Lash was rape suspect before murder
Anne Warfield
Lash was rape suspect before murder
Police photo lineup pointed authorities _to the wrong man
By SARAH ANTONACCI
STAFF WRITER
Dale Lash was identified as a possible suspect in a real-estate rape
months before Lori Hayes was murdered, but a number of problems -
including the fact that another man was picked out of a photo lineup -
meant he stayed on the streets.
Lash, 40, of rural Loami, was sentenced to death Wednesday by the same
Peoria jury that convicted him of the carjacking, rape and murder of
Hayes the week before.
Hayes, 25, was living in Auburn with her 91/2-month-old daughter,
Alexis, and husband, Brad, in the summer of 1999. On Aug. 1, with her
husband out of town on business and her mother having just left town
for her home in Kentucky, Hayes decided to go shopping for a pair of
shoes to match a new blue suit.
While in the parking lot of the Parkway Pointe shopping center, Lash
approached Hayes, forced her into her car, took her out into the
country, raped her and shot her, leaving her body in a cornfield.
He then returned Hayes' Jeep to the Parkway Pointe movie theater
parking lot, leaving her daughter in the back seat. Theatergoers
discovered the crying baby in the back of the vehicle and called
police. Hayes' body was found the following day.
Police did not know it at the time, but the crime had a lot in common
with another in which a woman was assaulted and escaped from her
attacker about nine months earlier.
A man had called the real estate agent that afternoon and identified
himself as Bob Gianelli. He made a 5 p.m. appointment with her to see
a home on Illinois Street and then asked if the two could view a home
on Windsor Road.
Inside the home, he pulled out a gun, commented on her looks and told
her he was going to take pictures of her with her clothing off, which
he did. After assaulting her several times, he started putting his
clothing back on, and a knife in a black leather sheath fell from his
pants.
As the two were leaving the house, the agent outsmarted Lash by
locking herself inside.
Police later learned the man who raped that agent had also approached
at least two other agents.
According to testimony from the rape victim at Lash's trial in
February 2001, she was not happy with the way her case had been
handled. She had to drive herself to the hospital, no rape counselor
was called, and police didn't show up for a long time.
"It was a disaster at the hospital," she said on the stand. As a
result, she said, she wasn't cooperative with authorities.
The mishandling of her case prompted changes in policy at the police
department on how rape cases are handled. The agent's case was handed
over to a major case detective in February 1999.
On Feb. 19, 1999, Springfield police released a sketch depicting the
man who raped the real estate agent at gunpoint Nov. 3, 1998.
A woman who worked with Lash at Initial Security, where he was a
guard, saw the sketch and was so sure it was Lash who had raped the
real estate agent that she went to his personnel file, took out his
identification card photo and blew it up to the same size to get the
side-by-side comparison.
"I knew it was him," said the co-worker, who did not want to be
identified. "The sketch looked exactly like him. If you took his hat
off, you could lay one on top of the other and see it was him. I saw
him in the office, his mannerisms, how he treated his 'mail-order
bride,' his controlling ways. I knew it was him."
So she called police. But she didn't have much luck.
First, she called Crime Stoppers but the person who took tips was away
from her desk. They told her to call back. Then, she called one of the
officers mentioned in a newspaper article directly. He was out of town
for two days.
Dale's co-worker was frustrated. By a fluke, her sister-in-law had
listed her house with the real estate agent who was raped in November.
She invited the agent to come over and take a look at the picture.
"I remember her exact words: 'It sends cold chills up my spine. It
could be him,'" Dale's co-worker said.
The two women then discussed his mannerisms and his distinctive walk.
They thought it was the same man.
An officer came to the woman's house on Feb. 24, according to police
records, and was told she shouldn't have shown the real estate agent
the picture because it could have harmed the investigation.
"Seeing how the two of us had talked, we were in big trouble, I was
told," she said. "If Crime Stoppers had done its job, there would have
been no problem."
Meanwhile, police had received tips from people leading them toward 50
potential suspects. Lash was included.
"(The co-worker) was so adamant that it was Dale Lash, but everybody
else I talked to was just as adamant it was their guy," said Sgt. Doug
Williamson, who had taken over the case in February.
Detectives started compiling a list of the people who were identified
by callers as potential suspects, Williamson said.
