David Biro: Langert Murders, Confession, and Life Sentence

David Biro was 16 when he broke into a Winnetka, Illinois, townhouse on April 7, 1990, and murdered his neighbors Nancy and Richard Langert, a young married couple expecting their first child. The Langert murders committed by David Biro have remained one of the most notorious Chicago-area juvenile crimes of the last half century, both for their motiveless brutality and for the decades of legal fights and family disagreement they set off. Biro was convicted in 1991, sentenced to life without parole, and remains in Illinois custody today.¹

The Murders in Winnetka

Nancy Bishop Langert, 25, and her husband Richard, 30, were living temporarily in a Winnetka townhouse owned by Nancy’s parents while they prepared to move into their first home. Nancy was pregnant. The couple worked together for a coffee company and had been married since 1987.¹

On the night before Palm Sunday, Biro used glass cutters to break into the townhouse and waited for the Langerts to come home from dinner. When they arrived, he took them into the basement, handcuffed Richard, and shot him once in the back of the head. Nancy was shot through the elbow as she tried to escape up the basement stairs, then shot twice more in the chest and abdomen. The unborn child also died.²³

Before she died, Nancy used her own blood to trace letters on a fallen metal shelf. Police and family members read the markings as a heart and the words “Love you.”¹ Her father found the couple the next day.²

There was no rational motive. The original sentencing judge later described the killings as unprovoked and driven by nothing beyond a desire to kill and to gain “notoriety.”⁴ When Biro later bragged to a classmate about the crime, he said the Langerts “deserved to die” because “they were annoying.”⁵

Who David Biro Was

Biro grew up in a three-story home in Winnetka, the youngest of three children of a public relations firm partner and a mother who worked for a leasing company. He was a junior at New Trier High School at the time of the murders.⁶⁷

His behavior had been alarming for years. At 13, he shot a seven-year-old boy with a BB gun. He was accused of shooting at a car windshield and stealing a bicycle lock. Around his 14th birthday, his family found a stolen motor scooter in the basement and noticed a strange substance in their milk. They called the police, and Biro was admitted to an inpatient psychiatric facility in Chicago, where staff recorded a “lack of empathy with others” and recommended long-term placement. He left on a pass after several weeks and refused to return.⁶

The gun used in the murders was a .357 Magnum. Biro had forged an application for a state firearm owner’s card; his mother intercepted it and gave it to the family’s attorney. Biro broke into the attorney’s office to retrieve the card, found the revolver in a desk drawer, and took it instead.⁶

How He Was Caught

The case went unsolved for six months. Early press coverage floated theories of a mob hit or a politically motivated attack.⁷ During that time, Biro attended the Langerts’ funeral.⁵

The break came from a classmate, Phu Hoang, whom Biro had bragged to and shown the murder weapon, which he was keeping in his bedroom. In early October 1990, Hoang, then 18, went to Winnetka police with what he knew. Officers executed a search warrant and recovered additional evidence. Biro was arrested on October 5, 1990.⁸

Conviction and Life Sentences

Biro was tried as an adult. A jury in 1991 convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder, intentional homicide of an unborn child, home invasion, and burglary. Under Illinois law at the time, the two murder convictions carried mandatory sentences of natural life without the possibility of parole.¹³

On direct appeal in 1994, the Illinois appellate court upheld the murder convictions and sentences but found the trial court had wrongly merged the unborn-child conviction into the murder counts. The case was sent back for a separate sentencing hearing on that charge. At the 1995 resentencing, the trial judge used his discretion to impose another sentence of natural life, calling the killings “intentional, totally unprovoked,” “planned,” and “cold-blooded,” and finding that Biro’s maturity was “far beyond his 16 years” in his capacity “to do evil.” The judge concluded that his conduct showed “irretrievable depravity and incorrigibility.”⁴

That split, one set of sentences mandatory and one discretionary, would shape every attempt Biro later made to get out.

Attempts at Resentencing After Miller v. Alabama

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional. Courts must weigh the “hallmark features” of youth, including age, family environment, and prospects for rehabilitation, before imposing such a sentence. In 2014, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Miller retroactive, letting juvenile lifers seek new hearings.⁴⁹

The State conceded that Miller entitled Biro to a new sentencing hearing on his two mandatory life sentences for the Langert murders. It argued, however, that Miller did not reach the discretionary life sentence for the intentional homicide of the unborn child, because the original judge had already weighed his youth. In December 2015, Cook County Judge Mary Margaret Brosnahan agreed and let that sentence stand.¹⁰ The Illinois appellate court affirmed in 2018, finding the sentencing judge had adequately considered the factors Miller and later Illinois cases required.⁴

On April 29, 2022, Judge Brosnahan denied what was Biro’s fourth resentencing attempt, this one directed at the mandatory life sentences, ruling he had “failed to make a substantial showing of a violation of a constitutional right.” Biro’s attorney, Thomas Brandstrader, said Biro remained “awaiting resentencing” on those counts, though no further hearing has been reported.⁹³

