COLES/RICHLAND/WAYNE COs.—In a case that has far-reaching ramifications for the Illinois State Police, a former investigator from Richland County has had a misdemeanor charge against him dismissed in Coles County, all over a case that originated in Wayne County.
Kelly A. Henby, 55, a former Illinois State Police investigator specializing in investigation of murders and sex crimes as well as a former mayor of the city of Olney, was charged in February of 2011 with a single county of Practicing as a Detective Without a License in Coles County, in what amounted to a set-up by Illinois State Police officials investigating former Wayne County Sheriff (and also a retired ISP investigator) Jim Hinkle of rural Fairfield.
That charge was dismissed by new Coles County State’s Attorney Brian Bowers on December 5, 2012, after nearly two years of investigators with ISP wrangling with the originating case in Wayne as well as with officials at the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation (IDPR), who had stated from the outset that Henby had done nothing wrong.
symbolic evidence of what Hinkle lost in the house fire that ISP’s Rick White was telling people Hinkle set.
Worried about lawsuit?
It’s been suggested the former Coles County state’s attorney Steve Ferguson was afraid to dismiss the meritless case, as dismissal would give Henby room to file a civil suit against the county and against Ferguson for malicious prosecution, so as a result, he let it languish untouched even though mere weeks after the filing, IDPR issued an opinion (for which Disclosure submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain) that Henby hadn’t violated anything they regulated by acting as a private investigator/detective for PII, a registered and licensed private investigation firm in southern Illinois under whose license he operated.
The charge was a misdemeanor, and was a culmination of events that underscored the frustration of a couple of ISP investigators—Rick White and Tom Oliverio—was experiencing with a case involving Hinkle.
In a nutshell: Hinkle was falsely accused of inappropriate sexual conduct with one of his young stepdaughters in 2010. The girl, living in Wayne, communicated the alleged conduct to her father in Coles so that she might go live with him in Charleston under less strict conditions than she experienced with her mother and stepfather (Hinkle) in Wayne. The father reported it to the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), who subsequently reported it to Illinois State Police, where it was turned over to White and Oliverio for investigation into any possible criminal aspect.
This is a shot of the damage on the morning of June 6, 2010, when a lightning strike hit then-sheriff Jim Hinkle’s house, causing it to burn to the ground. The vehicle ISP agent Rick White later claimed locals had seen “driving on the local roads” leading to and from Hinkle’s house in the moments prior to the fire is shown, severely damaged from the fire. Hinkle was in Effingham with his son at his son’s bar and grill when the fire broke out, but White has been trying to imply that Hinkle set the fire himself.
The ‘sheriff killers’
The two investigators, fresh off the victory of having a conviction in federal court over former sheriff Raymond Martin’s drug/weapons/intimidation case (see related story), and having investigated other former sheriffs and their wrongdoing including Wayne’s Sonny McCulley and Marion’s Brad Wolenhaupt, apparently decided they were the “sheriff killers” and, since at that time Hinkle was a lame duck sheriff in Wayne (having lost his bid for re-election in the Primary), they investigated the alleged sexual misconduct, not to prove it didn’t happen, but to prove that it did.
Hinkle called in Henby to interview the girl after she retracted her statements of misconduct to Charleston police. On two different occasions, the girl, being recorded on video/audio DVD, recanted her statements to Henby, once in Coles County at her father’s home, and once in Richland County at Henby’s home in Olney.
Henby wasn’t charged in Richland, but Coles, apparently under pressure from the ISP agents, filed the bogus charge. The charge was false because Henby of course was allowed to operate under PII’s license.
And the allegations against Hinkle were proven false through Henby’s interaction when the girl finally admitted in record that she had concocted the story out of an innocuous occurrence with Hinkle applying chigger medication to her leg in 2010 so she could get away from Wayne County to go have her kind of fun in Coles.
Even Missus White was in on it
Nevertheless, the damage was done to Hinkle.
