Double-murder convict’s release surprises local law enforcers

GRANVILLE — Putnam County authorities were angered to learn Friday a convicted double-murderer could be moving to Granville to a residence within 500 feet of a school. It wasn’t clear yet when the parolee will be relocated.

In a surprise development, Henry Hillenbrand, 71, was granted parole Thursday by a 14-0 vote by the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Hillenbrand had been listed as ineligible for parole until 2094 for the 1970 shooting deaths of George Evans and Patricia Pence in Evans’ Streator home.

While the parole board set him free with assorted conditions — no contact with victims’ families, must register with authorities — the board issued a rationale that read, “Reviewing all factors available at this time, it is the board’s conclusion that the subject is a good risk for parole.”

Putnam County was notified late Thursday via email that Hillenbrand would be released Friday and would move to the address of a relative in Granville. At press time Friday, the Department of Corrections had not provided a timetable for Hillenbrand’s release and re-entry.

“I’m wondering how he’s getting out after he killed two people,” chief deputy Chad Haage said, noting Hillenbrand’s twin sentences for violent crime were for a combined 390 years.

Haage said a parole officer for the Granville area confirmed that eventually Hillenbrand could arrive in Putnam County.

Hillenbrand’s parole caught La Salle County authorities off guard, too. The county wasn’t apprised of Hillenbrand’s parole hearing Thursday, with the result no attorney appeared in person to oppose release.

La Salle County state’s attorney Karen Donnelly emphasized that she had written a letter in opposition to release. And while she wasn’t notified of Thursday’s hearing, “I don’t believe my being there would have changed outcome based on what has been happening with other inmates, including (Chester) Weger.”

As with Weger, Hillenbrand has been afforded multiple parole hearings since the abolition of the death penalty and the state’s increasing emphasis on reevaluating life sentences. Hillenbrand was denied parole by a 9-2 vote in 2013 and by an 8-4 margin in 2016.

Apprehension and escape: Hillenbrand was charged with murder after he entered the Streator home of 22-year-old Evans with a rifle early June 29, 1970. He killed Evans with a single shot to the head.

He dragged 20-year-old Pence to his car, drove her to his apartment building, shot her three times and also struck her repeatedly with the rifle butt when she tried to escape to a neighbor’s home, according to NewsTribune archives. Pence collapsed and died on the steps of a neighboring home.

Hillenbrand was soon taken into custody, but after his guilty plea, escaped from La Salle County Jail in 1970 by cutting the bars and braiding sheets together to rappel down from a window. He spent more than a decade on the lam in southwest Missouri before being recaptured and pleading guilty to murder in 1984. Investigators finally tracked down Hillenbrand because, while he was traveling, Canadian border officials had taken fingerprints from a gun and had them checked against U.S. records.

Gary Peterlin was La Salle County’s state’s attorney at Hillenbrand’s sentencing in the 1980s, and the prosecutors had to work to show all of the aggravating factors in the Hillenbrand case to elevate the sentencing. Also, prosecutors interviewed people in southwest Missouri to find out if Hillenbrand had any criminal incidents while there.

Peterlin said he never went to Hillenbrand’s prisoner review board hearings.

Subject of a book, 'Tom Henry': Not until 2013 did Peterlin or county prosecutors know what Hillenbrand had done in the decade-plus between his escape and capture. David Hendricks, who was wrongly convicted of the 1983 murders of his own wife and children, was sentenced to prison and became a cellmate of Hillenbrand. Hendricks, a Christian businessman who was released after a 1991 retrial, for years pushed for the release of Hillenbrand and cheered the release. Hendricks published a book about Hillenbrand in 2013, "Tom Henry: Confession of a Killer."

Peterlin said from reading the book, he learned that, after his escape, Hillenbrand had broken into a house near Starved Rock State Park, hijacked a car and forced a teenager to drive him to Chicago. Peterlin said Hillenbrand found work at a horse farm north of Chicago, stole a name from an obituary, assumed the name Tom Henry, obtained a driver’s license and Social Security card and moved to Missouri.

Hendricks on Friday said he did not believe Hillenbrand would immediately show up in Granville.

“They had arranged for him to move to a half-way house in Chicago,” Hendricks said, relaying what he had heard from Hillenbrand’s sister, Gloria, who talked with him on the phone. However, he said he did not know for certain what Hillenbrand would be told to do.