Killer loses bid for new tests

A man serving a life sentence for the murder of the owner of a chain of appliance stores was turned down Friday in a bid for new testing of evidence in the case.

James Edwards, 58, wanted DNA testing on blood found in a car stolen from Fred Reckling after Reckling's slaying Dec. 4, 1994.

Edwards, who was convicted in 1974 of killing a Chicago woman and served 14 years in prison, confessed to killing Reckling and an Ohio woman after his arrested for an attempted robbery in 1995.

Reckling was the owner of the Grand Appliance store chain. Edwards was convicted of beating him to death with a cane inside the Waukegan store while robbing him.

A small amount of blood was found inside Reckling's car when it was found abandoned in Chicago 10 days after the slaying, and Edwards hoped DNA tests would establish whose blood it was.

"The state has no evidence against me except for the statement," he told Circuit Judge John Phillips on Friday.

"If that blood can be linked to someone else, then that person has to explain what his blood is doing in a murder victim's car."

Edwards claimed that his defense attorneys were "prevented" from testing the blood before his trial but did not explain how they were prevented from doing so or by whom.

Additional testing was unnecessary, Assistant State's Attorney Michael Mermel argued, because blood-type testing of the evidence at the time of the trial established that the blood did not come from Reckling or Edwards.

Witnesses who worked for Reckling testified at the trial that their employer would frequently allow workers injured on the job to be taken to hospitals in his personal car.

Prosecutors argued at the trial that the blood could have come from any one of a number of people who worked for Reckling over the years.

"The jury was told at the trial that the blood he wants tested was not his and was not the victim's," Mermel said. "He is simply wasting the court's time with this motion because he has nothing else to do."

Phillips denied Edwards' motion saying that Edwards had not established that testing of the blood was likely to change the outcome of the trial.

After his conviction in the Reckling murder, Edwards was convicted of the 1974 murder of a 60-year-old woman in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and was sentenced to life in prison in that state.

He was sentenced to 24 to 50 years in prison for the 1974 murder of the Chicago woman but was paroled in 1991.