"Some tips were vague, 'It's the guy who delivers water on Tuesdays
from such-and-such company,'" Williamson said. "We had to track all
those down, too."
Once they had the people identified, they began gathering photos of
each and running background checks. People with a history of having
committed other sex offenses rose to the top of the list. Lash had no
criminal history.
"One of the tips we got was from a state police investigator who was
sure she knew who it was. She said she'd worked on his other cases,"
Williamson said.
They were able to eliminate some people because they had alibis - one
man, for instance, was in the hospital at the time of the rape and had
the paperwork to prove it.
Later, when police compiled photos of all those legitimate potential
suspects whose names had been submitted, they asked the real estate
agent who had been raped and the two others who had been approached by
the same man to look at the photos and identify the person they
thought was responsible.
They all identified the same man - the man the state police
investigator had turned in as a suspect. None identified Lash.
Detectives also asked the three women to eliminate anyone they thought
it couldn't be. Lash remained among the group of possible suspects.
Police were pretty sure they had their man. They submitted writing
samples, voice samples, DNA and other items from the man the agents
identified to the Illinois State Police crime lab to see if they
matched those in the agent's rape case.
It was June or July before the news came back, Williamson said. "It
was not a match."
So, they worked with the approximately seven candidates they had left.
Williamson also points out that there were four major case detectives
at the time and in addition to working on the real estate agent's rape
case, they also were working on the nine murders that happened in the
seven months before Lori Hayes was killed.
Police also suspected the man in the agent's rape had characteristics
of a serial rapist and submitted the crime to several national,
regional and state law enforcement computer systems. Calls began
coming from across the country with stories of similar crimes. Police
had to determine whether they were related.
Then Lori Hayes was killed.
Police soon learned that the DNA collected from Hayes' body was a
match for the DNA collected in the real estate agent's rape case. A
task force of about 20 people from various law enforcement agencies
was formed. They began to concentrate on those five to seven suspects
they had left - Lash included.
"What broke it was when we played the voice tape to a relative of Dale
Lash's," Williamson said of a voice mail message collected from one of
the real estate agents and saved. They played it for a relative of
Lash who said that it was definitely him. Police arrested him in the
rape case.
On Sept. 8, 1999, The State Journal-Register published a story saying
Lash, who had already been arrested in the agent's rape, had been
linked to the Hayes case by DNA.
"I immediately thought that had they run with (the real estate agent's
case), that little girl would still be alive," said Lash's former
co-worker.
Hayes' mother, Connie Kotzbauer, said Friday that Hayes' family knows
that Lash's co-worker came forward and that police had him on a list
of suspects before their daughter was murdered.
"We are aware," she said. "I think that at this time, we're not sure
we can or should comment about that situation."
Kotzbauer, the real estate agent and the woman who had worked with
Lash all are acquainted with each other and talk. Lash's former
coworker who called in the tip said she wishes police would have
listened to her pleas from the start.
"I don't think we have a corrupt police department," she said. "I just
wish they had listened. Everyone I talked on the phone to (at the
police department) wanted to transfer me to someone else. They've got
all these things in place for when you have information but it didn't
work."
Williamson said he understands the frustration.
"I know people think we had the name, we should have stopped him. I
have the names of other people I believe are responsible for other
unsolved murders, but I don't have enough evidence to arrest them," he
said.
"Dale Lash had a clean record, he had a job, he was not identified by
anyone. Everyone was so sure it was (the other man who was identified
by the real estate agents). But for DNA, he'd probably be in prison
right now. Everybody feels bad we had the name and didn't stop it. I
feel bad."
Sarah Antonacci can be reached at 788-1529 or
sarah.a...@sj-r.com.
http://www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/N11172002,a.asp
--
Anne Warfield
indigoace at goodsol period com
http://www.goodsol.com/cats/
Anne Warfield
Hayes' family members share their feelings after trial
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Bev Hoffman had been Lori Hayes' supervisor at Kid Care for only four
months before her friend was killed Aug. 1, 1999. Last week, she had a
dream during the Peoria trial of Dale W. Lash, who was convicted and
sentenced to death for Hayes' murder.
"In the dream, Lori came back to work and told her, 'I don't want to
talk about it; let's just go back to work,'" said Lori's mother,
Connie Kotzbauer. "That is just like Lori."
