Judge Finds Spouse, Mom Dead at Ill. Home
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Mar 1, 10:39 AM (ET)

By DON BABWIN

(AP) A member of the Chicago Police Department walks out of the home of U.S. District Judge Joan...


CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge who was once the target of a failed murder plot by a white supremacist found two bodies in a pool of blood in her basement, and a source said the victims were her husband and her mother.

U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, 61, found the bodies about 6 p.m. Monday when she returned home from work, police spokesman Pat Camden said.

The source close to the investigation told The Associated Press the victims were Lefkow's husband, attorney Michael F. Lefkow, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, 89, who was visiting from Denver.

Michael Lefkow, 65, and Humphrey were each shot in the head, said the source, who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity.

No weapon was found Monday but authorities discovered two .22-caliber shell casings, the Chicago Tribune reported, quoting unidentified sources.

Authorities gave no indication that the deaths were related to the judge's involvement in the case of white supremacist Matthew Hale, who was convicted in April 2004 of soliciting an undercover FBI informant to kill her.

He is awaiting sentencing on one count of murder solicitation and three counts of obstruction of justice.

Lefkow received police protection after Hale was arrested in 2003. Prosecutors alleged that he was angry because Lefkow ruled that he could no longer use the name World Church of the Creator for his group since another organization had a copyright on that name.

Hale, 33, became notorious in 1999 when a follower, Benjamin Smith, went on a deadly shooting rampage in Illinois and Indiana. Targeting minorities, Smith killed two people, including former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, and wounded nine others before killing himself as police closed in.

Hale's reaction to Smith's three-day shooting spree - Hale laughed about it and imitated gunfire in secretly recorded tapes played for the jury - was part of the prosecution's case last year.

Members of a Chicago police forensics team could be seen inside the two-story Lefkow home on the city's North Side late Monday evening wearing white clothing and surgical-style headgear.

FBI spokesman Ross Rice confirmed that agents had been called in to help with the investigation but provided no further details. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said he would have no comment.

The Lefkows were active in the Episcopal church.

"This is a real shock. I'm really saddened and outraged. I hope the people responsible will be apprehended soon," said William Persell, bishop of the Chicago Diocese of the Episcopal Church.

Neighbors described the Lefkows as a model family. "This is someone who adored his daughters," Nan Sullivan said. "They were the kind of family everyone aspires to be, very close-knit, very supportive."

Hale never testified during his two-week trial. His defense attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, called no witnesses, saying the prosecution's evidence was the weakest he had seen in a major case.

A key witness, Anthony Evola, testified he secretly taped Hale for the FBI while posing as a follower. Among the conversations were ones in which they discussed the judge.

"Are we gonna exterminate the rat?" Evola can be heard asking Hale, who responds a short time later: "I'm going to fight within the law and, but, ... if you wish to, ah, do anything, yourself, you can."

The defense argued that Hale never asked anyone to kill the judge and that the FBI used Evola to draw him into a murder plot.

Lefkow, 61, served as a federal magistrate and a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge before President Clinton nominated her for the District Court bench in 2000.

Michael Lefkow was a graduate of North Central College in Naperville and earned a law degree from Northwestern University. The two married in 1975, and he ran unsuccessfully for Cook County judge in 2002, according the Tribune.