Coil said of the multitude of agencies involved. “They know what they did. I never thought he would ever murder somebody but I was scared to death he was gonna molest a kid. We wanted rid of him, but we never dreamed it’d be this way.”

Regina, who no longer lives in Illinois, and who, if Sabrina had been adopted out to her family, would have a living 8-year-old with her in another state instead of a child now buried in Olney, weighed in with her final comment: “This whole thing just makes me physically sick. But yet the Department of Human Services in Illinois hands them over, whether they can really take care of them or not.”

But probably the most powerful statement in the entire mess was made by a Johnson County official who didn’t wish to be identified for print, as there apparently are still a lot of people in that downstate county who have a serious case of heartache regarding the whole Ramey/Palmer/Gillihand bunch, on both sides of the aisle, for and against…and with the death of Sabrina Stauffenberg and the arrest of and charges against Ramey, wounds have been torn open anew.

The Johnson County official told Disclosure: 

“There are people who make mistakes, based on bad decisions. Those people can be rehabilitated and can change their course in life, and they can get past it all and become successful.

“Then there are evil people: Child pornographers, child molesters, serial murderers. You can’t change them. They can’t be rehabilitated. They’re evil. You have to keep these people out of the public.”

One agency after another in the state of Illinois continually failed to do that with Glenn Ramey. Whether or not he is the person who raped and killed Sabrina Stauffenberg has yet to be determined; however, even if he didn’t, the statement by the Johnson County official stands, because so many others, it’s been proven in courts of law in so many downstate Illinois counties, have been harmed by Glenn Ramey, some of them irretrievably…and most of it could have been completely avoided.

Whether any of these agencies will now change how they handle child abuse, child molestation, or “disabled adult” cases in the state after the death of Sabrina Stauffenberg is unknown. 

What is known is that something has to change. 

Children are oftentimes afraid to disclose abuse, no matter who commits it; some children are non-verbal and cannot, but sustain injuries that can’t otherwise be explained. That is a ridiculous excuse to not prosecute, and yet that’s exactly how some people get away with hurting children repeatedly. Prosecutors wimp out and don’t follow through on the “tough” cases, which generally aren’t that tough at all and usually only need an application of common sense as opposed to hotshot defense attorneys wrangling someone’s ability to present evidence away from them of a crime that could only have happened a certain way and by a certain person. Agencies wimp out when someone in a position of authority tells them “You don’t need to follow through on that; there’s nothing to it” and it makes their caseload lighter and thus their jobs easier. Mandated reporters (like teachers, doctors, nurses, dentists), frustrated over Illinois’ agencies set up to be “advocates” for children who are victims of abuse of any sort, dread dealing with them and sometimes simply don’t, because the mandated reporters watch as these children sink deeper and deeper into despair and depression because of what they are enduring when they’re away from school.

Illinois has many broken systems. Yet the budgets for these broken ones grow every year, and taxpayers – the ones whose children and grandchildren are the victims, first of the abusers, then of the agencies’ failures – are taxed into insolvency, all the while hoping “the system” will come through for them, that theirs might be that one child that the system can save.

And then, infrequently, there’s that one child that couldn’t be saved. Sabrina Stauffenberg, unfortunately, is only the latest.

HERRIN, Ill. - Maybe it was a GPS issue.

Whatever the case, Frank E. Wright, the elderly man missing from Herring, Illinois, since Sunday morning, has been located in Williamson County.

Wrong state, however; he wasn't in Williamson County, Illinois. He was found in Williamson County, Tennessee.

Wright, 77, had last known whereabouts at 7 a.m. Sunday when he left his home in Herrin in his 2013 Chevy Silverado.

There was a positive sighting of him in the Nashville, Tennessee area noted yesterday by Herrin police.

Then this morning we learned that he'd been found in Williamson County, Tenn., which is where Nashville sits.

Frank E. Wright

We've been in touch with the family, and we're being told that Wright was "disoriented and physically drained. He had been without his diabetes medication for three days."

Wright was taken to a local hospital for evaluation. His daughter in Tennessee who is bringing him back is his Power of attorney and says she is "taking his keys."