"She never wanted to call attention to herself," said Lori's older
brother, Greg Kotzbauer, 31.
But for the past four weeks, and off and on over the past three years,
Lori, in death, has been in the spotlight - something the unassuming,
25-year-old wife and mother would have avoided in life.
"She was a quiet person who did good quietly," her mother said. "She
never asked for anything."
The Kotzbauers have never spoken publicly outside the Peoria County
courtroom about their daughter, their loss and their feelings after
the trial of her killer.
The Auburn woman was the victim of a carjacking and sexual assault
before Lash shot her once in the back of the head, put her body back
into her Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove it to a rural area west of
Chatham. He then dragged her about 70 feet into a cornfield.
Hayes' then-91/2-month old daughter, Alexis, was found alone in the
Jeep about 4 p.m. in the parking lot of the Parkway Pointe 8 theater.
Lori's body was discovered by Sangamon County sheriff's deputy Rob
Steil about 6 p.m. the next day.
"Finding Lori was a miracle," Connie said. "He was guided by the power
of prayer of the people we have met who have given us so much kindness
and goodness."
"We just wish we could have met them under different circumstances,"
said Bob Kotzbauer, Lori's father.
The family mentioned Bramley Funeral Home in Auburn, whose owners
personally drove Lori's body to Lexington, Ky., where the Kotzbauers
live so she could be buried. The funeral home also worked on the body
so the family could view it before leaving for Kentucky.
St. Benedict's Church in Auburn, where Lori and her husband Brad
attended church, arranged a memorial service before the Kotzbauers had
even asked.
"They had several kids who sang a song for us, and they put the whole
thing together in one day," said Bob Kotzbauer, a pharmacist in
Lexington.
"Hundreds of people came out to speak to us," Lori's mother said. "I
can't count the letters I have, the albums people put together for us.
They say things like, Lori was the one who helped me when I was new.
Lori talked to me when I was alone."
And Bev Hoffman, who knew Lori only a few months in her job with the
state Department of Human Services, took vacation time to attend three
weeks of the trial and help the family.
The Kotzbauers see Alexis, who turned 4 on Oct. 21, every day. Brad,
who worked for a cellular phone company in Springfield, has returned
to college and still works full time. Brad and Alexis live about two
blocks away from the Kotzbauers.
"She is going to preschool and loves it," Connie said. "She is just as
happy as can be."
"She knows her mother, and she talks about her mother and says she
misses her," Connie said. "But she is surrounded by an enormous amount
of people who love her."
"She'll grow up being loved," Greg said.
One of Connie Kotzbauer's last memories of her daughter is from the
morning of Aug. 1, before Connie left to go back to Kentucky and
before Lori made the trip that afternoon to the Parkway Pointe
shopping center to look for shoes. Lori, who had a degree in social
work from the University of Kentucky, had planned to be home by
mid-afternoon to await Brad, who was returning from Colorado where he
had been on a business trip.
That morning, Alexis, who the entire family usually called "Baby
Girl," had crawled to a mirrored curio cabinet and for the first time
discovered "the baby" in the mirror.
"Lori was rolling on the floor, laughing so hard because she was
having so much fun watching Alexis," Connie said.
The trial - which ended late Wednesday when a jury ordered that Lash
die by lethal injection - gives Lori's family no special satisfaction.
"There is no joy in any of this," Connie said. "Obviously, the reason
we went there (to Peoria, where the trial was moved on a change of
venue) is because we wanted to make sure this never happens to another
young mother. This is why we came."
"We are 100 percent certain this (Lash) is the man who did it," she
said.
Greg Kotzbauer said the family certainly believes Lash, 40, of rural
Loami, should be punished for his crimes.
"We don't wish death on him, but the law is out of our control," he
said. "We have to honor that law."
Greg said his oldest sister was content and happy in her life.
"Seeing Lori after she had Alexis, I really started to see her grow
into herself," he said. "She loved her job, she loved everything about
being a mother, and she was starting to become a grown woman.
"She was just a joy to be around," he said. "Our relationship and how
it was developing was really a positive for me."
Chris Dettro can be reached at 788-1510 or chris....@sj-r.com.
http://www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/N11172002,e.asp