WHITEVILLE, N.C. — For the first time in nearly 40 years, Joseph Sledge woke up behind bars with a chance of becoming a free man. The 70-year-old needed one more win at an innocence hearing.
Three judges listened to closing statements Friday about how Sledge was wrongfully convicted in the 1976 stabbing deaths of a mother and her adult daughter. A few hours later, carrying his belongings in plastic bags, Sledge emerged from a North Carolina jail, saying he was looking forward to what most people consider the most mundane of activities: "Going home. Relaxing. Sleeping in a real bed. Probably get in a pool of water and swim for a little while."
A special three-judge panel unanimously voted Sledge had proven he was innocent of the killings and ordered his release. But his freedom almost didn't happen because evidence had been lost for years. His attorney, Christine Mumma, took the case in 2004 and considered closing the case in 2012. Then court clerks discovered a misplaced envelope of evidence while cleaning out a high shelf of a vault. The envelope contained hair, found on the victim and believed to be the attacker's. Meghan Clement of Cellmark Forensics said none of the evidence collected from the scene — hair, DNA and fingerprints — belonged to Sledge.
The victims, 74-year-old Josephine Davis and her 57-year-old daughter, Aileen, were stabbed to death in September 1976. Aileen was also sexually assaulted. Sledge was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. After his release, Sledge was headed to Savannah, Georgia, to live with family. He told reporters he never doubted he'd be freed someday. "I had confidence in my own self. The self will and the patience," he said before trailing off and searching for the right word. "Patience is the word."
Twin Cities director and filmmaker Paul von Stoetzel stated of David Crowley “He’s been one of my best friends since high school.” Von Stoetzel also stated that the couple had a “great marriage.”
One of the actors in a trailer for Gray State, Charles Hubbell, described Crowley as level-headed and destined to succeed.
“He seemed more grounded and focused than would lend itself to anything chaotic,” Hubbell said. “The entire time I worked with him there was nothing aggressive or chaotic or strange or abnormal. He was one of the ones I was hanging my hat on, one who was going to succeed.”
Would this man, a well-respected and seemingly grounded person with a great marriage who had been working on a film for years to expose the incoming communist regime really suddenly snap and kill his family and himself?
Conspiracy theorists would certainly say no. And, if they are right, it is likely that Crowley was not only silenced for his attempt to warn others on the impending totalitarian takeover of our nation, but he was also made an example out of by the psychopaths bringing in this brutal oppression who would seem to want to say “Mess with us and we will take out your entire family.”
There are plenty of others just like Crowley out there, if we start to see more suspicious deaths, that message may become loud and clear.
Hector Reyes, 40, sought and was denied remodification several times on his property. The house went into foreclosure, and Reyes couldn't pay his mortgage for three years while fighting it. He finally found Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, who helped him win remodification of his mortgage last September. | Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times
Hector Reyes could probably write a book on the nightmares of fighting foreclosure.
It would include unexpected financial hits, unsuccessful pleas to the bank to renegotiate a mortgage, bad advice, a battle for loan modification, and scam attorneys.
“After three years of fighting, I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to let this house go.’ It’s worth three times less than what I owe. I don’t know what I’m fighting for,” says Reyes, a 40-year-old father of three who lives in south suburban Blue Island.
“I only kept fighting because my wife said no, that we had to keep trying,” he says.
Mortgage delinquency rates are falling nationwide, according to recent data.
Yet the length of time it takes for foreclosures to clear the market is growing, with the Chicago area posting among the longest foreclosure processes in the country — nearly 2 1/2 years.
The Chicago metro area saw foreclosures decline by more than 25 percent in 2014, compared with 2013.
At the same time, the average foreclosure process — from initial filing through auction of a home — continued to rise to an average of 903 days.
The increasing duration is due in part to the large backlog of foreclosure cases still making their way through Illinois courts.
However, housing advocates say the elongated timeline is contributing to the stagnant problem of abandoned and “zombie” properties continuing to distress housing markets in many areas of the region and city.
“We’re seeing approximately a two-year process, longer, if a homeowner is contesting it,” says Robin Coffey, assistant deputy director at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, a nonprofit community redevelopment group that daily confronts the issue both as a housing lender and an agency providing foreclosure help to homeowners in trouble.
