Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 1-7

Chicago Tribune Section 1 Monday, May 1, 2017 7 Shooting leaves boy wounded, afraid Stepdad also killed in incident close to home in Pullman By Heather schroering Chicago Tribune Clifford Marshall and his stepdad were "ride buddies." "I used to go everywhere with him" the 11-year-old said. When they weren't playing ball or video games together, they'd ride up to Checkers for milkshakes vanilla for Clifford and strawberry for KeShawn Slaughter. They had family dinners at Home Run Inn or headed to the White Palace Grill for breakfast. One April afternoon, the pair strolled from their home in the Pullman neighborhood to a store a few blocks away to pick up cigarettes and hot chips for Slaughter, walking because the car needed repairs. On the way back, in the 11600 block of South Bishop Street, a white car started following them.

Minutes later, someone got out and started shooting. Clifford and his stepdad were both hit. "I thought he was still alive," Clifford said Wednesday, sitting on a red upholstered ottoman in his home. "I heard two shots and thought, people don't die from two shots. "I thought he was just sitting there but he wasn't breathing," the boy said.

"I felt mad, scared. That's when an ambulance put me in the trunk. I was so tired, I felt dizzy. All these doctors was trying to help me breathe." Slaughter was shot in the head and died three hours later on April 10, two weeks before his 27th birthday, at Clifford Marshall, who was shot ABEL near his Pullman home on April 10, says he doesn't want to go URIBECHICAGO TRIBUNE PHOTOS outside anymore. "I heard two shots and thought, people dorCt die from two shots." Clifford Marshall Brandi Grant wears a pendant with a photo of her partner, who was killed in a shooting that also injured her son.

brought him balloons and toys. Even the Easter Bunny dropped off treats. After surgery to remove the bullet, which left a scar down the middle of his body, Clifford's mother said he kept asking why. "He just don't know why they would do anything like that," said Brandi Grant, 37. The boy's stepdad had been in trouble with the law in the past, a few arrests for misdemeanors, but his family said Slaughter was turning things around.

He got a job at a moving company, waking up early and working long hours to Stebic's case remains unsolved, unforgotten Pullman in November. Grant said she's renting to own the three -bedroom house, which she said was being rebuilt before they moved in. She thought the area was an upgrade from where they used to live in the Bronzeville neighborhood, which was "terrible," according to Clifford. He didn't feel safe there but thought his new neighborhood was nice. "No kids be disturbing anything around here.

It's peaceful, no music playing when I'm sleeping," he said. Grant said she thought she was getting what she wanted, a nice house with a garage and a backyard where the kids could play. But she didn't know about the gang fights. "I just found out there's a war here," she said. "I'm not gonna stay here." She wants to move her kids to Schaumburg or Carol Stream, "somewhere where they can go outside." Clifford, who likes playing basketball, said he doesn't want to go outside his home anymore.

"I can't even go to the park no more. Mom lets me sit on the porch," he said. "I ain't never going back out until we move." Clifford and his brother Charles, 10, go to school two blocks from home, but Grant doesn't want them walking anymore. They'd have to walk toward the crime scene. She's nervous the shooters might come back.

"I can't wait till they find them," said Grant, who wears a pendant with a portrait of Slaughter around her neck. "Either way, he will get justice. God don't like ugly." hschroeringchicagotribune.com Twitter OhItsHeather PEREZCHICAGO TRIBUNE PHOTOS "Obviously, we all have a sense of frustration when it comes to this case, because it is 10 years and we're still investigating it because it's unsolved," said Plainfield police Detective Sgt. Kevin McQuaid. "Do I think that it's ever going to be solved? I hope so.

I mean, I think that's the whole purpose of why we're in this profession." Greenberg said Lisa Stebic's sisters did not want to speak to the media, but her oldest sister, Debbie Rutten-berg, provided a written statement. "I knew my sister was murdered from the start," Ruttenberg said. "It's a disgusting thought and a surreal life for us. But it's been 10 years since Lisa was murdered and my sister's killer needs to be brought to justice. My family and I are victims and have had only one goal since Lisa was murdered, waiting all this time to witness justice." mwalhergchicagotrihune.com C-1" support his family of three children and four stepchildren.

Since he got together with Grant in 2012, he had been in trouble less often, court records show. The couple had plans to get married when the time was right. Together, they have a 3-year-old daughter, an energetic child who scuttled around the home in a red Minnie Mouse dress. She doesn't really understand yet, her mother said. "She want her daddy back," Grant said.

The family moved to ANTONIO the suburb gives way to farmland. "We were contacted by the patrol officer that took the report and said, 'Hey you guys might want to start looking into Siegel said. "I think the biggest thing was that the husband didn't report her missing. She was reported missing by a neighbor. Lisa had told the neighbor that if something happens, contact the police." Siegel and her fellow detectives said they run down every tip that comes in.

They've fielded calls from people across the country, many with theories rooted in dreams or visions. "There have been so many random things," Siegel said. "I mean, we've had people from Michigan, California, 'Oh, you should check here' 'I see railroad Or 'Cats on a farm that means you've got to go check the road called Caton Farm, because that has Cat on It's just weird and random stuff." Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. The bullet that hit Clifford entered his shoulder and traveled down his body. He was in the hospital, the same one where his stepdad died, for more than a week.

