Styf: More details are coming, they are likely horrendous

As time moves forward, more details will come to light on the specifics of what happened to AJ Freund in his Crystal Lake home both before and after the days following Easter Sunday.

And as they come, they likely will continue to enrage.

They will be graphic, they will likely become piecemeal, and plenty of the community will reach a boiling point over point on them.

We feel it is our duty to report those details as they arrive. And, while it would be best if all the details came at one time to provide a clear picture and give readers a choice on what they are willing to read, that is not reality.

Which will lead to tough decisions on how and where to publish that information.

To be clear, I strongly believe the details need to be published. The public should know what happened at that home on Dole Avenue, both last week and in the years that led to it.

The only way to effectively and knowledgeably create better outcomes in the future, a full examination of the past needs to occur.

But also understand that we are human, we are reporting details for a reason and that those details are also very difficult for us to digest.

That’s why I wasn’t in Crystal Lake on Thursday morning. Instead, I was at Northern Illinois University for a Northern Illinois Newspaper Association session on covering mass shootings.

Two reporters – including former Northwest Herald reporter Megan Jones – the public information officer from the Aurora Police Department and Anita Lewis, a Henry Pratt employee, attended.

One thing Lewis said about the coverage after the February shooting at the Henry Pratt plant stuck with me.

She said she recently was sitting down on a nice spring morning to read her paper and came upon a story about the shooting, which graphically told what happened to her friends and co-workers that day.

It brought her right back to that moment, that day.

To her, the question was when she could continue her process of moving on. The answer is that those details aren’t going away anytime soon.

All cases are certainly different and the court process doesn’t always move forward so quickly.

The Lake County trial in the death of former Crystal Lake resident David Gorski in December 2016 won’t begin until June, at the earliest.

The Texas execution of John William King for the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr., happened this week.

And the details of this case won’t go way anytime soon, either.

At this point, there an abundance of unanswered questions. That won’t end anytime soon.

Not with the ultimate release of DCFS’ report and not even when the trials for each parent ultimately arrive.

This process won’t be easy. It will be maddening and it will cause fatigue.

None of that, however, will take us off our course, to inform you on what happened here.

It’s the reason we have already requested so many documents on the history of the case and we continue to request more.

Because, the way we see it, the only way to improve the process that led to this horrible result is to give it a full examination in the light for the public.

AJ Freund’s death currently has the attention of lawmakers and decision-makers throughout the state. We need to keep it that way.

• Northwest Herald Editor Jon Styf can be reached at jstyf@shawmedia.com or 815-526-4630.