Whatever will happen from this point forward, the elderly man is okay, and it's likely all because YOU shared the posts across social networking; how else would people in Tennessee have been able to spot him, missing from little podunk Illinois...? GOOD JOB, readers. Keep it up.

FLORA, Ill. - It's a pretty sure bet that police officers in the city of Flora were grateful that it was a slow couple of days last week, as the police report shows.

Chief John Nicholson releases the following information:

Tuesday, November 29 at 7:08 pm, Flora Police investigated an accident at the intersection of US RT 45/50 and Shamrock, involving a 1984 Chrysler operated by Tanya Tackitt, 40, of Olney and a 1997 Ford operated by William Boyd, 54, of Olney. Tackitt was cited for Failure to Yield when Turning Left.

Wednesday, November 30 at 10:41 pm, Flora Police arrested Grant Cartnal, 32, of Colorado on a FTA Warrant out of Effingham County. Cartnal was transported to Flora Police Department before being transferred to the custody of Clay County Sheriff’s Office.

Thursday, December 1 at 6:55 pm, Rikki Goff, 23, of Iuka was issued a Citation for Operating an Uninsured Vehicle, following a traffic stop in the 400 block of West North Avenue.

Friday, December 2 at 3:15 pm, Amanda Wesselman, 36, of Effingham was arrested by Flora Police for Driving While License Suspended and Operation of Uninsured Vehicle, following a traffic stop in the 100 block of Presley. Wesselman underwent booking procedures at Flora Police Department and was released with a Notice to Appear.

CLAY CO., Ill. - Sheriff Andy Myers has released the following information about the goings-on in his county as it pertains to departmental activity from December 1 through the 6th:

Dec. 1, Michael E. Martin, 32, Sigel, was arrested on an outstanding Clay County warrant for Failure to Appear on the original charge of D.U.I. Bond set at $5,000.00(10%), plus $75.00 warrant fee. Martin appeared in Clay County court and was released.

Dec. 4, Clay County Sheriff's Deputy arrested Steven W. Koester, 48, Dieterich, on an outstanding Clay County warrant for Failure to Appear on the original charge of Aggravated D.U.I. Bond set at $20,000.00 (10 percent), plus $75.00 warrant fee. He is currently incarcerated in the Clay County Jail.

Dec. 4, the Clay County Sheriff's Office was notified of a motor vehicle accident at 9:15 p.m. south of the intersection of South Stanford and Cherrybark Lane. Apparently Aaron J. Winchester, 22, Flora, operating a 1995 Chevrolet Silverado was travelling south on South Stanford Road. Winchester stated a deer ran into his path, he swerved to miss the deer and drove through a fence. Winchester was arrested for Failure to Reduce Speed to Avoid an Accident and Driving Under the Influence. He posted bond and was released.

Dec. 5, Clay County Sheriff's Deputy arrested James P. Patterson, 48, Clay City, on an outstanding Clay County warrant for Failure to Appear on the original charge of Theft. Bond set at $3,000.00 (10 percent), plus $75.00 warrant fee. He posted bond and was released.

Dec. 6, the Clay County Sheriff's Office was notified of a motor vehicle accident at 10:51 a.m. at the U.S. Hwy 45/50 East Intersection east of Flora. Apparently Donald R. Brown, 51, Xenia, operating a 1996 Ford truck was travelling eastbound on Hwy 50, when a 2003 Mercury operated by Jean Foster, 83, Clay City, stopped at the stop sign going south then proceeded into traffic, causing the Brown vehicle to strike her vehicle. Foster was transported to Clay County Hospital for her injuries. Foster was cited for Failure to Yield at an Intersection and was given a Notice to Appearin Clay County court.

Cheyenne Matheny

WILLIAMSON CO., Ill. - Williamson County Sheriff Bennie Vick is asking the public for help with locating a missing person.

This morning at about 9:30 AM the Sheriff’s Office received the report of the Missing Person. Cheyanne Matheny, 17, reportedly walked away from a residence on Holly Drive, near the intersection of Morning Glory Road and Spillway Road, yesterday at about 4:00 PM. There has been no contact with Cheyanne since then.

Cheyanne is not originally from this area, and was staying with a friend on Holly Drive for the past few weeks.

Cheyanne is described as a white female, 17 years of age, 5’04” and about 130 lbs.  She has brown eyes and brown hair.

