Cop's Kid Blames Friends for Strangling Murders

A Joliet cop’s kid who is on trial for the Nightmare on Hickory Street murders blamed his friends for the crime and said he wished he had just stayed home with his girlfriend that night.

“I didn’t want that to happen,” Adam Landerman said of the grisly slayings after he was arrested in January 2013. His murder trial began last week. His attorney, in an opening statement, described as a “scared kid” who “looks like a child.”

Asked if he would like to go back in time and change anything from the night 22-year-olds Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover were killed, Landerman, the 21-year-old son of Joliet police Sgt. Julie Larson, said, “F--- yeah I would.”

“I wouldn’t have left the house,” Landerman said. “I wish I had stayed home.”

But instead of watching a movie with his girlfriend in the Glenwood Avenue house where he lived with his grandmother, Landerman’s friend Bethany McKee, 20, picked him up and took him out. McKee drove Landerman to the Hickory Street Nightmare house of Alisa Massaro, 21. Another man, 26-year-old Josh Miner, was already at the house. Landerman said he had met Miner just once before.

The four drank and hung out, and then McKee suggested inviting Rankins over so they could rob him of his drugs and money, Landerman told detectives during a seven-hour interrogation.

“She knew exactly what was going to happen,” Landerman said of McKee.

But Landerman also accused Miner of masterminding the fatal robbery and, when asked to apportion blame for the murders, put 75 percent on Miner and took 25 percent for himself, which was generous considering his claim that he didn’t even kill anyone.

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’

Landerman, who was taken down to the police station in a black muscle shirt, repeatedly demonstrated to detectives how he strangled Glover, but explained he only did it to keep him from jumping into a fight between Miner and Rankins.

And Landerman insisted Glover was still alive when he let him go.

“He was still breathing, just knocked out,” Landerman said.

Miner, who killed Rankins moments before, then murdered Glover by garroting him with clothing he tied to the unresponsive man’s neck and ankles, Landerman said, describing the operation as “the whole hogtie thing.”

After Miner tied Glover’s neck, ankles and arms, the bound man made “zombie” noises and died, Landerman told detectives.

Landerman also told the detectives he never even wanted to rob Rankins, much less kill him and Glover. He just went along with it “because everybody else was going to do it, and I’m already there.”

And not only that, “I had no way back to my house,” Landerman point out. His grandmother’s home on Glenwood is two miles from Massaro’s on Hickory.

If Landerman is found guilty, he faces a mandatory life sentence. McKee and Miner have already been convicted and are serving their own 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.