Hosey: Life and death and leaving Louis Road

A year ago, when Laresa Kinley was living in East Chicago, her son saw an old classmate from Joliet on the news.

“When he saw the story on the news and he saw her, he said, ‘I went to school with her,’” Kinley recalled.

The story on the news was about the disappearance of baby Sema’j Crosby. The woman he had gone to school with was Sema’j’s mother, Sheri Gordon.

Hundreds searched for Sema’j for a day and a half, combing through fields and retention ponds, and then they found her under the couch in her own home. She was 17 months old and she was dead.

In the year since, no one has been charged with killing Sema’j or putting her under the couch.

“The facts of the case have not changed,” Deputy Chief Dan Jungles of the Will County Sheriff’s Department said the other day.

The facts of the case, police said, are that at least one of four women – Sema’j’s mother, her grandmother Darlene Cros- by, her aunt Lakerisha Crosby and grand- ma’s friend Tamika Robinson, along with a minor child – knows how the baby got under the couch.

“This is a child whose life was taken away by the people who were supposed to take care of her and love her,” Jungles said.

In July, Kinley ended up moving down the street from where Sema’j’s house used to be, before someone burned it down the day after she was buried. Kin- ley and her daughter had been staying at the West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago, but had to move when lead and arsenic were found in the soil.

“There was 1,200 people displaced,” she said. So Kinley and her daughter end- ed up on Louis Road. Then she learned Sema’j last lived on Louis too, less than a fifth of a mile away.

“I found out after I moved in,” Kinley said. “I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s right down the street.’ "

The other day Kinley found something else out. She was told a married couple was shot to death in the home she now rents eight years before Sema’j was killed. The landlord hadn’t mentioned it.

“I had no clue,” Kinley said. “If I knew anything about it, I wouldn’t have moved into this place.”

Kinley said she was glad to be getting out of the house early, not only because of the murders she just found out about, but also the ants and spiders she said infest the place.

“I wasn’t even able to sleep at night,” she said. “I’m on bug patrol.”

Kinley’s landlord, Kenneth Corcoran, got pretty upset when he was told his tenant heard about the murders. When he was asked about the ants and spiders, he said, “Have a nice day, buddy.”

The murders were in March 2009. Brian and Angela Charles were killed in the home where Kinley now lives, the one down the street from where Sema’j was found dead.

Brian Charles’ ex-wife, Kathleen Rundle, discovered the bodies. Rundle had supposedly gone to the house to retrieve videos for the two children she and her ex-husband had together, police said at the time. The children were 7 and 10 in March 2009.

No one answered the door but it was unlocked so Rundle went inside, police said. She found her ex-husband had been shot multiple times, police said, and his wife’s dead body was in another room with a single gunshot wound.

Brian and Angela’s 2-year-old son was also in the house but unharmed.

No one was ever charged with killing the Charleses. Angela’s mother, Jackie Roth, said she hears nothing from the

police. They didn’t even let her know the detective assigned to her case had retired.

“Oh no, no,” said Roth, who has custody of her daughter’s orphaned son, who now is 11.

“I had no idea he even retired,” she said.

The times the detectives did talk to her, Roth said, she was frustrated with what they had to say.

“They have excuses,” she said, and recalled them telling her, “We’re waiting for someone to talk.”

“Well, that’s never going to happen,” Roth said. “They want someone to do their jobs for them.”

Roth said she kept her daughter’s place up for a while, but it was hard with her living out in Marseilles in her own home, and the house on Louis Road went into foreclosure. Now Kinley lives there. At least for the time being.

“I’m going back to Indiana,” she said.

In her eight months on Louis Road, Kinley said she’s seen some marches held in Sema’j’s name.

“They knock on the door and say, ‘We’re doing a demonstration for justice for Sema’j,’ and things like that,” she said.

“I think it’s absolutely beautiful what they do,” Kinley said. “I pray they find answers.”

• Joseph Hosey is the editor of The Herald-News. You can reach him at 815- 280-4094, at jhosey@shawmedia.com or on Twitter @JoeHosey