by Jeff Coen
Sherlock knew what he would probably have to do next, and it wasn’t something he was looking forward to. He would have to reach out again to John Hughes’s sister Ellen, whom he had spoken to many months earlier after picking up the Hughes file. He had started his work with her blessing, and now he would have to tell her what he had—and hadn’t—been able to do as he worked to solve the case of her brother’s killing. There were answers he had, and some that would never come. How would she react?
Sherlock struggled with approaching Ellen. He called and he texted, but he didn’t hear back. Finally he texted again, and there was a reply. “Come tomorrow,” she wrote him.
Sherlock drove to Ellen’s home by himself. It was December 2019. It was a lonely drive, with time to reflect on what had transpired. Christmas decorations flickered on many of the neat homes on the blocks of Canaryville and Bridgeport as he passed the local landmarks he knew well.
Ellen and her husband greeted him warmly. There was small talk about politics and their families. Sherlock started with some personal news. He was stepping away from CPD and the FBI. Obviously John’s murder had not been closed in the way he wanted it to be, but there was still a glimmer of hope. Sherlock would be joining the Cook County state’s attorney’s office as an investigator, hopefully working cold cases. He told Ellen he would keep an eye on the case for as long as he was still working.
“I don’t see what else I can do on this right now,” Sherlock said. “But I definitely want to keep this file close to me.”
Sherlock did not mean it as some empty thing to say in a difficult professional moment. He knew that he would keep the file close. And if someone—Costello or anyone else—ever came forward, he would be there.
“They thanked me in the Canaryville way,” Sherlock said later, remembering the talk. “Their voices didn’t rise any octaves. They just said, ‘Thank you,’ and I accepted it.
“I knew they weren’t going to jump up and hug me.”
Any disappointment Ellen Hughes felt was, of course, reasonable. But Sherlock had done much in the face of difficult circumstances.
He had found compelling evidence of a police cover-up. He had found serious irregularities in the handling of the Hughes case that suggested someone in authority did not want it solved.
That list of findings included proving definitively that there was paperwork missing from the official police file that should have been there. By locating the Gorman file, he found reports and notes that someone had made sure were omitted from the record. Additionally, he had found multiple witnesses who said they were brought to the main courthouse at Twenty-Sixth and California, though no records existed showing they had been there at all.
He had shown to a reasonable degree of certainty that the lineups viewed by witnesses had been manipulated. Larry Raddatz and Mary Mestrovic, who had not communicated with each other, both had testimonies inconsistent with police records. They each had been named in the reports as having viewed a lineup that contained Nick Costello and having failed to pick him out. Someone had taken the extra step of including a lineup photo that did include Costello, standing in a conspicuous spot with a bright yellow jacket. Both Raddatz and Mestrovic swore they told police they did see Costello at the police district, despite that not being recorded.
The inclusion of the photograph would have gone against police protocol in the first place, as negative lineups typically were not photographed and preserved. Someone was trying to make a point, Sherlock believed.
John Russell’s account was perhaps even worse. His lineup apparently had been filled with younger-looking police officers, which he knew because he saw them milling around the station later with their guns back on their belts. Yet the official record still included not a photo of the lineup of cops but the same one with Costello in his yellow jacket, and a note that Russell did not pick him out.
Mestrovic shouldn’t have been viewing a lineup at all. When a witness tells police, “I know him; I grew up with that guy,” there’s typically no need for one. She had already positively identified Costello, who was someone she knew, as having been at the shooting scene in the car the fatal shot was fired from. In a police report, an investigating officer should simply have written that Mestrovic had identified Costello, nickname “Horse,” as being in the passenger seat, and note she had known him since fourth grade. Maybe there would be a need if she hadn’t seen him for ten years, Sherlock thought, but that clearly was not the case. And not only was a lineup allegedly done, she was still recorded as having failed to positively make an identification.
Sherlock also had developed a legitimate police witness who worked the case and corroborated the irregularities. Terry Strong detailed how command-level officers had big-footed working detectives and taken over interviews—another situation that was all but unheard of. And Sherlock had learned that one of those high-ranking officers, John Haberkorn, had wound up under investigation himself for possible criminal activity, although no case was made.
And Strong’s account included claims that were closely corroborated by prior testimony. Retired officer John Furmanek had gone to the FBI in 2005 with some of the same complaints, stating that Costello had been released from custody after Mayor Richard J. Daley made a call. Strong said the word in the station at the time was that Costello, on top of everything else, was a godson of Daley confidant Michael Bilandic and his father was a ranking firefighter. Strong told Sherlock that Daley’s right-hand man, John Townsend, had taken interview notes from the detectives and marched them out of the Ninth District in the direction of Daley’s home just before that call would have been made.
Strong also corroborated Mary’s account of her being mocked and dismissed by officers who were supposed to be supervisors and then her testimony being discounted once prosecutors got involved.
Sherlock had developed a working theory of what could have happened the night Hughes died, one that included a car that matched the description of the one witnesses had seen. He had learned from another interviewee that the car had, in fact, been moved out of Chicago in the middle of the night just after the shooting.
