With Perseverance, There Is Hope

By Shannon in News on Mar 24, 2007 3:00PM

Back in October, we alerted you to the brutal murder of dermatologist Dr. David Cornbleet in his downtown office. In the midst of tying up the doctor and stabbing him to death, the would-be killer was captured on surveillance cameras entering and leaving the building at 30 N. Michigan. More information trickled out in the form of added security camera footage from a Lincoln Park Home Depot, showing a man making an odd purchase, in cash, of an unidentified item later found at the crime scene. In December, in hopes of spreading that footage and the nature of the heinous crime as far as he could, Dr. Cornbleet's son Jon set up a MySpace page devoted to finding his father's killer.

Now Jon Cornbleet has gone one step further in his relentless pursuit. He hired a digital enhancement firm to clean up the Home Depot and office building videos, so that one might better identify the suspect. Releasing the photos on Wednesday, Cornbleet states that "it's very, very easy to recognize if you know this person." Some of the footage has never before been released to the public; the MySpace page is doused with new photos and enhanced videos.

Call us crazy, but even with the grainier photos, if we knew the suspect, he wouldn't be that hard to recognize. That's what has us baffled about this case: Despite plenty of good footage from surveillance cams, the persistence and info saturation of the devoted son, and a $25,000 cash reward, we've heard of no leads. From all that we've heard about the departed doctor, he was one of those that was truly devoted to his work, running his office by his lonesome (which ultimately aided in his demise), with very few enemies. No cash was taken from the office, compounding the strangeness. We'd hate to think that Jon turned to the meager technological enhancement because that's basically all he or the police can do at this point. Here's hoping something concrete comes out of it.