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 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.

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.

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.

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.