The February 6, 2008, murder of Attorney Gregory Clark is the highest-profile, memorable murder case in Rockford, IL and in Winnebago County, IL. 60 year old Greg Clark was expertly shot 3 times in the back outside his home in the middle of a blizzard while he used a snowblower to clear his sidewalk. His murder was bizarre and surreal. Greg Clark was not an outspoken or premiere attorney in Rockford. He was a long-time general practice attorney in a small firm with his son-in-law. Some of the cases he handled, such as divorce or conflict cases could be contentious, but he did not appear to have known enemies.
Clark’s sensational and violent death was not witnessed. Police canvassed his neighborhood afterward and gathered reports of unknown individuals and vehicles seen entering and leaving his residential subdivision and area on the day and weeks before his murder but found no weapon, DNA, fingerprints, or any other forensic evidence at the murder scene to identify who shot attoney Clark or whether it was one person or two. Clark’s death in a quiet up-scale residential neighborhood shocked local attorneys, created widespread public fear and speculation and made regional and national news for months. Most people to this day recall Clark’s Feb. 2008 murder and were influenced and convinced by the details of the media storm that followed it.
Some of us are not. We question the substance and conduct of the Rockford Police investigation into the murder of attorney Greg Clark. Some of us saw and experienced the investigation first-hand and know how deficient it was and how it’s conclusions remain unsupported. The police quickly within hours focused solely on a client of Clark’s, Richard Wanke, as the shooter. The evidence at the murder scene did not incriminate Richard Wanke or even place him there. His name was mentioned to police as a client who may have been unhappy with Clark, and that sufficed for the police to not question or suspect anyone else associated with attorney Clark; his family, his friends, his neighbors, his business associates, and any other unhappy clients he may have had. The police instead picked Richard Wanke up by 5pm on February 6, 2008, and then spent the rest of their investigation trying to connect him and any of his friends to attorney Clark’s murder.
Single-minded police investigations are not unusual. The public thinks police thoroughly investigate all leads, but once they have a person in custody police seldom investigate alternatives, because they know that they will have to disclose that information to defense attorneys. Every alternative suspect police find will then later become a reasonable doubt for their case at trial.
It’s hard for defendants in high-profile and sensational cases to get a fair trial. It is particularly impossible for those charged with the murder of a police officer, judge, or local attorney. The legal community and the courts tend in those instances not to be impartial. The legal bar tends to prosecute those cases more zealously and it’s difficult to find attorneys willing to represent those clients.
Winnebago County did not charge Richard Wanke with Clark’s murder until April 2014. It could have charged him earlier but deliberately chose to hold off doing so. From Feb. 2008 – April 2014, Wanke was in state prison serving time for the theft of a laptop computer (an extended-term sentence the state ensured he got in 2008), and the State took it’s sweet time extending it’s investigation. It instead used prison staff to vigorously harass and investigate him during his prison term. Meantime, the Clark murder investigation was listed as an “unsolved”, cold-case murder on the Rockford Police website.
Just as Richard Wanke was due to be released from prison in 2014, the Winnebago County State’s Attorney, Joseph Bruscato, then charged him with the Clark murder. Bruscato charged him in 2014, after his office predecessor, Phil Nicolosi, did not in 2008. Cold-case crimes are generally charged after new evidence comes to light incriminating a suspect. Bruscato had discovered no new incriminating evidence against Richard Wanke in April 2014 when he charged him. All the time delay did was punish Wanke extra-judicially and diminish his chances of defending himself as some of the evidence to support his defense vanished over time.
The States’ evidence against Richard Wanke is circumstantial. It entails witnesses who identified a suspicious man in a vehicle entering and leaving Clark’s subdivision around the time of the shooting. Because the shooting happened during the blizzard, no witness got a good view of either the man or the van. Witness descriptions of both vary in every detail; from height, to clothing, to facial details, to whether the man wore a hat, a face mask, glasses, a beard or whether there was more than one person. Most witnesses reported the van as dark-blue, but there were differences in it’s make, model, and year, and reports of other suspicious vehicles seen in the area. Every “eye-witness” failed to identify Richard Wanke in police photo line-ups on the day of the murder.
