DOUGLAS CO.—The continuation of the series involving a woman whose exploits and subsequent arrest have spanned the Heartland and leads all the way down into Egypt in deep southern Illinois continues this month with an examination into what Jennifer Inman has dragged a Douglas County man into with her apparent delusions.
Inman, 31, was arrested in August of this year after authorities allege that she attempted to hire a man to act as a hitman and kill her ex boyfriend, the father of her son, after her allegedly autistic daughter made accusations that she had been molested by the ex. Inman remains jailed in Douglas County lockup.
That “hitman” was James Hollenbeck. And his name, as it turned out, was not to have been released. Yet it was, to Disclosure, in Inman’s own handwriting, prompting Hollenbeck to contact the newspaper (since Disclosure was unable to reach him, as there is no cell phone directory and everyone seems to operate off cells exclusively these days) in order to set the record straight.
Unbeknownst to proud father and devoted husband James Hollenbeck, the decision not to end a man’s life that he wrestled with for nearly three sleepless days and nights in late July, 2013, was far more life-altering than he could have ever imagined at the time. Hollenbeck had faced a great moral dilemma involving an issue that nearly every person who knows him personally, realizes he feels complete, passionate, contempt for.
Loathes pedophiles
James Hollenbeck will tell anyone: he loathes pedophiles.
Hollenbeck’s life was upended by Jennifer Inman’s reappearance in it after more than a year since he last shared words with her. But when Inman confided in him the desperate reason for her impromptu visit, Hollenbeck could never have imagined that he might be the victim she actually had in mind. After all, Inman was offering him a total of $10,000 to kill a man she claimed had repeatedly sexually assaulted her daughter; pedophilia-driven molestation of children being the sole offense Inman had learned a year earlier that Hollenbeck believed was the only reason to justifiably end another man’s life: to stop future incidences of sexual abuse of children.
Hollenbeck’s introduction to Inman took place while they were both receiving inpatient treatment at the Provena Psychiatric Unit in Urbana in June of 2012. Hollenbeck, who lives with bipolar disorder, had been admitted around the same time that Inman had been hospitalized for her latest failed attempt to take her own life. The two shared the same lunch table from time to time, and also had group-therapy sessions together.
Hollenbeck tells Disclosure that if he could alter only one period of time in his life, it would be the days he spent unwittingly revealing himself in Inman’s company while being treated at Provena; totally unaware that Inman had an agenda in which he had become grossly and intricately involved, and caught horrifyingly unaware.
Learned of obsession
It was at Provena that Hollenbeck learned, as many others have recently, that Inman was literally, obsessively pursuing a self-styled, unsolicited “investigation” into a murder that, having resided in the area at the time it occurred, Hollenbeck was regrettably familiar with… along with many other citizens of Mahomet, Illinois.
Hollenbeck clearly recalls Inman’s unrelenting chatter about her pet topic: revealing the person responsible for the brutal slaying and post-mortem sexual assault of Holly Cassano in Mahomet in 2009; a task in which she intended to succeed where the FBI, ISP, and other investigative agencies had only failed.
When Inman first made mention of her interest in solving Cassano’s three-year-old cold case, Hollenbeck was as of yet unaware that this particular murder was her obsessive, even rabid, focus in life, and responded as if to a normal conversation. Quite normally, Hollenbeck told her that he was familiar with the case; he’d read about it. In fact, Hollenbeck told her that he and his family had once even lived near the scene of the crime and met Holly through another married couple they had been friends with.
With 20/20 hindsight, Hollenbeck can vividly reconstruct how things started to snowball with Inman after that first casual mention of his familiarity with the murder. Inman’s attentions devolved to the point where after nearly two days of being grilled by the obsessed woman who only seemed to seek more and more sordid details, which of course as someone not involved, Hollenbeck did not have, he was finally driven to demand of her that she leave him alone.
