The year of 1976 my hometown, Lincoln, Illinois, was turned upside down by six violent murders that transpired between June and October. My father, Roger Winston Thompson, was the Logan County State’s Attorney, and he handled these high-profile central Illinois murder cases.
Prior to becoming state’s attorney, Dad tried his first murder case as Logan County Public Defender. On July 22, 1967, Edward Richard Cesarz, a resident of Michigan, walked into the Lincoln Holiday Inn and cold-bloodedly shot the desk clerk, Ruth Evelyn Ross, during an attempted robbery. I was just ten-years-old when my father was preparing for the Cesarz trial, and I remember vividly how conflicted he seemed having to defend a man who was so obviously guilty—it was the first time I had seen him out of character and despondent. At that time, our family had recently moved to “Country Club Estates”—a wooded neighborhood near the Elks Country Club. My father’s parents, whom we affectionately dubbed Nana and Grandods, had just moved to Lincoln from Park Ridge, Illinois and purchased our former home in the Mayfair subdivision.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL EXCERPT PDF
