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He Was Here: Bill from China Town (Season Five) Limited Series; Open Homicide Case
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In today’s episode, we continue the limited series “He Was Here” about an unsolved 2010 murder in Chicago.
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Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS by slip.fm. The song is “No Scars”.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2015/chicago-crime-stats/
https://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com
https://fstoppers.com/education/biggest-dangers-photographers-face-299728#comment-thread
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Second Autopsy and Investigation Challenges
00:00:49
Speaker
This is True Crime XS
00:00:59
Speaker
We're back with Jane and we're going to talk through the process of what it's like when a case goes from the shock and the grief and everything that you just had ah go on in your world where you have this traumatic loss to trying to communicate with the police department. You did all the right things here. You hired a private investigator and that was pretty quickly into this process. And then you,
00:01:27
Speaker
took their advice to go and get this ah second opinion with the pathologist who prepared like a a secondary autopsy report. What made you go for that second autopsy report? Was it something that the private investigator said? Yes, he suggested that, but also at that time,
00:01:55
Speaker
The detectives were quite firm in their belief that ah it but it was suicide. And also at that time, I had learned from another reporter that I had um spoke with that Chicago was trying to alter their numbers of murders. And that's what I thought that they were doing.
00:02:24
Speaker
So you felt like this was like a statistical thing. They wanted to look like they had a higher clearance rate, lower murder rate. Correct. Do you remember like the first time you felt like they were like listening that like this is probably not a suicide? Like even if you don't know the date, do you remember like like having a conversation with someone where that seemed to be the case? Yes, it was when Jay's case was officially turned over to the cold case detectives. I never stopped communicating with the detectives, and they did send two detectives out to the house. They were not thrilled to be there, but they did send them out. Those two detectives were not the detectives that
00:03:20
Speaker
took over the case for the cold case detectives, they were kind of in between that timeframe. And shortly after that meeting at the house, that's when they turned it over to the cold case detectives, namely Detective Rodriguez. That's who I started communicating with. They did not want to talk to me.
00:03:46
Speaker
Did you see a difference in how Detective Rodriguez seemed to be handling things? Yes, I did. Was he communicative with you? Oh yes, he was. Was there a point in time where he said that like he wasn't going to be working on your case anymore and handed it off? He called me and told me that he was retiring.
Dissatisfaction with Authorities
00:04:11
Speaker
And that he assured me that Jay's case was going to be investigated by another cold case detective. And that was the start of nothing.
00:04:26
Speaker
Did you ever hear from a new detective? Yes, we did. We did hear from the other detective, um not as frequently as Detective Rodriguez. Do you know if they, um where that went, did they feel like they had enough to go further? I mean, obviously not we're here where we're at now, but do you have any idea if they even considered putting it before a grand jury? Oh no. Okay. Absolutely not. Now our private investigator went with us. It was in downtown Chicago. The assistant district attorney was there. And at that time I told them that
00:05:07
Speaker
The investigation was botched from the get-go. They did not like that at all. And it was at that time they told me how they saw it, what they thought happened. And they had no proof of what they, you know, were saying. No proof. Or if they did have proof, they weren't sharing it.
00:05:34
Speaker
did Did what they tell you, did it sound plausible? Oh, good question.
Pursuit of Justice for Jay
00:05:43
Speaker
I suppose it sounded plausible, but from what we were told beforehand, it just didn't sit well with me. I felt like they were just being a pretty abrasive with us to get us to leave them alone.
00:06:04
Speaker
well in In what they told you, were their next steps to be taken? I mean, did they have a conclusion that like ended it when they were done with their meeting with you? No. There was no, it was just, see you later. No. And and that was it. That was it. And do you feel like on their side of things that like they had concluded everything? Oh, yeah.
00:06:35
Speaker
I guess that they didn't give you a ah scenario where they had, they felt like Jay had been killed and that they were going to be pursuing the case. No. I mean, obviously Jay had been killed and they, in their minds, the person of interest was in jail.
