KLP: This is closer to home than you might think. Michael Lefkow and his wife, Judge Joan Lefkow, were member of my church, St. Lukes Episcopal Church, Evanston. Michael was on the Standing Committee of the Chicago Diocese, an advisory committee to the Bishop. My wife is administrative assistant to the Bishop.
The church is in shock and disbelief at this turn of events. A memorial service will be held Saturday at St. Lukes. The Bishop will conduct the service.
Unfortunately, The executions are building as a "media event" at the moment which means that the service will most likely be visited by the national networks. Efforts are underway to prevent it from getting out of control.
You might watch your network stations on Saturday for some of the coverage.
I am hoping that the service will be permitted to occur devoid of the the tv and the other media intrusions.
The lefkows were devoted members of the Church. It is reported that the white supremists, who threatened the Judge earlier as a result of a judgment against their group, thought that she was Jewish. They are known to have pledged to "get her" for ruling against them in the past. You can learn more of this by going to Google and pulling up the coverage.
What an unfortunate chain of events. How did the executioners know that MIchael was at home on Monday because of an achilles heel injury from which he was recovering? Judge Lefkow's 89 year ofd mother just happened to be visiting this week. Her death occurred because she was there, not because she was targeted. She had to walk with crutches which were found on the first floor of the townhome. She had been dragged into the basement along with Michael where the two of them were shot, execution style.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The apparent execution-style killings of the husband and mother of a U.S. judge in the basement of her home sparked calls on Wednesday for tighter security for jurists in the United States where violence against court officers has been rare.
Whether the crime, which has shocked the city, was the result of a break-in or something more sinister is not yet known though the finger of suspicion has been pointed at white supremacists in the killings of the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow, who found the bodies when she arrived home on Monday night.
"We need a reevaluation of security," said Marvin Aspen, chief judge of the federal court in Chicago. "Judges get lots of threats. Most don't really mean anything but some of them should be investigated and require some sort of action."
Judge Lefkow was placed under tight security as police reviewed the cases she had handled including that of a hate group leader who once tried to hire someone to kill her.
Published reports said Lefkow's 64-year-old husband and her 89-year-old mother were both shot in the head and chest in what investigators were apparently calling an execution style murder.
While three federal judges have been killed in the United States since 1979, that kind of crime has been rare historically compared to some places in the world.
"It's hard to make generalizations but in some countries such as Colombia there are assassinations (of judges) all the time and elsewhere in Latin America," said Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of law at DePaul University in Chicago. That has not been the case in the United States, he said.
Lefkow had been provided protection outside the court by the Marshals Service after a failed death plot by a jailed white supremacist but the protection was withdrawn last year, officials said.
Last year a jury convicted Matthew Hale, founder of the "World Church of the Creator," with trying to hire someone to kill Lefkow, who had been presiding over a case that involved him on another matter.
Hale has been in jail and was due to be sentenced later this year. His brother, David Hale, told reporters on Wednesday that his brother "didn't have any animosity toward her" and could not be involved in the slayings because he is under such tight security.
Hale was not charged in relation to that crime and his "church" which issued anti-Jewish and anti-black messages may have existed mainly as a Web site, with no indication of how many followers he had.
A spokesman for the U.S. Judicial Conference, an administrative arm of the court system, said judges had expressed security concerns over the years at various times especially after the April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
That led to tighter controls to government buildings, including those housing courts.
But the spokesman said there had been no formal report issued by the group in recent times, and that most of the concerns had been expressed as part of appropriation requests from the U.S. Congress.
The Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington resulted in "enhanced security, and we feel very secure in courthouses, but because of the tragic incident here in Chicago and the renewed threat of terrorism it is important we review our procedures," Aspen told Reuters.
He said addressing security outside the courtroom for judges and their families should be part of that.
Police have declined to name any suspects in the slayings of the judge's family but said they were conducting a wide ranging investigation involving those who came into contact with both Lefkow and her husband, also a lawyer who had been in practice for years.
Police have created an around-the-clock task force to work on the crime with help from the FBI (news - web sites) and the U.S. Marshals Service. |
