Molly Young
JACKSON CO., Ill.—There’s disturbing news arising out of the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office in Springfield today regarding one of the unsolved deaths in downstate.
IT WAS OUR UNDERSTANDING (added for emphasis) that Special Prosecutor Ed Parkinson advised the family of Molly Young yesterday (and the public today) that he is declining at this time to pursue the case of the March 2012 death of the young woman in the city of Carbondale.
Disclosure was given the information last night and has attempted to contact Parkinson today at the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office in Springfield this morning; we were advised that he was in a meeting and would return our call as soon as possible.
Young, 21, died in the bedroom of an ex-boyfriend, Richie Minton, in a Carbondale apartment in the early morning hours of March 24, 2012, after Minton called her there telling her he was drunk and sick and needed her help. She died of a single gunshot wound to the head which authorities maintained until January 2013 was a suicide, even though the bullet entered her skull at an improbable angle for the young woman to have done it herself. In January of that year, a coroner’s jury, hearing ONLY testimony slanted toward suicide, ruled her manner of death “unknown,” meaning they couldn’t give a finding of homicide, but couldn’t give a finding of suicide, either, despite the overwhelming testimony aimed toward that verdict.
With Minton being an employee of the city of Carbondale police department (as a dispatcher), Carbondale, who may have irretrievably bungled the case early on, handed it over to the state police, who also dropped the ball on many occasions in the investigation. The case was closed in September 2012 just prior to then-prosecutor Mike Wepseic’s conclusion of term in office. The office was won in that year’s election by Mike Carr, who did nothing to further the investigation. But upon the conclusion reached by the coroner’s jury, and ongoing efforts by the family and the Justice for Molly group throughout 2013, the case was reopened…and in July of 2013, it was handed to Parkinson.
There’s been no word on why Parkinson has taken the stance he has on this very obvious case. We await his response.