Another Guilty Verdict in Nightmare on Hickory Street Murder Case

A jury needed only an hour and 15 minutes to find Nightmare on Hickory Street strangler Adam Landerman guilty of murdering two young men from Joliet in January 2013.

Landerman, the 21-year-old son of Joliet police Sgt. Julie Larson, sat slack-jawed with his attorneys as Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak read the verdict Monday afternoon. He will be sentenced to life in prison.

Landerman and three of his friends — Joshua Miner, 26, Bethany McKee, 20, and Alisa Massaro, 21 — conspired to rob 22-year-olds Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover. Landerman and his friends had been partying at Massaro’s Hickory Street home but were broke and ran out of cigarettes and liquor.

McKee, who was in a sexual relationship with Rankins, suggested inviting him over and robbing him of his drugs and money. To the surprise of the young men and women who were plotting to kill him, Rankins arrived at the death house with his lifelong friend Glover.

Landerman told police during his interrogation that he and Miner planned to start the robbery after the group finished off a bottle of tequila. When the bottle was empty, Miner strangled Rankins and Landerman throttled Glover.

Read all the stories and watch every video in the series, Josh Miner: The Nightmare Revealed:

• The Nightmare Revealed: Hickory Street Strangler Josh Miner Tells All
• Part I: Josh Miner Sawed Tongue in Half, Wanted to Transform Into Vampire Clown ‘Freak’
• Part II: Josh Miner Says He Was ‘Too Slow-Witted’ To Be Charles Manson Murder Mastermind
• Part III: Nightmare on Hickory Street Gals Got ‘Bogus’ Deal, Says Josh Miner, Even the Woman Doing Just 5 Years
• Part IV: Cop’s Kid Made Up Sex On Bodies Story To Trick Detectives Into Thinking He’s Crazy: Miner
• Part V: Hickory Street Killings Were Nothing But A Fight Gone Too Far: Miner
• Part VI: No Future: Josh Miner Says He’s ‘Not Living ... Just Existing’

One of Landerman’s attorneys, April Simmons, had tried to portray the 6-foot-4 Landerman as small, frightened and childlike, and under the sway of the older, more dominant Miner.

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow countered that Landerman is actually “arrogant,” sophisticated, “cunning,” “selfish” and “demonic.”

“That baby face is a mask for an abandoned and malignant heart,” said Glasgow, who also called Landerman a feeble-minded, drug-addicted drunk.

Glasgow also accused Landerman of taking a “lead role in some of the depraved activities” the four engaged in after Rankins and Glover were dead. Those activities included binding the bodies, tying plastic shopping bags over their heads, beating them with liquor bottles, and jumping up and down on them.

Massaro and Miner also had sex atop Rankins and Glover’s corpses, but no mention of that was allowed at Landerman’s trial.

Glasgow pointed out that “hog-tying” the dead bodies “makes no sense, but that’s what they did.”

McKee and Miner have already been convicted and are serving life sentences in prison. Massaro wriggled her way out of the murder case last year by copping a plea to reduced charges of robbery and concealing homicides. She will be released from prison in less than two and a half years.

In hammering home the brutality of the murders, Glasgow noted the “intimate” nature of a strangling.

“Their life is attached to yours and you feel it drain out of their body,” he said. “That’s how demonic it is.”