The list of irregularities in the police work grew with the information that an evidence technician had traveled alone, out of state, to give the car a clean bill of health. A police report recording the examination of the car had failed to note that the inspection of the vehicle had taken place not in Chicago but in a neighboring state.
Sherlock had found and interviewed a relative of the policeman who ran the Coral Key restaurant. He had corroborated accounts of a meeting there that included Costello’s father and police leaders who allegedly discussed the case. Strong said he had been summoned to the same restaurant to give an accounting of what was happening in the investigation, off the books, as had Furmanek before him.
Finally, Sherlock had tracked down Costello’s ex-wife. She had repeated to him what she had previously testified to, about Costello placing the main suspect in the case, Rocky LaMantia, in the shooting car. And she had taken her account a step further. While it was uncorroborated, she told Sherlock she knew that Martha DiCaro, her cousin, was going to break up with LaMantia when she went to his home one day a few years after the Hughes murder. DiCaro was afraid of her boyfriend, and her family thought she was trying to end an abusive relationship. The ex-wife said she believed DiCaro had a trump card. She would tell police that LaMantia had killed Hughes if he did not leave her alone. LaMantia shot her in the face, the woman believed, and he would never face punishment for the crime because his mobster father had bribed a Greylord judge, which was something federal prosecutors also believed.
If certain police supervisors did scuttle the Hughes investigation at the behest of powerful politicians or forces from Chicago’s underworld, and if LaMantia was in fact the shooter, Martha DiCaro was an unintended follow-up victim of that misconduct. But there were others who would remain affected by a failure to get justice.
They included members of the Hughes famil
y, for whom the loss of their son and brother remains an open wound. For Ellen Hughes, it was the memory of her older sister awakening her from a cold sleep to tell her that her brother was gone, a memory that stung all the more with the knowledge that no one paid for taking him away. And it had brought fear to her parents. They weren’t “a cop family,” so it had taken them longer than it probably should have to realize that police weren’t going to be solving the case, perhaps purposefully so. They had hired their own investigator, only to have him scurry back to their home so afraid that he would only tell them in their backyard that he had been urged to leave the murder alone.
The neighborhood itself suffered as well. What were once blocks where children and teenagers roamed freely changed overnight. Magical summer nights hanging out in darkened Chicago parks faded into memory for many youngsters in Bridgeport and Canaryville. A friend had been taken from them, but a measure of their innocence had, too. Parents were understandably unsettled. The way many viewed their neighborhood changed permanently.
For Mary Mestrovic, it was years of disillusionment. She had attempted to do the right thing for her friend, and she had done so even in the midst of threats and fears. She endured harassment from friends of the boys she believed had been involved, repeatedly being antagonized at work and followed home. She had taken the risk that police often beg and plead with witnesses to take. Speak out. Say something, for your community and for justice. Mary had done it for nothing.
She had gone to college, gotten married, and had a career and two kids of her own, but the case stuck with her. At times it flashed in real time. Like when LaMantia died and she started getting texts, including from her son. She had been away at school for the DiCaro murder, and it had faded from her mind. So she googled LaMantia and learned how he had been acquitted. “I was like, ‘Holy cow,’” she said later. “He got away with it.”
Needless to say, what happened to John Hughes would now stick with Sherlock as well.
As a police officer—and a good one—he could see the angles play out in his mind. If the case were handled properly, it would have been over in days. It was clearly solvable, despite the lack of physical evidence, such as a gun or shell casing left at the scene.
“This is not a case that should have become a cold case,” is how he put it. “All night long we have a fight between kids from Bridgeport and Canaryville. It’s not World War II. It’s not a bunch of different countries involved. It’s two groups of kids that everyone knows.”
The detectives and the tactical officers who worked the streets each night, they knew them all. “Let’s use the highest number. Let’s say there’s twenty kids from Canaryville and twenty kids from Bridgeport. They’re fighting all night, it’s already documented,” Sherlock said. “That incident on Thirty-First and Halsted. These coppers who worked that district, they know who’s out there.”
The kids from Canaryville had just finished beating up the kids from Bridgeport in the street, and those teens were mad about it. Both sides retreated to their park, and a short time later, the green Chevy was heading in.
“A 1970s detective? That case is solved that night. There’s no mystery,” Sherlock said. “It’s not a gang drive-by. It’s not a robbery gone bad. These are the kids from the fight on Halsted. They came back and shot at the kids from Canaryville in Boyce Park.”
Grab the right twelve kids, do the work, and the defenses come down, he said. “Rocky LaMantia’s lawyer calls Area Three and says my client took a polygraph at a detective agency, and he passed, and I don’t want you talking to him, and that’s it?” Sherlock said. Even then, he was the most likely suspect, and all work in his direction had stopped. No one had been brave enough to say anything. “Nobody wants to be that one person.”
But with his work finished, the time for theorizing was over.
