Bizarre Crime of the Week : Investigation Discovery

Former Police Sergeant Jeff Pelo Rape Trial Update

Former Bloomington, Illinois police sergeant Jeff Pelo, 43, was convicted on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 of raping four women and stalking another.  All-in-all, Pelo was found guilty on 35 counts from the various cases in which he'd been charged, including 25 counts of aggravated sexual assault.  Two charges were dropped during the course of the lengthy trial.  Pelo cried when the verdict was read, and his wife ran out of the courtroom in an emotional outburst.  Although she later apologized and said that she feels badly for the victims in this case, Pelo's wife nonetheless stood behind her husband and again professed his innocence and insisted that the authorities had arrested and convicted "the wrong man."

Defense attorney Michael Rosenblat also professed his belief in his client's innocence, and indicated that he would likely appeal.  He said that he might argue that the judge should not have allowed jurors to view the violent pornography, some of which showed unwilling sexual encounters at gunpoint, found on Pelo's home computer. The type of pornography preferred by Pelo was irrelevant, Rosenblat said.  Rosenblat indicated that another point of appeal could lie in the fact that the defense was not allowed to place an expert witness on the stand to provide testimony regarding the reliability of eyewitness identification.

Three of the victims had chosen Pelo's image out of a photo lineup.  Rosenblat had argued, however, that there were discrepancies in the victims' descriptions of their attacker, and that the descriptions had varied widely.  Rosenblat said that the reason the descriptions varied widely was because the attacks had been committed by different people. One woman said that her attacker had been in his early twenties.

One victim testified that she had been...

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"I've Been Watching You" Rape Trial of Former Illinois Cop, Jeff Pelo, Underway

Jeff Pelo, a 43-year-old married father of three and a 17-year veteran of the Bloomington, Illinois police department, has been in jail for the past 22 months on multiple counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault and home invasion that prosecutors contend were committed on four occasions between 2002 and 2005 by a blue-eyed man donning a ski mask and dark clothing who had stealthily entered the bedrooms of four young women, all of whom were single and in their twenties, and raped them.  Pelo's trial is currently underway, and his lawyers have been arguing that the wrong man is being tried for the crimes.  His lawyers are also challenging what they claim are questionable identifications made by victims who only recall seeing a masked man in their bedrooms, a prosecution sore point made all the more troubling by the fact that the victims were asked to identify their masked assailant more than a year after the alleged assaults occurred.

The first rape occurred in December 2002, and the second one in April 2003.  Nearly two years passed before the next two rapes occurred, both in January 2005.  The cases stumped the local police, and at first there was only idle speculation that the cases might be connected.  Little headway was made in the case until December 2005, when the FBI reported that there were significant similarities between the cases.  After the FBI report was issued, Bloomington police announced that a serial rapist might be at work in the area and they appealed to the public for assistance with regard to information pertaining to the investigation.

The case didn't break for another seven months—on June 10, 2006—when Sergeant Pelo was arrested and charged with burglary and stalking after yet another female called the police to report a late-night prowler outside her house, located on Bloomington's east side.  It was shortly past midnight when a police officer, David Ziemer, confronted Pelo outside the woman's house.  Pelo ignored the officer's commands to halt, and attempted to walk away from the scene until Ziemer pulled his gun and aimed at Pelo.

"He had a blank stare on his face," Officer Ziemer testified during one of the court hearings.  "I was yelling, 'Stop,' and he wasn't complying with me.  I thought it was going to be a deadly force situation."

According to Ziemer's account, Pelo told Ziemer that he was out looking for a house to purchase for his mother-in-law.  However, the problem with his story was the lateness of the hour and the fact that the house where he was arrested was not for sale.

A month later, three of the rape victims...

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Brian Rooney Convicted in Rape and Murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn

Last week, on Thursday, May 22, 2008, the man charged with the rape-slaying of a University of Vermont student was found guilty of aggravated murder after the jury deliberated barely six hours.  The randomness of the case, as well as the unprovoked, wanton violence involved, left many Vermont residents shaken.

Michelle Gardner-Quinn, 21, of Arlington, Vermont, was majoring in environmental studies when she transferred to the University of Vermont.  She was only a few weeks into the fall semester when she disappeared on October 7, 2006.  For the next six days police and volunteer search teams looked for any signs of the young coed throughout Burlington as well as the neighboring forests and countryside.  Even the lake adjacent to the small city was searched, to no avail.  Michelle had simply vanished, without a trace.

Her partially-clad body, however, was soon found by a hiker.  It had been placed inside a gap between two large rocks in the hiking area at Huntington Gorge, and an attempt had been made to cover it up with leaves.  An examination of her body showed that she had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled.  Semen was collected from her body.

"This was a violent, random crime," said Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan.  "It scared a lot of people."

According to witnesses interviewed during the investigation, Michelle had been out with friends during homecoming weekend when she disappeared.  At some point during the early morning hours, she became separated from her friends and was attempting to call one of them when her cellular phone's battery died.  She apparently borrowed a cell phone from Brian Rooney, a 37-year-old construction worker and father, at approximately 2:35 a.m., during a random encounter.  The ensuing investigation eventually linked Michelle to Rooney, and police found a videotape of them taken by a jewelry store surveillance camera as the two of them walked up Main Street in Burlington.  Based on the depiction viewed on the tape, she did not appear distressed and it did not seem that she was in any immediate danger—but the time that the videotaped images were taken was the last time she was known to have been alive.

Despite the fact that there were no witnesses, investigators built a case against Rooney using the jewelry store video, inconsistent statements that he had made to the police and others and by using the most damning evidence of all—the fact that...

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Photo credit: Police mug shot