Taking advantage of his loathing of pedophiles
It was also during that time in Provena where, during group sessions or at table-talk, Inman learned of Hollenbeck’s openly passionate contempt for pedophiles; a mindset he shares with countless other men sickened by the travesties committed against innocent children.
This was a piece of information that Inman never forgot and Hollenbeck eventually regretted revealing, even with it being a relatively common mindset among men. At the time it certainly didn’t seem significant.
Over a year had passed (summer of 2013) since James Hollenbeck had last made Inman’s acquaintance at Provena, when to his utter amazement Inman showed up at his mother’s home in Tuscola. Hollenbeck was not present, but his mother offered to let Inman wait, as he was expected to arrive shortly to retrieve his children after work.
Hollenbeck was nothing short of bewildered to find this woman he barely knew waiting for him inside his mother’s home upon his arrival. At that time, and being a devoted father and husband, Hollenbeck was justifiably concerned as to how his young children would interpret this strange woman—a stripper whose debatable sanity he had only encountered while receiving psychiatric care himself—appearing unexpectedly at their grandmother’s.
A brief consideration of helping her
He walked Inman outside and demanded that she explain herself. When Inman delivered Hollenbeck the carefully-rehearsed and edited story about how her ex-fiancé had recently evaded prosecution in Champaign County for raping her daughter and giving the child herpes, Hollenbeck’s dismayed confusion caused by her mysterious arrival turned to sympathy for the child in her story. Inman knew that she had just jabbed one of his hot buttons.
Then, when she offered Hollenbeck two payments of $5,000 to kill the man, Hollenbeck openly admits, regretfully, to having briefly considered helping her. But the circumstances surrounding how and where they had initially met, not to mention her sudden and uninvited appearance to tell Hollenbeck, a man she only knew from Provena Psych unit, this shockingly graphic and personal story concluding with an attempt to solicit him to commit murder, produced red flags in Hollenbeck’s mind.
The two then parted ways shortly thereafter, having made no definitive plans to complete the murderous task; only instead exchanging phone numbers while agreeing to discuss the matter at a better time. Hollenbeck thought it was, at the very least, the easiest way to get rid of her. He recently told Disclosure that he privately hoped to never hear from or see her again.
Yet, in the days that passed, Inman’s story haunted Hollenbeck. In fact it troubled him to the point that he finally confided to his best friend what had transpired between him and the stripper. Hollenbeck credits his friend for providing a voice of reason that inevitably saved him from an unimaginable fate that he couldn’t fathom then, and only recently has started to recognize as a twisted, calculated plot devised by Inman.
Research showed something ‘not right’
Not only did this friend tell Hollenbeck that he absolutely should not consider taking part in Inman’s plan, but he demanded that James think about what torments his conscience would provide for him if despite his declination to take a direct role in this man’s death, Hollenbeck later heard that Inman had succeeded in finding somebody to do what James would not. Hollenbeck’s friend also reminded him that his responsibility did not, and would not, simply end when he refused to help Inman, because if and when her alleged target, being the father of her youngest child, was eventually murdered, Hollenbeck could very likely be charged in this crime as an” accessory to murder” for not divulging his knowledge of her murderous plans to authorities in time to save the man’s life.
Convinced that his friend had advised him wisely, and in order to protect his wife and the children whom they adore, James Hollenbeck kept his internal dilemma a secret from everyone close to him —aside from the friend who’d advised him so well. He did some at-home research on Inman’s proposed target from his computer; searching Champaign area news media websites for anything that might invalidate the twisted tale that the stripper had told him. Hollenbeck’s confusion was not alleviated when all he found online were scantily-detailed posts about the man’s arrest, and later revelations that Champaign County prosecutors didn’t believe the evidence against him supported the charges.
James Hollenbeck knew that something wasn’t right.
Absolute anonymity
Soon after that, he quickly gathered the nerve to make his move and go to the authorities, where he exposed Inman’s plot. Hollenbeck was almost taken aback by how seriously he was taken by investigators. It was almost as if they weren’t expecting to hear the story Hollenbeck told them, but they weren’t altogether surprised or even curious enough to ask why Hollenbeck thought Inman had approached him to carry out the murder-for-hire scheme in the first place.
