Kenneth Hansen Case: Cold Case, Retrial, and Death in Prison

The Kenneth Hansen case is the four-decades-late prosecution of a Chicago-area horseman for the 1955 murders of three boys — Robert Peterson, 14, and brothers John and Anton Schuessler, 13 and 11. Hansen was convicted in 1995, had that conviction reversed on appeal, was convicted again at a 2002 retrial, and was sentenced both times to 200 to 300 years in prison. He died at the Pontiac Correctional Center in 2007 at age 74, still insisting he was innocent.¹

The 1955 Murders

On October 16, 1955, Robert Peterson and the Schuessler brothers left their Northwest Side homes to see the Disney film The African Queen at a Loop theater. They never came home. Two days later, their naked bodies were found in a ditch in the Robinson Woods Forest Preserve, near East River Road and Lawrence Avenue. The boys had been sexually molested and strangled.²

Chicago police called it a “heater case” and interviewed an estimated 4,300 people. No arrest followed. The murders changed the city: families that had left doors unlocked began drawing shades, enforcing curfews, and warning children about strangers.³ The case then sat cold for almost forty years.

How the Cold Case Turned on Hansen

The break did not come from the murder file itself. It came out of a sprawling federal probe into the 1977 disappearance of candy heiress Helen Vorhees Brach. That investigation pulled back a corner of the Chicago-area horse industry and uncovered insurance fraud, barn arsons, and animal cruelty.⁴ In 1991, information developed during the Brach probe pointed investigators to Kenneth Hansen, a horseman who had worked for the notorious breeder Silas Jayne at the Idle Hour Stable, not far from where the boys’ bodies were found.⁵

On August 11, 1994, federal and local officers arrested Hansen, then 61, at his home in Country Club Hills, Illinois. The initial warrant concerned a 1970 fire at the Forest View Stables in Tinley Park that killed 36 horses. The next day he was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the 1955 killings.⁶

The Prosecution’s Theory

Prosecutors told the jury that Hansen picked up the three boys while they were hitchhiking, brought them to Silas Jayne’s Idle Hour Stable, sexually assaulted at least one of them, and strangled all three. In this account, Jayne arrived afterward and helped Hansen dump the bodies at Robinson Woods.⁷

No physical evidence from the 1955 crime scene survived. The case rested entirely on witness testimony about things Hansen had said over the decades.

The Witnesses the Case Rested On

Four witnesses in particular carried the state’s case, each describing something Hansen had told them at a different point over forty years.

William “Red” Wemette, a paid FBI informant and former porn dealer, said that in 1968 a drunk Hansen told him over a bottle of scotch that he had killed the three boys in 1955, saying, “I came that close to getting caught.”⁸ Wemette’s 1993 tip is what revived the investigation.⁹

Roger Spry came from a broken home and began living with the Hansen family around 1960, at age 11. He testified that Hansen sexually abused him as a child and that around 1964 or 1965 a drunken Hansen confessed to killing the three boys at the Idle Hour Stable after Peterson walked in on him molesting the Schuessler brothers. Spry said Hansen also told him Silas Jayne helped dispose of the bodies.¹⁰ The defense attacked Spry’s credibility: he came forward in August 1994 while facing arson charges for burning one of Hansen’s barns in an insurance scheme, and after agreeing to testify his felony was reduced to a misdemeanor. He also received $4,000 for his cooperation.⁷

Herbert Hollatz, a former intimate of Hansen’s, testified that Hansen bragged about the killings a week after the bodies were found in October 1955. Hollatz said he stayed silent for forty years because he feared Hansen’s brother Curt, a reputed mob enforcer, and agreed to testify only after prosecutors showed him proof that Curt Hansen had died.¹¹

Joe Plemmons told the jury that in 1988 Hansen said he worried about being caught for the murders. Plemmons had a 1992 fraud conviction and was on probation when he testified.¹²

Other witnesses filled in a pattern of behavior. Patrick Mason testified that in 1956, after witnessing Hansen performing oral sex on a minor, Hansen threatened him that he would “wind up in the woods like those other boys.” Robert Stitt, who worked for Hansen starting in 1963, said Hansen regularly recruited young hitchhikers for labor and sex, and that Stitt himself had helped pick up more than 30 boys for him.¹²

