Tenney family implicates him in '92 Weber slaying

He was Edward Tenney's partner in crime.

Donald Lippert told a DuPage County jury Wednesday he saw Tenney kill Jerry Weber late April 16, 1992, after the two cousins approached the man while he struggled to free his van from a muddy Aurora Township field.

Weber was shot four times, then robbed of the $6 he had in his wallet, near Sheffer and Vaughn roads, now the sprawling Stonebridge subdivision.

Tenney, 50, is serving life prison sentences for the 1993 fatal shootings of two Kane County women, killed in separate home invasions, including that of dairy heiress Jill Oberweis.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Tenney if he is convicted of also murdering Weber, a 24-year-old carpet installer whose wife, Sharon, gave birth to their second child just three weeks earlier.

Lippert received an 80-year prison term for his role in the three slayings, and agreed to testify against Tenney, as part of the 1996 plea deal.

Lippert was a 16-year-old East Aurora High School student back in 1992 and said he just returned home from a night of partying when he agreed to walk with his much older cousin to collect aluminum cans.

As they approached the mired van, Lippert testified, Tenney handed him one of the two .22-caliber handguns he had tucked in his waistband. Lippert said he recognized the guns as those he stole in 1991 from his older brother's friend in Warrenville, then later sold to Tenney.

"He handed me a gun and said, 'Let's see what's going on up there and rob somebody,'" Lippert said, quoting Tenney.

Lippert said he was drunk and high on marijuana and didn't really believe Tenney. So, as Tenney chatted up Weber, Lippert said he walked several feet ahead and began to urinate. The sound of gunfire rang out, he said.

"I was kind of freaking out," Lippert testified, "telling him, 'I'm out of here. Let's leave.'"

He said Tenney used both guns because the first one jammed.

Lippert, now 34, is eligible for parole in 2035 after serving half his prison term. His older brother, Michael, and their father, Les Lippert, whose sister is Tenney's mother, also offered incriminating testimony Wednesday. They lived with Tenney in an old Aurora farmhouse near the crime scene in 1992.

The defense team argues the Lipperts are far from reliable witnesses and, upon heated cross examinations, noted some inconsistencies.

Michael Lippert said Tenney confessed to him hours after the murder and even showed him Weber's wallet, which contained photos of the man's family.

"(Tenney said) he and Donny were walking and came across a guy stuck in the mud, offered to help him but shot him and took his wallet," 37-year-old Michael Lippert testified.

"Don't say nothing or I'll come and kill you," he said, quoting Tenney.

Police caught a break in the case in October 1993 when they arrested Tenney on an unrelated burglary warrant at his girlfriend's apartment, about a mile from the murder scene, and recovered one of the two guns they later linked to the crime through ballistics testing.

Michael Lippert testified he lied to police out of fear Tenney would kill him when they first interviewed him in August 1994. In May 1995, Lippert said, he told authorities that Tenney confessed three years earlier.

It was in Les Lippert's St. Charles storage locker that police recovered a blue cookie tin containing Weber's wallet, and a dictionary that had two newspaper articles about his shooting stuffed inside the pages.

Les Lippert, now 65 and living in Tennessee, said it was Tenney's tin and dictionary. Lippert said he also led police to the other murder weapon, which he had confiscated years earlier from his youngest son, Donald.

Earlier in the trial, Sharon Weber testified she discovered her husband's bullet-ridden body after she went searching for him the next morning. She never remarried and raised their two sons, David and Erik, while putting herself through school to become a registered nurse.

The trial before Circuit Judge Daniel Guerin resumes Thursday in Wheaton.