Blackout! Courtroom Goes Dark During Video of Miner Detailing Hickory St. Nightmare Murders

In the middle of a video showing Joshua Miner confess to strangling a man, abusing two dead bodies and then having sex atop them with his sometime-girlfriend, the chilling tale was cut short as the courtroom plunged into darkness.

Moments later, a deputy with a flashlight cleared the room of spectators. Miner remained and was left at the defense table.

Prosecutors had asked Will County Judge Gerald Kinney to keep the accused killer in chains throughout his murder trial for safety’s sake. Kinney refused the request and Miner rewarded his trust Thursday by not using the cover of darkness to attack anyone or make a run for it. In fact, he hardly seemed to move.

Power was out at least one other downtown Joliet building besides the courthouse Thursday afternoon but it only caused a brief delay of Miner’s trial. When it resumed, the rest of his interrogation video was played and a fingerprint expert testified.

Miner was held at the Joliet Police Department for 24 hours the day after the January 2013 murders of Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22. The video showed him turning in to sleep on a mat on the floor of an interrogation room about midnight. Soon after he hits the sack two detectives enter the room to ask just a few more questions.

Miner then makes his most incriminating statements about killing Rankins and Glover so far, telling how his lover, 20-year-old Alisa Massaro, and her friend, Bethany McKee, along with another man, 21-year-old Adam Landerman were in on the plot to rob Rankins and Glover.

McKee knew the two men would come over with money and liquor, he said, telling how he choked the life out of Rankins and Landerman strangled Glover. After the men were dead, Landerman jumped up and down on the bodies, Miner kicked and punched them, and the women struck them with liquor bottles.

Miner and Massaro then had sex atop the corpses.

Miner also revealed the plan he and his friends had to dismember the bodies and the steps they took toward accomplishing the grisly task.

Miner faces life in prison if convicted of the double murder.

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