The Carbondale apartment complex where Molly Young died
Long before the movement was on to bring to justice the person responsible for Molly Young’s death, Disclosure went out of the coverage area and produced a comprehensive article about it in the print version, to show people what’s happening in Carbondale and to send a warning.
The warning was: this is happening in Carbondale, and authorities appeared to be covering it up. The caution is even more premonitory now, since the death of Pravin Varughese in that town.
Richie Minton
But the warning is more than that, even. It’s that our young people are dying, and authorities, instead of acting, are relying on diversionary tactics (in Molly’s case, that she committed suicide; in Pravin’s case, that the boy was under the influence of substances that made him just wander into a wooded area and succumb to hypothermia) in order to offset the fact that they’re doing nothing. It’s not just in Carbondale; it’s happening all over Illinois, and all over the country. And it’s time we start holding our authorities accountable, in many ways: while a police chief isn’t elected, he IS appointed, and the mayor and city council approves and ultimately appoints. That mayor and city council needs to be overturned at the next available election…and every election after that….until someone with enough cajones to handle deaths like Pravin’s and Molly’s no longer remain unaddressed. The same goes for sheriffs and county prosecutors. Our chance to speak comes every four years at the ballot box. Don’t waste it. It could be you, your child, or your grandchild next.
Here now is the article in full that appeared in the June 2012 print edition of Disclosure about Molly Young, before we had the e-Edition, long after ISP and then-prosecutor Mike Wepseic had already allowed the story of Molly’s death to be altered, just like the crime scene was…and mainstream media was being characteristically silent about it.
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CARBONDALE—The case surrounding the death of a young Carbondale woman was showing slight movement as of press time (June 11) after languishing in the public eye for more than two and a half months.
Molly Young, 21, was found shot to death in the bedroom of an ex-boyfriend’s apartment in Carbondale by the ex’s roommate at approximately 8:58 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, March 24, 2012.
But this wasn’t just any ex-boyfriend…and the discovery of Young’s body at two minutes til 9 wasn’t the result of the roommate hearing gunfire.
All the circumstances surrounding Young’s death can be described as spurious at best. And the reactions of not only the Carbondale police, but those peripherally involved in the matter, are highly suspect, and are prompting outrage among a growing number of people who are not only members of Molly Young’s family and friends, but who know that when something unusual such as this happens in Carbondale, it is very likely to go poorly investigated—if at all.
And that’s what Young’s family has vowed will not happen in this case.
The players
What is known of the official record has been placed in the public eye by members of Young’s family, who have created “Justice for Molly” on a Facebook page and are encouraging the public to tell what they may know.
Unfortunately, they are being met with a level of resistance because of who Young’s ex is.
The ex is one Richie Minton, 23, who is employed through the Carbondale police department as a dispatcher.
Minton’s father, “Flip” Minton, is an investigator for the Franklin County sheriff’s department, and his mother, Katherine, is supervisor of dispatch in Franklin.
The bits of information that have been confirmed paint a disturbing picture.
Molly Young, her family agrees, has had problems in the past but as of late, had come to be very happy with her life, with a new job and other positive occurrences.
Whether her happiness was because Minton was out of her life after a year-and-a-half relationship is only a matter of suggestion, but the two had stopped seeing each other, although limited contact was still being made between them.
Young, who was living with her mother and grandmother, was home on the night of Friday, March 23, and had gone to bed at about 11 p.m.
Friends of Young’s reported that Minton had been “threatening suicide” all week to Young via text and possibly other forms of communication.
Whether Young believed Minton to be serious or not is unknown; however, the messages were frequent enough for her to express to friends and relatives that Minton was at least contacting her.
Sick, but left the house
On the 23rd, Young had been “throwing-up sick” with an apparent stomach virus, and her grandmother had been trying to take care of her, which is what prompted the next instance in the series of events: the grandmother “heard a noise” at about 3 a.m., and went through the house to find the door unlatched from the inside, a light on—and the car gone, apparently taken by Molly Young for reasons unknown to her grandmother.
Young’s mother and grandmother did not hear from or about Molly until between 11:30-12 on the morning of the 24th—when authorities called them and advised that Molly was dead in Richie Minton’s apartment.
Little is known about the ensuing period of time between the noise the grandmother heard at approximately 3 a.m. and the phone call.
However, it has been established that Molly Young sent out a text from her cell phone at 4:20 a.m. on the 24th. It was to the effect that Minton was drunk, and that she was at his apartment because he was despondent.
Whether he referenced suicide in any communication just prior to Young sending this text is unknown, as well as to whom the text was submitted.
