Former Joliet resident publishes book about CSI scandal

JOLIET – The pages of “Bloody Lies: A CSI Scandal in the Heartland,” behold a gripping tale: a double murder of an All-American couple in Nebraska on Easter night in 2006, false confessions and planted blood evidence by a prominent CSI director.

Except that it’s all true.

The author is former Joliet and Plainfield resident John Ferak, the reporter who covered the investigation into the murders of Wayne and Sharmon Stock for the Omaha World-Herald. Ferak worked nine years for the newspaper, until 2012.

And he credits The Herald-News in Joliet for contributing to his passion for journalism.

At age 11, Ferak – then a student at St. Mary Nativity School in Joliet, where his mother Cathy Ferak of Plainfield also taught – was delivering newspapers to Herald-News customers in the Gardner Street area, eventually earning the newspaper’s coveted “Carrier of the Week” title.

Around that same time, Ferak attended a career day event at The Herald-News. His uncle, John Harmon, retired editor of The Columbus Republic in Indiana, is a former sports editor and news editor for The Herald-News. Harmon was working for The Herald-News when Ferak attended that career day, Ferak said.

Nevertheless, the journalism bug didn’t bite Ferak until his family, which included his father John, now a retired Bolingbrook High School history teacher, moved to Plainfield and Ferak was attending Plainfield High School.

Ferak realized the impact of journalism when he wrote an article for the school newspaper about track coach Stephen Hunt, who died in the 1990 Plainfield tornado. Ferak wrote that story when the school was temporarily relocated to the former Joliet Catholic High School building and was inspired by the feedback he received.

“I was 17 years old and it was not a great story,” Ferak said. “But I think I captured what Mr. Hunt meant to so many students and teachers. It was my first experience in writing a serious news story.”

In 1993, Ferak said he was a paid intern for The Herald-News. Ferak has since worked as a reporter for the South Bend Tribune in Indiana, the Arlington Heights Daily Herald and as a metro editor at the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin.

What made the Stock case unique, said Ferak, now an award-winning Gannett Wisconsin Media investigative team editor, was that it became the first instance in modern American history that had these three elements: a prominent CSI director caught planting crime-scene blood evidence, a double murder and a false confession.

“False confession cases, sadly, happen from time to time,” Ferak said, “but it’s unheard of to find such a case where an extremely high-profile Midwestern CSI lab manager winds up going to prison himself.”

Ferak is set to return to the Joliet area at 2 p.m. Oct. 26 to host a presentation and book signing at the Plainfield Public Library, 15025 S. Illinois St., Plainfield. Although people who followed the Stock murders will probably enjoy Ferak’s book, Ferak believes the story, published by Kent State University Press, is sufficiently compelling for any fan of true crime books.

“They say truth is stranger than fiction,” Ferak said. “That is certainly true here.”

For information, visit www.johnferak.com.