Sixteen years after then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko threw a punch that value David Koschman his lifestyles, newly launched mobile phone data disclose that some of the folks Vanecko was once with known as the mayor’s brother simply 8 hours after the incident.
Long hidden from public view by way of a courtroom order, the telephone invoice received by way of the Chicago Sun-Times presentations Bridget Higgins McCarthy known as legal professional Michael Daley across the time that two Chicago police detectives had come to the McCarthys’ area. The law enforcement officials have been searching for two males who ran away after the punch was once thrown, leaving Koschman subconscious on Division Street round 3:15 a.m. on April 25, 2004.
McCarthy’s husband Kevin, who’d to start with been handcuffed on the scene, lied to the detectives, telling them he and his spouse didn’t know the 2 guys who ran away. He didn’t inform them that he, his spouse and those self same two males all were in combination at an engagement celebration for certainly one of Michael Daley’s daughters previous that night time.
The detectives requested to talk with McCarthy’s spouse. But he informed them she was once unavailable, and the police left.
About 4 hours later, the police investigation got here to an abrupt halt, data display. It didn’t resume till May 9, 2004 — 3 days after Koschman had died.
The Bridget McCarthy telephone invoice, launched by way of the Chicago Police Board in line with a public data request, raises new questions concerning the Daley circle of relatives’s communications with the ones concerned within the Koschman case on the time the Chicago Police Department — underneath Richard M. Daley’s keep watch over — was once undertaking an investigation that will stay Vanecko from being dropped at justice for just about a decade.
A distinct prosecutor, former U.S. Attorney Dan Ok. Webb, received an indictment in opposition to Vanecko in 2013 for involuntary manslaughter, and the mayor’s nephew, then 39, pleaded accountable the next 12 months.
Webb is now serving as particular prosecutor in some other high-profile case: He were given an indictment in opposition to actor Jussie Smollett from Fox-TV’s “Empire,” charging him with staging a hate crime. And Webb continues to research Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx over her determination to drop the costs to start with filed in opposition to Smollett ultimate 12 months.
After Vanecko’s accountable plea in January 2014, Webb mentioned he discovered “no evidence that former Mayor Daley, his family or others at their direction engaged in conduct to influence or attempted to influence” the 2 Chicago police investigations — one in 2004, the opposite in 2011 — into Koschman’s demise.
But greater than a decade and a part after Koschman’s demise and 6 years since Vanecko served two months in prison for killing him, those questions concerning the dealing with of the case and Daley’s consciousness of what took place stay unanswered:
When did the mayor be told concerning the fatal war of words?
Who informed him?
And did the mayor or his circle of relatives speak about the case with the police division, which by no means even wondered Vanecko, letting him stay loose till the grand jury overseen by way of Webb indicted him?
David Koschman.Sun-Times record
Koschman’s demise got here as Daley was once reeling from a federal investigation into town’s Hired Truck Program, during which the FBI already had seized paperwork from City Hall and later would query the mayor. The scandal ended up sending 48 folks to jail and caused Daley to kill the $40 million-a-year program.
The police temporarily ended their preliminary investigation into Koschman’s demise however reviewed the case once more in 2011, caused by way of a Sun-Times request to peer the police stories from the 2004 case, which formally had remained indexed as open and unsolved. The 2011 investigation ended with detectives officially ultimate the case, mentioning that Vanecko had struck Koschman in self-defense, despite the fact that witness statements contradicted that.
The newly launched telephone data display Bridget McCarthy made 3 calls…