Cheyanne has been entered into the statewide database as a Missing Person.

Anyone with information on Cheyanne’s possible whereabouts is asked to contact the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office at 618-997-6541, or their local law enforcement agency.

CENTRAL CITY, Ill. - Donald S. Boyce, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today that on December 6, 2016, George David Treece, 38, Alabama, pled guilty to an indictment charging him with Bank Robbery.

Treece faces a term of imprisonment of not more than twenty (20) years, a fine up to $250,000, or both, and a term of supervised release of not more than five (5) years.

Treece will also have to pay restitution to the bank for its loss.

Treece’s sentencing has been scheduled for March 21, 2017, in Benton, Illinois. Treece has been held without bond since his arrest on a Criminal Complaint on August 29, 2016.

The charge arose when, on August 26, 2016, Treece entered the Farmers State Bank in Central City, Illinois, and demanded money from a bank teller. After the teller removed the money from her drawer and placed it on the counter, Treece took the money and left. Later that day, after being Mirandized, Treece admitted robbing the bank.

The case was investigated by the Central City Police Department, Centralia Police Department, Wamac Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case is assigned to Assistant United States Attorney Angela Scott.

CHESTER, Ill. - Jeffrey Magelitz, 44, of Chester, Illinois, was sentenced to two years of probation, six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service as a result of his convictions in a two-count Indictment that charged embezzlement and theft from a labor union and for filing a false report with the Department of Labor, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Donald S. Boyce, announced today.

Magelitz was the former treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 415 in Vienna, Illinois from January of 2012 through June of 2013.

The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Labor Management Standards, with the assistance of the labor union. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Norman R. Smith.

MARSHALL, IL. (ECWd) –

The Clark County Park District held a special meeting last night, the same night as Township Caucuses, most likely in hopes nobody would notice they were about to lease out residential lots for less than the cost of an annual campsite.

An amazingly ignorant decision.

Sources tell us that in the 2+ years this has been advertised on their website, only one person has attempted to enter into a contract, and that person only did so because of threats from the Park District of denial of a dock permit on the property she already owns unless she “pays da man” more money – by way of a lot lease on an adjacent lot.

Pretty sad when the district has to threaten to withhold favorable action unless the property owners lease a lot they do not even want to lease (sounds eerily familiar to the textbook definition of criminal intimidation by a public official).

The vote was three in favor of stealing your property, and two against it. Joe Ewing (the election cheat and abuser of public trust and helped the Ethics Commission commit criminal acts and FOIA Requester Attacker) did not show up for this important vote even though he had previously publicly intimidated and badgered a fellow board member for skipping meetings. Commissioner Pine attended his Township Caucus as he had previously committed to....

To read the rest and view the video, click this link.

Attorney General’s Settlement Ensures Sandwich Shop Workers Will No Longer Be Subject
to Restrictive Non-Compete Agreements

Chicago ─ Attorney General Lisa Madigan today announced a settlement with Jimmy John’s for imposing highly restrictive non-compete agreements on its low-wage sandwich shop employees and delivery drivers whose primary job tasks are to take food orders and make and deliver sandwiches. Between its franchise and corporate-owned locations, Jimmy John’s operates nearly 300 sandwich shops in Illinois.

Madigan’s settlement agreement with Jimmy John’s Enterprises LLC and Jimmy John’s Franchise LLC requires the company to:

• Notify all current and former employees that their non-competition agreements are unenforceable and confirm that Jimmy John’s does not intend to enforce them;
• Notify all franchisees in Illinois of the same and ask them to rescind any non-competes they used based on the model agreement provided by Jimmy John’s corporation;
• Implement a process to remove all non-competes from Jimmy John’s “new hire” packets and stores;
• Agree to use non-competes in compliance with Illinois law moving forward; and
• Provide $100,000 to the Attorney General’s Office to use toward education and outreach to raise public awareness regarding the legal standards for enforceability of non-compete agreements and promote employer best practices.  

“This settlement helps ensure Illinois’ workers have freedom to change jobs in order to seek better wages, further their careers and improve their lives,” Madigan said. “Workers in Jimmy John’s sandwich shops should know they are not subject to these unfair and unenforceable agreements."

