Alleged Ringleader of Hickory St. Nightmare Murderers Stands Trial Monday

Next month, a 20-year-old Shorewood woman will be sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of two men she never actually laid a hand on while they were being killed.

With that in mind, the alleged ringleader accused of giving the signal to start killing—and then strangling one of the two men himself—can’t much like his chances when he goes in front of the same judge for the start of his murder trial Monday.

Joshua Miner, 26, is expected to be tried by a jury instead of putting his fate solely in the hands of Will County Judge Gerald Kinney, as co-defendant Bethany McKee did at her own trial in August. Kinney found McKee guilty of two murders, despite a complete lack of any allegation that she physically killed anyone.

While McKee didn’t actually strangle 22-year-olds Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, she did lure them to the Hickory Street home of her friend Alisa Massaro, and after the two men were dead, she took part in splitting up and spending the $120 her friends removed from Rankins’ pockets.

Along with Miner, McKee and the 20-year-old Massaro, a second Joliet man, Adam Landerman, 21, also was charged with the murders of Rankins and Glover. He is awaiting trial as well.

Massaro slipped out of the murder case in May when she copped a plea to reduced charges of robbery and concealing homicides. In exchange, she agreed to testify against her three friends. She already did so at McKee’s trial.

While her pals are looking at life in prison, Massaro—who admitted to police that she had sex with Miner atop the bodies of Rankins and Glover after the killings—will be free in less than three and a half years.

Miner, the oldest of the alleged Nightmare on Hickory Street killers, is also the only ex-convict among the group. He was sent to prison for a 2010 burglary he committed on Irene Street in Joliet. He also did time in jail for theft and was sentenced to a year of conditional discharge for misdemeanor unauthorized videotaping.

The misdemeanor was originally filed as felony child pornography. Miner allegedly made a video recording of his then-girlfriend, Ivon Walsh, then known as Ivon Gurrola, as she “placed her tongue in the vagina” of an underage girl in October 2005. Miner also videotaped a man identified only as “Jake” as he had sex with the girl, according to a criminal indictment.

Four years later, Walsh claimed Miner told her he was going to disembowel her and strangle her 6-month-old daughter with her intestines.

Miner allegedly told Walsh, “If u yell at me again u cheating bitch I will cut your stomach open, pull out your (intestines) as you lye bleeding, make a turnakit, put it around the little bitch of a daughter that should have been mine(‘s) throat and hang her,” she wrote in a petition for a protective order. Walsh also said she had three miscarriages while being subjected to physical abuse at the hands of Miner, who she accused of burning her with cigarettes, and branding her with both an upside-down cross and a swastika.

After Miner was taken into custody and charged with killing Rankins and Glover in January 2013, Walsh took to Facebook and boasted about her romantic connection with the alleged double murderer, writing, “I dated a serial killer!!!!!!” and “It could have been me years ago.”

After his arrest on the murder charges, Miner’s attorneys attempted without success to bar statements he supposedly made to police from being used against him at trial. And Miner said quite a bit, according to police reports obtained exclusively by Patch.

For one thing, shortly after officers arrived at Massaro’s house, Miner told them, “I killed this guy and Adam killed the other guy,” according to the reports, which also have Miner bragging, “I did the guy with the dreads.”

Miner initially told detectives he was protecting McKee from Rankins, who was trying to rape her, the reports said. This account was refuted by McKee, Massaro and Landerman, according to the reports. Miner then told police how he and Landerman attacked Rankins and Glover with the intent to rob them and ended up choking the two men to death.

Miner told the police that after Glover and Rankins were dead, he and Landerman “jumped on both subjects who were laying on their stomachs,” the reports said. “Miner described Landerman’s actions as surfing on the bodies.”

Miner told the police he and Landerman searched through the dead men’s pockets and clothes for drugs and money, “then tied bags over each one of their heads and then hog-tied the (man) with the dreadlocks with an extension cord and then tied the bald (man) to the other (man) with some clothing or rope,” the reports said.

Miner said McKee and Massaro “wanted to hit the bodies and did so with a liquor bottle and then kicked both victims as well,” according to the reports. He said the “girls wanted to see if the victims were dead.”

“It was at this time that (Miner) asked (Massaro) if she wanted to have sex on the bodies as (Miner) recalled (Massaro) stating years back that she wanted to have sex with a dead guy,” the reports said.

Miner said Massaro smirked at him, according to the reports, and Massaro “acknowledged she and Josh did have sexual intercourse on top of the bodies.”

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