00:07:05
Speaker
and you know there was no way to get evidence. And so that's how they left it. They said this person has gone to jail for a different crime and this is how it is. Yes, and they did not want to have him plea to a lesser charge. So they were not going to pursue it and that basically I should be satisfied with that.
00:07:34
Speaker
They said, i I remember, you know, isn't that what you want? Him in jail. And it's like, well, no, that's not what I want. I want the person who killed Jay to be in jail.
00:07:49
Speaker
right and and you want him to be risk like held responsible for his murder yes justice is for everybody not just who they pick it to be for right i mean i hate i feel like i i feel it like It's strange for me to even have to say that, but I feel like in this case, with everything that has happened, it's like, oh, he doesn't really need justice. That has been my driving force for 14 years. That Jay deserves justice. He absolutely does.
00:08:31
Speaker
So when you were working with Bob Rodriguez, I'm just going back in time a little bit. Okay. Did Bob Rodriguez ever present to you a theory of the case or like a rough idea of what he thought may have happened? Yes. And when he did that, did he indicate to you that he actually went and spoke with someone that he considered to be a primary person of interest? Yes.
Detective Rodriguez's Investigation
00:09:00
Speaker
Did he tell you the results of that conversation? Yes. And from what he said there, did you feel like Detective Rodriguez hit a brick wall? At that time when he told me no, but as time went on, yes. But he was actively attempting to do, from what I can tell, a number of things. The first one was the person of interest he had had a slightly different address than where things would have been related to Jay. And he did a pretty good job of running down and connecting him to two areas that would be in common with Jay, including what would be called the Chinatown area in Chicago, um as well as an area just south of ah Columbia College. Did he talk to you about that at all? Yes.
00:09:53
Speaker
In talking with, I'm gonna go forward and then backwards, and I apologize for doing that. In talking with Durkin and the assistant state's attorney at the time, did they basically tell you the same theory Bob Rodriguez had, or did they give you a different variable? They told us the same thing with more graphic detail. Yeah, it was very similar.
00:10:22
Speaker
Did they sound like they were trying to counter news articles that had come out when they were talking to you from the position of giving you resolution and saying the guy was in jail and there's nothing we can do about it? I'm sure they told you a story. I've i've sat in on those before. When they told you that story, did it sound like they were trying to appease you? Yes.
00:10:45
Speaker
Did they say things like they were trying to like give you peace of mind for Jay's last moments or anything like that? Oh, no. No. Okay. No. i was just I was curious about that because in reading the press, you know, this case got a little bit of press and it could have had a little more heat to it. Bob Rodriguez even participated in in speaking with one of the reporters. um At that time, I never spoke my mind about my thoughts about the case to the press. yeah I mean, the first time I ever, you know, said that I thought the the investigation was mishandled was to their face during that meeting. in In that particular meeting, did they respond visibly to you saying, like, I think this was bots from the jump? Oh, yeah, they responded. They were not happy.
00:11:38
Speaker
did they respond Did they say anything to that, like to try and counter it? Oh, yes. They said that it was certainly not botched and that I should see how thick Jay's file was. did they Did they actually show you his file? No. To the point that you go into this meeting with Durkin and an estate's attorney, how many times had you met Detective Durkin? Probably a couple.
00:12:07
Speaker
And had he given you any new information in that time or did he just sort of say we're working on it? Did he have a party line that he used? No, there was no new information. So at some point in time, Bob Rodriguez comes to you and he says, I've got a guy. And I think this guy is, he's my he's my prime person of interest. Did he tell you what made him think that initially?
00:12:38
Speaker
Well, hold on for a minute. The name of the that guy was provided
Identifying Suspect Bill
00:12:45
Speaker
to them by me. How did you find him? We were supposed to go up and visit Jay.
00:12:56
Speaker
And Jay had called me and said, no, Mom, don't come up. I have a i have a gig. And I said, well,
00:13:07
Speaker
you know, what are you doing? And he says, I'm taking pictures of this guy. And he was in the army and he wants me to take pictures of him and his army uniform to send back to his army buddies. And at that time, Jay told me his name. He told me where he had met him.