Madigan filed a lawsuit in June 2016 that alleged Jimmy John’s required all employees to sign a non-compete agreement as a condition of employment. The agreement restricted employees during their employment and for two years afterward from working in any other business that earns more than 10 percent of its revenue from selling “submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita, and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches.” Under the terms of the non-compete agreement, this work restriction applied to any sandwich business located within three miles of any Jimmy John’s Sandwich Shop in the country. A later, nearly identical version of the non-compete agreement modified the geographic limitation to two miles around any Jimmy John’s Sandwich Shop in the country.

Madigan’s lawsuit alleged the agreement was illegal and unenforceable under Illinois law. Madigan’s office is currently investigating several additional employers for the use of unenforceable non-compete agreements.

According to White House and U.S. Treasury reports, non-competes impact approximately 30 million – nearly one in five – U.S. workers, including roughly one in six workers without a college degree. Under Illinois law, non-compete agreements must be premised on a legitimate business interest and narrowly tailored in terms of time, activity and place. Starting in January 2017, the Illinois Freedom to Work Act will prohibit use of non-compete agreements for employees earning minimum wage or less than $13 an hour.

The settlement was handled by Madigan’s Workplace Rights Bureau Chief Jane Flanagan, as well as Assistant Attorneys General Anna Crane and John Wolfsmith. The mission of the Workplace Rights Bureau is to protect and advance the employment rights of Illinois residents, particularly low and moderate-income and immigrant residents. The Bureau recently held a symposium on “Emerging Legal Issues in the Workplace” in which national and local experts discussed recent trends and policy proposals surrounding the increasing use of non-compete agreements.

ST. CLAIR CO., Ill. - Remember this gal?

JoAnn Reed

That's JoAnn Reed. The obnoxious former mayor of Alorton, Illinois, whose charming mugshot which features her wildly-coiffed hair was obtained after she was alleged to have smuggled contraband into jail. Or maybe before; she had to have been in jail for something, after all. Actually, somewhere in there is how she lost her mayor gig.

Anyway, JoAnn's now indicted. Press information indicates that Reed is charged with two different crimes: buying votes and disregard of election code. Reed is alleged to have bought votes on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 this year in St. Clair County. With money. That's right; a special agent claims Reed knowingly gave or promised to give money in exchange for voting a certain way on a certain candidate or position in an election, which act is a Class 4 felony in Illinois.

Reed is also accused of "knowingly committing an act that is declared unlawful." Court documents state that Reed engaged in Electioneering, or soliciting votes or engaging in political discussion within 100 feet of a polling place. That's a misdemeanor

She's being held on $10,000 cash bond.

And she's not the only one.

East St. Louis board member Michael Roberts, 70, has been charged with Official Misconduct after allegedly using township funds for trip to Las Vegas for Roberts and his wife a year ago.

East St. Louis township trustee Edith Moore, 69, has been charged with Forgery of an Email and Prevention of Voting, the former after she delivered a document to the St. Clair County Circuit Clerk she knew had been altered to make it false, the latter after it was alleged that she simply prevented another person from voting.

Alorton police officer Teanna Gillespie is charged with a violation or FOID and weapons statutes, after her FOID card was revoked following her being a patient in a mental institution, and she had in her possession a Smith & Wesson .40-cal handgun.

East St. Louis City council person and ESL township contractor June Hamilton Dean, 53, has been charged with Public Contractor Misconduct and Forgery, after allegedly forging documents regarding the employment status of a RaeShaunta S. Lacy, 45, of Swansea. Ms. Lacy, who also goes by Reashaunta and Raesha, has herself been charged - with Forgery, in which it's alleged that she knowingly provided false information to McDonald Homes, a manufactured house company in Swansea.

Washington Park auxiliary officer Anthony L. Davis, 25, of Cahokia, has been charged with Official Misconduct after allegedly furnishing false information about a patrol car accident. He was an auxiliary, so why he had a patrol car isn't clear at this time.

U.S. Postal Service worker Christopher Malone, 41, of Swansea, has been charged with Theft of Government Property, this allegedly occurring at five USPS branches in ESL, St. Clair County and three other locations. Other than "government property and money," what it was he was alleged to have stolen wasn't listed in press material.

