Chronology of the case of George Lettrich, Jr.
Compiled by Billy Warden
Copyright 2006, Center on Wrongful Convictions
Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law
December 17, 1948 — Ten-year-old Roberta Rinearson leaves her home in Brookfield, Illinois, to take a bus to attend a movie in nearby LaGrange.
December 18, 1948 — The child’s body is found in a ditch near Elmhurst. She has been raped and strangled.
December 22, 1948 — Herlindo Perez Arias, a thirty-one-year-old mental patient, confesses to Dr. William H. Haines, director of the Behavior Clinic of Cook County, but Haines, in deference to doctor-patient confidentiality, says nothing.
December 30, 1948 — Arias commits suicide, but Haines maintains his silence.
July 27, 1950 — Two girls, a ten-year-old from Cicero, and a twelve-year-old from Berwyn, report that they have been sexually molested by a man in a forest preserve near Lyons.
August 10, 1950 — Thirty-six-year-old George Lettrich, Jr. is arrested while sitting on a park bench waiting for a bus at the western edge of Chicago.
August 11, 1950 — Lettrich signs a written statement confessing to the crimes against the two girls who had reported being sexually molested the previous month.
August 13, 1950 — Lettrich signs a written statement confessing to the murder of Roberta Rinearson.
August 13, 1950 — Authorities take Lettrich to the Rinearson crime scene where he “re-enacts” the crime before some 150 spectators, including reporters, photographers, and police officers.
April 2, 1951 — Lettrich is found guilty of molesting the two girls — crimes he now contends he did not commit — and is sentenced to one to ten years in prison.
October 18, 1951 – Lettrich is found guilty of the Rinearson murder — which he also now denies — and is sentenced to death in the electric chair by Judge Crowley.
November 9, 1951 — Judge Crowley sets Lettrich’s execution date for January 19, 1952.
January 15, 1952 — The Illinois Supreme Court grants a stay of execution stay to allow Lettrich to appeal.
September 18, 1952 — The Illinois Supreme Court reverses Lettrich’s murder conviction and grants him a new trial, finding that there was “not a scintilla of evidence” connecting him to the crime “except his repudiated confession.”
April 20, 1953 — Prosecutors drop charges against Lettrich.