The multi-agency investigation quickly kicked into gear, and Hollenbeck was stunned to discover that his life was about to get even more complicated as the result of both Inman’s devious plot and what the authorities expected of him in order to apprehend her.
Douglas County Sheriff’s Department and Zone 5 Illinois State Police Investigations Unit were suddenly assuring Hollenbeck that in exchange for his cooperation in a covert “sting” operation to arrest Inman, the authorities would offer James Hollenbeck absolute anonymity until his testimony might become necessary in court. They also promised to ensure the Hollenbeck family’s safety until after Inman’s trial concluded and she had been convicted of her crime.
Hollenbeck hesitantly agreed, yet admits regretting that that the authorities couldn’t go it alone based on his tip. However, after being plied with assurances that would later be proven worthless, and being assaulted with notions of “doing the right thing,” Hollenbeck realized that authorities seemed to believe that he was their only choice in order for the “sting” to work – and work quickly.
In the hands of authorities
His family’s safety and the integrity of his very name were now in the hands of the various authorities who had repeatedly assured him he was doing the right thing, and he’d be shielded and protected by them as a result. He trusted them and agreed to do his part.
The covert operation was considered a success, as Disclosure readers who have been following this story already know. Inman was arrested on August 7, 2013, and neither the man whose murder she had solicited, nor the unsuspecting victim of her much darker plans, Hollenbeck, had been harmed. Inman was arrested and led away in cuffs, while the borrowed Hummer she’d been driving, belonging to the same 62-year-old Teutopolis dairy farmer from whom she had also deceptively manipulated the $5000 to pay her ‘hitman,’ was on its way to impound. Inman herself told Disclosure that she was so hysterically stunned and horrified by her unstable perceptions of how she “felt the tables had been turned on her,” that when she was booked into the Douglas County Jail she had to be isolated for days while being restrained in a suicide vest, and placed under an around-the-clock suicide-watch.
Inman remained in such shambles that she claims jailers were instructed by the jail psychiatrist not to provide Inmate Inman with anything more than a thin blanket. According to Inman, her erratic behavior kept her isolated for days, confined to a suicide vest, in a bare room, without hygienic supplies, supplied with only the thin blanket; which by her own account was smeared with feces, urine, and menstrual fluid after her second day in jail.
Assurances
Unaware of the serious near-future jeopardy under which Inman had attempted to place him, James Hollenbeck returned home and was intent on regaining some sense of normalcy for his family. To Hollenbeck, that task seemed entirely do-able, as Douglas County Sheriff’s and Illinois State Police continually assured him that his name would remain confidential and his family’s safety would be guaranteed until such a time when he may be required to testify against Inman in court.
James Hollenbeck felt he had done what was right, as he was most certainly entitled to feel. He trusted that the authorities would honor their end of the bargain, and it appeared as if no one would have to know what had come to pass, or where he had met the woman who had put him in such a predicament. Ideally, Inman’s case would never go to trial, but instead end in a plea agreement and he could put all of this behind him. However, he and his wife remained vigilant of developments in Inman’s case as it progressed through the court system, relying on official reports from Judici.com and whatever scraps the Douglas County and Zone 5 investigative authorities allowed to be reported by local mainstream media coverage.
Family learns of coverage
The Hollenbecks were completely unaware of the existence of Disclosure, which isn’t as well known in Central Illinois as it is in Southern Illinois; primarily as the result of being generally feared and despised by Zone 5 Illinois State Police and the law enforcement agencies they influence within their jurisdiction. In fact, until November 15, the Hollenbecks were blissfully unaware of Inman’s extensive correspondence with Disclosure. Inman’s story had been covered on numerous occasions since her August arrest via this organization’s printed publication, and the relentlessly aggressive and effective style of web-oriented, Southern Illinois-based NewMedia offered online to an ever-expanding readership.