Richard Wanke’s custody and the arrest of his landlady, Diane Chavez, on February 6, 2008, was quickly leaked by police to local news media. The Rockford Register-Star newspaper quickly published a 3-page spread that weekend featuring pictures of Richard Wanke and Diane Chavez, and articles recounting a blow-by-blow history of both and Richard Wanke’s past conviction and court case with Greg Clark. All the case eye-witnesses then later called police to tell them that the man they saw identified in the newspaper photo as Richard Wanke and the police suspect was the same man they saw driving the van on the day of Clark’s murder.
Later at trial in 2017, testimony about these questionable identifications was accepted without much challenge in cross-examination and the defense refused to present an identification expert on Richard’s behalf despite his pleas to do so.
The police did not find any gunshot residue on Richard Wanke on Feb 6, 2008, or his clothing. Nothing he wore matched anything witnesses claimed to see, and he spent that morning across town working on a friend’s computer. A 2:15 pm land-line phone call he made from his apartment places Richard Wanke farther away from the murder scene than he could have travelled given the street snow conditions during the blizzard. The State presented mis-leading time travel studies which fail to take into account additional time needed for Richard to travel on that day. The State had no witnesses to any physical or verbal threat or altercation between Richard Wanke or Greg Clark. It could only allege that Richard was unhappy with Clark because they lost a jury trial. It instead submitted written statements from court briefs and transcripts showing as motive that Richard had alleged that Clark represented him inadequately in his past case. A defendant has the right to make such an assertion after trial and most do. This is the best the State could come up with and the first prosecution we know of to try to use this as evidence of a motive to murder anybody.
Convictions are prioritized when high-profile murders happen. In conjunction with a “rush-to-judgement” in the conduct of police investigations and the reliance upon over-worked Public Defender staff for defense, indigent defendants can be wrongfully convicted. We know that is what happened here.
Richard Wanke is no expert shot. He has no background of any weapons use or ownership. He had burglary cases in 1991 and 2006, but neither involved weapons, violence, or residential burglary. He’s never had any instances of domestic abuse, battery or assault, and is non-violent. He is not a gang member, and we know him to be a peaceful individual. We also know him to be an educated community activist who is intelligent, articulate, creative, and concerned with helping others. We believe his trial could have been handled better and that he could have been acquitted with use of thorough cross-examination and other resources.
Diane Chavez was the only person charged in connection with the Clark murder in 2008, and she was acquitted of all charges in 2015. She was charged as an attempt to pressure Richard Wanke into cooperating with the police and the State, and he has steadfastly refused to do so and proclaimed his innocence since the day of the murder. Anyone experienced knows just how difficult it is to afford to fight for one’s freedom when being used as leverage for a case. Diane’s succeeded in doing so but only at great personal cost. She remains supportive of Richard Wanke, partly because she knows the charges against him are baseless.
Richard Wanke is presently serving a natural life sentence at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, IL. His case is presently on appeal in the 2nd District. He is represented by the IL Appellate Defender’s office pending briefing. There are many appealable issues in his case. We urge any defense attorney who is interested in his case or who can represent him if his case is remanded for a new trial to contact us at freerichardwanke@gmail.com.
We also urge other readers of this blog to contact us and join us in support of Richard Wanke. Thank-you.
Over 8,000 pages and 200 individual Rockford police reports comprise the massive police investigation of attorney Greg Clark’s murder and show it to be flawed from the outset.
Richard Wanke and his landlady were both thoroughly investigated for years in ways police seldom have time to investigate any suspects. Their mail was intercepted; their email and social media accounts searched, their friends and associates were tracked down and interviewed, their phone records obtained, their finances examined, their physical property seized, searched, and tested. Last, the police intercepted and monitored the hundreds of phone conversations, video visitations, and all mail exchanged between them from 2008 to present. The results of this massive criminal investigation show nothing; no DNA, no fingerprints, no weapon, no gunpowder residue, no questionable contacts or associations or phone records, no incriminating conversations or admissions, no transactions: nothing, zilch….
