Shadow in the Rain
Readers Want to Know:
Readers of the book Shadow
in the Rain, a novel by news reporter Harriett Ford, (that’s me) are
asking questions. Many of these questions have answers, unlike the murder
investigation itself.
Truth
is always stranger than fiction, because truth has to be believable.
My book is the true story of romance, murder,
lies, missing tapes, and a conviction with no forensic evidence, no murder
weapon ever found, no motive, and a single eye witness who changed his story
fifteen times as a matter of court record.
During
my investigation, I worked with a nationally known forensics scientist and
a private investigator, each of whom came to believe the wrong man was
convicted. The accused murderer, Ted Kuhl, has been serving a 50-year sentence
since 1997.
News readers know that Ted Kuhl and his
girlfriend Janet Nivinski enjoyed a late night at a restaurant with several
friends including Christa Peterson. At 1:30 a.m. on that bitter cold December,
Ted walked Janet and Christa out to the parking lot. Christa stopped at her own
car and began to scrape frost off the windshield. Ted and Janet walked about six cars away. He kissed Janet
goodnight, and turned his back to head for his own car across the parking lot
when Janet screamed. Four to five gunshots rang out. Kuhl ducked and ran,
dodging bullets. He grabbed Christa, who had tried to duck under her vehicle, and
hurried her back inside the restaurant. He then ran back out accompanied by Dan
Johnson, to find Janet beyond help, a bullet in her brain.
People who attended
the trial, read newspaper accounts of the crime, and are reading Shadow in
the Rain have asked the following questions.
Q. How much
of the reporter, Tia Marie Burgess, is you?
A. Naturally I
chose to reinvent myself as the young, beautiful, and tragic heroine.
What grandmother wouldn't?
Actually, the
character of Tia is completely fictional. However the investigation that
she conducts in the book was my experience. Cap, her romantic interest, is
entirely fictional.
Q. Why did
you decide to weave a fictional subplot into your story of the Kuhl case?
A. For two reasons.
First, it’s a fact that women are the largest group to purchase books, and they
typically gravitate to romance. I wanted to reach that population. Judges,
attorneys, senators and governors have wives. Perhaps one of them will read the
book and persuade her husband that this man's case deserves another look.
Second, I had to
create some suspense and bring the reader to a somewhat satisfactory
conclusion. Since there is no happy ending for Ted Kuhl at this time, I chose
to develop the romantic angle for that reason.
There is also a third
reason. You may guess about that one.
Q. Ted lied
when he said Janet had a gun, which was untrue. She died with a glass in one
hand and car keys in the other. --Cheri Nivinski (a family member of the victim).
A. Ted did not say
Janet had a gun. It was the police who suggested that possibility in a
hypothetical scenario of the crime.
Q. Why did Ted sign a confession right after he
got off work?
Ted did not sign a
confession. Police typed up their idea of what “accidentally” happened.
They told Ted he could go home if he would only sign it. This
was after he had worked a full day and then endured fourteen hours of
brutal interrogation. An exhausted Ted had been awake almost 24 hours at that
time.
Q. Ricky
Mueller, the star witness and Ted’s good friend, testified at trial that he saw
Ted aiming the gun from 50 feet away at the victim. How close was the
gunman when he fired the actual shot?
A. According to
Forensics specialist Dr. Blum, gunpowder stippling around the wound
showed Janet was shot from as close as five inches. This leaves a huge
contradiction between Mueller’s statement and Dr. Blum's.
Q. What about Mueller’s statement that he saw
Ted’s green ball cap as he walked toward the victim aiming the gun?
Another
contradiction: Mueller swore Ted was wearing a green ball cap. Ted's cap was
white. Ted’s attorney neglected to display it to the jury or to point out the
discrepancy.
Q. Wasn’t
Ted struggling with the victim when the gun went off?
A. On the contrary,
Ted was seen kissing Janet goodnight. To fire the gun directly in front of
Janet--as written in the hypothetical scenario--the bullet would not have
struck her in the right temple. Not unless Ted was left-handed and also a
contortionist.
However, the
wound on the right side of Janet's head (according to the death
certificate) makes perfect sense if she had turned to look at Ted who was
walking away with his back turned to her, according to both himself and at
least three other witnesses.
