Hundreds bid goodbye to slain boys

LEROY -- More than 300 relatives and friends crowded into a central Illinois church Friday to say goodbye to two boys found dead in the back seat of their father's car.

A minister told the overflow crowd at the LeRoy Christian Church that heaven is a better place because 9-year-old Duncan Connolly and his 7-year-old brother, Jack, are there. The boys lived in LeRoy, just outside Bloomington.

"Jack and Duncan were good kids," the Rev. Tim Vollstedt told mourners, according to The (Bloomington) Pantagraph. "They did nothing to deserve this to happen."

The brothers went missing after their father, Michael Connolly, didn't return them to their mother on March 8 after a custody visit.

They were the subject of a national search that ended Sunday night when a 911 call led Putnam County authorities to a rural spot where all three were found. Investigators believe the father killed his sons, then himself by either hanging or strangulation.

Investigators say they'll release the boys' causes of death later Friday.

Mourners spilled out of the church and into an adjacent room at Friday's funeral, where the boys' caskets were decorated with blue and green flowers. Ribbons in those colors, the boys' favorites, also were hung on trees and signs around LeRoy the past few weeks.

Michael Connolly, who was 40, and the boys' mother, Amy Leichtenberg, divorced in 2006 and had a difficult relationship that included numerous disputes over the children.

Connolly was barred from contact with Leichtenberg, and the couple picked up and dropped off the boys at the LeRoy Police Department before and after custody visits.

Connolly had only been given the right to keep his sons overnight and without supervision late last year after earlier violating a court order of protection.

A friend of Leichtenberg launched an online petition this week demanding that James Souk, the McLean County judge who granted Connolly unsupervised visits with the boys, resign.