sábado, 3 de agosto de 2013

Parole violator Edmund Lopes, convicted in '70s of murdering wife, dies in prison - Chicago Tribune

Even in death, Edmund Lopes is having a hard time departing Illinois.

Lopes, who was convicted in the early 1970s of killing his wife and attempting to murder another woman in DuPage County, made headlines 20 years ago after making parole and reinventing himself out west as a preacher.

Stories of redemption he told his congregation in Washington state drew the attention of Illinois law enforcement officials, who briefly incarcerated him here for violating his parole by leaving the state.

He ran afoul of the law again in the mid-1990s while living in Missouri and wound up at Dixon Correctional Center in Illinois. Lopes, 77, died there last month with a final bid for freedom — a request for executive clemency — having never reached the desk of Gov. Pat Quinn.

"He recognizes that all of the bad that has come to him in life was of his own doing," Lopes wrote in his clemency petition. "But now his time approaches, and he wants a few fleeting moments at freedom once again. Please help me."

His ashes are being stored at a mortuary in Rochelle, about 25 miles from Dixon. Funeral director Jeff Beverage said he has not spoken to anyone interested in claiming Lopes. His cremains will remain there at least 18 months waiting for a friend or family member to take possession and, perhaps, help Lopes leave Illinois one last time.

Lopes' life story, pieced together from Tribune articles and court records, reveals a man raised in a seemingly stable home who strayed outside society's lines, especially after he came to the Chicago area.

Born in Plymouth, Mass., in 1935, Lopes arrived in the western suburbs in the mid-1960s and took a maintenance job at Medinah Country Club, leaving behind a broken marriage that produced four children. He had amassed a string of arrests in Massachusetts beginning in the 1950s, after a stint in the Marines and a brief time playing semipro football.

In a 1972 DuPage County court report, Lopes, while awaiting sentencing for murder and attempted murder, told a parole officer he turned to crime for thrills.

"He began to feel he was missing out on the excitement of life," the report said. "He began to choose as his idols men who were involved in criminal activities."

In May 1969, Lopes, who was using the alias Jasper Brown, married a divorced 43-year-old waitress at a Bensenville restaurant, and they settled in Bloomingdale. In late July 1970, the restaurant contacted police to say the woman, Phyllis Brown, had stopped coming to work the month before, and her husband had provided evasive answers as to her whereabouts.

Just days later, on July 31, Lopes attacked a woman he had met recently and had begun dating. Lopes stabbed and choked the woman at her Itasca home, but she survived and identified him to police. Lopes eluded arrest by fleeing the state.

He was still at large in December, when a construction crew installing a septic tank in DuPage County found Brown's body in a shallow grave.

Lopes turned up the next year in Florida, where he had been arrested for passing a forged check. Authorities returned him to Illinois, where he was convicted of Brown's murder and the Itasca woman's attempted murder. He was sentenced to a 50- to 99-year term for the murder.

But in 1983, Lopes made parole. Under regulations that have since changed, prisoners were automatically granted parole hearings after 12 years, and the parole board only considered their prison records and future plans, not the offense for which they were imprisoned, according to Ken Tupy, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board's senior legal counsel.

Within days of being paroled, Lopes left Illinois without permission. He went to Nebraska to meet a woman he had befriended by mail while in prison. They married soon after and, in the mid-1980s, headed west to Washington.

There, in the town of West Richland, Lopes became a much-loved pastor at a small Baptist church. "Pastor Ed" riveted his congregation with stories of his sordid past, including his time as a Mafia hit man, and his redemption through faith. His exploits drew the attention of a local newspaper reporter. After she checked on his background in Illinois — he said he had been on death row there — Lopes was arrested for violating parole.

The convicted murderer-turned-preacher was extradited in 1992. His parishioners, some of whom traveled to Illinois at their own expense, testified in support of Lopes before the parole board.

Lopes admitted he lied about being a hit man to gain respect. But he had not, he claimed, violated the parole board's trust.

"I took that trust and became a new man," he told the board, which ordered him to spend an additional 90 days in prison for violating parole.

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