Family To Make Plea To Keep Killer Behind Bars
(CBS) -- A Chicago area family will go before a state commission on Wednesday to try to keep the door to possible freedom closed to a 58-year-old convicted murderer.
It was a double murder in the summer of 1983.
A couple was killed, their 12-year-old son almost beaten to death.
One of the two men convicted, Jerry Mahaffey, says he was tortured into confessing.
And the officers who were on the case three decades ago were under the supervision of the notorious Jon Burge.
"Any time the Burge name is connected with a case, they take a quantum leap to torture, regardless of the facts," said Joe Heinrich, the brother of JoEllen Pueschel, who was killed 32 years ago along with her husband Dean Pueschel.
Heinrich will argue that the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission should not vote today to refer the case to a judge, who could then order a new trial for Mahaffey.
"If they are truly doing their job, they'll look at the facts and not go into their own whims and gut feelings and hunches."
In a written statement, a spokesman for the commission says that "confidentiality requirements of the statute prevent commission staff from commenting about an active investigation."