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Koschmancop: Politicsnota factorincase

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WHO KILLED DAVID KOSCHMAN? | A WATCHDOGS INVESTIGATION

Ronald Yawger, who was a lead detective, tells the Sun-Times that early lack of cooperation by friends of Daleys nephew hurt the investigation
BY CHRIS FUSCO & TIM NOVAK, PAGES 16-17

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16 | CHICAGO SUN-TIMES | MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2011

WHO KILLED DAVID KOSCHMAN? | A WATCHDOGS INVESTIGATION

DetectivesaysuncooperativeDaleynephew,friendsmadechargesimpossible
BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK

KOSCHMAN COP: NO POLITICS INVOLVED

he detective who originally led the 2004 homicide investigation involving a nephew of Mayor Daley and White House Chief of Staff William Daley says politics had nothing to do with the decision not to charge Richard J. R.J. Vanecko. Nobody laid down on this case, says Ronald E. Yawger, now a retired Chicago Police Department homicide detective, speaking at length for the first time about the investigation into the death of 21-year-old David Koschman of Mount Prospect. No one tried to get [Vanecko] charged harder than me and the states attorneys office. Yawgers comments come as two outside investigations have been opened in recent weeks into the police departments handling of the case one by the Illinois State Police, which was called in by Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez in the wake of reports in the Chicago Sun-Times, and the other by city of Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson. Declaring, Ive got nothing to hide, Yawger says he tried to build a case against Vanecko for involuntary manslaughter or, at a minimum, reckless conduct, anything, just something to get this kid charged with something. In the end, though, he says he was stymied by a lack of cooperation by Vanecko and the friends who were with him on the night that Vanecko punched Koschman in the face and sent him reeling backward to the street in a drunken confrontation on Division Street. Another problem, he says, was the inability of Koschmans friends to identify Vanecko in a

Staff Reporters

Daley nephew Richard R.J. Vanecko Ronald Yawger (in 1982 photo), who was lead detective of the David Koschman homicide case, says, Nobody laid down on this case.
lineup. That Koschman guy doesnt deserve to be dead, by any means, says Yawger, who now works as an investigator for Attorney General Lisa Madigans office, adding that he hopes the latest investigations can still lead to criminal charges. Of Vaneckos ties to City Hall, Yawger says, Theres no policeman in the city who would give two craps about the Vaneckos or the Daley family. The key hurdles to filing charges in 2004, according to Yawger: After punching Koschman, Vanecko ran off with a friend, Craig Denham. Two other Vanecko friends who were there Kevin McCarthy and his wife, Bridget Higgins McCarthy initially told the police they didnt know the two guys who ran away. They didnt admit they did know them until May 13, 2004, Yawger says 18 days after Koschman got punched and seven days after he died in a hospital from brain injuries suffered when the back of his head hit the street. Till then, the police hadnt been able to identify Vanecko or Denham as being involved, according to Yawger. Bridget McCarthy the daughter of developer Jack Higgins, a friend of the Daley family who built the citys police headquarters met May 13, 2004, with Yawger, identified Vanecko and Denham and acknowledged that she and her husband had been with them at an engagement party and shared a cab with them to Rush Street just minutes before the confrontation. On May 19, 2004, Kevin McCarthy the son of a former president of Zenith Electronics and Denham, a LaSalle Bank official at the time, agreed that Vanecko and Denham had run off. And, like Bridget McCarthy, both Kevin McCarthy and Denham said they didnt see who punched Koschman. On May 20, 2004, Yawger says prosecutor Darren OBrien told the McCarthys lawyer he was considering calling them to testify under oath before a grand jury that they didnt see who knocked Koschman to the street. Their lawyer ended the interview at that point, according to Yawger, and the case was never presented to a grand jury. The witnesses four Koschman friends and two bystanders couldnt identify the then-29-year-old Vanecko in a police lineup held 25 days after Koschman was hit. Thats understandable, Yawger says now, though he admits he was surprised at the time, because Koschman had been arguing not with Vanecko but with Denham, and Koschmans were focused on him. They all identify Craig Denham as the guy arguing with him, Yawger says. And they all identified Kevin as the guy with

the girl. And there was one other guy a big, tall guy and all we can assume is its Vanecko because thats what Bridget McCarthy and Kevin McCarthy tell us, and even Denham tells us that in the end. In Sun-Times interviews, Koschmans friends and one of the bystanders have contradicted Yawgers recently released police reports from 2004 that described the 5-foot-5, 140-pound Koschman as not only refusing to back down in his argument with Denham but also being physically aggressive by running or lunging at the Vanecko and Denham group. They may be saying that now, but they didnt say it back then, Yawger says of the 2004 interviews, which werent taped. To a man, everybody said this kid Koschman would not let this go. All I know is what these kids told me. Police and prosecutors including detectives who recently took a new look at the 7-year-old case say thats why they concluded that the 6-foot-3, 230-pound Vanecko acted in selfdefense. Yawger says he wasnt able to interview Vanecko though Vaneckos lawyer, Terence Gillespie, promised him he would get to. Yawger says he called Gillespie on May 13, 2004, and Gillespie asked to meet with him the following Monday May 17. Yawger agreed. He wanted to know what we had, Yawger recalls. We had to talk to him first. He says Gillespie, who has refused to discuss the case, told him he could meet with Vanecko in three days. We never tried to go get him because he said he was going to bring him in, Yawger says. But Yawger acknowledges making what turned out to be a

MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2011 | CHICAGO SUN-TIMES | 17

Cop had brush with trouble

Ronald E. Yawger originally the lead homicide detective on the 2004 case involving Mayor Daleys nephew was accused in a federal criminal indictment in the mid-1980s along with another officer of providing security for a cocaine sale but found not guilty. According to the indictment and testimony in the case, Yawger and his then-partner drove Ray Carskie a drug dealer who was carrying cocaine in an unmarked police car to a Lincoln Park bar where another drug dealer, Scott Breslar, was meeting with a buyer who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent on May 11, 1984. The FBI arrested Breslar. Then, agents confronted Yawger, telling him that theyd seen Carskie, now sitting in the back seat of the police car, just place a package of cocaine into the trunk of Breslars white Mercedes nearby. Yawger and his partner told the FBI that Carskie was an informant who was alerting them to the drug sale involving Breslar and that they were investigating. Breslar pleaded guilty. A jury convicted Carskie but acquitted Yawger and his partner, who both testified they didnt know Carskie had cocaine when they drove him to the sale. Yawger, now 59, wasnt disciplined by the Chicago Police Department. He retired in August 2007 and has an annual pension of $71,683. A month after his retirement from the Police Department, he was hired as an investigator for Attorney General Lisa Madigan, where his salary is $70,212 a year. In an unrelated matter, the city of Chicago is now defending Yawger and two other detectives in a civil case filed in 2008 in federal court by Frank Davis, who spent nearly two years in Cook County Jail until a jury acquitted him of murder charges in a gang-related double homicide. In his lawsuit, Davis accuses the detectives of malicious prosecution. Attorneys for the city argue that, despite his acquittal, Davis was found not guilty because he drove the getaway car but did not pull the trigger, according to a statement from the citys Law Department. The two people in his car were convicted of the double homicide because they actually did the shooting.

David Koschman died after getting in an argument and getting punched outside a bar on Division Street in 2004. | KEITH HALE~SUN-TIMES
strategic mistake: He agreed to have Vanecko appear in a police lineup at Area 3 police headquarters at Belmont and Western first, and then he would interview him afterward both on May 20, 2004. He says he was surprised that Koschmans four friends, as well as the bystanders, werent able to positively identify Vanecko. There was never any doubt these kids would pick him out, says Yawger. Theres no doubt he was the guy, but you have to have an identification . . . . Those kids when none of them picked him out, I was just flabbergasted. Equally surprising, says Yawger, was that Gillespie then took Vanecko and left, without allowing the interview hed agreed to. Gillespie screwed me, Yawger says. The attorney promised me he was going to let me talk to him. He was going to explain what happened. We were hoping to get him to say he punched him. Yawger says he kept the case open, hoping that another witness might come forward one day. There had to be 100 g-----people on the street that night, he says. I thought we would get a call from somebody that this kid punched the s--- out of this kid. Never happened. Other questions about the investigation remain questions Yawger says he doesnt know the answers to: Why did the two detectives who originally were assigned to the case before Koschman died and Yawger and his partner, as homicide detectives, were brought in stop trying to find and interview witnesses within hours after Koschman was rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital? Most of the witnesses werent interviewed until after Koschmans death 11 days later, when the homicide case was assigned to Yawger. Why did the police reports that Yawger says he wrote immediately after doing interviews and conducting lineups on May 20, 2004, not get filed and dated until six months later? Thats mind-boggling, Yawger says. Those reports were typed up that day. I cant explain it. Why did the police department assign a new set of detectives from a different detective headquarters this January to reinvestigate Koschmans death, after Sun-Times reporters requested copies of files in the case? That investigation ended with the case being formally closed without charges on March 1, when the police concluded that Vanecko punched Koschman but acted in self-defense. Why didnt those detectives speak with Yawger? I dont know why these people who are reinvestigating this thing dont come to me, Yawger says. If you were reinvestigating something, Id be the first guy youd want to talk to. Yawger says theres another thing that bothers him: the fact that he didnt know until reading it in the Sun-Times recently that Phillip Kohler one of the two bystanders whom prosecutors would later call the two unbiased witnesses to what happened had gone to high school at Loyola Academy in Wilmette with Vanecko and McCarthy and had been members of the freshman wrestling team with Vanecko. Kohler told the police in 2004 that he and a co-worker, Michael Connolly, had happened upon the argument and saw Koschman charge into the group and then get immediately pushed back out into the street but that he didnt recognize Vanecko then or in the lineup later. Kohler has said Vaneckos appearance had changed in 12 years. Connolly, whod been out drinking with Kohler, differs with Kohlers characterization of Koschman as being physically aggressive. He told the SunTimes it appeared Koschman just wanted to get in the last word in the argument. Questions aside, Yawger says none of the recent revelations has shaken his view of what happened on Division Street at Dearborn Street around 3 a.m. on April 25, 2004 nor his conclusion that criminal charges might have been warranted if there had been a positive identification. I firmly believe Koschman started this fight, Yawger says. He kept arguing and arguing. And his group is trying to pull him away, and Vanecko is trying to pull the other guy Denham away. If this kid continues on you, youve got a right to say, Enoughs enough. You dont got a right to kill the kid.