Probe into ’81 deaths closes
By JILLIAN DUCHNOWSKI - jduchnowski@nwherald.com
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| Ron Scharff and his wife Kathleen in 1969 |
WOODSTOCK – A second sheriff’s investigation into a 1981 double homicide at a Lakemoor bar gave the victims’ families more information – but no criminal charges.
Almost a year after sheriff’s investigators revived their efforts to solve the 28-year-old case, they announced that they believe Larry Neumann – a mob hitman who died Jan. 9, 2007, in prison for an unrelated murder – is responsible for slaying P.M. Pub owner Ronald Scharff and his bartender, Patricia Freeman.
In the past year, more than 1,292 hours have been spent on the renewed effort that initially included 16 investigators and ultimately involved interviewing 23 potential witnesses, McHenry County Sheriff’s Lt. Andy Zinke said. Fewer investigators were involved as the efforts became more focused, but they couldn’t find enough evidence to charge two possible accomplices.
“Every investigator in the division, including the secretaries, worked on this case,” Zinke said. “And everybody wanted to see a better conclusion.”
Freeman’s son, Robert, and Scharff’s oldest son, Paul, said they were glad that police publicly identified a suspected offender but wondered why they didn’t better explain why the first investigation didn’t produce a similar result long before Neumann died.
“You had children who had lost their parents,” Robert Freeman said. “From their explanation, there’s not a large amount of notes. There’s not a lot in the case file. I think they owe us a better explanation.”
Limited records
Family members found Freeman, 32, and Scharff, 36, dead, each shot twice, about 11 a.m. June 2, 1981, in the living room of an apartment attached to the tavern. Scharff’s pub was on Route 120 in what now is an empty lot next to the Lakemoor Village Hall, 234 W. Rand Road.
Then-Capt. George Hendle, who later became sheriff and who died in 2002, led the original investigation with little assistance from other detectives, Zinke said. Notes left in the case file didn’t include times, dates or other information that now is standard in police work.
“From everything we have, [Hendle] handled everything on his own with a few people getting specific assignments,” Zinke said. “It’s rumored he kept everything in his head.”
Some retired deputies who were familiar with the case helped current investigators decipher the notes, Zinke said. It was clear that Hendle focused on one of Freeman’s previous boyfriends, whom police interviewed and who submitted to multiple polygraph tests. That man never was charged.
When mob informant Frank Cullotta revealed another potential suspect in April 1982, prosecutors and investigators traveled to the West Coast for an interview. But Hendle did not think that Cullotta’s information was credible, Zinke said. Hendle’s reasoning is unknown to current investigators, who had more confidence in Cullotta’s information.
“Mr. Cullotta provided specific details of the homicides which he could not have known without being present or told by the killer,” Zinke wrote in a July 9 summary to the victim’s family.
But when Scharff’s widow asked Hendle about news reports of Cullotta’s claims in 1982, she was told that his information was incorrect, Paul Scharff said.
That made him and others wonder whether police didn’t care about solving the case – or whether a potential mob connection made the former investigator back away from pursuing Neumann.
“I do greatly appreciate [current investigators’] efforts in what they did, but as a person who was a child whose mother was murdered, I want to know more,” Robert Freeman said. “Why didn’t his police department care at the time? Maybe I have that right, maybe I don’t. I don’t really know.”
But Zinke said there is no way to know whether Neumann’s mob connections influenced the initial investigation.
“The only person who could answer that question is George Hendle,” Zinke said.
Alleged retribution
Current investigators learned of Cullotta’s information after a Scharff family friend pointed them toward Cullotta’s biography, which describes in general terms the murders. The crime-scene evidence, which had been preserved, was resubmitted to the Illinois State Police lab, although the results did not connect Neumann or any other suspect to the scene when the murder occurred, Zinke said.
But Cullotta said Neumann told him that he – Neumann – killed the pair as retribution. Neumann, according to Cullotta, was upset with Scharff throwing his ex-wife out of his bar. A witness to the incident told current investigators that Scharff made Deborah Neumann leave the bar after rejecting her advances, and Deborah Neumann announced that she was going to call her ex-husband.
When police interviewed Deborah Neumann more recently, she said she still loved her ex-husband and believed that he was responsible for the killings, although she denied being involved, according to Zinke’s summary. She claimed that Scharff had sexually assaulted her around the time of the slayings, although another man that Deborah Neumann said she told about the alleged assault did not recall her telling him that.
Police also interviewed the alleged getaway driver, according to Zinke’s summary. A sworn affidavit from a retired Las Vegas Metro Police detective indicated that Thomas Amato told him that he sat in the car outside the P.M. Pub, heard gunshots, and drove off with Neumann when he returned to the car. But in the recent interview, Amato denied making that admission or participating in the shootings. He told police that he remembered being interviewed with Cullotta while awaiting other charges in Las Vegas, but he thought he was used because the detective and Cullotta needed to corroborate Cullotta’s claims, according to Zinke’s summary.
Questions remain
All those conflicting statements left current investigators with a slew a credibility problems and not enough evidence to support charges against any suspected accomplices, Zinke said. If Neumann were alive, police would seek murder charges against Neumann, Zinke said.
So the new investigation is over unless new evidence or new leads come to light.
“But that being said, someone could come up next year saying, ‘I think I know who did it,’” Zinke said. “And we’d continue following up on it.”
Paul Scharff, who has started a blog and made numerous radio appearances to keep the case in the public eye, challenged whether authorities truly lacked the evidence to charge accomplices. But, he said, he might relax his efforts unless an opportunity arises to discover more about the original investigation or to support new criminal charges.
“I’m not inclined to take a dead horse around a track twice,” Scharff said. “We did achieve naming Larry Neumann, but I’ve got more holes in the soul from this than I have resolution.”