00:13:32
Speaker
And then when we were cleaning out Jay's dorm room, Jay had a note on a post-it. It said, Bill the Chinatown Dude. And I gave that to the original detectives.
00:13:53
Speaker
So it's not like the detectives did any work to find this person. that name was given to them by me. And that name was given to them oh days within um us finding out about Jay. Bill, the Chinatown person, that's a great name for him right now. they They take this information that you give them and they put it into his file
00:14:25
Speaker
When does Bill the Chinatown person come up again in the course of you talking to the police department? I can't answer that. I don't remember, but I know I asked probably every time I talk to them. And you have to keep in mind, I i was calling them all the time. I was probably calling every other day. When you called every other day or ah ever how frequently you called, how many times did you actually speak to someone? Like of a, say if a week went by and you called three or four times, how many times did you talk to someone? Probably once. And it was the original detectives who had the case. At some point in time, ah Bill, the Chinatown guy becomes a real person. Yes. Now did that happen with the original detectives? No.
00:15:21
Speaker
Was there any progress made when you were making those frequent phone calls where you thought they were either taking the case seriously or they had some form of lead that they were like a direction that they were headed in? No. Because you have to remember they thought Jay killed himself. So that stayed on through the original detectives? Yes. So they go away.
00:15:51
Speaker
And then you find out the stuff that we we've sort of already covered, the pathologist and the report that you pay for has a wildly different opinion of what happened to Jay and why why it should have the authority's attention. And then you get a cold case investigator, which we've talked a little bit about Bob Rodriguez.
00:16:12
Speaker
At some point in time, does he make Bill the Chinatown town guy ah a full name for you and a real person? Yes. Did he tell you how he did that? Meaning how he found him or? Was there a point in time where he came back and he said, this guy's name is, and he he gave you the first name, last name, and said, he's a good person of interest for this? Yes. Do you remember how he did that?
00:16:41
Speaker
I think he just told us. I think he just, yeah, he just told us. Did he have any sort of because? I was just saying a reason. Did he give you a reason why he thought it was that? Right, besides the obvious, which is that you found that you knew your son was going ah to do a gig, you found the name, and then you provide them with the name. Did he say, oh, I checked out Bill, the Chinatown guy, and we think he's a good suspect because?
00:17:07
Speaker
He was in the phone records. Meg and I happened to know that Bill the Chinatown guy had a mail stop in ah Chinatown, and he frequented like two different buildings. no What we're wondering is, so Bob Rodriguez comes up with the last name?
00:17:27
Speaker
hu And did he say, you know, guys, I found this guy and he matches because he's in Jay's phone records or he I tracked him to this one particular place in time where they would have both been. Did he say anything like that? I know that he had the phone records and I know that He checked his alibi. And I know that Bill the Chinatown dude took off. He fled.
00:18:05
Speaker
And Detective Rodriguez and another detective followed him. And I believe it was in Minnesota. Yeah, they actually end up catching him later too. Yeah. It it it briefly makes like a little pop in like the crime water in a small town.
00:18:23
Speaker
Let's talk about Bill the Chinatown guy for just a second, since we're here. i'm not sure I'm going to name him. I just don't know how I'm going to do it. so I'm not going to implicate Jane or Meg in that. I just want to talk about him for a second because he is a suspect here. so He's arrested pretty early on in life for a bank robbery, a really dumb bank robbery. He actually crashes his car. He has a second bank robbery.
