He's Covering the Pain

By: Sarah Weber For three decades, police officers in one section of Chicago systematically tortured prisoners, the majority of whom were black. On July 19, special prosecutors Edward Egan and Robert Boyle released the results of their four-year investigation into the actions of former Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his subordinates ? and the report acknowledged that although torture had been administered, charges could not be brought due to the statute of limitations.

The story of Burge and his Violent Crimes Unit never achieved the national notoriety of, say, Frank Serpico in New York. But one Chicago journalist kept the torture cases alive over the years, winning several awards in the process ? and is now gaining new recognition. He is John Conroy, a veteran reporter for the alt- weekly Chicago Reader.

Conroy came to the Reader in 1978 after serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Long Island, N.Y. In 1980, he received an Alicia Patterson Fellowship that allowed him to travel to Northern Ireland, resulting in the book Belfast Diary: War As a Way of Life. For his next volume, he delved into the psychology of torturers.

When a reporter from Chicago contacted Conroy in 1989 with information on Andrew Wilson, a convicted cop killer who was suing the police for brutalizing him, Conroy embarked for the city. Wilson, along with his brother Jackie, had shot officers William Fahey and Richard O'Brien on Feb. 9, 1982. Five days later, they were apprehended and brought to police headquarters in district Area Two, where many suspects were tortured.

Andrew Wilson claimed that while in police custody he was beaten, suffocated, burned with a cigarette, tied to a hot radiator, and subjected to electric shock. In 1989, he filed charges against Burge, three detectives, the police superintendent, and the city of Chicago.

All of the accused detectives were well respected. Most of the public was skeptical, if not outright dismissive, of Wilson's case. "I went down [to Chicago] not expecting much," Conroy admits. "It was the word of a cop killer versus these upstanding policemen." But as evidence was presented ? including pictures of Wilson's radiator burns and the imprints of alligator clips singed onto his ears ? Conroy began to change his mind.

The ex-con's suit eventually ended in a mistrial. Nevertheless, Conroy says, "Nobody would've known as much if the Wilson case hadn't come forward. It was pivotal because of the peculiar injuries he had. He's the only guy who emerged from the electrical torture with these kinds of injuries." He adds, "Usually that's the reason why electrical torture is used, because it doesn't leave marks. It was just a fluke that they were left on Wilson."

Another key factor was the anonymous letters that Wilson's attorneys (who were members of the People's Law Office, or PLO) received. The letters, some of which were in police department envelopes, confirmed the torture of Wilson, and accused former Mayor Jane Byrne and state's attorney Richard M. Daley (Chicago's current mayor) of a cover-up.

One of the letters contained what Conroy once described as a "hand grenade," and the anonymous author urged the PLO to speak with an inmate named Melvin Jones. The prisoner claimed to have had his confession coerced after receiving electric shock, just as Wilson claimed. He also mentioned other victims who had endured similar torture.

In all, Conroy spent 16 years producing in-depth coverage for the Reader. In articles like the award-winning "Town Without Pity," "Shot in the Dark," "Pure Torture," and "What Price Freedom?" he introduced the readers to key players in the Chicago scandal, exploring each person's background, psyche, and experience. His descriptive voice, coupled with the hard-boiled grit of a crime reporter, made for brutally affecting reports.

"The Reader was really supportive," says Conroy, who notes that long investigative reports "are expensive to do." Meanwhile, his second book, titled Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture, was published by Knopf in 2000.

Before he was pardoned by Illinois Sen. Gov. George Ryan, inmate Madison Hobley read Conroy's "House of Screams" article. "He wrote to me and said, 'I was abused by the same unit, please investigate the case,'" Conroy says. He met with Hobley, taping the discussions that became part of his May 2000 piece "The Magic Can."

Hobley filed a civil suit in 2004 against the officers who he claims tortured him. Prosecutors subpoenaed Conroy and the Reader, demanding all notes with Hobley's statements, either in letters or taped interviews. The paper faced an expensive legal process, with potential precedents that could jeopardize reporters' rights. Reporters' privilege was already shaky in Illinois due to a 2003 opinion by Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, who wrote, "We do not see why there needs to be special criteria merely because the possessor of the documents or other evidence sought is a journalist."

The Reader's First Amendment attorney David Andich defended Conroy's notes with the argument that they were "work product." Federal Magistrate Geraldine Soat Brown ruled that Hobley was not a confidential source, so his letters to Conroy needed no protection ? but agreed with Andich that Conroy's notes were work product and therefore not admissible.

"I bet you that there's not another paper in the country that has been willing to let one person do what I have done for so long, at such cost, in terms of every story we do involves extensive legal review," Conroy notes. "And to end up in court! We got subpoenaed not once, but three times, so each time it was a great pain."

He admits the court victories and journalism accolades (including a 2005 Studs Terkel Award) are bittersweet: "In some ways, what's frustrating is that I'm still doing it. It's been 16 years since the first article. I tried to walk away from this. My editors and I tried to figure out how I could do something else. But then something would happen that's so compelling, and nobody else would be covering it."

Conroy doesn't blame the Windy City's metro dailies for not picking up the Burge case sooner, although he was surprised they didn't. The Burge case has recently received major media attention in Chicago due to the Boyle-Egan report. But once the allure of the breaking news dies down, Conroy says he will still be working on what he calls "one of the greatest police scandals in the history of this country."