Sept. 14--In 1999, a Chicago man wanted on a murder charge in a Far Northwest Side killing was picked up and jailed in Arkansas. What might have been a simple interview and extradition request turned into a 16-year chase after Chicago investigators left him in an interview room for hours, and he escaped.
Officials in Florida also failed to make any connection to the Chicago case after the suspect was arrested there multiple times.
His luck ran out Friday.
Jerome Lawrence, 46, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after an acquaintance spotted him in Chicago and called police. Lawrence is accused of striking 65-year-old Marjorie Collette and smothering her with a pillow in her home in May 1999. Appearing in court Sunday, prosecutors gave a surprising account of missteps that allowed the 10-time felon to remain free.
"The defendant was briefly interviewed, and then managed to escape the (Arkansas) jail," said Joseph DiBella, an assistant state's attorney. "Just weeks later ... he was apprehended in Florida after an unsuccessful carjacking. The defendant refused to give his name, he was processed as a John Doe and eventually began using the name Joseph Mayhar. For the next decade, the defendant was in and out of Florida Corrections, and Florida never discovered that he had a nationwide manhunt for him out of Cook County."
Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas appeared stunned, interjecting: "Florida had no clue? They didn't have fingerprints?"
DiBella said he didn't have the answer.
The news of Lawrence's arrest came as a relief to Collette's niece, Margaret Collette.
"It's always been back of our mind," said Collette, 54, of Joliet. "I did live in the city at the time, not far from where (Lawrence) was supposed to have lived. I was born and raised there. We all were. Marjorie and her brother owned the house. She was talking about moving into a safer neighborhood."
The acquaintance reported seeing Lawrence in the 5300 block of North Lincoln Avenue in the city's Budlong Woods neighborhood, police reports said. When police interviewed Lawrence, he maintained his identity as Joseph Mayhar and presented a Florida Department of Corrections ID card bearing that name, according to prosecutors and the police report.
Regardless of the name, prosecutors said Lawrence had quite a rap sheet. Prosecutors pointed to six felony charges, most of them burglary, in Cook County. He also picked up four felony charges in Florida, including fleeing and eluding in 1999; robbery in 2000; and arson in 2005. Lawrence doesn't appear to have a criminal record under his fake name in Cook County, according to court records.
Lawrence, who knew Collette's niece, had been doing remodeling work on Collette's house in the Edison Park neighborhood in the days before she was found dead in her bed by her niece May 21, 1999. Lawrence believed Collette, who had worked at Walgreens for 35 years and was looking forward to retirement at the time, was rich, according to prosecutors. Video evidence shows Lawrence taking the niece's keys to Collette's home.
The suspect killed Collette, slit her dog's throat for barking and made off with a bag full of her electronics and a safe, DiBella said.
The grisly finding left Collette's family bewildered and afraid.
"I hate to admit it, but we didn't lock our doors," Margaret Collette said. "We had an open-door policy there for a while. After that we started locking doors, we weren't letting the kids outside. We didn't know what it was all about. The aftereffects on the children ... they still get moody around the anniversary. It really hit hard."
Lawrence is accused of stealing his wife's car and calling her from Arkansas and Georgia for help, DiBella said. She reported him to Chicago police. Four days after the killing, a detective and assistant state's attorney went to the Marion jail in Arkansas, where Lawrence had been picked up on a charge of theft by receiving and an Illinois charge of parole violation. They locked Lawrence in the interview room after questioning him and returned that evening to an empty room. Lawrence had apparently crawled through the ceiling and walked out of the jail, becoming the fifth person to escape from the then-new facility.
Another man John Cameron, who prosecutors also said was involved in the killing-burglary plot, pleaded guilty to a murder charge and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Cameron, 67, is at Dixon Correctional Center and set to be released in 2026.
Margaret Collette said her family attended each of Cameron's hearings, and now plans to do the same for Lawrence.
Chiampas denied bail for Lawrence and ordered him to appear in court Monday.
Chicago Tribune's Patrick O'Connell contributed.
tbriscoe@tribpub.com
