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Attorney: Theft suspect 'regularly reimbursed' food pantry accounts

Kenneth Spaeth "regularly reimbursed" bank accounts of the Kendall County Food Pantry for personal expenditures made with its credit card, his defense attorney told Kendall County Judge Timothy McCann Monday.

Attorney Edward Edens said so while again requesting a bill of particulars with detailed information about when and where investigators believe his client stole money from the charity.

Edens first filed his request in February. He asked again this week, saying the details would help him as he sorts through 1,700 pages of documents from the food pantry and from a bank where Spaeth worked and where the pantry had accounts.

Prosecutor Charles Colburn of the Illinois States Attorneys' Appellate Prosecutors office agreed to Edens' request.

The next court date is at 1 p.m. Nov. 17.

Spaeth and his father-in-law, William Crowley, were each charged in January with stealing between $10,000 and $100,000 from the charity pantry.

Spaeth is accused of doing so between Dec. 1, 2013 and April 30, 2016, when he was the volunteer treasurer for the pantry. Crowley, a volunteer, is accused of stealing between July 1, 2013 and March 30, 2016.

Yorkville police and a special prosecutor began their investigation in June 2016.

The pantry was run by Maria Spaeth, Kenneth's wife and Crowley's daughter. The Spaeths resigned their duties in early June 2016.

Maria Spaeth died several weeks later of a combination of prescription painkillers and sedatives at the Spaeths' second home at Lake Holiday. The DeKalb County coroner ruled the cause of death "undetermined."

Spaeth and Crowley lived in Yorkville. Spaeth now lives in Sandwich, and Crowley lives in Arizona.

Volunteers went to Kendall County State's Attorney Eric Weis with suspicions that something was amiss when the pantry's bank account balances grew unusually low in the spring of 2016. Weis notified Yorkville police and also asked for a special prosecutor because he had served on the pantry's board of directors and could be called as a witness.

The pantry has reorganized, with a new board of directors, as the Kendall County Community Food Pantry.

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