Adam Landerman (clockwise from top left), Alisa Massaro, Joshua Miner, and Bethany McKee (Credit: Will County Sheriff’s Office)
CHICAGO (CBS) — Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said Monday he will personally prosecute the murder case against four young men and women accused of strangling two friends in Joliet, then attempting to dismember their bodies.
CBS 2’s Marissa Bailey reports police said the crime scene was so grotesque, even veteran officers said it was the worst they’d seen in 25 years.
Investigators said Adam Landerman, 19, Alisa Massaro, 18, Bethany McKee, 18, and Joshua Miner, 24, lured Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22, to Massaro’s home on Thursday. Once Glover and Rakin got there, they were robbed and killed.
Friends Eric Glover, 22, and Terrance O. Rankins, 22, were killed in Joliet Thursday by four acquaintances, police say. (Family handouts)
After trying to dismember Rankins’ and Glover’s bodies, the four suspects allegedly continued partying. Police said they were notified of the dead bodies in the home Thursday afternoon, and when police went in, Landerman, Massaro and Miner were playing video games. McKee had left by then, but was arrested later in Kankakee.
Authorities said the suspects were surprised they were caught. All four have been charged with first-degree murder.
Glasgow announced Monday he will personally prosecute the case.
“This is my home. My children live here, and this case is something that I think it’s the responsibility of the elected prosecutor to prosecute,” he said.
The victims’ friends gathered in front of the Will County Courthouse on Monday for the suspects’ first court appearance, emotional about their friends’ deaths.
“You just don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Yeah I’m fixing to go behead somebody, or chop somebody up,” said George Leftridge, a friend of the victims. “This is something that had been brewing in their system for a long time. That was some diabolical acting right there.:
Glover graduated from Joliet Central in 2008, capping off a school career in which he made the honor roll several times and participated in football, wrestling and track. Glover also played minor league football on the Bolingbrook Buccaneers and the Illinois Gators, his family said. His younger brother, Drakkar Williams, plays outside linebacker at the College of the Redwoods in Eureka, Calif.
Rankins graduated from Joliet West High School.
“Everywhere they went, they was well mannered,” Leftridge said. “They weren’t no hoodlums going around stealing, or robbing, or raping nobody.”
A judge upheld the $10 million bond for each suspect when they appeared in court Monday.
The victims’ friends said they think the murders were racially motivated. They also hinted that the suspects were on drugs at the time of the attacks.
Joliet police did not return calls about whether the suspects had drugs in their systems at the time of their arrests, or whether toxicology tests were conducted.
All four suspects have a criminal record, but Miner’s is the most extensive, including charges of burglary in 2010 and child pornography in 2005. The other suspects’ criminal records were mostly for traffic or curfew violations.
(The Sun-Times Media wire contributed to this story.)