00:18:47
Speaker
And the judge basically wants to throw him under the jail for the second bank robbery because he's dragging these unwitting accomplices in. on what he's doing. And the bank gets so involved in both cases that in the second case, the bank sues Bill and his accomplices. the way they They don't get very much money in these robberies, but the way that that all goes down is it becomes a part of the record in the federal court filings. So we can trace his life through all the people that talk about him in these federal court filings. Unfortunately, when it comes to this one thing that Meg is asking about,
00:19:24
Speaker
That is a sealed filing because it has to do with his mental health records. What he's actually in prison for, which I think you know, is the assault on a 41-year-old woman. Yes. And he was a fugitive for a period of time after that. He writes in a letter to his judge. This is Bill. And he says to the judge on the probation ah probation and parole office They have a hearing for him on the bank robbery parole, and he writes a letter and says, whatever I get here, just do it to me. This is me withdrawing any chance to defend myself. I violated my parole. It's a handwritten letter by. He's actually from Rockdale, Illinois, which is a little south and west of the area that we're talking about. It's almost directly south of Columbia, but it's south and west of Chinatown.
00:20:21
Speaker
We've done quite a bit of tracking him and like putting together a family tree to find out more about him. and i I want to make you aware that I reached out to him. I've sent him a letter and I also sent him an electronic communication. He has not yet responded. I didn't tell him why I wanted to talk to him. I mentioned the earlier cases, but I do plan on talking to Bill the Chinatown guy.
00:20:43
Speaker
wow OK, but I would like to have his story. And I was curious. I wanted to know.
Communication with Authorities and Investigation Closure
00:20:51
Speaker
I you said one of the detectives did talk to Bill. Yes. And they got an impression.
00:21:00
Speaker
one way or the other, right right? As far as he felt like, I mean, because the conclusion was this dude's in jail. Aren't you happy with that? Yes. And if that wasn't, if they didn't get ah the impression that, you know, that satisfied the situation that's happening in the case, they would have said, well, you know, we don't think that's relevant. We need to keep working and not like, Oh, he's already in jail. You should be happy with that.
00:21:28
Speaker
And so from that, I guess I just, I wonder like if I, this guy does not give me the impression that he would be real hard to get it out of. When he committed the assault on the woman, it was in another County. It was not in Cook County. It was in Will County. Mm-hmm.
00:21:56
Speaker
And the Will County prosecutor asked Bill, the Chinatown dude, about my son because I had found that he, you know how you can go in and see court dates and what time the court dates? Well, I found when his court date was and I i went in, I watched.
00:22:24
Speaker
And at the time I was so terrified that I didn't say anything, but I remembered the prosecutor and I called his office after I had left, told him who I was and that he was going to see if he couldn't try to talk to Bill, the Chinatown dude, about Jay.
00:22:53
Speaker
And in fact, the this gentleman and I talked several times and he thought that he was getting ready to say something about Jay, either confirm it or deny it. And all of a sudden the communication between Will County and myself stopped.
00:23:18
Speaker
He would not return my phone calls. Bill the Chinatown dude had a court date that was not posted. And then after that fiasco, that is when we met with Durkin and the Chicago district attorney, the assistant district attorney. Do you have any idea of why it fell apart? Oh, they did not want to take a plea deal, they didn't want this guy to get a lesser sentence than what he was gonna get. Oh, I see. Well, do you have any idea if he was trying to use it as leverage? I have no idea what happened. Probably what he did was wanted to get him on the murder charge and was offering him less than the judge was gonna give him on the assault.
00:24:13
Speaker
Well, I was going to say, I don't see how it would have gone the other way because you typically get more for murder than you do for sexual assault. When you go in for that court date and then you talk to the Will County ADA, do you remember how long it was before, one, he stopped talking to you, and two, you had your meeting with ASA in Cook County or Chicago? Was it months or years?
00:24:43
Speaker
he probably stopped talking and communicating for maybe a month. And then my husband got ahold of him and he told my husband what I had just told you that Chicago had gotten involved and shut down the deal, shut down everything. And You know, I have my own thoughts why his second appearance before the judge was never on the sheet for public knowledge. I mean, that's just my own thought, it but... tell us Tell us your thought there. i say I think the Chicago did not want me to know. They didn't want me to know.
