Police question victims' relative

Originally published Saturday, Oct. 1, 2005

A 28-year-old Naperville man was arrested Friday in Wisconsin and held on intimidation charges against his sister - one of four family members slain inside a home in a prestigious Aurora subdivision.

Eric C. Hanson has not been charged with the quadruple slaying, but sources say police are not targeting anyone else after learning his family had accused him of stealing from them.

Hanson, a convicted felon, returned early Friday from a one-day trip to Los Angeles and headed north toward his parents' summer cabin when a state trooper pulled over his SUV near Portage, about 35 miles north of Madison.

Prosecutors are seeking to extradite Hanson to Illinois on Monday so they can continue questioning him about Thursday's grisly slaying of his parents, sister and brother-in-law.

His parents, Terrance, 57, and 55-year-old Mary Hanson, each died from a gunshot wound to the head, authorities said. The bodies were found in the home of their daughter and son-in-law, 31-year-old Katherine and Jimmy, 34, Tsao, who were severely beaten.

Tsao was a successful, outgoing businessman, friends say, who wasn't shy about flaunting his wealth. He kept large sums of cash and even gold bars in his home in the White Eagle subdivision.

Eric Hanson had been staying in his parents' basement on Rock Spring Court in south Naperville. Hanson is accused of threatening to kill Katherine weeks earlier after his sister said she'd tell her parents that he had been stealing from all of them, sources said.

Hanson is being held in Columbia County, Wis., on the felony intimidation charge. A DuPage County judge issued a $4 million cash warrant late Thursday, hours after the murderous rampage on Jeremy Ranch Court was uncovered.

Anatomy of a killing

Police haven't pinpointed when the four family members were killed. Nor have they recovered a murder weapon.

They know Terrance Hanson was alive as recently as 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, sources said, because he answered a phone call at his home.

The call was from Eric Hanson's ex-fiancee in Los Angeles who wanted to confirm his planned arrival the next morning. Authorities said the father hung up after his son answered, too.

Terrance Hanson was found inside the garage of the Tsao home. Police say they found his credit cards and cash in his car - a strong indication this wasn't a random robbery. Other valuables also weren't stolen.

Jimmy Tsao's badly beaten body was discovered in his front room. Authorities said his attacker caught him off guard, as he sat on the couch working on a laptop computer.

Katherine and her mother, Mary, were found in other areas of the home.

After family members didn't show up for work Thursday morning, a relative went to the Tsao home to check on them and, after walking inside the home, saw the first body.

The relative called 911 at 2:39 p.m.

From the onset, police detectives wanted to talk to Eric Hanson after learning he had quarreled with his family.

Authorities said Hanson may have stolen cash from his family and even obtained credit in their names. Weeks earlier, he and Katherine Tsao argued about it. He threatened to kill her, sources said.

Hanson boarded an 11:15 a.m. Thursday flight for Los Angeles on a planned trip to see a Neil Diamond concert with his former fiancee.

Aurora police quickly asked the FBI for out-of-state assistance. Federal officials reached the ex-fiancee, who was cooperative, sources said, but local officials ran into red tape without an arrest warrant while trying to secure phone taps and other ways to track Hanson.

DuPage Associate Judge Terence Sheen approved the arrest warrant on intimidation charges late Thursday.

Pieces of a puzzle

Eric Hanson returned Friday morning to Illinois and drove north along I-90 toward a family cabin in northern Wisconsin.

A state trooper, who ran the license plate and got a hit from the arrest warrant, pulled over Hanson's Chevy Trailblazer near Portage. Police and prosecutors left by noon Friday and were questioning him later that day.

Eric Hanson has a criminal history. He was paroled May 7, 1998, after spending more than a year in a Michigan prison for home invasion.

Seven months later, Lombard police arrested him for retail theft and battery. He was accused of biting a security guard in the thigh while he was taken into custody in the Yorktown Mall parking lot.

His lawyer, Ned Khan, tried to get his client into the sheriff's young adult boot camp, but probation officials rejected him for the program saying he had "anger management issues," court records showed. They also cited the Michigan crime and the fact he did not graduate from high school.

Instead, Hanson paid $907 restitution, wrote an apology letter to the security guard, served 30-months' probation and served 180 days in jail after pleading guilty.

In 1999, Eric Hanson worked full time as a painter and was a server at TGIF's in Naperville. He previously worked as a server at Max & Erma's in Winfield.

Computer records showed he later moved to Los Angeles, where he lived with the ex-fiancee.

By the time detectives reached him Friday, authorities from Aurora, Naperville, Los Angeles, Wisconsin and the FBI had participated.

In the meantime, the Aurora evidence unit began the painstaking task of searching and collecting evidence inside the Tsaos' home.

Authorities did not get inside the house until several hours after the gruesome discovery while awaiting court-authorized search warrants. The seven full-time technicians and a part-time property manager handle, store and manage about 10,000 items each year.

Nearby, at the coroner's facility in Wheaton, two pathologists began conducting the four autopsies. The official cause of death hadn't been released as of late Friday, but sources confirmed the parents died of gunshot wounds, while the young couple had been beaten.

How they lived

Gary Griese was one of Jimmy Tsao's buddies. He and others played golf, partied together and looked out for one another, he said. They are all a little "flashy," Griese said.

After Griese's friends learned of the crime scene late Thursday, his phone began ringing incessantly; everyone was wondering if he'd seen Jimmy's house on the news. He said Tsao had told him he suspected Eric Hanson of stealing.

"What had been happening was this kid had been sponging off of him," said Griese, who added that police interviewed him Friday afternoon.

"Jimmy is pretty easy with his money," he added. "He didn't make much about hiding it. He kept cash in his top drawer. He had gold bars just sitting out there in his house. Five gold bars just sitting there."

Griese said Jimmy was a gregarious guy who had the "all-American wife."

"Kate was your typical beautiful girl," he said, "smart, friendly, wouldn't harm anybody. She was that wholesome, blonde-haired beauty. This is what you'd want in a wife."

Her parents, Mary and Terrance Hanson, bought their house in Naperville's upscale Brookwood Trace neighborhood in 1996, property records show.

Like her daughter, Mary Hanson loved to garden, neighbors said. The yard of the two-story home appeared meticulously maintained.

"They were wonderful neighbors," said Karyn Speckels, who often would see Hanson outside planting flowers. "They always were very friendly."

While none of the neighbors spoke to the Hansons' son, they said he lived "on and off" at the house.

Terrance Hanson worked more than 30 years for Ashland Inc. He was a sales manager at the Covington, Ky.-based company's chemical distribution facility in Willow Springs.

Jim Vitak, spokesman for Ashland, called Hanson "a very valued" employee. And his death has other workers at the Willow Springs facility "quietly shocked and distressed."

Daily Herald staff writer Robert Sanchez contributed to this report.