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Judge Kin Murders, Suicide Linked

A man who shot himself during a traffic stop in Wisconsin left a suicide note in which he claimed responsibility for the murder of a federal judge's husband and mother, including information that was not released to the public,

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The van was registered to Bart Ross, 57, of Chicago, reports WBBM.

WMAQ-TV in Chicago also reported Thursday that it had received a handwritten letter signed by Ross in which he describes breaking into the house of Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow around 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 28 with the intent to kill her and anyone else.

Ross said he waited all day in a utility room in the basement and shot the judge's husband after he discovered Ross, according to the news report. Ross said he then shot Lefkow's mother after she heard the gunshot and called out to her son-in-law.

He said he stayed in the house until about 1:45 p.m. before deciding to leave.

Last September, Lefkow dismissed a civil rights lawsuit in which Ross claimed doctors at the University of Illinois-Chicago Hospital and its clinic had disfigured him, damaged his mouth and caused him to lose his teeth when they treated him for cancer from 1992 to 1995.

Among other claims, Ross alleged doctors committed a "terrorist act" against him by giving him radiation treatment without his consent. He represented himself in the lawsuit.

Defendants in the lawsuit included the federal government, the State of Illinois, five doctors and four attorneys who had taken part in an earlier Ross lawsuit that was dismissed by another judge.

Ross had been stopped in West Allis, Wis., Wednesday evening because his van had a faulty taillight, police said. As officers approached the car, he killed himself with a gunshot to the head, police said.

Police in the Milwaukee suburb declined to characterize the evidence found in the van. But a source close to the investigation told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the van contained a suicide note that also listed some other judges.

Investigators also discovered hundreds of .22 caliber shells in the van that are the same caliber as the casings found in Lefkow's home, the Chicago Tribune reported in its Thursday editions.

Chicago police confirmed that detectives had been sent to Wisconsin to investigate the suicide. Police Department spokesman David Bayless confirmed the man who died in Wisconsin as Ross.

Officers cordoned off the street outside Ross' last known address Thursday morning, a two-story home across from a high school on a tree-lined street on Chicago's North Side.

Lefkow found the bodies of her husband, attorney Michael Lefkow, 64, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, 89, on the basement floor of the Lefkow home the evening of Feb. 28.

There was speculation the slayings could have been related to white supremacist Matthew Hale who is jailed awaiting sentencing for plotting to kill Lefkow. But the Tribune said there was no immediately known link between Ross and any hate groups.

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