Students Take Another Look

Over several months of knocking on doors and following up leads, the students began to poke holes in the prosecution's version of the Rhoads' murder.

They found Donnie Alexander, a childhood friend of Dyke Rhoads. Alexander, who had never been interviewed by police or defense lawyers, was probably the last person beside the killers to see the couple alive, in a bar. He had sat with them at the Friendly Tavern, probably until 12:20 a.m., he says.

But Herrington had testified that the murders happened shortly after midnight.

Protess points out that Alexander's story calls Herrington's account into question: "How, if they're at the tavern at 12:15, do they manage to stop drinking, pay the bar bill, get to their house, get unclothed, get into bed, fall asleep and get stabbed?"

The students also tracked down Ben Light, now a surgeon in Pittsburgh. In the summer of 1986, Light was a teen-ager living across the street from the Rhoads in Paris, Ill. He says that on July 5, he was hanging out on the porch with a friend from 11:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. During this time, Herrington heard Karen Rhoads scream, he had said. But Light says he heard nothing.

Protess argues that these new statements indicate that the crime occurred much later, at a time when the accused, Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock, were nowhere near the scene.

Both Herrington and Rienbolt told police that after the murders they were standing by the Rhoads' garage, with Steidl. Herrington and Riebolt said they never saw each other, though.

Five years ago, under oath, Reinbolt told Steidl's lawyer, Michael Metnick, that she had lied on the stand. She said that Steidl and Whitlock were not there and that she had never been in the Rhoads' house. Reinbolt also said that police had fed her information about the lamp.

But Reinbolt now says she lied to Metnick and that her original testimony was true.

Yet Metnick claims the defense team has proof that Reinbolt never saw the murders. The key to his claim: a broken lamp at the crime scene.

Reinbolt said the lamp had been broken before the fire that followed the murders. The prosecution had used the lamp as the centerpiece of its corroborating evidence. Reinbolt had testified the lamp was broken when she got to the Rhoads' bedroom.

But after the fire, black soot covered the crime scene. In pictures taken afterward, the pieces of the broken lamp were white. If the lamp had been broken before the fire, the fragments would have had soot on them, Metnick says. Therefore, Reinbolt could not have seen the lamp when it was broken, he contends.

Reinbolt also said that she had provided the knife for the murders. The blade on her knife was five inches long.

But defense consultant Dr. Michael Baden, formerly the chief pathologist for New York City, says that many of the wounds were 6 1/2 inches deep. "A 5-inch knife could cause (a) 6-inch deep wound if it were pressed in very hard," says Baden. "But i would leave a hilt mark from the handle." There were no bruises of the sort a handle would cause, he says.

"The Reinbolt knife couldn't have made many of the wounds, and it could not have made the severest wounds," he says.

Last fall, Steidl's attorneys got an Illinois court to hear this new evidence. Although they failed to win their client a new trial, his death sentence was lifted. Steidl doesn't consider this a victory. "That was the state's way of trying to make the case fade away," he says.

But the students wanted to make sure that the case didn't fade away. Several witnesses told the students that they had seen a mysterious car with Florida plates in Paris the night of the murders. One witness, who asked not to be identiified, said she had seen two men staking out The Rhoads house the night before the murders. She belives she saw the same two men the night of the murders, driving a white car with Florida tags.

Another witness, gas station attendant J.C. Foley, told the students he remembers selling seven 3-gallon cans of gasoline to a man driving a light-colored car with Florida tags.

After six months of work, the students developed an alternative version of events. They found that Karen Rhoads had told several family members and friends that she had seen something at work that had scared her. An office assistant in a food processing plant, she told them she had seen money and a gun being put into a car in the employee parking lot.

Protess believes there's a link between what Karen Rhoads saw and the Florida connection his students uncovered.

But Michael MacFatridge, who prosecuted the case, says police looked into this angle, but the investigation never panned out because eyewitnesses came forward and named Stiedl and Whitlock as the killers.

Since the story first aired in May, 2000, the Illinois Supreme Court denied SteidlÂ's appeal. His lawyers say they plan to seek a new trial in Federal Court. Herb Whitlock also hopes to get a chance at a new trial. Law students will begin working on Whitlock's and Steidl's case this summer.

Says Steidl: "That's all I ask is to have a shot at a new trial, a fair trial."

The students believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that if given a new trial today, both men would be found not guilty.

Dyke's brother and sister, Tony and Andrea Rhoads, say that as long as the reasons behind the crime are mysterious, their loss will be more painful. "What did they do to deserve this?" Tony Rhoads asks. "Why, why them?"

Go back to Part 1 of the story: Impossible Mission.

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