“It literally bothers me,” Sherlock said. He had grown to like Ellen and her family very much, and he thought he had let them down. He had started his investigation thinking maybe it could be different. Maybe he would be the one to break through and go to the Hughes family and be able to tell them what had happened, who had done it, and why. Closure.
“It upsets me now. I’ve had a lot of success in my career,” Sherlock said, “and this is the way I’m going out. I’m leaving a case open.”
It is accurate to say, though, that the Hughes case, instead of being a reflection on Sherlock’s abilities, is more a reflection on his city.
Chicago was John Hughes’s city, and Sherlock’s, and Mestrovic’s. But it was also LaMantia’s, and Burge’s, and Miedzianowski’s.
Historically, many in positions of power in the city have grown adept at doing just the sort of thing that frustrated Sherlock and has frustrated so many others. Masking the truth. Looking out for their own interests at the expense of others and then covering their tracks.
Adding forty years to a case that seemed marred by conspiracy had left it virtually unsolvable, save a miraculous new admission by someone who may have seen something or been a part of it and never before come out of the shadows. But in many ways, Sherlock still gave the Hughes family a gift. With the kind heart of a good police officer, he cared. He recognized what they had gone through and the vacancy in their lives and tried to give them answers. Some would say he found them.
But like no other case in his years with a badge, Sherlock was pushing against the city’s unmoving structural beams. He was not the first—nor will he be the last—to end his effort without getting absolute fairness and true justice.
Perhaps at least as often as anywhere else on earth, things happen in Chicago that should never happen to anyone. And what should happen—if God were keeping close watch on the dark skyscrapers on the shore of Lake Michigan—doesn’t.
Clouded. Unforgiving. Infuriating.
Chicago.
EPILOGUE
The Hughes family has set up a scholarship fund at De La Salle High School in John’s name. Every year they hold a golf outing to help fund it. They remember their lost son and brother with love. The memory of him can bring instant tears. After more than four decades, the loss is in many ways still fresh.
They have a website for the fund that carries these words:
John’s legacy as a leader began during his grade school years at St. Gabriel in Canaryville, most notably when he first donned a helmet to play for the Shamrocks—a squad coached by his Uncle, Stephen Patrick Hughes. Dubbed “Big Red” by his teammates, after John honed his skills at St. Gabriel he went on to play football in high school, excelling at the game for the De La Salle Meteors. He was an outstanding defensive back who helped lead the freshman squad to an undefeated season, and continued to be a hard-hitting competitive force throughout his sophomore and junior years.
John was a leader off the gridiron as well. He made the honor roll quarter after quarter and was involved in several extracurricular activities, including student government. During his junior year, before his young life ended tragically, he served as De La Salle’s student body vice president, and John’s friends, family and teammates believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that John would have been the student body president as a senior.
The De La Salle family will miss him most dearly because of who he was as a person. Even more than his academic and athletic exploits, John will be remembered for his charisma, sense of humor, fortitude and compassion.
Nick Costello declined to comment for this project through his lawyer, who noted Costello has repeatedly denied any involvement. The attorney said Costello on one occasion gave his version of events to a grand jury, an appearance Sherlock found no record of.
LaMantia’s attorney at the time of the Hughes and Martha DiCaro killings, Anthony J. Onesto, said he could not speak to the Hughes slaying or any alleged LaMantia role in it, and that he did not specifically recall the incident. He called Martha DiCaro’s death a “tragic, tragic case,” and said it was likely some kind of accident. As for information that Shorty LaMantia could have pa
id off the judge at the time, Onesto was dismissive of the idea. “It’s easy to throw rocks at a guy like Shorty, because he’s not going to respond,” Onesto told the author. “Whatever he was, he was.”
A close relative of LaMantia’s, when reached by the author, declined to address the news that an investigator with the FBI was looking into LaMantia’s suspected involvement in the Hughes case.
Reached by the author, Paul Ferraro also declined to comment on the case, saying he knew nothing about it.
Bridgeport is changing. Its proximity to downtown Chicago has made it attractive to young professionals who initially were drawn to its cheaper housing stock. They gather for parties at some of the old standbys but have put their own stamp on places like Maria’s Packaged Goods and Community Bar. White Sox Park is now named for some kind of mortgage company, and the team markets itself to young families. The neighborhood’s location near Chicago’s traditional Chinese neighborhood on the near South Side has also meant a larger influence of that community in Bridgeport, as Chinatown has essentially overflowed and Chinese businesses have gone looking for new areas to set up shop. All of the new growth and a younger demographic has meant some of the neighborhood’s traditional walls have come down. It is in some ways less insular. And there are fusion restaurants now, and ones offering herbal Rishi tea and avocado fries.
As for Canaryville, it has not experienced the same upscale turn. But whatever the Chicago of the future might be, the neighborhood may still take a place in it as more than just a museum piece of the city’s past. It is still proud of its blue-collar roots, but it too has seen movement away from its history as a closed-off slice of the city with an often-deserved reputation for racism and tribal thinking. The neighborhood, and areas around it, have lately grown more integrated.