Slain jailer's family: ‘No forgiveness, no mercy’

DIXON – Like clockwork, the letter arrives at the Fordham home just before Thanksgiving.

It’s not a welcome letter, however.

It’s the letter that reminds them of the brutal murder of their husband, father, and grandfather, Richard “Bert” Fordham Sr., a Lee County sheriff’s deputy, in the spring of 1977.

It’s the letter that lets them know that one of his killers, Gerald “Doc” Johnson, is eligible for parole.

“It’s one of those things you learn to live with,” said Fordham’s widow, Lucille. “”Basically, it’s the beginning of our holiday season. It’s difficult to believe it’s been almost 35 years [since the murder].”

[ Read Lucille Fordham's leader to the parole board. ]

Johnson, who is serving 45 to 100 years in the Menard Correctional Center, was a prisoner at the Lee County Jail when he and fellow inmate Chester Sanders killed Fordham, who was the sole guard on duty that night.

Fordham is the only Lee County deputy ever to be killed in the line of duty.

Johnson, 64, has been in front of the state prisoner review board nearly every year since the late 1980s. Next month, he will again ask the board to release him.

Sanders died in December at the Pickneyville Correctional Center.

Johnson’s former attorney, Shaena Fazal, now of Washington, D.C., says Johnson has paid his debt to society and should be released.

“He’s probably one of the most rehabilitated inmates I’ve ever met,” Fazal said.

The Fordhams, though, don’t think he’s paid enough.

“I have no forgiveness, and I don’t think we should show mercy,” Lucille Fordham said. “He didn’t show any mercy. I don’t think he’s at all remorseful.”

A grisly discovery

By May 9, 1977, Johnson and Sanders were tired of life behind bars at the Lee County Jail.

Johnson had been in the jail since October 1976 for the armed robbery of Walt’s Tap in Dixon. Sanders was awaiting trial for breaking into the home of, and threatening, his ex-wife and her husband.

Fellow inmates later told investigators that the two men had hatched a plan to overpower the jailer that night, tie him up, and break out a window to escape.

According to police and news reports:

Fordham, 39, who had joined the sheriff’s department 7 months earlier, was working the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift on May 9.

Around 10 p.m., Fordham was making sure the jail’s 10 inmates were secured in their cells for the night.

Johnson and Sanders, then 29 and 25, respectively, were assigned to Cell Block B, which also held three other inmates.

As he was locking up, Fordham discovered that Sanders’ cell door did not close automatically. As he went to close the door, Sanders threw liquid soup into Fordham’s eyes and pushed him out into the hallway.

Sanders then called for Johnson, who was hiding in the shower. The two beat Fordham with his own jail keys and a bar of soap stuffed into a sock.

Sanders than went back to his cell to grab a makeshift rope made of bedsheets, which they used to bound and gag Fordham.

Johnson then tried to break through a window, but bars on the outside of the window prevented the escape.

Fordham, who later was found in the hallway, died from asphyxiation, according to autopsy reports.

In September 1977, Johnson pleaded guilty to Fordham’s murder under the accountability theory, which holds that someone can be liable for the conduct of another if he helped plan or commit the crime.

He was sentenced to 45 to 100 years in prison, but he later appealed his conviction on the grounds that he didn’t understand what he was pleading guilty to.

Sanders also pleaded guilty under the accountability theory and was sentenced to 48 to 100 years in prison.

While both men acknowledged that they played a role in Fordham’s death, each blamed the other for inflicting the fatal blows, according to police and news reports.

In 2005, Johnson told the Wall Street Journal that he accepts his role in Fordham’s death.

“I can’t help but think of him,” he told the Journal. “Whenever I look at one of [the officers], I think of him.”

A call to duty

Fordham, born and raised in Amboy, enlisted in the U.S. Navy shortly out of high school. He married Lucille on Dec. 31, 1962, in Brunswick, Maine.

The couple have five children: sons Marin, Robert, and Richard Bert Jr., and daughters Dorothy and Misti.

Misti Fordham describes her dad as a “practical joker” who would “give you the shirt off his back.”

Lucille Fordham said her husband had instilled a “good work ethic in people.”

“He was a hard worker,” she said. “The kids always had their jobs to do, but when work was over, then we played. We didn’t have much money, but we always found things that were fun.”

Fordham, a chief quartermaster, took his family throughout the country during his time in the Navy. After 17 years, he took a position in Dixon as a Navy recruiter.

