MEET THE FIRM

Chicago Sun-Times - June 21, 2005

JOYFUL FOX DANCED OVER DNA NEWS

By Frank Main
Crime Reporter

As he headed off for a vacation with his wife to celebrate his newfound freedom, Kevin Fox looked back Monday on the threats he said his fellow inmates made when he stood charged with sexually assaulting and murdering his 3-year-old daughter, Riley.

Fox, released from the Will County Jail last week after new DNA test results failed to link him to the crime, called his more than seven months behind bars a "nightmare."

"That was the worst crime you could ever be accused of," he said in a wide-ranging interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. "They told me they'd rape me, they wanted to kill me, beat me up."

The threats never materialized into physical violence, Fox said. But they echoed the warnings he claims Will County sheriff's detectives made when they allegedly extracted a false confession from him last year.

Says officials lied to wife, son

Fox, in a federal lawsuit against the sheriff's office and the investigators, has accused detective Edward Hayes of saying he "knew people" at the jail and would "make sure" Fox was sexually molested every day unless he admitted to killing Riley, the lawsuit said.

A representative of the sheriff's office did not return a call for comment.

Fox, a lanky blond with an aw-shucks smile, was a union painter when his daughter was found in a Will County creek on June 6, 2004. He said he still loves painting and would consider re-entering the trade, but worried that he didn't pay dues to his union local while he was in jail.

"I'll have to contact them and see," he said. "But we really don't know where we're going to be living or working yet."

Fox, 28, did not rule out returning to Wilmington, where the couple had lived with Riley and their 7-year-old son, Tyler, until the killing. Now their house is sold.

"I'm still welcome there. Anyone I was close with knew I didn't do it," he said. "As far as other people, if it went through their minds, they don't have to say sorry to me."

He is not so forgiving toward the Will County detectives he claims mistreated his wife and son.

"To feed them lies about me shows you what kind of people they are," he said. His wife, Melissa, added, "They victimized a family that was already victimized."

Fox said he was initially jailed in a medical unit of the jail before he was moved into protective custody.

"Being in protective custody, a lot of people think you have it a lot easier," he said. "It's not like I was treated good, even though I was in protective custody. It was mostly mental abuse."

He coped with the ordeal by reading letters from his wife, as well as the Bible and Gone in the Night about four African-American men who spent a combined 64 years in Illinois prisons for a murder they did not commit.

Last Thursday, everything changed with a DNA report by Bode Technology, a private laboratory in Virginia that Fox's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, hired to re-examine genetic evidence taken from Riley's body.

The tests showed Kevin Fox's DNA profile did not match the DNA in biological evidence removed from Riley's body. It's unclear precisely what the biological evidence was, but it wasn't from semen or blood, and might have been from saliva, Zellner said.

'The killer is out there'

Citing the pending litigation, Zellner would not let Fox discuss who he thought killed his daughter. "The killer is out there somewhere and hopefully he will be caught," he said.

At precisely 6:55 p.m. Thursday, Zellner and Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow stood in his office near the fax machine as the final Bode lab report came across.

Zellner joyfully delivered the good news to Fox and he was returned to his cell.

"I was on lockdown time then. I just went back to my room and started dancing with a big smile on my face," Fox said.

On Friday, Glasgow went to court to free Fox and announced his top priority was to catch Riley's killer, undoing charges Glasgow's predecessor, Jeff Tomczak, had approved just days before losing last year's election to Glasgow. Tomczak declined to discuss the case during a telephone conversation over the weekend.

Once he was freed, Fox made a beeline for a burger at the Northside Bar & Grill in Chicago near his brother's home, where he briefly stayed after his release. He also drank some Corona beer, but that's not what he truly savored.

"The thing I cared about most was a big glass of milk," he said, chuckling. "That was one of the first things I wanted was a glass of milk."

"The only time you are offered milk [in jail] is at breakfast time and it's that powdered kind," he explained. "They'd give you a whole pitcher and a couple of tablespoons of powder . . . there was nothing like that first glass of the real stuff."