Jury selection begins in Hoffman Estates teen's death
The last two weeks have been difficult for Jeffrey Ziegler and his family, but no more difficult than the 3½ years since Ziegler found the lifeless body of his 19-year-old son Joseph shot to death in the basement of the family's Hoffman Estates home.
It took more than 18 months before a tip led to the arrest of Matthew Zucco of Hanover Park and Clinton Johnson of Streamwood. They face first-degree murder charges in connection with the September 2008 slaying of Joseph Ziegler, a Schaumburg High School graduate who studied criminal justice at Palatine's Harper College.
Originally set to begin April 16, Zucco's trial was delayed until today, when jury selection is scheduled to begin in a Rolling Meadows courtroom. The trial date for Johnson, who authorities say is undergoing chemotherapy, has not been set.
This trial has been a long time coming, and the elder Ziegler says he won't miss a moment of it.
“One thing I will say about my son, he was a 19-year-old teenager, but he never talked back to me. There's not a lot of us who can say that,” said Jeff Ziegler. “He respected me, and he took care of his sister and defended her when he needed to.” Yet, getting justice has been difficult.
With no arrests more than a year after Ziegler's 2008 death, the case appeared to have gone cold. But a break came in 2010 when an expansive suburban drug investigation prosecutors dubbed “Dial-A-Rock” yielded a tip that led to the arrest of Zucco and Johnson.
Police say the men entered the Ziegler home around 9 a.m. Sept. 4, 2008, intending to rob Ziegler. Something went wrong, and authorities say Zucco, now 23, shot Ziegler instead. Zucco and Johnson, 25, fled the scene, dumped the weapon and bullets down a sewer and went to Johnson's home where they burned the clothes, police said. Police say Zucco went to Wisconsin after the shooting. He was arrested in April 2010, as was Johnson, a Marine, who at the time resided in North Carolina at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.
The delays in bringing the men to trial have been a source of frustration for Jeff Ziegler, who has described the criminal justice system as moving at a snail's place. The years have not dulled his grief.
“I live with it every day in some shape or form. There has not been a single day since it happened that I haven't thought about it,” said Ziegler who plans to attend the trial with his daughter and mother. His wife, Joseph's mother, died of cancer in 2001.