After the co-defendants recanted the authorities turned to snitches
Valentine Harpstrite (a.k.a. Harpstreith) was convicted of murder in 1929 in St. Clair County based solely on the testimony of two jailhouse informants. Sentenced to life in prison, he was released two decades later after — but not because — the informants recanted. Nineteen years later he received a gubernatorial pardon based on innocence. The victim, Justus Nungesser, was shot to death in a cornfield on his farm near the town of Muscoutah on September 9, 1928. An itinerant laborer heard the shot and alerted Frank Grimmer, Nungesser's neighbor, who ran to the cornfield where he found Nungesser gasping for breath. Before Nungesser lapsed into a coma from which he did not recover, he told Grimmer "that a detective came out of the cornfield and shot him." Harpstrite was implicated in the crime several weeks later, based on alleged confessions by two co-defendants, Raymond Rensing and Elmer Lindner. All three were indicted for murder, but before their joint trial in April 1929, Rensing and Lindner recanted, claiming their confessions had been beaten out of them. The confessions were admitted against them, but not against Harpstrite. To convict him, Assistant State's Attorney Curt C. Lindauer relied on statements from two jailhouse snitches, Charles Pillow and George Shelton.
Several years later, Pillow and Shelton recanted, saying Lindauer and St. Clair Sheriff Charles Aherns had promised to arrange for their release from jail in return for their testimony implicating Harpstrite. After the trial, the court record of the case disappeared, and there was no appeal.
Harpstrite was paroled in 1949, and pardoned by Governor Samuel H. Shapiro in 1968. — Rob Warden
