Daughter testifies in murder trial

After her Aurora Township home was burglarized at least twice, Virginia Johannessen had an alarm system installed.

It had an "at home" setting that turned off the basement motion detectors but still armed the first floor windows and doors.

"She used it religiously from the day she got it," Barbara Bailey, Johannessen's daughter, testified Wednesday.

The alarm and its use supports Kane County prosecutors' arguments Edward Tenney broke into the 75-year-old woman's home through a basement window in January 1993 and shot her to death.

Tenney originally was convicted of Johannessen's murder in 1998 and sentenced to death. But in 2002, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered a new trial.

The court ruled the former Aurora resident, now 48, did not receive a fair trial because incriminating statements from a man who was convicted of the crime in 1995 and later released were not allowed to be heard by a jury.

Lionel Lane was initially convicted of killing Johannessen in 1995 but released from prison after Tenney's cousin, Donald Lippert, admitted he was with Tenney during the killing. Lippert received an 80-year sentence for cooperating with prosecutors and has been subpoenaed to testify, as has Lane.

Lippert could be called into court today or Friday.

Michael Lippert, another cousin, testified Wednesday Tenney told him "he shot her in the back of the head. She was sitting in a rocking chair."

Bailey and her sister, Karen Johannessen, also identified numerous items that Kane County sheriff's investigators recovered from a storage locker in May 1995 that was shared by Tenney, his uncle and cousins.

Among the items were Johannessen's 1934 high school class ring, earrings, necklaces, street maps with her signature and her alarm clock. "The top drawer in her dresser in which she kept her jewelry had been ransacked," Bailey recalled.

Tenney currently is serving a life sentence for the October 1993 murder of dairy heiress Mary Jill Oberweis, who lived down the street from Johannessen.

His trial is expected to last into next week.