He finished his term in office with the “pending investigation” hanging over his head and, once out of office, found that he was under suspicion and scrutiny by nearly everyone around him; people he’d known all his life were treating him like a pariah, all thanks to Rick White traveling around Fairfield and Geff implying that Hinkle was guilty, it would be “just a matter of time until everyone learned the truth.”
White’s verbal diarrhea even extended to his wife, Sarah, a teacher at West Richland school in Noble at the time (now teaching at West Salem), who knew of the allegations and was loose-lipped with them as well (despite the loss of credibility she experienced when the public learned that she herself had been sexually improper, having had an affair with a youth minister at a local church shortly before the matter with Hinkle and Henby broke.)
Sarah White, advised of the details of the allegations by her husband, dropped them into conversation anywhere she could, constituting a violation of state juvenile laws, as the matter wasn’t civil, but was criminal, with an underage person as the alleged victim, and, worse, was under open investigation.
White even went as far as to suggest that a house fire at Hinkle’s rural residence in June 2010, caused by a lightning strike, was arson, and that Hinkle had set it, even though the incident he used as “evidence” could be wholly disproven (that people on Enterprise Road in Wayne County had seen Hinkle’s car passing by moments before the fire, even though Hinkle was in Effingham County at the time, and in a vehicle other than the car people allegedly “sighted,” which, incidentally, was parked at the house at the time of the fire and suffered extensive damage).
This is a shot of the damage on the morning of June 6, 2010, when a lightning strike hit then-sheriff Jim Hinkle’s house, causing it to burn to the ground. The vehicle ISP agent Rick White later claimed locals had seen “driving on the local roads” leading to and from Hinkle’s house in the moments prior to the fire is shown, severely damaged from the fire. Hinkle was in Effingham with his son at his son’s bar and grill when the fire broke out, but White has been trying to imply that Hinkle set the fire himself.
Experienced damages
Resultant of this smearing of his name, Hinkle suffered greatly, including being unable to obtain employment as a police officer, and the matter going so far as to affect his son’s restaurant in Effingham to the point that he had to shut down.
Hinkle earlier in 2012 filed a civil suit, naming White, Oliverio, ISP, and the State of Illinois as bearing the burden of being the cause of his financial and emotional devastation—all over false allegations and an investigation that went nowhere.
The civil suit was filed in February of 2012, and outlined the steps White and Oliverio took that put Hinkle under the cloud of suspicion and kept him there despite the multiple recanting statements from the girl.
In August, the complaints against ISP and the state of Illinois were dismissed when an amended complaint was filed.
However, on November 19, the amended complaint itself was dismissed, and Hinkle was given leave to file another amended complaint within 21 days.
About a week later, it was all over the news that Hinkle’s case had been dismissed—outright, and with no explanation about the “leave to file a second amended complaint.”
White: Blabbermouth
This, it’s been discovered, has originated from none other than White himself.
White, as it turns out, is drinking buddies with local radio personality Len Wells, who works for WFIW, now owned by The Original Company, in Fairfield. White’s close relationship with Wells has resulted in the radio station getting early—albeit often incorrect—information on a case if White happens to be working it. Hinkle’s federal civil suit was one of those cases. White, apparently unclear about the part where the judge had told Hinkle he was given a 21-day leave-to-refile window, related to Wells that the case was “dismissed” and stopped there, causing Wells to report that the case was over—at least temporarily, until Wells learned the truth and reported correctly.
The amended complaint was filed on Dec. 5—the same day Henby’s charge was dismissed in Coles.
Since that time, White and Oliverio have filed motions to dismiss Hinkle’s complaint against them, stating that it has no merit. However, that will be for a judge or perhaps a jury to determine as the case moves forward.
No court setting has yet been made to hear any upcoming action in Hinkle’s federal civil case.
Henby, reached for comment about any potential civil suit of his own against the questionable agents of the state police who caused his Coles County problems to arise, refused to indicate one way or another whether that was a possibility.
JIM HINKLE