'It's kind of sad' whistle-blower says of state's attorney's indictment

Amy Dalby had plenty of reason to celebrate last week when news of McHenry County State's Attorney Louis Bianchi's indictment reached her.

But instead of reveling in her former boss' arrest on corruption charges, the woman most responsible for it occurring said she mostly felt sadness.

"Initially I felt a little vindicated," Dalby said Thursday in her first public comments since Bianchi's indictment. "But ultimately it's not a very good thing for McHenry County. It's kind of sad."

Dalby, 25, was the central figure in a three-year-long saga surrounding claims of criminal wrongdoing within the McHenry County State's Attorney's office, first as a too reluctant whistle-blower, then as a criminal defendant and most recently as the petitioner seeking a special prosecutor to investigate Bianchi.

Her request for a special prosecutor, granted in September 2009, led to Bianchi's indictment last week on 21 felony charges claiming he used county workers, equipment and funds to further his political aspirations. Among the allegations are that Bianchi had employees store and maintain political records on state's attorney computers and let workers leave the office during business hours to attend campaign functions.

Bianchi, a second-term Republican from Crystal Lake, has strongly denied the charges.

As Bianchi's personal secretary in 2005 and 2006, Dalby said she believes the indictment justifies her decision four years ago to copy thousands of computerized state's attorney files onto a portable hard drive as proof she was required to do political work on county time.

"I'd like to think I did the wrong thing for the right reasons," she said.

Dalby, now a graduate student at Northern Illinois University, initially reported the allegations to the Daily Herald in 2007, but because she would not do so on the record and her claims could not be verified independently, the newspaper did not publish them.

In the meantime, however, Bianchi launched a special prosecutor probe into Dalby's copying of the files and whether his political rivals had put her up to it.

The probe led to Dalby's indictment last year on multiple felony charges alleging she unlawfully stole the documents. She later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor computer tampering charge and was sentenced to court supervision.

"It was scary," she said. "I didn't know if I was going to college for nothing, because nobody was going to hire me if I had a felony conviction."

Even with a misdemeanor record that ultimately will be expunged, the charges Dalby faced brought negative consequences. Her best job prospect vanished when the company that was thinking about hiring her did a background check and learned of her arrest.

She said she got through the difficult times with a lot of support from family and her attorney, Wesley Pribla, along with doing her best to keep a sense of humor about her predicament.

On the morning she turned herself in last year, Dalby walked into her biology class where she was scheduled to take a midterm, held up a newspaper story about the case against her and explained to her professor she was unable to study the night before because she was preoccupied by her impending felony arrest.

"I didn't know what else to do," she said, adding that it worked well enough to get her a postponement on the test.

After pleading guilty, Dalby turned the tables on her former boss, asking for another special prosecutor to investigate her claims she was required to do political work on his behalf.

She admitted Thursday that before last week's indictment, she had little hope the case would lead to charges.

"I knew something should happen, but didn't think it would," Dalby said. "After a year of waiting, I just thought people had forgotten about it and it would be let go."

In blogs and online comments on newspaper stories, Dalby has been portrayed alternately as a heroic figure who stood up to a powerful politician or part of a conspiracy intent on taking down an honest man.

Neither description applies, Dalby said.

"I don't see myself as a hero, definitely," she said. "I was trying to do the right thing."

She's never had a connection with Daniel Regna, Bianchi's challenger in a heated 2008 Republican primary, and, if anything, now thinks she was used by the state's attorney's political foes.

"It was hard to know what was the right thing to do when it came to the politics," she said. "I wasn't on one side or the other. It was hard when I realized I was being used."

As for Bianchi and what happens to him next, Dalby said she only hopes to see justice.

"I hope it works out for everyone," she said. "Justice needs to be served and wrongs need to be made right."