Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 68

CHICAGO TRIBUNE SECTION 1 FROM PAGE ONE WEDNESDAY MARCH 21, 2001 20 -S. f- iA victims," Murphy said, explaining that police believed it was possible that bodies had been dumped in garbage containers and taken to landfills without being discovered. 12 murder charges unravel In 1996 Cook County prosecutors, without waiting for complete laboratory analyses of the cases, obtained indictments against Clepper charging him with 14 of the murders. Authorities said he killed the women after he refused to pay for sex. But the cases began to unravel in 1999 after DNA tests linked another man, Earl Mack to one of the victims: a still unidentified black woman whose body was found in an alley in the 4900 block of South Champlain Avenue on May 25, 1994.

Mack gave a tape-recorded confession last May and is awaiting trial, police said. That charge against Clepper was dropped. At that point, O'Brien and Begane working with the state's attorney's office, the cold case unit and the FBI began closely examining the remaining 13 cases, a source said. O'Brien said that in some of the cases, there was no DNA to test. In others, tests showed the DNA of a single individual, and in the remaining cases, analysts found multiple DNA sources.

The investigators also found that some of the details Clepper provided failed to match the evidence, the source said. Only the case involving Scott remained solid, according to the source. By then, prosecutors realized that most of their cases against Clepper were too weak to take to trial. The prosecutors knew that Clepper's lawyers, assistant public defenders Allan Sincox and Joseph Kennelly, could use Clepper's false admission in the Mack case to cast doubt on his other confessions. O'Brien and Begane said that police properly obtained the confessions from Clepper and that the absence of physical evidence did not mean he was innocent but only that they could not prove his guilt.

CLEPPER: Serial suspect allegedly said he killed 40 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 similarities to the crime he was involved in" and "all have biological evidence." O'Brien said the 15 unsolved murders occurred in the city between 1990 and April 1996, when Clepper was arrested in the slaying of a South Side woman the crime he pleaded guilty to on Tuesday. O'Brien declined to be more specific on the locations of the 15 cases. After his arrest, Clepper allegedly gave police detailed accounts of 14 other murders. Authorities said he directed police investigators to several crime scenes and at one point used a chalkboard to plot the locations where he left bodies. Clepper allegedly told police he had strangled as many as 40 women, Begane said.

Investigation continues Police said they will continue to seek evidence, such as witnesses, in an attempt to link some of the 12 crimes to Clepper, said Lt. Joe Murphy, head of the department's cold case unit. But a source familiar with the investigation said some evidence has been developed that points toward another suspect in at least one of the killings. Clepper, 33, pleaded guilty to the strangulation of Patricia Scott, 30, of the 8500 block of South Halsted Street, in his home in the 8300 block of South Carpenter Street in April 1996. Clepper's mother and a friend of Clepper's pleaded guilty to helping dispose of Scott's body.

After a janitor at Calumet High School found Scott's body in a garbage bin behind the school near 81st and May Streets, police acted on a tip and S3 CP5 Sk. a Gregory Clepper pleaded guilty Tuesday to one murder but is suspected in as many as 27. found Scott's shirt and an earring with her blood in Clepper's bedroom, Begane told Schreier. Murphy, who was head of the Calumet Area violent crimes unit when Clepper was taken there for questioning, said Clepper gave statements that were "very coherent and very specific He wasn't confused." Murphy said he accompanied Clepper during visits to various murder sites. "I rode around with him," he said.

"He took us to specific locations. He was describing to me what I had already seen." While physical evidence such as DNA, fingerprints or bloodstains on Clepper's clothing was lacking in the cases, investigators believed his statements were sufficient to pursue charges. Murphy said Clepper told them he knew some of the victims. In other cases, Murphy said, Clepper provided specific details about how the women were killed and found, details they believed he would not have known unless he was present. Murphy said police were unable to substantiate Clepper's alleged assertion that he committed as many as 40 murders in the decade before his arrest.

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