On November 15, Hollenbeck’s wife fatefully stumbled upon an online article featured on Disclosure’s website revealing details of Inman’s handwritten confession in which she openly and falsely accuses Hollenbeck of being a longtime confidential informant (CI) for Douglas County Sheriff’s Department, while brazenly insisting that the plot she had hatched to kill her ex-fiancé was a complete fabrication that was being misinterpreted by investigators. Inman’s delusional elaboration continues extensively throughout hundreds of handwritten pages which details meticulously what she claims has been her one, true motivation since June of 2012: to expose James Hollenbeck to authorities as Holly Cassano’s murderer.
The Inman Manifesto
In her confession, dubiously referred to as The Inman Manifesto by Disclosure Staffers investigating this story, she had brazenly written that she didn’t particularly care whether Hollenbeck killed her ex-fiancé or her ex-fiancé killed Hollenbeck in self-defense; which she cites as the most likely outcome as her ex wields the skills of an advanced-degree black belt in taekwondo. Inman’s own words reveal that it would have been most ideal if the two men somehow managed to mutually cause one another’s demise as the result of her plan; an outcome she pines away over on multiple occasions throughout her manifesto while simultaneously giving personal testimony to what a good, pure, and chaste Christian woman she is. Her apparent desire to “play God” with these men’s lives, both of whom have long since been cleared of the horrific accusations Inman has publicly made about them, revealed no human compassion, nor concern of any kind for the lives and safety of anybody besides Inman herself.
However, The Inman Manifesto was penned from a Douglas County Jail cell in Tuscola, and the authorities who had repeatedly reassured Hollenbeck that his anonymity would remain secure until after Inman had faced justice in a court of law, had not only somehow allowed this woman’s obsessively-delusional, handwritten letters to reveal Hollenbeck’s identity as Douglas County’s “inside-man” responsible for her arrest, but those same authorities also applied postage and mailed those revealing documents to Disclosure offices themselves. Even more disturbing is that during Inman’s letter-writing campaign she also divulged her meticulously-fabricated, desperate and altogether-false accusations of Hollenbeck’s complicity in Holly Cassano’s brutal slaying and the subsequent acts of necrophilia visited upon her corpse in 2009.
Unfortunately the very same authorities who had made promises to Hollenbeck were also responsible for reviewing inmate mail entering and leaving Douglas County Jail. By their failure alone is how James Hollenbeck’s anonymity was shattered and his identify leaked — via inmate mail sent by Jennifer Inman, passed along through the system, and finally landing in the hands of the media. Disclosure sources have recently discovered that this organization was only one of the numerous media outlets throughout Illinois who received photocopies of The Inman Manifesto.
Inman’s credentials
The unvarnished truth is that Jennifer Inman indeed had some credentials to go about brilliantly and brazenly attempting to frame James Hollenbeck for the murder of Holly Cassano so there would no longer be a Cold Case under investigation.
Inman has progressed into her Senior year of college, much of which is online study while she had also been enrolled at Parkland College near Champaign. She studied heavily in the fields of psychology, criminal behavior, crime scene investigation, and forensics. One of her professors was Dr. Robert C. Shaler, a world-renowned forensic scientist. Dr. Shaler was called upon in 2001 to lead the grisly work of identifying human remains at Ground Zero of the World Trade Center. Dr. Shaler was responsible for identifying the dead from only bits of bone and human dust, even if all mixed together. In an on-line interview, Dr. Shaler admitted that there was a developing problem they were discovering in the field of forensic science, as some of their students took the forensics classes in order to more perfectly hone their ability to commit crimes and lessen their chances of being forensically identified as the perpetrator.
DNA evidence had cleared Hollenbeck of any association with Cassano’s murder beyond the shadow of a doubt. Hollenbeck informed Disclosure that a requirement of his 2007 felony conviction had been that he submit his DNA profile to authorities so that it could be filed in the national databank years prior to the tragic brutality of Cassano’s death.