Roommate finds her
In the sequence of events next known for certain, Minton’s roommate, Wes Romack, who works at Panera Bread in Carbondale, was off work at 5:30 a.m. and arrived back at the apartment he shared with Minton at Westridge Drive at about 5:45 a.m.
Subsequent disclosure to authorities has been that Romack didn’t hear any noises in the apartment between the time he arrived home and the time he went to bed.
However, the official story at this point is that he arose shortly before 9 a.m., and somehow, came across Young’s body in Minton’s bedroom.
She was dead of a gunshot wound to the head. The coroner’s report showed that the bullet entered the top of her head on the left side and traveled straight down.
The weapon was a high-caliber handgun (conflicting reports have it at either a .45 or .40 caliber) and belonged to Minton. One thing authorities knew about the weapon (whether Minton told them this or they learned in some other way is unknown) is that it was kept in a locked box on the premises. It has been confirmed that Minton did tell authorities Young “knew the combination” to the lock. Her family, however, has stated that she wouldn’t even know how to handle a gun, let alone chamber a round in order to shoot herself.
Even more weird is that she was found in Minton’s bedroom…and there has been no comment made out of anyone as to whether Minton was aware of the shot or not.
Timeline spurious
But it gets even more spurious.
The 911 call was made by Romack at 8:58 a.m.
City police arrived at about 9 a.m., and contacted the Illinois State Police at 9:05 a.m.
Within minutes of the ISP call, Minton, his parents and a lawyer were at the police station.
Minton’s parents live at least 30 minutes away from Carbondale, in Franklin County.
Further, Minton was on the schedule to report to work at police dispatch at 7 a.m.
Records available show that Minton didn’t show up for work, and that there was no call-in; further, sources indicate he “never misses work.”
Documents obtained by the family via Freedom of Information Act requests, as noted on the Facebook page, show that dispatch traffic is redacted (“blanked out” out of sound files) between 7 and 7:30 a.m., then again between 8:30 and 9:15 a.m.
When communication is restored to FOIA’d sound files, the indication is that a “22-year-old woman has overdosed” at Minton’s apartment.
Initial published reports coming from the state police indicate that Carbondale police allowed Minton to “change clothes and wash his hands” before he left the apartment.
News information being released from Carbondale police had it disseminated widely to television media in the area that the death was being investigated as a suicide.
Atrocity in handling
However, even if it were a suicide, the handling of the entire matter is nothing short of atrocious.
That is especially true given that when the coroner became involved in the matter, he issued his opinion that the time of death was between 4:20 and 5:30, based largely on the condition of Young’s body, but also upon the text found having been sent from her phone.
On the premise that Molly Young committed suicide with a weapon kept in a locked box that she was hardly proficient in handling, but was able to shoot, right-handed, straight down the top of the left side of her head, in Richie Minton’s bedroom nearly four hours before any 911 call was made, ostensibly performed in such a manner that allowed him to sleep through it and not even he, but his roommate, were to discover her body, provides plenty of fodder for thought as to what exactly Richie Minton was doing between 4:20 and 8:58 a.m. March 24.
That his parents were already on scene with a lawyer, Terry Green, in tow at the Carbondale police department less than a half hour after the 911 call was made, gives even greater pause.
Sluggish prosecutorial response
It continues to be reported that Richie Minton himself has not spoken with ISP investigators (the case is being lead by Stanton Diggs, one of the sharper investigators in downstate.)
On the morning of Monday, June 4, Jackson County state’s attorney Mike Wepsiec informed the media that more than 200 pages of evidence, along with some CDs and DVDs, had been turned over to his office by the Illinois State Police.
He reportedly told Young’s family that if there were “no crises this week, I’m going to get to this.”
However, Wepsiec has it within his authority to order the investigation to move along a little more quickly and efficiently than it has been, including investigating why there are convenient “blank stretches” in radio/dispatch traffic/911 audio logs during two points of time on the morning of the 24th.
He has, as far as can be ascertained, not done any sort of thing; and a week after the voluminous reports were turned over, no arrests have been made.
Wepsiec is a lame duck, having opted to retire this year instead of seek the office of prosecutor one more term.
Federal prosecutor and Democrat candidate Mike Carr won the March Primary and will compete against Republican Sharee Langenstein, who recently was announced as her party’s choice for the office after a recent caucus.
Whether either of them will take the Molly Young death seriously, and cut through the perceived favoritism that Carbondale seems to have shown “one of their own” remains to be seen.
The family is apparently taking every possible step in order to bring attention to the case—and pressure to the authorities—including contacting the Department of Justice and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
Future developments will be featured both in Disclosure’s print version, as well as disclosurenewsonline.com.
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Larry Young filed a federal civil Wrongful Death suit in Jackson County Circuit Court Tuesday. Subsequent developments in that case will be covered here at Disclosure News Online.