Illinois has since gone further than Miller. In February 2023, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed Public Act 102-1128, abolishing life-without-parole sentences for anyone under 18 and making Illinois the 26th state to do so. The law lets people sentenced to natural life for crimes committed under 21 seek parole after 40 years, but only if they were sentenced on or after June 1, 2019.¹¹¹²

Senate Bill 2073, introduced later that month, would make those parole provisions retroactive to an estimated 3,251 inmates sentenced before 2019, potentially including Biro. As of the latest available reporting, SB 2073 had passed committee but had not become law.¹²

The 2012 Confession

For 22 years after his conviction, Biro maintained his innocence. In the fall of 2012, Nancy’s older sister, Jeanne Bishop, a Cook County public defender, wrote to him at the Pontiac Correctional Center. She told him she had forgiven him years earlier but had never said so, and she apologized for the delay.¹³

Biro replied with a 15-page handwritten letter. “I think the time has come for me to drop the charade and finally be honest,” he wrote. “You’re right, I am guilty of killing your sister Nancy, and her husband Richard.”¹⁴ He offered his “deepest condolences,” said he had felt “guilty and remorseful,” and claimed he would have confessed years earlier had he been given a determinate sentence rather than life without parole. He acknowledged his “reluctance to give a full confession which I know from this point on I can never retract.”⁶

Others in the family read the confession differently. Nancy’s other sister, Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, called it a “thinly veiled attempt” to look remorseful before a potential resentencing hearing. Their mother, Joyce, said: “I don’t think he is the least bit sorry he killed them. I think he’s terribly, terribly sorry he got caught.”⁶

A Family Split Over Forgiveness

Nancy Langert’s two surviving sisters have become public figures on opposite sides of the juvenile sentencing debate.

Jeanne Bishop

Jeanne Bishop is a Cook County assistant public defender and adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.¹⁵ She originally lobbied to keep juvenile life-without-parole sentences in place so that her sister’s killer would never be released. Over time, influenced by conversations with her children and by her Christian faith, she changed position.¹⁶

Beginning in March 2013, she visited Biro at Pontiac every couple of months to describe what he had done to her family. She has said he gradually voiced remorse, telling her, “The more I get to know about your family, the worse I feel about what I did.” She now advocates for juvenile justice reform and restorative justice, and published a book about the experience, Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer, in 2015.¹⁶

Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins

Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins founded the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers and has argued against parole for people who murdered as juveniles. She has described Biro as “one of the ‘worst of the worst'” and “a serial killer and a psychopath and unrepentant.”¹⁷ She has testified against parole bills before the Illinois legislature and argues for “legal finality” for victims’ families, citing the emotional and financial cost of repeated hearings.⁹

The two sisters have given opposing testimony on the same legislation, and the disagreement has strained their relationship.¹⁷

Where the Case Stands Today

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, David Biro is in custody at Dixon Correctional Center, serving life sentences for two counts of murder, home invasion, and intentional homicide of an unborn child. He was previously held at Pontiac and transferred to Dixon at some point after 2022. His projected discharge date is listed as “INELIGIBLE,” and no pending legal proceedings appear on his record. His admission date is recorded as December 27, 1991, with a custody date of October 7, 1990.¹⁸

Whether that ever changes depends on the Illinois legislature. If SB 2073 becomes law and makes the state’s new 40-year parole review retroactive to pre-2019 sentences, Biro could eventually get a parole hearing. Until then, he remains ineligible for release.

1
CBS News. Road to Redemption: Nancy Richard Langert Murders
2
Chicago Tribune. Woman Left Message in Blood, Police Say
3
Chicago Sun-Times. David Biro Nancy Richard Langert Unborn Child Murder Appeal Petition
4
Illinois Courts. People v. Biro, No. 1-16-0128
5
NCR Online. A Spiritual Journey to Keep Hate at Bay
6
Northwestern University School of Law. Jeanne Bishop
7
CBS News. 48 Hours: The Killer Was My Schoolmate
8
Chicago Tribune. Winnetka Murder Trial Set to Begin
9
Chicago Tribune. After Winnetka Couple’s Killer Denied a Resentencing Request
10
Daily Herald. Discretionary Life Sentence Stands for Juvenile Killer
11
Equal Justice Initiative. Illinois Abolishes Life Without Parole Sentences for Children
12
Capitol News Illinois. Bill Aims to Guarantee Youth Sentenced to Life in Prison a Chance at Parole After 40 Years
13
America Magazine. Lord Have Mercy
14
WTTW News. Change of Heart
15
Restore Justice Illinois. Jeanne Bishop
16
Northwestern University Magazine. Forgiven: Public Defender Jeanne Bishop
17
IBW21. Life Without Parole for Juvenile Offenders
18
Illinois Department of Corrections. Inmate Search: David Biro