Q. Didn’t
Ricky Mueller testify that he heard Ted say he planned to kill Janet at the bar
that night?
A. Yes, Mueller did
say that, but he later said in court that he did not remember ever hearing
Ted make that statement. Mueller changed his statement no less than 16 times as
a matter of court record, which raises serious questions about his
credibility.
Q. Did the prosecutor withhold this retraction
from the jury?
Yes, Assistant
State's Attorney Mark Karner admitted under oath that he had withheld this
information from the jury. Without doubt, this information would have made
a huge difference in the trial’s outcome.
Q. If Ted
and Christa Peterson (the victim’s best friend) were not having an affair, why
did she spend the night at his place the very night after the murder?
A. Christa's ex-husband had their children for
the weekend, and she was understandably afraid to stay alone. She asked Ted if
she could sleep on his sofa.
Remember, Christa
had just seen her best friend shot and killed. Significantly, only twelve
weeks earlier, Christa’s former boyfriend also had been shot to death
in a drug-related shooting. She was terrified that the killer had seen her at
the death scene and would come after her. In fact she believed he had
fired shots at her and at Ted while she was trying to hide underneath her car,
a fact that other witnesses verified.
Q. Why
didn’t Ted first run to Janet instead of to Christa?
A. Ted ran from
gunfire. Perhaps he believed Janet was hiding. The manager from the game
place saw Ted running "as if dodging bullets," then kneeling, then
running again. He never saw Ted with a gun or attempting to hide one.
Q. Why are
you so convinced Ted and Christa never had an affair?
A.I interviewed numerous people who knew Ted, Christa and
Janet well and socialized with them. None of them believed Ted and Christa were
involved in an affair. One of Ted’s coworkers passed by his house nightly on
the way home. He said Christa’s car was never there, only Janet’s.
Q. What makes you so sure Christa is telling the
truth?
I
have sat with Christa, looked her in the eyes, and observed her behavior. She
actually went to a therapist and asked to be put under hypnosis
to find out if she had repressed memories as the police suggested. In fact she
did not suppress her memories. Her testimony has remained completely
consistent and has never changed since her first statements to police.
Q. Is there any other motive for the murder?
A. There are many
possible gang-related motives, but none for Ted. Janet has a twin sister who
was involved with a gang member. The private investigator thought the murder
could have been a mistaken identity.
More importantly, even if Ted and Christa were
having an affair, this was not a motive for murder. Janet had already moved out
of the house, and Ted was free to date whomever. The two women remained best
friends and were planning a trip together. Where was the need for murder? This
theory flies in the face of their behavior.
It appears far more likely the drive-by gangland
style shooting was the reason Janet died. Also she was involved in an
investigation at the bank where she had uncovered something “not right.” Money
is always a motive for crime.
Q. Didn’t
the prosecutor say Ted lied from the beginning of the investigation, and that
an innocent man does not lie?
A. Yes, Ted lied and
the prosecutor did use this information to turn the jury against him even
though it had nothing to do with the investigation. For 20 years, Ted had
claimed he served in Vietnam, first in order to gain points with an employer
and later with Janet's pro-military father. During the entire 20 years,
Ted never killed anybody. If all people who ever told a lie are also murderers,
there wouldn't be enough prisons to hold them.
Q. The jury
heard the gun was there, but never found. Wouldn't the police have checked Ted,
Mueller and Christa for a gun?
A. Even the greenest
cop knows to do that. Loves Park police chief Darryl Lindberg told me personally
that he instructed his officers to check Ted's truck.
Q. Why was this information withheld from the
jury?
A. Police did not write in reports that they checked the car
and did not find a gun. Without a police report to confirm it, prosecutors
could suggest to the jury that the weapon had to be there.
Q. How do you
know Ted did not have time to hide the gun?
A. Ted was never alone in the parking lot. He first saw
Christa to safety, running under gunfire. Then he immediately ran back to
Janet’s body accompanied by Dan Johnson. Police arrived within in three minutes
of the 911 call made by Ricky Mueller. They seated Ted in a squad car to stop
him from banging on car windshields and demanding, “Who did this?”
Q. Couldn't Ted have tossed the gun into
Christa's car or his own pickup?
