Impossible Mission
In the summer of 1984, Dyke Rhoads, 27, met 24-year-old Karen Spesard. The couple fell in love and were married on March 22, 1986.
But less than three months later, on July 6, in their hometown of Paris, Ill., the couple were murdered in their house and stabbed more than 25 times each. After the crime, the killer or killers set a fire to destroy the evidence.
The next year, two men, Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock, were arrested. Whitlock, then 41, was a part-time construction worker and small-time drug dealer. Stiedl, then 35, also worked construction jobs and had several convictions for assault.
The motive for the murders, according to prosecutors: a drug deal gone bad. After the trial in 1987, Whitlock was sentenced to life in prison; Steidl was sentenced to death. But are they really the murderers? 48 Hours reports on a case that may not yet be closed.
Over the years, Steidl and Whitlock have continued to claim that they were innocent. They weren't the only ones who thought that justice had gone astray. In 1999, David Protess, a Northwestern University journalism professor, and four of his students began to reinvestigate the crime trying to find out who killed the couple.
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"It struck me from the start that this was a likely miscarriage of justice," says Protess, whose investigations have shown that several other men convicted of murder were actually innocent. Protess notes that there was no physical evidence at all that specifically linked the two men to the crime.
"This young couple was stabbed tragically over 50 times," he says. "These men would've been covered in blood; there would've been blood in their automobiles; there would have been blood on their clothes. Someone would have seen them in blood. There would have been hair, fiber, something that linked them to the crime scene. Nothing did."
Even Tony Rhoads, Dyke's brother, was not totally sure that prosecutors had convicted the real murderers. His brother would not have been involved with serious drug dealers, Tony Rhoads says.
For six months the students spent most weekends looking for clues in Paris. Thy plowed through police reports, court records and tracked down new leads and old witnesses.
The key to the 1987 case was a man named Darryl Herrington. He came forward two months after the murders and said he had seen the crime. In a taped statement to police, Herrington said he woke up in Stiedl's car outside the Rhoads' house. He heard screaming, so he went inside, where he said Steidl - covered with blood and holding a knife - confronted him. Herrington saw a body on the bed, he said.
But one witness, with no corroborating evidence, would probably not have been enough for a conviction. So prosectors did not indict anyone at that time.
But three months after Herrington came forward, a second eyewitness came forward, with corroborating evidence: Debra Reinbolt, who describes herself at the time as a drug addict and alcoholic, told police she had not only seen Steidl and Whitlock commit the murders but had provided the weapon and even helped with the killing.
Reinbolt's story impressed the police, especially because she accurately described a broken lamp found in the Rhoads' bedroom.
Despite the prosecutor's recommendation for no jail time, Reinboldt, who says she is now sober, served two years in prison for concealing a homicide. Herrington was never charged.
Now incarcerated at Menard Prison, Whitlock and Steidl continue to profess their innocence and say they didn't even know the Rhoads'.
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Find out what happens when students probe the case.
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