Among states where mortgage delinquency rates are significantly higher, Illinois was hit hard by the mortgage crisis, leading the Illinois Supreme Court in 2012 to put rules in place slowing the movement of foreclosures through the system, Coffey notes.
“There were an awful lot of properties that were in default between 2009 and 2012 — before the court ruled on what lenders had to provide in a foreclosure filing, including original documents — that are still showing in the court process but lenders are not really pursuing anything,” says Coffey, who oversees lending at her agency.
“The biggest issue with this long foreclosure timeframe is these zombie properties sitting abandoned and in distressed conditions, making it difficult for any type of recovery in the low- to moderate-income neighborhoods we operate in,” she says.
The agency last year helped Reyes and his wife emerge from a nearly three-year odyssey into and through the foreclosure process with the home they bought in December 2001.
The journey began with the death of Reyes’ mother in 2010.
Then working as a factory machine operator, Reyes, as his mother’s main source of support, had to find funds for a funeral and related expenses. The financial outlays set him back to the point where he had to file for bankruptcy that year.
A year later, his mortgage ballooned, going from $1,100 to $1,400 a month. At the same time, work at his factory slowed and his 40 hours a week began to shrink. His reduced salary, and that of his wife, a teacher’s aide, wasn’t enough to meet higher mortgage payments.
“We ran through our savings. I called the bank and explained my situation and asked if we could work something out. They said the only way they could actually help me was if I was behind on payments,” Reyes says. “They told me, ‘Fall behind four or five payments and call us back and we’ll talk about it.’ So I stopped paying November 2011.”
In early 2012, he applied for a mortgage modification. The bank told him to restart his payments during the process, to avoid going into foreclosure, he says. So he did.
“I submitted every single document they asked for, and they denied me,” he says.
“They told me to reapply. I did, a second and third time, and was denied. It was after the third time that they finally told me it was because of the bankruptcy,” he says.
Soon after, the bank stopped accepting his payments, filing for foreclosure in December 2012. The court appearances began.
“Then at one hearing, the judge asked, ‘Is it your intention to keep the house?’ I told him, ‘Yes, it’s my house. It’s the only one I have.’ The judge said, ‘OK. As long as you’re working on a loan modification, the foreclosure will not proceed.’”
Reyes sought help through the Regional Fair Housing Center in Evergreen Park. It helped him apply again in summer 2013, but again, his modification request was rejected.
Reyes hired an attorney who charged him $2,500. After paying $1,500 up front, he received a message from the attorney to contact an individual at the bank and never heard from the attorney again. Applying a fifth time by himself, he was again rejected.
Reyes hired a second attorney in fall 2013. This one charged him $1,500 and reapplied for him. Rejected, the attorney reapplied, now a seventh time. This time it brought the news that his mortgage had been sold, and the attorney said he could nothing further.
By spring 2014, Reyes had been in foreclosure for 2 1/2 years. He had not had to make mortgage payments, but he was out a lot of money fighting to hold onto his home.
Then in June 2014, he was laid off from his factory job. He was ready to give up.
“That’s when I came across Neighborhood Housing Services. I had no hope they could help me,” says Reyes, who now runs his own business, doing home remodeling. “The counselor talked with the new lender and we reapplied. In July, they told me I’d been accepted for a trial modification. I was stunned. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Are you serious?’ ”
Reyes made his first payment out of foreclosure in September.
Spurred by low interest, dropping unemployment rates and clearance of backlogged foreclosures, experts see mortgage delinquency rates likely to continue their nationwide decline. And some point to cases like Reyes’ in arguing the long process isn’t all bad.
“Buildings that sit abandoned during that process aren’t good for neighborhoods or blocks, but it’s important to tell both sides of the story,” says Andrew Celis, who oversees home ownership and foreclosure prevention at Neighborhood Housing Services. “Where you have a family residing in the property who has experienced death, divorce, health crisis, unemployment — reasons folks historically fall into foreclosure — the elongated judicial timeline allows essential time to seek solutions.”