Bizarre items
Hollenbeck himself admits confusion as to why, when he and Inman met up for the sting, she had handed over a backpack that contained not only the primary $5,000 cash payment (which The Inman Manifesto claims that she’d literally laundered in a washing machine and dried), a fee that they had agreed upon, but she also presented him with peculiar items like gel shoe sole inserts and glue that Inman insisted Hollenbeck affix to the bottoms of his shoes so there would be no traceable footprints at the scene. Inman also admits to feeling regret as she deposited her Bear Gryllis knife into the bag that she had possessed since her teens; donating the weapon she had carried in her purse towards her dramatic and diabolical cause. Oddly enough, she parted with her long-cherished knife even though she had previously advised Hollenbeck that he should use a gun to kill her martial-artist ex-fiancé. It causes one to wonder about the “history” of that particular knife. Inman also provided a box of blue latex gloves, a skull cap, and other peculiar items.
What Hollenbeck didn’t know was that Inman was fully aware that the suspect being sought in the Cassano murder case was believed to have entered Cassano’s home in their stocking feet as no footprints were ever discovered. She also knew that Cassano was blitz attacked while she slept under her covers by the elusive assailant who stabbed Cassano more than 60 times with a knife that authorities have never located. Inman claims that in her own investigation of the crime scene, she discovered a pair of bloody, blue latex gloves when she removed a panel of skirting from under the mobile home.
Attempt to frame failed
There is no doubt that Jennifer Inman attempted to frame James Hollenbeck for the brutal murder of 22-year-old Holly Cassano. It was never her intent to have Hollenbeck murder her ex-fiancé; the wealthy martial artist and black belt instructor in both Champaign and Tuscola. If Hollenbeck hadn’t gone to authorities as advised by his best friend, at the moment he agreed to this plan and took possession of the backpack that Inman had so meticulously prepared, she surely intended to inform authorities that she had just overheard that Hollenbeck was on his way to murder her ex-fiancé in Champaign. She was so entirely certain that upon Hollenbeck’s apprehension and the subsequent discovery of the peculiar items in his possession, that authorities would finally believe what ISP Zone 5 Investigators only recently revealed to Hollenbeck that Inman had been obsessively trying to convince them of for over a year prior to her arrest; that those items she had given to Hollenbeck, which authorities would have discovered in his possession — while he was en route to commit the murder or having been caught after committing murder —should prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was clearly responsible for the murder of Holly Cassano — due to the paralleling evidence Inman had so carefully amassed before handing the backpack over to him.
Inman’s equally-calculated manipulation of Hollenbeck’s deep loathing of pedophiles in order to secure the death of her ex-fiancé by Hollenbeck, who would now not only have handled Inman’s relationship problems by way of murder, but he would have also done so while in possession of a mysterious backpack full of items linking him to Holly Cassano’s murder; a crime for which Inman wanted nothing more than to see the wrong person convicted. These deeply disturbing facts about Inman’s sociopathic and calculated attempts to get away with murder should speak volumes about the dangerously wicked and evil nature of a woman who has been licensed and certified as an EMT after receiving extensive education in all fields of criminal science, forensics, and human psychology.
Authorities were aware of revelations
The revelations of Inman’s unwarranted, undeserved, and cold-blooded attempt to frame an innocent man for just one of the murders that she claimed haunted her so vividly that she attempted to take her own life on several occasions as the result of her inescapable nightmarish visions of women’s blood being mercilessly shed, are detailed thoroughly in her own handwriting throughout The Inman Manifesto. James Hollenbeck, who had been instrumental in Inman’s apprehension while authorities kept the his family in the dark about Inman’s truest motivations for soliciting him to commit murder, first discovered the precarious position that Douglas County Sheriff’s and Zone 5 ISP investigators led him into only after he received a copy of The Inman Manifesto, sent to him by Disclosure staff on Saturday, November 16; nearly three and a half months after Inman’s arrest.