St. Clair County board of review member Michael P. Crockett Jr., 55, of Millstadt, has been charged with Bribery and Failure to Report a Bribe, this after it was alleged that he accepted cash to reduce taxes on two commercial properties on Camp Jackson Road in Cahokia, and Official Misconduct and Forgery for falsifying an assessment of the same property.

All the indictments were announced Monday; seven were arrested on that day (it's not clear which one or ones weren't.)

You'll remember that the Edgar County Watchdogs were called over to Cahokia earlier this year after concerned citizens were asking what on earth several of the public officials were doing with public funds.

Now we know (allegedly, of course) what the big problem was with the Cahokian public officials when the Watchdogs - considered "outsiders"  - showed up at the meetings....something that ALWAYS should send up red flags, if the boards/councils/committees etc have a pucker factor when someone "they don't know" shows up at a PUBLIC meeting.

Every taxpayer has to pay taxes in to a minimum of eleven taxing bodies, a ridiculous amount, in Illinois. For every taxing entity, you can bet there's at least ONE person with his or her hand either in the till, taking advantage of perks, or something that effectively is fraud, waste or abuse. The culture of corruption in Illinois is over and above anywhere else in the country, we're beginning to believe. The complacency of the public - blindly trusting those running for and attaining public office - is largely to blame...which means folks need to get interested in what's going on, attend meetings, get involved. Otherwise, people are going to continue to run roughshod over the trusting. We're creating our own problems here, folks.

It's time to uncreate it.

CLARK CO., Ill. - A Richland County driver was cited after she grew ill and crashed her vehicle trying to get to the side of the road early this morning in Clark County.

Illinois State Police in District 12 Effingham said preliminary investigative details indicate that Kasey Iffert, 34, of Noble was driving a brown GMC Yukon eastbound on I-70 at milepost 137 at 12:50 a.m. this morning (Wednesday, December 7) when she reports that she became ill. 

As Iffert pulled the vehicle onto the shoulder of the Interstate, she lost control and drove off the roadway and into a drainage ditch, where the vehicle overturned.

With Iffert were passengers Sara Keck, 38 of Cisne, Barbara Staser, 48 of Effingham, and Tamara Boerngen, 47 and also from Effingham.

Staser was transported to Union Hospital in Terre Haute, Ind., with minor injuries.

Iffert was cited for Failure to Reduce Speed to Avoid a Crash.

There will be no print headlines for this issue.

Instead, we'll just put the cover of it right here, where you can see the headlines of the four separate pieces in this issue on stands right now:

Systemic failures and "pure evil" may have lead to Sabrina Stauffenberg's death

How did the system fail Sabrina?

An exclusive look inside the home of a suspected killer

What can be done to prevent future tragedies?

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This is the Limited Special Edition on the Olney child murder, as promised. The whole issue, 16 pages, full color...of stuff you will read nowhere else. You think you know what's going on in this case, or in the background of everyone involved...? You have no idea! This special issue is sure to enrage even the meekest among you. And for good reason. When you see what we turned up, you're going to be aghast. And what we're currently learning for the next issue is absolutely jaw-dropping.

So get this limited special edition, on stands now for only ONE WEEK, followed by the next regular issue on stands December 14 or read it online with an online membership to the e-Edition.

RICHLAND CO., Ill. - Hey, Richland County.

Get out and see how your tax dollars are being spent. There's a board meeting Thursday, December 8, at 7 p.m. Here's the agenda:

RICHLAND CO., Ill./VINCENNES, Ind. - The woman who used an Ace bandage to effectively hang herself Sunday at the Richland County Detention Center in Olney has died.

The 30-year-old woman, according to family, had been on life support since being transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, Indiana. We were told Monday that family was waiting to see if physicians were able to detect any brain activity in 48 hours, and if they weren't, they would give physicians okay to remove life support. Apparently that removal occurred yesterday.

You can read about the initial incident here.

The name of the woman is being withheld here pending notification of relatives; however, we will be producing the full story - according to family - in the upcoming print edition, on stands Tuesday, December 13.

If you haven't gotten this current issue - the Limited Special Edition - hurry out and get one, to make way for the upcoming print version, the December 2016/January 2017 issue.