How Thom McNamee celebrated twin Tim - after his 1987 death - in the fast lane

First of two parts

Nobody was living larger than identical twins Tim and Thom McNamee of Carpentersville in the 1980s. Tim was a top attorney. Thom was an international model. Their Bandito Barney's Beach Club and Bordello bar drew crowds to East Dundee. With a steady stream of money and women, the twins partied in their hot tub with nude supermodels and professional athletes.

And then things got really crazy.

Tim, 34, was gunned down on the night of June 8, 1987, in the driveway of the converted ranch house that served as the McNamee & Mahoney law firm. As Carpentersville police searched for the killer, Tim's corpse spent a night on the town as part of a wild Irish wake that is legendary 30 years later.

“He was such a big figure. It was such a big deal,” remembers Gary Mueller, 61, a close friend to Tim and Thom, who died of a brain tumor in 2009.

Tim's death “was devastating,” says brother Phil McNamee, 58, one of the 11 children in the McNamee family. “Tim was a champion for little guys everywhere and for our family.”

The events that followed Tim's murder, each confirmed by several sources, court records or police reports, unfolded in spectacular fashion.

After playing his usual Monday night softball game with “the boys,” Tim McNamee swung by Bandito Barney's to grab the day's receipts and drove back to the McNamee & Mahoney law office to lock away the money. Tim helped law and bar partner Timothy Mahoney carry files to his car and went back inside alone to finish up some work. Mahoney drove to his nearby home and took his dog out on a jog. McNamee left the office sometime around 9:45 p.m. to rejoin friends back at his bar.

“I heard the shot,” says Gerard Dziuba, who was a reporter for the Northwest Herald working in the newspaper's small office across the road that night. Police had told Dziuba that hunters had been illegally shooting raccoons and deer in recent nights, so Dziuba, who later would become a Daily Herald editor and columnist, didn't think much about the gunshot.

Others saw what they figured was a garbage bag on the pavement next to a car that night in the McNamee & Mahoney parking lot adjacent to Illinois Route 31. Shortly after 6 the next morning, a secretary discovered McNamee's body, still clad in his softball uniform, in a pool of blood next to his unfinished cigar on the pavement near his charcoal gray Porsche 944.

A single bullet from a World War I-era Remington .30-06 rifle, which police found in bushes about 75 feet away, pierced McNamee's right side and his liver and spleen, causing massive bleeding, before exiting through his back and lodging above a door in the law office.

The crime seemed better suited for an episode of TV's “Miami Vice” than for the working-class town where folks tended to know each other and their parents.

Everyone knew the McNamees, and many people had theories about who might want the lawyer dead.

“There were all kinds of rumors and allegations floating around,” says then-Carpentersville Police Chief Leon Kutzke, who calls it the “highest-profile investigation of my career.”

Mueller, the twins' friend, was fixing a roof that morning when his parents' car pulled up. “My mom was crying and told me Tim was murdered,” Mueller says. Members of the McNamee family asked Mueller to call Thom, who was on a modeling assignment in New Zealand. The model Thom was dating answered the phone and wanted to chat.

“Elle, you need to get Thom,” Mueller told Elle Macpherson, the swimsuit model who would grace the cover of the next year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. “Something bad has happened.”

When Thom got home, after 23 hours on planes, he orchestrated a spectacular and macabre wake for his twin, whose body was released by the coroner to a local funeral home, which released it to Thom.

Mueller was home watching the Lakers and the Celtics in the NBA Finals on TV when he got a phone call with an odd request.

“Tim wants to go for his last drink with the boys tonight,” Thom said. A confused Mueller went to the McNamee home, which they called the Log Cabin, on Route 31 to find the twins' closest friends.

“There's judges and lawyers and police officers and firefighters,” Mueller says. “And there's Tim on a gurney in the back of a pickup truck.”

They drove Tim's embalmed corpse, wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots and his No. 12 “Irish Rebels” flag-football jersey (Thom wore No. 21), to all his old haunts. “We'd bring him in and sit him at a stool at the bar with a drink in front of him,” Mueller says.

Mahoney, who was handling a turbulent divorce case and thought that bullet might have been meant for him, stayed home, but he left briefly to meet with Thom.

“I came in (to Bandito Barney's) and Tim was sitting at the bar, and I was just … phew,” remembers Mahoney, 66, who couldn't believe Thom would take a corpse into their bar. When the stitches from Tim's autopsy gave way, Thom found a friend who knew what to do.

“He sprung a leak and they sewed him back up,” Mahoney says.

“It's something only Tim or Thom would have done,” says Phil McNamee, who went home to his wife before the night was over. The crew, all well-known in town, visited a half-dozen bars before the final toast at the law office. When one bartender complained about a dead guy sitting at his bar, the persuasive Thom talked him into allowing it by noting, “I'm just having a drink with my brother,” remembers Mueller, who had a drink with Thom at every bar.

“I was kind of sickened in a way,” admits Mueller, who said he soon came to realize Thom orchestrated the night out of love for his brother. “It was probably the most memorable thing in my life. It was very touching. I understood what Thom wanted to do for Tim. It made me feel better.”

The funeral four days later at McNamee's log house drew a crowd estimated at more than 2,000. Tim's body, wearing jeans, his “Irish Rebels” football jersey and his trademark cowboy boots adorned with a Rolex watch, was positioned on a bear skin rug atop his 1959 Corvette convertible as the car's sound system played “Ride Across the River” by Dire Straits. Even though they used bags of ice to keep his body cold when it wasn't part of the celebration of Tim's life, “His nose is getting black. His face is getting black. He's decomposing in front of us,” remembers Mueller, who accompanied Thom, Mahoney and others to the cremation.

“You would think he was a king,” says Mueller, explaining how McNamee was cremated with lots of fancy jewelry, an expensive watch and his cowboy boots. “I'd love it to be a movie because people wouldn't believe it.”

Many people, including some members of the McNamee family, thought the wake and funeral were bizarre. But Phil McNamee says the family understood Thom's motivation. “It's part of the acceptance of what happened,” he says. “It was hard to accept that.”

Police, meanwhile, were nowhere close to coming up with a suspect or motive.

“In the beginning,” Kutzke said, “we had lots of tips.”

Part II: Who killed Tim McNamee?