Until that time, Hollenbeck was unaware of most, if not all, of Inman’s false accusations regarding his involvement in the Cassano murder. Hollenbeck was never made aware of the imminent danger authorities no doubt knew they had subjected Hollenbeck and his family to as the result of his chance association with Inman and her calculated plan to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit. In addition to keeping the Hollenbeck family ignorant of Inman’s web of deceit, Douglas County authorities failed to secure Hollenbeck’s anonymity as they had promised. It is stated on their website that outgoing inmate mail is read and screened, detailing exactly to who the inmate is able to correspond with. Inman’s false accusations of Hollenbeck had passed multiple times through the hands of jail staff who are required to review inmate mail in order to prevent inmates from jeopardizing the safety of sensitive case witnesses like Hollenbeck and consequently his young children and beloved wife.
Opinion: What the evidence shows, according to Disclosure’s examination of facts
In addition to these failures, Douglas County authorities and Illinois State Police investigators have failed to recognize, despite repeated attempts by Disclosure staff to inform them, that they might better serve the public welfare and the interests of the families of the victims of numerous cold-case murders that Inman has obsessed over throughout her life by demanding that Inman come clean with them about what exactly her involvement was in the brutal slaying of not just Holly Cassano in Mahomet in 2009, but also the death of Shana Marie Jaros of Nokomis who was murdered in exactly the same fashion on exactly the same date (November 1) as Cassano; the only difference being the 14 years separating these crimes and the sexual assault of Holly Cassano’s mutilated corpse. Inman herself told Disclosure that a serial killer only develops necrophilia after 10 -15 years of murderous exploits. Inman has continually exposed a gruesome, unbelievable truth that Douglas County authorities and ISP Zone 5 investigations unit have all-but-refused to consider… until Disclosure began unravelling this story publicly.
Disclosure would like to here go on the record to state our opinion of the matter: that Jennifer Inman is a serial killer.
The evidence, Disclosure believes, shows that she murders women in their sleep, and has become so prolific in her craft that in order to achieve whatever sick gratification she has become accustomed to receiving by committing these brutally heinous acts, that she actually had to sexually assault the corpse of Holly Cassano once she was dead; and from her confession it’s clear she had the means and tools with which to do so in such a way that a male perpetrator might have been suspected. There was indeed DNA evidence at the scene of Cassano’s murder, but to this date, it has gone unmatched. However, as a stripper at Gentlemen’s Clubs, giving lap dances for a fee, she could have very likely extracted a cast-away receptacle apparatus used by many men from a nearby waste basket; knowing that this DNA would provide false evidence and likely belong to someone not in the DNA data base… perhaps unlikely to ever appear listed. Her training and certifications as an EMT also gave her ample opportunity to collect blood samples with which to do the same.
In recent months another young woman’s remains were found near Mahomet, where Cassano was killed, who was never reported missing, but who was last recalled seen toward the end of October in 2012. A connection? Maybe. Worthy of law enforcement investigating? Indeed.
James Hollenbeck: Unsung Hero
Perhaps the only reason that November 1st, 2013 came to pass without hearing about yet another brutally slain young woman whose murder would have gone unsolved while authorities continued to search in vain for a teenaged male suspect who doesn’t exist, is because James Hollenbeck is an unsung hero who chose to protect life instead of taking it.
Authorities refuse to recognize that James Hollenbeck protected far more than just the life of one man when he decided to reveal his knowledge of Inman’s murderous plans. James Hollenbeck’s decision to help authorities apprehend Inman undoubtedly secured the future of an untold number of young women against a diabolically brilliant, female, professionally-educated, and seasoned serial killer.
All James Hollenbeck expected in return was that authorities would honor their end of the bargain by protecting his anonymity while not placing his family in harm’s way.
Douglas County Sheriff’s Department and the Illinois State Police have failed James Hollenbeck, his family, and numerous other families waiting for closure… quite miserably.