“It was kind of like home,” Lucille Fordham said of life in Dixon. “We never had family close. It’s small town U.S.A.”

He also worked in the emergency room at CGH Medical Center in Sterling and was interested in becoming an EMT, Lucille Fordham said. Fordham, who was friends with many Lee County deputies and then-Sheriff Ray Nehring, also joined the sheriff’s auxiliary.

So, when he retired from the Navy in 1976, the logical career choice for him was to become a deputy with the sheriff’s department. That was something her husband was “very eager” about, Lucille Fordham said.

The thought of her husband being in danger never crossed her mind, she said.

“It’s a small town,” she said. “If it had been Chicago or Rockford, then there would have been [a safety concern]. I never thought it would be dangerous.”

Just 2 days before he died, the family had celebrated the wedding of Martin, the couple’s oldest son.

The night of her husband’s murder, Lucille Fordham was picking up her oldest daughter, Dorothy, from the hospital, where she was a nurse. Misti, then 12, was asleep at home.

On the way home, she drove past the jail and saw then-Coroner Richard Schilling there. She remembered commenting on it, but it didn’t occur to her that something may be wrong with her husband.

When she got home, Nehring and his wife were waiting to give her the news.

“You just don’t believe it,” she said.

When Johnson and Sanders each pleaded guilty, Lucille Fordham said, she was relieved.

“It was a relief because none of us had to go through [a trial],” she said. “As I understand it, there was really no doubt. ... There was no question as to what had happened.”

‘A model prisoner’

Attempts to reach Johnson’s family for this story were unsuccessful.

According to news reports, Johnson, formerly of Sterling, is the fifth of 12 children. His father had died in a car accident when he was 12, and his mother later remarried.

After pleading guilty to Fordham’s murder, he was sent to prison in October 1977.

Fazal, who represented Johnson from 2005 until last year, said her former client has been “working since the day he got into prison.”

Johnson, who had only an eighth-grade education, obtained his GED while behind bars.

Skilled at carpentry, Johnson built many pieces of furniture, such as desks, for the prison, as well as name plaques and other items, Fazal said.

He has generally behaved himself in prison and received only minor “tickets” for such infractions as refusing to work a 24-hour shift, Fazal said.

In 1997, he married Arlene, who lives in southern Illinois. She told Sauk Valley Media in 2005 that her husband was “not the same man that he was” in 1977.

In August 2004, Johnson discovered a lump on the right side of his neck. Six months later, the lump had grown and a biopsy determined that he had stage 4 neck cancer. He underwent radiation and chemotherapy.

His diagnosis, however, was poor.

That’s when Fazal, then the executive director of the Long-Term Prisoner Policy Project in Chicago, took up his case and appealed to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to grant Johnson an executive clemency so that he could spend his remaining days with his family.

That request was denied. Johnson’s cancer, however, went into remission in 2007.

“It was pretty miraculous,” Fazal said. “We fought tooth and nail trying to get him medical attention at the prison, and finally we were able to get doctors to see him.”

Fazal stayed on Johnson’s case until last year, when she became the national policy director at Youth Advocate Program Inc. in Washington, D.C.

Still, she is proud of the strides he has taken while in prison, she said.

“The first time I met him, he was such a harmless guy,” Fazal said. “He is a hard worker and a thoughtful person. He is genuinely a good person and is remorseful for his role [in Fordham’s death].”

A ‘C-number’ prisoner

Johnson, who first became eligible for parole in 1985, is known as a C-number inmate, which stands for the letter preceding his prison identification number.

C-number inmates are those convicted before 1978, when sentencing laws changed.

Before 1978, the trial judge had a wide array of discretion and could sentence a defendant to an indeterminate range of years, according to Adam Monreal, chairman of the prisoner review board.

After serving anywhere from 7 to 12 years, an inmate is eligible for parole. The inmate typically goes in front of the board every 1, 2 or 3 years.

If the parole board does not grant parole, the inmate is required to serve 50 percent of the sentence. Any good time credit earned or time taken away for an infraction also is factored into that, Monreal said.

Monreal said Johnson could essentially be released in 2024 if the prisoner review board does not approve his latest request for parole.

Monreal said only 238 C-number inmates remain in the state.

When the law changed in 1978, defendants were sentenced to a specific number of years in prison and were given day-for-day credit.

