Nightmare on Hickory St. Murder Verdict Set for Aug. 29

In 17 days, a Shorewood woman charged with the Nightmare on Hickory Street murders will find out if she must spend the rest of her life in prison.

The murder trial of Bethany McKee, 20, ended Tuesday afternoon and Will County Judge Gerald Kinney said he will announce his verdict Aug. 29.

McKee was charged with the strangulation deaths of 22-year-olds Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover. If convicted of the two murders she will be sentenced to life in prison.

McKee’s attorney, Chuck Bretz, said prosecutors could have charged McKee with a laundry list of crimes for the way she behaved after Rankins and Glover were killed in January 2013—but murder wasn’t one of them.

“The investigating officers became tunnel-visioned in their approach to this case,” said Bretz, who claimed prosecutors suffered from the same lack of perspective. While the state’s attorney could have filed more appropriate charges—such as concealing a homicide, obstructing justice, possession of stolen property and burglary of a motor vehicle—prosecutors instead went all in with double murder and its accompanying life sentence.

“Someone decided to make this an all-or-nothing proposition,” Bretz said, urging Kinney to reach a verdict of innocent even though it “may not be popular with some.”

Prosecutors alleged that McKee and her lifelong friend, Alisa Massaro, also 20, lured Rankins and Glover to Massaro’s house on Joliet’s Hickory Street. After Rankins and Glover arrived, Massaro’s occasional boyfriend, 26-year-old Joshua Miner, and another of their friends, Adam Landerman, 21, strangled the two young men to death.

Once Rankins and Glover were dead, Massaro and Miner had sex atop their bodies, according to police reports obtained exclusively by Patch. Massaro, McKee, Miner and Landerman then decided to dismember the corpses of their victims and began procuring supplies, including a blowtorch, to carry out the gruesome job, the reports said. Miner reportedly intended to keep the dead men’s teeth as trophies.

McKee, Miner, Landerman and Massaro hatched the plot to kill Rankins and Glover because they were broke and badly wanted to buy booze and cigarettes, prosecutor Tricia McKenna said during the trial.

In his closing argument, prosecutor Daniel Walsh said McKee came up with the idea to rob Rankins, a high school acquaintance she reconnected with on Facebook. Massaro said Rankins and McKee had sex after getting to know each other again, and that he bought her liquor because she was underage and without funds.

“They knew him as a guy who sold a little weed, who dressed nice, and they picked him as their victim and they got him over there,” Walsh said.

Glover apparently just happened to accompany Rankins to Massaro’s house that night, according to testimony.

Since McKee chose Rankins as the target of the robbery, and because he and Glover died during the ensuing crime, she is guilty of their murders, Walsh said.

“She’s in for a penny, she’s in for a pound,” he said, “and when she’s in for the robberies, she’s in for the murders.”

Glover’s mother, Nicole Jones, said Bretz made her feel “sick and disturbed,” that she wants McKee to die in prison, and told how the killers did not just take her son’s life, but also tore her family apart.

“They destroyed my family doing what they did,” Jones said. Our family will never be the same.”

Go take a look at our Facebook page.