No Corpse-Sex Talk Allowed at Last Nightmare on Hickory Street Murder Trial

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that any talk of sex will be off-limits during the Nightmare on Hickory Street murder trial of cop’s son Adam Landerman.

Jury selection for Landerman’s trial is set to start Tuesday morning. On Monday, Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak ruled jurors will be permitted to see crime scene video shot in the aftermath of the January 2013 killings. Public defender April Simmons argued that the video is too prejudicial.

Prosecutor Dan Walsh countered that the video is not particularly “gory by any stretch of the imagination,” since, even though it shows the bodies of murder victims Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22, the young men were strangled to death and not in some way mutilated.

Judge Bertani-Tomczak watched the video before making her decision. Near its end, a cover of the Door’s song People Are Strange by horrorcore duo Twiztid can be heard playing in the background.

Bertani-Tomczak has yet to decide whether jurors can see photographs of the crime scene. While talk of the sexual activity allegedly indulged in by Landerman, 21, and his three alleged partners in crime — Joshua Miner, 26, Alisa Massaro, 21, and Bethany McKee, 20 — was forbidden, prosecutors can talk about how the four allegedly stole drugs and money from Rankins and Glover, and then used that money to buy more drugs. Prosecutors can also tell the jury how the four allegedly planned to dismember the bodies of Rankins and Glover.

The sex-talk issue will deprive jurors of hearing how Miner and his occasional girlfriend, Massaro, had sex atop the corpses of Glover and Rankins. While Miner and Massaro confessed to having sex on the dead men’s bodies, Miner later told Patch in an exclusive prison interview that he only said it to get the detectives to leave him alone. The whole sex on the bodies story was concocted by Landerman, said Miner, who claimed his co-defendant was trying to convince the cops he was crazy.

According to prosecutors, Landerman, who is the son of Joliet police Sgt. Julie Larson, and his three friends hatched a plot to rob Rankins and Glover. During the attack on the two men, Landerman and Miner allegedly choked them to death. In his prison interview with Patch, Miner claimed he killed Rankins and Landerman strangled Glover after the two men refused to leave Massaro’s home and a fight broke out. Miner said he ordered them to go because he felt slighted.

Landerman faces an automatic life sentence if convicted of murdering the two men. McKee and Miner are already serving life sentences.

Massaro wriggled her way out of the murder case last year by copping a plea to reduced charges of robbery and concealing homicides. She was sentenced to five years in prison but will be released within four years of striking her deal.