Joliet Man Wants No Jury For Nightmare on Hickory St. Murder Trial

Just as a jury was to be picked for Joshua Miner’s Nightmare on Hickory Street murder trial, the Joliet man chose to put his fate solely in the hands of a judge.

Unfortunately for Miner, that same judge just a month ago found one of his co-defendants guilty of murdering both Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, despite a complete lack of any allegation she physically killed anyone.

Bethany McKee, 20, of Shorewood did lure the two Joliet men to the Hickory Street home of her friend Alisa Massaro. And after they were dead, McKee took part in splitting up and spending the $120 her friends removed from Rankins’ pockets. And that was enough for Will County Judge Gerald Kinney to find McKee guilty of murdering both Rankins and Glover.

Now Kinney, and Kinney alone, will sit in judgment of Miner, 26, who was much more intimately involved than McKee in murdering Rankins and Glover, according to police reports obtained exclusively by Patch.

Miner, along with McKee, Massaro, 20, and Adam Landerman, 21, was arrested and charged with murdering Rankins and Glover, both 22, in January 2013.

Unlike McKee, who only planned the killings, enjoyed in the profits and plotted a cover-up, Miner actually strangled Glover with his bare hands, then bragged about it—twice—to police sent to Massaro’s home, the reports said.

After he killed Glover and Landerman strangled Rankins, Miner and Massaro had sex atop the dead men’s bodies, the reports said.

Miner also spoke of flaying Glover and wearing his face like a mask, McKee told detectives during an interrogation at the Kankakee Police Department.

“He was going to take a picture later on with his face pulled off like Leatherface,” McKee said, telling how Miner was inspired by the horror flick Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in which Leatherface goes on a murderous rampage and wears a dead man’s face like a mask.

“I think it’s because of the dreads” Glover wore, McKee explained to Joliet police detectives. She said Miner wanted to “scalp his head and wear it like a hat.”

“I was laughing,” McKee admitted, but told the detectives, “I didn’t think it was funny.”

McKee repeatedly called Miner “crazy” during her interrogation, and told how he was the one who gave the signal that the attack on Rankins and Glover was about to go down.

McKee, Miner, Landerman and Massaro hatched the plot to murder Rankins and Glover because they were broke and wanted to buy cigarettes and alcohol, prosecutor Tricia McKenna said during McKee’s trial.

McKee will be sentenced to life in prison next month. 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.

Landerman remains locked up in the Will County jail while he awaits his own murder trial.

During his brief appearance for the aborted jury selection, Miner, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail and the open collar of his blue-and-white striped shirt low enough to show off his neck tattoo, confirmed to Kinney that he wanted to proceed without a jury.

Kinney sent Miner back to jail and said the trial will start Tuesday after recent court filings are argued. One motion, filed by prosecutors, was on whether to keep Miner in restraints during the trial.

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