00:25:32
Speaker
That's the only explanation I could come up with is that they didn't want me to know. They didn't want me to be vocal about it. Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of. And then after that happened, you know, I felt very, very defeated because It was close. I felt you know like the first time it was close of either knowing one way or the other. And I know that he he could have lied. The bill, the Chinatown guy could have lied and said, yeah, I did it. And you know this is what happened. But that would have made the detectives of Chicago have to investigate what he said.
00:26:17
Speaker
They're not going going to take his word for it. They would have to verify what he said. Right. And I can tell you from just an investigative standpoint, I am not a detective, but I have worked on a lot of cases. And it is highly unlikely that Jay had this man's name and you have knowledge that he was going to meet up with this man the weekend that he disappeared. And from what we can gather, he was going to meet him for to take for the photography gig. ah hey And so it is the the statistical probability of it not being him with those facts lying up. I mean, it's impossible that it was not him.
00:27:12
Speaker
It has to be him, otherwise it would be, it it's just too much, it would be too much of a coincidence. Now the original detectives that worked on Jay's case cleared him. Based on? He had an alibi and they cleared him. Right, but then he went on to commit the assault that he left, that they went and that he eventually was arrested for. Correct.
00:27:42
Speaker
Right. And so he just lied for his alibi. yeah make Because learned recently that alibis are not always thoroughly checked out. But the fact that he had his name and he was meeting up with a guy with that name, it's actually not a very common name. No, it is not. ah The phone records did show that there was communication.
00:28:11
Speaker
It did share that. Yes. I assume this happened really quick. Like he met Bill in Chinatown and he, you know, they, they made arrangements for him to do photography for him. And so it was all leading up in a, in a shorter period of time. Right. That I don't know. Okay. Okay. Let me ask it this way. Jay never said, Hey, I met that guy and took his picture.
00:28:38
Speaker
no He just said, this guy's going to pay me to take his picture. Yes. And then shortly thereafter disappeared. Well, and he's told his parents, hey, don't come up this weekend because I've got that gig. Right. OK. And so that all leads to, obviously, he was when he left and nobody knew where he was, he was going to do these pictures. At the time, he wasn't yet you know fleeing because he had committed another assault, right?
00:29:10
Speaker
And so that that made it more apparent, I think, but that's just me looking at it from you know now. Because Bob Rodriguez checked out the alibi, I'm curious, did he ever come to you and tell you what it was? I believe that he was working.
00:29:31
Speaker
that's what i That's what I think it is. I think he told the original detectives he was working and then it fell apart because it didn't like it didn't account for the whole weekend, basically. I thought somebody else punched him in or something, but I could be wrong. The stuff that I can get my hands on right now, I'm getting peaks at and I'm not getting the full story yet.
00:29:52
Speaker
You said that um Detective Rodriguez, they they followed him because he committed this other crime and then left the area, right? No. No, he left. I don't know why he fled. But apparently they found him. Rodriguez and this other detective found him in a barn. And they played, you know, good cop, bad cop.
00:30:20
Speaker
and really put the pressure on him about Jay. And he he went back then and committed the assault on the woman. Really? So that's actually out of order. Yeah, now that I say that, it doesn't make sense. But that's what I was told. What I read.
00:30:44
Speaker
It was just a very blu brief blurb about they, he was wanted for assaulting a female with a knife in a little, it wasn't Chicago, I can't remember what it was, but um a little place and they had gone to go get him. And it could be a completely different time, but I'm i'm fairly certain it's the same person.
00:31:11
Speaker
It's definitely the same guy. yeah yes um It's William Raymond. That's how I've tracked him because there there actually are, believe it or not, several people with that name and I've had to narrow it down and move it around.
Bureaucratic Challenges in Justice Pursuit
00:31:22
Speaker
We have his birthday and everything though. Yeah, that that has been the the most helpful part of it is having his birthday.
00:31:29
Speaker
It will be interesting too, because part of that conversation that I had, they said that he because of what he did, he was going to go to a maximum, a more hardened prison. But for some reason, Bill the Chinatown dude was transferred to a less secure prison.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, he's in a medium security classification. Okay, well, that's not where he started. He was transferred. And I never knew why he was transferred. So he had a little federal time to do. And he was also being held on a very high, like almost no bond situation. And that they used it to hold them in prison rather than just jail.