If Johnson was sentenced to 40 years in prison under that law, for example, he would have been paroled in 1997.

In 1995, Illinois enacted a Truth in Sentencing law, which requires inmates convicted of first-degree murder to serve 100 percent of their sentence.

A murder conviction carries a sentence of 20 to 60 years in prison or life without parole.

If Johnson had been sentenced to 40 years under truth-in-sentencing, he would be released in 2017, for example.

Jail concerns

Lee County Sheriff John Varga said Fordham’s murder still is shocking 35 years later.

“It’s something you still think about when you go back into the jail,” Varga said. “When you’re out on the road, you’re not really sure what you’re walking into. The jail is supposed to be a secure setting.”

Jail security has changed since the 1970s, he said.

The cell blocks and hallways are equipped with surveillance cameras, Varga said, and deputies do a visual check on inmates every 30 minutes.

Inmates also can appear in court via closed-circuit TV, which cuts down on shuffling them back and forth between the jail.

Back then, only one guard was on duty each shift. When Varga joined the department in 2000, there still was a single jailer.

Now, two guards are on duty each shift, he said.

Varga said he doesn’t think Johnson should be paroled.

“This was a senseless killing,” he said. “It’s hard looking back on it as someone who is now in charge of the sheriff’s department.”

Going in front of the board

Lucille Fordham said she has been to the prison twice to appear in front of the parole board. The first was when Johnson first went up for parole in 1985, and the second time was 2005, when he had asked to be released on medical grounds.

For most of the hearings, she has sent a letter to the parole board.

“I don’t know if it would do any good to say anything to Mr. Johnson,” she said. “You hear about [parole hearings] on the news. Unless you’ve been through it, I don’t think you realize what people are going through. It’s not just something that happens and then it’s over with.”

Johnson’s request for clemency due to his illness was difficult for the family, Lucille Fordham said.

“I guess I resented it,” she said. “It made me sick that he had a life and obviously, he wasn’t as ill.”

Fazal said it was hard to tell whether the parole board would release Johnson this year.

“I’m not confident, just because the board doesn’t seem to parole people the way that it should,” she said. “He is the model prisoner and is the exact replica of what they want.”

Fazal said Johnson came close 2 years ago when five of the board’s 13 members voted to release him. One of the board members was absent that day, she said.

To be released, Johnson must have seven of the board’s 13 members vote in his favor.

Moving on

Over the past three decades, the Fordham children have married and had children and great-grandchildren. Several members of the family have followed in Fordham’s footsteps and have gone into law enforcement.

That’s something her husband would have been proud of, Lucille Fordham said.

"He never got to see any of this," she said. "He would have loved this so much, because family meant everything to him."

The Fordhams also received letters each year when Sanders was up for parole. In December, they received a letter that he had died.

“We feel for his family, but that’s one less thing that we have to deal with,” Misti Fordham said.

Both Lucille and Misti Fordham understand that Johnson could eventually be released from prison.

“I would hope that with my father’s memory, it wouldn’t,” Misti Fordham said. “But, if that decision is made, then that decision is made. Hopefully they see that my dad’s not forgotten and that he’s not just another statistic.”

Added Lucille Fordham: “If them let him out, if they let any murderer of a police officer out because of the economy, to me, it’s just a slap in the face to every police offer and their family. These men risk their lives every single day, and they deserve the respect.”

Parole by majority

The Illinois Prisoner Review Board determines when to parole C-number inmates who were sentenced to indeterminate prison terms before 1978.

Since the law change in 1978, the board also has hearings to determine whether good-conduct credits should be revoked or lost and sets the conditions for an inmate's release from custody.

C-number inmates are eligible for parole after serving 7 to 12 years in custody. They typically go in front of the board every 1, 2, or 3 years after that.

One member of the board is assigned to oversee the inmate's parole consideration. That board member will familiarize himself with the facts and circumstances of the offense and the inmate's criminal history. The board member will conduct an interview with the inmate at the prison and will discuss the inmate's institutional history, family history, and plans after release.

The board member also considers letters written in support of and opposing the inmate's release. A report will be made and the board member will make a recommendation to the full board, which usually meets to consider the inmate's parole a month after the initial interview.

In a closed session, those opposing the inmate's parole can testify in front of the board.

To be paroled, an inmate must get a majority vote, or 7 of 13 members, in favor of release.

Source: The Illinois Prisoner Review Board