Ex-Winnetka Teacher Accused of Sex Crimes Dies at 94

A 94-year-old man suspected of sexually molesting as many as 100 children during his work as a gym teacher and scout leader in Winnetka and a summer-camp counselor in Wyoming has died.

Bill Bricker was in poor health and fighting extradition to Wyoming, where he faced charges in connection with alleged abuse of two boys and a girl at a summer camp dating back to the 1960s and 1980s.

Bricker died in his home, reports the Chicago Tribune, where he received hospice care. He was arrested in September at his nursing home. His attorney Michael Lewis told the Tribune Bricker died at about 10 p.m. Friday.

In a shocking revelation, one of Bricker’s reported victims was the son of the Winnetka school superintendent at the time Bricker was a teacher there. Reports the Tribune:

Murphy Monroe had not attended Hubbard Woods, nor was he a member of the Boy Scout troop that Bricker oversaw in Winnetka for decades. But when he was 11, Murphy’s parents had sent him to the ranch camp in Wyoming where Bricker worked each summer and that drew many children from Chicago’s North Shore.

Yes, he told his parents over breakfast that day in 1993, sharing what he’d told no one except a group of close friends from New Trier High School: Bricker had molested him several times over the five weeks he spent at the camp.

» More via the Tribune: Winnetka School Superintendent’s Son Among Alleged Bricker Abuse Victims

Monroe’s abuse took place in 1985, according to authorities, at the Teton Valley Ranch Camp in Wyoming. Another charge involves the abuse of a boy at the camp in 1962. A third attack took place in 1968 at Grand Teton National park during an overnight camping trip, during which Bricker allegedly kissed and fondled a 14-year-old girl.

Bricker worked at that Wyoming ranch camp until 2002.

For 40 years, he taught at Hubbard Woods School in Winnetka. In October 2014, Winnetka School District 36 opened Bricker’s personnel files to public review after turning them over to authorities in Wyoming. He taught at the school from 1949 to 1985.

“We believe it is our responsibility to be forthcoming with the community, and we want potential victims to know how seriously this School Board takes these issues. We have elected to make Mr. Bricker’s redacted files available upon request to anyone who feels they might be helped by reviewing them,” district leaders said in a statement.

School officials learned of allegations against Bricker in 1968 but police were never called to investigate his conduct. A 1995 handwritten note in school records suggested Bricker’s victims at the school were many: “Could have 100 children abused”. Other phrases in the notes read: “Letting sleeping dogs lie may be more helpful” and “no proof”. It’s not clear who wrote those notes.

Bricker’s Michigan attorney told the Detroit News that it was unlikely he could be extradited because of his failing health. He slept 17 hours a day and suffered from congestive heart failure, the attorney said.

Still, the publicity in recent months generated by Bricker’s arrest and the effort to extradite him to Wyoming to face justice has been gratifying to some who say Bricker molested them.

“I’m glad he’s been exposed,” Tim Berg, 61, of Evanston, told the Detroit News. “I’m glad it’s seeing the light of day.”

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