00:32:28
Speaker
Cause like most people that are accused of the thing, like the assault on the woman, he would go to quote jail, which is slightly different than prison, but he, he did not get that opportunity and he actually took it upon himself. I, I can't tell what they did to him yet that made him write the letter to the judge that I have, but something there.
00:32:51
Speaker
Well, that made it seem like he didn't want it looked into any further. Yes, I violated my parole. Just get it over with. Yeah. That's how it came across, which it it was interesting to me because the attorney relayed it to the the judge and it ended up in the court filings, which is why I was able to see it. But it was basically just saying, I don't need a hearing on this, just sentence me to whatever it is you're going to sentence me to and be done with it. But doesn't that kind of sound like he was trying to like skip over that?
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, it could be that he doesn't want to sit in jail and he wanted to just go ahead to the prison. Because jails are actually, believe it or not, they're worse than most prisons. It could have been that. It could have been a number of things that he was doing there. I have asked him that in his letters if he could explain something. In the letters I sent, I've asked him to explain some things to me. And I've made it seem like it's about him. um I haven't even hinted at the fact that, like, I'm onto Jay's case, because i'm just trying i've I've been trying to just get him to open up and talk about anything. Because he seems willing to do that, but it you know it could be he didn't want to be in jail. It it could be the guilt, knowing that like if he if people looked into it much more like you're saying, they were going to discover more things that he'd done. Next time on True Crime XS.
00:34:14
Speaker
It's interesting to be able to sit down with the family on these cases and to talk to them. You get a completely different perspective than anything the media could give you or anything that the paperwork on the case could give you. It's particularly helpful when you've got a case where there isn't as much media thinks it would be. And when you get these FOIA requests that come back empty or denied, it is the only way we can tell the story. And believe it or not, the story's not over yet. There's still,
00:34:42
Speaker
a little bit more to tell as we try and propel it towards the ending that it should have. And the reason I bring all of this up is because Bill writes to these different prison magazines and he has letters and poems and nonsense published. I don't have a very high opinion of Bill. He he writes letters? Yes. To prison magazines? Yes.
00:35:10
Speaker
And we don't really know exactly how all that works, but we're we're learning. It's very interesting. I don't know if it's like published to the other prisoners or like what, but it's, it's weird. All of it's weird. Yeah. I probably know more about Bill right now than his mother ever did. So have you read these writings? I've started to collect them. Yes. Okay.
00:35:40
Speaker
I thought once I saw there's a couple of things where something happened where there was a modification to his parole and then him asking just to, he didn't want a hearing. He didn't want to come back to court. He just wanted whatever was going to happen to happen. And he didn't, he just didn't want to deal with it. I thought that was really odd. yeah So especially timing wise,
00:36:12
Speaker
Yeah, they have to see it from that other angle and realize how ridiculous it is that they haven't done anything. um Because to me, that's exactly where we're at. This is a case that Bill the Chinatown Dude is obviously responsible for this. It seems like everybody knows that. And it is bureaucracy and red tape that's the holdup.
00:36:38
Speaker
And they feel like they can skip the justice part for Jay. I have no idea why. I mean, if anything, I can't imagine a 20 year old college kid, any 20 year old college kid deserves justice when their life is cut short like that.
Reflection on Justice and Missing Elements
00:36:54
Speaker
Do you guys think we, do you think we left anything out? I know we have a couple more episodes to wrap this up, but in terms of just this timeline, did we leave anything out? I think the only thing As I'm thinking about it that we didn't talk about that I brought up briefly was that we did put out a reward for Jay. And I had a billboard companies put up a couple of billboards along the, okay, the last train he was on was maybe the red line. And one of the billboards was in Chinatown.
00:37:33
Speaker
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00:38:39
Speaker
Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.