Bruce and Glen Carter, who had known the victims, said the three boys told them on October 16, 1955, that they were going to ride horses at the Idle Hour Stable and were “getting picked up by a man named ‘Hansen.'” Their mother had forbidden them from telling police, fearing the killer would come after her sons.¹¹ At the retrial, the trial court excluded the Carters’ account, finding the timeline contradicted by other evidence, including testimony that one victim was home until later that afternoon.¹³

Hansen’s Ties to Silas Jayne

Hansen’s world was tangled up with Silas Jayne’s. Several witnesses placed Hansen at Jayne’s Idle Hour Stable during the 1950s, though Jayne’s widow, Dorothy, denied it when she testified at the 2002 retrial.¹⁴

Jayne had his own violent history. He was convicted in 1973 of conspiracy in the 1970 shooting death of his brother George Jayne and sentenced to six to twenty years, paroled after six.¹⁵ Silas Jayne died in 1987, years before Hansen was charged. Prosecutors at Hansen’s trial also alleged that Hansen organized a hit squad for Jayne in connection with George Jayne’s killing and hired arsonists to burn a competitor’s stable in 1970.²

First Trial, Reversal, and Retrial

Hansen’s first trial ran in 1995 before Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Toomin, case number 94 CR 21926. The jury deliberated less than two hours before returning guilty verdicts on all three murder counts on September 13, 1995.⁹ Jed Stone led the defense; Assistant State’s Attorneys Scott Cassidy and Patrick Quinn prosecuted.

At sentencing on October 20, 1995, prosecutors referenced Hansen’s own statements suggesting he had molested as many as 1,000 boys over the decades. Judge Toomin imposed 200 to 300 years, saying, “This man should never again join free people in society.” Hansen chose to be sentenced under 1973 law, avoiding the death penalty but technically becoming parole-eligible after nine years. Hansen told the court, “I did not commit these crimes. If anybody is a victim, it’s me.”²

In 2000, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction in People v. Hansen, 313 Ill. App. 3d 491, finding that certain evidence had been improperly admitted, and sent the case back for a new trial.¹³

The retrial took place in 2002 before Judge Mary Ellen Coghlan.¹⁶ Prosecutors again called Spry, Hollatz, Wemette, and Plemmons, and again presented forensic testimony about how the boys died. The defense argued Hansen had not worked at the Idle Hour Stable in the relevant period and put on alibi witnesses. The jury convicted again on all three counts, and Hansen received the same sentence: concurrent 200 to 300 years.¹⁷ On August 25, 2004, the Illinois Appellate Court upheld the second conviction, rejecting all of Hansen’s claims of trial error.¹⁸

Death in Prison

Hansen died of natural causes on September 12, 2007, at the Pontiac Correctional Center at age 74. A source familiar with the case reported he had been suffering from dementia.¹

Gary Kujawa, a stepbrother of the Schuessler boys, told reporters he hoped Hansen’s death had been painful: “Tremendous. I hope it was cancer, and I hope it was the most miserable thing for him to die from.” John Rotunno, the ATF agent who led the investigation, said, “I think he died too soon. He should have lingered.” Agent James Grady called it “a fitting end to all this heartache.”¹

1
Chicago Tribune. Killer of 3 Boys in 1955 Dies
2
Chicago Tribune. Hansen Gets 200-300 Years for Killing 3 Boys in ’55
3
Newcity. A Killer and a Movie: When Two Brutal Murders Brought Fear to Chicago
4
Los Angeles Times. Murder Charges Added in Horse Killing Case
5
Deseret News. Stable Hand Convicted of 3 1955 Murders
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Deseret News. Murder Charges Added in Horse Killing Case
7
Chicago Tribune. Hansen Told Story of Killings, Witness Says
8
CBS News Chicago. Informant Opens Up About Using Secret Camera to Put Chicago Mobsters in Jail
9
Chicago Tribune. Hansen Gets Fast Justice From Jury
10
Chicago Tribune. Court Told of 3 Boys’ ’55 Murder
11
Chicago Tribune. Fear Kept Killer Free for Decades
12
vLex. People v. Hansen
13
FindLaw. People v. Hansen
14
Chicago Tribune. Jayne’s Widow Defends Hansen in Court
15
Chicago Tribune. Silas Jayne, Jailed in Brother’s Slaying
16
New York Times. National Briefing Midwest
17
Illinois Courts. People v. Hansen, No. 1-02-3190
18
Chicago Tribune. Court Upholds Conviction in 1955 Triple Murder