A. No, there simply
wasn't time. Private investigator Joe Lamb documented the time line very
accurately from video surveillance cameras. Ted had barely 12 seconds from
the time of the first shot until he and Christa ran inside the bar. His truck
was parked nearer Mueller's van on the far side of the parking
lot. In addition, the security cameras would have shown any attempt to
toss or hide a weapon.
Q. What did the
video camera show?
Actually, there were
six cameras taken by police, which went missing. Private Investigator Joe
Lamb was mystified by this missing evidence and by what these films may have
revealed. He found the mountings for these cameras which had been removed.
Q. The
charge against Ted was First Degree premeditated murder. Doesn't that mean that
a crime-of-passion, as theorized by prosecutors, should be a lesser charge?
A. That is a logical
assumption. Premeditated murder implies willful planning rather sudden violence.
Q. Why would
anyone sign a "confession" or hypothetical scenario of the crime if
he were actually innocent?
A. As unbelievable
as it may seem, false confessions happen regularly and frequently. A
suspect is threatened during an interrogation. One veteran interrogator told me
he could get a confession out of a ham sandwich. Police can imply they have
evidence against a suspect. He hears he will get the death penalty if he
doesn't confess. Many times he breaks down and agrees to a lesser charge in order
to avoid a certain conviction.
Q. Do false
confessions happen often?
False
confessions happened 14 times in Illinois alone during the 1980s to 2000,
and each suspect received the death penalty. In the late 1990s and early 2000s,
DNA evidence exonerated 13 of those men, one of them just hours away from
execution.
Nationwide, there
have been some 200 murder convictions overturned since DNA has finally come
into its own. Many of these convicts confessed to murders they did not commit.
Exhausted,Ted signed
the statement, believing that as the facts of the case came forth he would be
declared innocent.
Q. Why would
anyone plan a murder in front of ten or more witnesses in the parking lot?
A. Why indeed? If he
was planning to kill Janet for some unknown reason, he had plenty of
opportunity to lure her into a secluded area where he need not fear being seen.
Q. In your
book, the leader of the Satan’s Disciples wrote a letter hinting that he was
the killer. Is that true, and Did police ever check into it?
A. It is true. I
turned the letter over to investigators. They never checked it out. Members of
the Satan’s Disciples gang are documented as being in the parking lot that
night, as well as other persons with violent histories. Some were convicted of
a drive-by shooting of a Rockford woman only two years later.
Q. Why did
Mueller suddenly accuse his best friend?
A. I can guess.
After hours of exhaustive interrogation, an officer asked him what he was
afraid of. Mueller answered, "Of not spending the rest of my life with my
wife and kids." It seems likely that Mueller believed he would be charged.
Q. Why did police let the barefoot driver wearing the
fake beard simply leave the scene?
A. I don’t know.
Reason tells me that this driver should have been thoroughly checked. Why was
he barefoot on a bitter cold December night? Why was he wearing a fake beard?
Q. Do you
think you're smarter than the jury?
A. No. If I had sat
on that jury I probably would have reached the same conclusion they did.
However, I have access to more complete information than the jury was allowed
to hear.
Q. Isn't
this story mostly your personal opinion? What actual sources did you use
to document your theory?
A. Most of
my information comes from exhaustive notes collected by Joe
Lamb, former Register Star investigative reporter turned private
eye. For over a year, Joe worked the case, conducted his own ballistics
tests and thoroughly pursued many aspects of the crime. I also
had access to police reports, witness interviews, court records, the recorded
accusation on the "overhear tape", the signed hypothetical
scenario, and the print-out results of Christa's and Mueller's lie
detector tests. I had a detailed account of the activities of the suspects
on the day of the crime furnished by Defense Attorney Dan Cain. In addition,
I interviewed several people involved in the crime, witnesses and friends
of Janet and Ted.
Q.
Aren’t you the only one who believes Ted is not guilty?
I am not alone in my
conclusion that Ted is not guilty. At the end of my book is
a 25-page analysis of the crime done by Forensic Scientist Arthur
Chancellor, an eye-opening report. With his weighty and impressive resume, he
can hardly be ignored.
Q. Where can I
buy the book?
Amazon.com or any
local bookstore, and www.publishersdrive.com .
