State Police official denies blocking murder investigation

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http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-urbana22.html

URBANA -- A high-ranking Illinois State Police official denied Thursday she short-circuited a murder investigation because of its possible target: an influential businessman who had given thousands of dollars to Gov. George Ryan.

Testifying in federal court, Lt. Col. Diane Carper refuted the allegation during a civil trial stemming from the 1986 murder of Dyke and Karen Rhoads in Paris, near the Indiana state line. Carper and two other state police officials, Deputy Director Charles "Chuck" Brueggeman and Capt. Steve Fermon, are being sued by retired Lt. Michale Callahan for allegedly blocking his investigations.

Callahan says the three denied him his First Amendment rights when they didn't let him re-open the Rhoads case, even after his own initial queries convinced him the two men convicted of the crime were innocent. Callahan was eventually re-assigned to a less prestigious patrol job, a move he says was retaliatory.

When Callahan first presented his findings in an April 2001 meeting, he said Carper told him her superiors, citing the high-profile nature of the case, had put the kibosh on widening the probe of the businessman's role in the slaying. Earlier this week, Callahan's immediate supervisor at the time, Maj. Edie Casella, corroborated his story.

'Politically sensitive'