Marin Calls for Grand Jury Investigation into Koschman Murder

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 27, 2011 9:00PM

Carol Marin, in both her role as a Sun-Times columnist and an NBC 5 reporter, has been all over the case of David Koschman for months.

To catch you up, Koschman was killed in 2004 by a punch that was thrown by Richard "RJ" Vanecko, a relative of former Mayor Richard Daley. Even though the Cook County Coroner ruled Koschman's death a homicide, the Chicago Police Department closed the case and declined to file charges against Vanecko.

Monday the Sun-Times reported that files turned up from the Koschman case that were missing for months and even years, the second time that law-enforcement records in the case turned up missing. Because of this, the Police Department's Internal Affairs division is now investigating how that happened. That's in addition to the investigation into the handling of the case by City Inspector General Joseph Ferguson.

Marin penned an column today calling on Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez or U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to convene a special grand jury to look into the Koschman case.

Marin points out the huge conflict Alvarez has with this case, as chief of staff to former State's Attorney Dick Devine. Alvarez disputes she has a conflict of interest. But then she also declined to file charges against Vanecko, then asked the State Police to investigate (State Police Chief Hiram Grau was Alvarez's former chief investigator) before they reversed course and declined and, when Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard tried to launch his own investigation into the State's Attorney office's handling of the case, Alvarez and her staff ran interference.

Frankly, we couldn't agree with Marin more. This case does merit a grand jury investigation and Fitzgerald is the only one who should be calling for one.