Defense outlines Tenney's history of mental illness

Even as a teenager, triple murderer Edward Tenney was considered "dangerous" and "disturbed."

That's according to Tenney's former therapist who treated him between the ages of 13 and 15 while he was being held at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute from 1973 to 1975. Elaine McCarter testified at his death penalty hearing Thursday that he had a lengthy history of mental illness that sometimes manifested itself in aggressive and angry outbursts.

McCarter was called to testify by Tenney's defense team, John Houlihan and Mark Kowalczyk, in an effort to sway jurors away from a death sentence. They want to show jurors that Tenney's rough childhood while raised by a mentally unstable mother plagued him into adulthood. Upon his release from the state facility in 1975, McCarter said she recommended keeping Tenney from living with his mother.

"I don't believe it would have ever been healthy for Ed to return home to live," McCarter said.

The therapist also testified that while she didn't believe Tenney was "psychotic" when he was being held at the state facility, he was "headed that way." She said Tenney considered himself "born bad" and was frequently suspicious and paranoid during counseling sessions.

Last week, a DuPage County jury convicted the 50-year-old former Aurora man of killing Jerry Weber on April 16, 1992. Tenney robbed the 24-year-old Aurora man of a wallet containing $6 as Weber tried to free his van from a muddy Aurora field, three weeks after his second son was born.

The jury is considering whether to impose a death sentence. If not, Tenney will receive his third life prison term. He is serving two life prison terms for the 1993 fatal shootings of 75-year-old Virginia Johannessen and dairy heiress Mary Jill Oberweis, 56. The two widows were killed 10 months apart in separate home invasions in an Aurora Township neighborhood.

Tenney's lawyers do not dispute his violent history, which dates back to age 17 and includes several armed robberies and jail escape attempts. Rather, they are presenting mental health experts who argue Tenney operated under an extreme mental and emotional disturbance and could not control his behavior when he opened fire on Weber.

Another expert, Ruth Kuncel, a licensed clinical social worker, told the jury about abusive situations such as when Tenney, under the age of 5, reached across the dinner table for something, his teenage mother stuck a fork in his hand out of disapproval. Tenney lived in several long-term mental health facilities for children and had to repeat grades, including kindergarten.

"He was severely neglected," Kuncel said. "He was unkempt, uncared for and sadistically treated."

The sentencing hearing, before DuPage Circuit Judge Daniel Guerin, may end today.