Boys' murderer dies in prison

Maybe it was the memory of the old man opening his door and asking if John Rotunno was there to talk about the decades-old murders of the man's son and two other boys.

Or Rotunno's belief that the man he helped put in prison for the murders did not do nearly enough time, did not suffer nearly enough for what he'd done before his death this week in prison.

Whatever it was, Rotunno, an ATF special agent who helped lead the investigation, choked up Friday while talking about the murders of 14-year-old Robert Peterson, 13-year-old John Schuessler and his 11-year-old brother, Anton Schuessler.

"I wish he would have stayed in longer just to linger, just to stay there," Rotunno said of 74-year-old Kenneth Hansen, who died Wednesday of natural causes at Pontiac Correctional Center.

Still, he said, "It's done. It's closed."

Hansen's death marked the end to a criminal case that has been part of the city's history for more than a half century. In October 1955, the boys disappeared, their naked bodies found later in a Cook County forest preserve.

The case went unsolved for almost 40 years. Then, during the investigation of another long-unsolved case -- suspected horse killings and the mysterious 1977 disappearance of candy heiress and horsewoman Helen Vorhees Brach -- Rotunno and his partner, ATF Special Agent Jim Grady, came across witnesses who implicated Hansen in the boys' slayings.

In the summer of 1994, Hansen sensed the investigation was closing in on him, Rotunno said.

"He was asking a neighbor, 'Are there any police around watching my house?' " recalled Rotunno, adding that Hansen had even packed a suitcase to leave town when Grady arrested him in August of that year.

He was arrested on an arson charge in a 1972 fire at a suburban Chicago stable and charged later the same day with murdering the boys.

During Hansen's trial, prosecutors contended that three boys were hitchhiking when they were picked up by Hansen, then 22, who took them to the stable where he worked. They said he sexually abused at least one of them and strangled them all.

Hansen was convicted of the crime in 1995, but the Illinois Appellate Court overturned the conviction five years later after determining that the jury should not have heard evidence that Hansen had cruised the streets and picked up boys for sexual relations.

Hansen went on trial again in 2002 and, after deliberating a little more than two hours, a jury found him guilty again. Hansen was sentenced to 200 to 300 years in prison.

Hansen maintained his innocence, according to two attorneys who represented him, one of whom was working on another appeal at the time of his death.

"The case was as phony as could be," said Leonard Goodman, Hansen's former attorney, who said he remains convinced of Hansen's innocence.

Had Hansen been arrested shortly after the slayings, Goodman said, he thinks he surely would have had an alibi, "but 40 years later it's very difficult to defend yourself. You can't say where you were on a particular day in October of 1955."

Karen Daniel, an attorney with Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, was working on an appeal that included the argument that Hansen should have been allowed to present evidence at his second trial that another man confessed to the slayings.

She said the only evidence was from witnesses who testified that Hansen told them he had killed the boys.

"You can't allow people to be convicted on this type of evidence," she said.

Though the appeal was still active, Goodman said Hansen had lost hope. "But he wanted to keep fighting for his kids so they wouldn't have to live with a blemish on their name."

Rotunno, though, maintains that the evidence against Hansen not only was overwhelming, but the case against him a "dead lock." He also said that in the years before he was arrested, Hansen preyed on hundreds of boys.

"All the children this guy molested, all the kids, now men, who told us they were molested by him..." he said.

"I'm glad he's dead because now they can't say this or they can't say that. It's finally done."