DCFS Backs Off Probe of Alleged Hickory St Killer’s Kid: Dad

By Joseph Hosey

The father of alleged Nightmare on Hickory Street killer Bethany McKee said the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has dropped its bid to subject her young daughter to a naked examination.

Bill McKee also said a Tuesday hearing on the matter scheduled to be held at River Valley Justice Center has been canceled.

DCFS attorney Cynthia Gonzalez said at a previous hearing that an investigation by her agency was prompted by two calls to its child abuse hotline. The first call, on March 8, accused Bethany McKee—who had been locked up in the county jail for nearly two months at that point—of neglecting her daughter, said her lawyer, Chuck Bretz. The second call, Bretz said, accused Bethany McKee's mother, Teresa McKee, of neglecting and abusing the little girl.

Bretz also said DCFS wants to check out not only the girl, but Bethany McKee's brother and sister, 15 and 17. One reason DCFS is interested in the children, Bretz said, is that their father pleaded guilty to a sex crime in 1995.

But Bill and Terese McKee have resisted DCFS's efforts. They claim the agency has investigated them numerous times in the past and found nothing untoward. They also said DCFS has been aware of Bill McKee's criminal conviction for years.

At a previous hearing, Bretz compared DCFS workers to Nazis.

"This is the Department of Children and Family Services, not the Gestapo back in Nazi Germany," Bretz said.

DCFS spokesman Dave Clarkin said he could not comment on the case unless Bill McKee produced a letter notifying him that the investigation had been closed. McKee said he was informed by Bretz and is still waiting on the DCFS letter.

"I can tell you that DCFS investigated an allegation of neglect against Bethany McKee related to the murder charges filed by Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, and that allegation was indicated," Clarkin said in an email.

Bethany McKee was arrested in January along with three others—Adam Landerman, 20, Joshua Miner, 25, and Alisa Massaro, 19—and charged with murdering two men in Massaro's Hickory Street house.

After luring Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22, to the house, Miner and Landerman strangled them to death, according to police reports obtained exclusively by Patch.

Massaro and Miner then had sex atop the dead men's bodies, the reports said, and the four hatched a plot to dismember the corpses, with Miner planning to keep the teeth of the murdered men as trophies.

McKee left the house and went to her father to see if he would help butcher the bodies. Instead, Bill McKee alerted police to the killings.

Officers sent to the Hickory Street house found the bodies and took Landerman, Massaro and Miner into custody. Bethany McKee was captured later in Kankakee, where she had gone to see the father of her child. Her daughter was in the backseat of her car when she was pulled over.

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