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Police receive more than 600 tips in Chicago slayings

Associated Press, via Rocky Mountain News, USA
mar. 6, 2005
Carla K. Johnson
rockymountainnews.com

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Monday March 7, 2005

CHICAGO — Investigators have received more than 600 tips from the public about the unsolved shooting deaths of a federal judge’s husband and elderly mother, police said Sunday.

Authorities have collected a total of 606 tips about the Feb. 28 slayings in the home of Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, according to Police Superintendent Phil Cline.

Police did not say how many tips had come in since the case was featured Saturday night on the television show “America’s Most Wanted,” but on Friday, they reported receiving 230 tips.

Meanwhile, parents of imprisoned white supremacist Matthew Hale said Sunday they look forward to seeing their son this week in their first regularly scheduled visit with him since the shooting deaths.

In separate telephone interviews, Russell Hale and Evelyn Hutcheson said they are worried authorities will cancel their visits to their son, who is awaiting sentencing next month for soliciting an FBI informant to kill Judge Lefkow.

They are limited to one phone call with Hale each week and visits to the Metropolitan Correction Center in Chicago every other Tuesday.

Russell Hale said two FBI agents questioned him Friday for 15 or 20 minutes, asking if he had any idea who might have killed Judge Lefkow’s husband and mother, Donna Humphrey, who had lived in Denver.

Hale’s parents both said members of Hale’s group are not capable of murder.

“They’re scared the government’s going to do something to them like they did to Matt,” Hutcheson said. “They’ve all run. They’re scared to death … They’re scared puppies is all they are.”

Hale has denied any involvement in the slayings, or of soliciting the judge’s murder. But FBI Agent Robert D. Grant has said Hale and his associates are one avenue of investigation.

Prosecutors alleged in the solicitation case that Hale targeted the judge because he was angry that she had ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator in a trademark lawsuit.