What is the big lie? It is the State’s assertion that this case is simple: that it was Clark’s client, Richard Wanke, who murdered Greg Clark because he was upset over legal representation. The State has no forensic evidence or witnesses of Richard ever threatening, arguing, abusing, harassing, or stalking Clark, or even being violent towards anyone. And, we are supposed to believe that ordinary court filings filed in the course of a prior court case show that Richard was motivated to kill Clark.
Richard experienced prior poor legal representation and did not get upset about it; he just worked to urge his attorneys to represent him better. Attorney Greg Clark’s murder was a particularly brutal and cold-blooded execution; the sort of work professionals do; not amateurs. Attorney Clark represented plenty of emotional people in civil divorce cases as well as other criminal matters. He’d received threats before but not from Richard Wanke. There are plenty of people with proven violent histories who were his clients as well as the usual family and social connections for police to explore. The police did not investigate those possibilities. Instead, they immediately seized upon Richard Wanke as their suspect despite his lack of violent history or weapons use whatsoever and the complete absence of anything forensically or definitely connecting him to the Clark murder scene. The Winnebago County Public Defender’s office should have been barred from representing him at trial in 2017 because of a prior conflict-of-interest which had barred them from representing him before. The Winnebago County Public Defender’s office then sought 4 times before trial to withdraw from his case. Apparently it did not want to represent him and the trial transcripts and case evidence show a failure to authentically challenge the State’s case.
The snow fall in Rockford, Illinois began the evening before and continued throughout the day. The snow accumulation was the heaviest experienced by the city in 10 years. The snowfall was so heavy that most businesses and all offices closed early or never opened, and for the first time in memory mail delivery did not even occur. At 1:50 pm, snow on the streets reached above car bumper level and visibility was poor.
What happened: News media report that in early afternoon, attorney Greg Clark was home at his house in a quiet neighborhood on the east side of Rockford when he was murdered and pronounced dead at the hospital a short time later.
News accounts and subsequent police action show that more than one perpetrator actively participated in Clark's murder. Media reports show the police immediately focused upon Richard Wanke because of what they thought of him and not because of any of the evidence found at the murder site.
The news reporter was told the next day that the police did not believe he murdered Clark, but just that he was somehow involved. Subsequent questioning of Richard's acquaintances showed the police asking questions indicating they sought information about at least one other person other than Richard.
If you read this blog and either appreciate it's efforts or feel a great injustice had occurred in Richard's case, then please, reach in your pockets for a little change and throw in whatever you feel comfortable giving to Richard by pressing the donation button above. It will be used only for the legal attorneys he needs. Thank-you sincerely, and God Bless!There was a great story of wrongful conviction on the “This American Life” podcast last week.
<http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=318>
It is the first story.
You can listen to it here: Full Episode
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Send a letter with your thoughts or questions to Richard Wanke. (If you want a reply, you must include your name and a regular mailing address.) freerichardwanke@gmail.com, or snailmail (and it is slow):
Richard Wanke, K77902 Menard Correctional Center PO Box 1000 Menard, IL 62259
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Express your frustration about IDOC, prison issues, or anything else to your IL State Representative or IL State Senator! Use this link to email them directly!: (Rep or Senator here)
Send an opinion letter to the Rockford Register Star. (To be printed it must be less than 200 words, with name, address, and daytime phone number.) Opinions@RRStar.com
Send an opinion letter to the Rock River Times. rrtimes@rworld.com
Have you experienced problems with the Winnebago County legal system? Please write a short story about your incident for us to post. You can choose to add your name, or not. freerichardwanke@gmail.com
RichardWanke.com is written and updated by community volunteers. It’s mission: publicity and assistance for the legal defense of IDOC inmate, Richard Wanke. This blog also features articles on topics affecting IL, IDOC, and IDOC inmates. Article information is gleaned from a variety of public media accounts and from other internet sources and reflects what we believe to be accurate. Readers are invited to respond and submit their own experiences.
We urge readers to check these online sites: (ILprisontalk.com), and the (John Howard Association), for more information
RichardWanke.Com