Identical wakes for McNamee twins, 22 years apart

Although it is difficult to remember what I did last Tuesday, I distinctly remember where I was 22 years ago last Tuesday.

I was standing on a tree-shrouded driveway off Hwy. 31 in Carpentersville, wondering why a young, popular, good-looking attorney had just been cut down with a high-powered rifle.

His name was Tim McNamee, 34, and he had been assassinated. Someone using a World War I-era rifle took him out with a single shot to the abdomen.

The sniper had nested about 50 yards away and had been waiting for a while. Judging by the litter left behind, there was time enough to down a sandwich and a couple of beers

McNamee was still wearing a softball uniform from the night before when his secretary found him in a puddle of blood near his jet black Porsche.

It was then and still is one of the most peculiar cases ever in Kane County, involving two of the most colorful figures that will ever pass through the area.

Two. As in twins. Tim McNamee and his twin brother, Thom.

When lawyer Tim was in the crosshairs of a gunman that day in June, 1987, Thom was halfway around the world in the South Pacific saying cheese.

Thom was a model, one of the busiest in Chicago and on assignment in Fiji when he got the call.

The twins ran in fast crowds, drove fast cars and were well-known players on a fast party circuit in the Northwest suburbs.

So when Tim was shot and killed, some of the whispers were quite loud. "It had to be drugs or maybe a jilted lover" was the chorus of gut reactions to a playboy attorney getting whacked while exiting his Porsche.

The rumors were fed by a popular new TV show: Miami Vice, where it was hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys until the end of the show. But everybody looked slick and sleek, wore linen jackets with no shoulder pads and drove fast cars.

By the time model-twin Thom rushed back to Carpentersville, the cops had made no headway in the solving the case.

So he, his 9 siblings, and other relatives and friends starting heating things up, criticizing the police as inept and demanding more resources be put on the case.

Once the Illinois attorney general and the FBI became involved, it still took almost a year and a half to solve it.

In the end, the Tim McNamee murder wasn't as exotic as a Don Johnson caper. His gangland-style slaying wasn't a mob hit or ordered by Colombian drug lords.

It was motivated by a routine divorce and custody case; the kind lawyers handle every day that usually don't go haywire.

As impossible as that incident was to predict, Tim and Thom used to talk about death when they were in their 20s and 30s.

They decided whichever twin died first, the other was to throw a lavish party - not a weeping wake.

Thom did that for Tim after he was murdered. His body was laid out in a Corvette in front of the brothers' log cabin home in Carpentersville for mourners to pay their respects.

Then, Thom held a party in Tim's honor at the Field Museum that attracted 3,000 people including Chicago Bears and some notable actresses and models.

The event raised thousands of dollars for charity.

"My brother and I were never afraid of the reality of life and death," Thom was quoted as saying at the time.

Last Thursday, at age 56, Thom himself passed from the reality of life to death. He died of a brain tumor.

In keeping with his view of life (and his chronic attire) Thom's many friends are asking that Hawaiian shirts and shorts be worn to his funeral services today and tomorrow.

The McNamee twins may both be gone, but there are lots of reminders of their presence: a charity foundation and a park in Tim's name; the robust redevelopment of East Dundee that was Thom's vision, and the bars and restaurants that celebrated their way of life.

In this Twitter age, if you judge a person's influence and sway by the number of comments on their memorial Web site, then Thom McNamee was widely known and beloved.

One author of a comment suggested that the twins' story would make a great movie script.

I know just the screenwriter. Twenty-two years ago, he was standing on a driveway in Carpentersville.

Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=300219">Colorful East Dundee developer Thom McNamee dies at 56 <span class="date">[06/12/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.legacy.com/dailyherald/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=128348598">Obituary for Thom McNamee <span class="date">[06/12/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>