"I had to spend my whole FAMILY PHOTO Stebic was a mom of two. NBC-5 reporter Amy Jacob-son accepted an invitation to speak with Craig Stebic and swim with him and his lads at the Stebics' backyard pool. A competing news channel broke the story, adding another round of attention-getting headlines to an already heavily covered case. Despite the made-for-TV elements of her case, Lisa Stebic's disappearance was soon competing for attention as Will County endured a series of major national criminal investigations, straining resources for both police and prosecutors. Stebic's family watched as tips and leads dwindled in their case and resources were diverted to the other high-profile cases especially Stacy Peterson's disappearance.

"It wasn't just sucking the oxygen, it was sucking the money out of the room, because I felt like Will County only had so much money to spend on prosecution and literally only so many hours in the day that these prosecutors can devote," Greenberg said. Will County Assistant State's Attorney Michael Fitzgerald, head of the office's felony division, happened to be working late the night Lisa Stebic was reported missing, and helped police with legal research. He's been chasing the case ever since but her case was only the first wave, he said. About six weeks after Stebic disappeared, Christopher Vaughn killed his wife and three children on a frontage road near Channa-hon. In October, Boling-brook resident Stacy Peterson disappeared.

In February 2008, five women were shot and killed and a spring break in the hospital," he said, later pulling back the collar of his Mickey Mouse T-shirt to reveal the small crater where the bullet hit him. "But it was OK we played board games." Teachers and family sixth was injured at the Lane Bryant outlet store in TinleyPark. "Lisa Stebic's disappearance in May of 2007 touched off a time period unlike anything we've seen in Will County," Fitzgerald said. "We had to dedicate a lot of resources to each of those cases as they unfolded. And I think we were able to do that.

We had an all-hands-on-deck mentality." Vaughn was sentenced to life in prison for killing his family. Like Stebic, Peterson has never been found. The Lane Bryant case remains unsolved. There was some crossover. Searches for Peterson doubled as searches for Stebic, given the fact that both women lived within a short geographical distance and had disappeared only about six months apart But Peterson's husband, Drew, appeared to relish attention of any kind, feeding a contingent of local and national reporters camped outside his home.

The attention only grew more focused on him after prosecutors re-opened the investigation into the drowning of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Drew Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant, was later convicted of Savio's murder. Greenberg said Lisa's family is happy that the relatives of Stacy Peterson and Kathleen Savio have gotten some measure of justice and closure, but they remain frustrated that authorities have been unable to offer their family any sense of hope their case will be resolved. "I feel like we just get lip service," she said. "I feel like they stand up and say, 'This is not a cold But what is the reality? It is a cold case." Police and prosecutors say Lisa Stebic has not been forgotten, and they have not given up hope.

Though it is done out of the eye of the general public, every 13 weeks Lisa Stebic is remembered in a building across the street from the Will County Courthouse in Joliet. Inside, a new grand jury is convened to hear evi- T'f Stebic, from Page 7 Craig Stebic has never been charged. He answered the door at his Joliet home last week but declined to speak to the Tribune. While the world has moved on, Lisa Stebic's family is rooted in time trapped by a story only partially told, one that may never be resolved. "I try to have faith, but I'm losing hope that her body will ever be found," Greenberg said.

Stebic's family is Jewish, and with their faith comes a prescribed set of observances to lead them through loss. Sitting shiva. Saying kaddish. None of which can be done, Greenberg said, until her body is found. And there is no justice, no one to bear the blame for her disappearance and presumed death.

"How can you move on? There's no grave that we can visit," said Greenberg, who has been the family spokeswoman for years. "How do I answer Lisa's grandmother when she's afraid that Lisa's just lying in a ditch somewhere and is not given the proper burial that she should have? I mean, I don't have an answer to that." Stebic's case quickly drew national attention. She was young and attractive, a devoted suburban mother of two who worked in a local school cafeteria to allow her to spend more time with her children, family said. The 37-year-old was trying to leave her deteriorating marriage to her husband of 14 years. She was last seen by her husband on April 30, 2007, after he had sent the children on a bike ride to the store.

That same day, her divorce attorney sent her papers to have her husband evicted from the home they shared in Plainfield, though Craig Stebic said he knew nothing about the papers. The next day, she was reported missing by a neighbor after Craig Stebic called her to ask if she knew where Lisa was. There were massive searches, billboards, hotlines, rewards, television appearances. Then former Melanie Greenberg speaks last month in her Naperville home about Lisa Stebic and the 10th anniversary of her disappearance; the Stebic family's former home in Plainfield. dence in a range of cases, and as a matter of practice, Plainfield police Detective Carianne Siegel appears before each new panel to be sworn in as a grand jury investigator for the Stebic case.

"It keeps it an active case so that if something were to come up that we would need subpoena power, we already have approval through the grand jury," Siegel said. Siegel said the case has woven itself into the fabric of her career and the entire police department. "As far as it being an anniversary, it's a day that I know every year," she said. "May 1st the day we took the report. And it's something that's been affecting our department for the last 10 years." She was working the night Stebic was reported missing from her home on Red Star Drive, a quiet street overlooking a wetland area on the western edge of Plainfield, where.