Longest-serving prisoner in Illinois up for parole hearing

DIXON, Ill. -- Convicted killer William Heirens has spent 61 years behind bars, longer than any other inmate in Illinois.

The 78-year-old entered prison at age 17 after pleading guilty in 1946 to three gruesome murders, including the dismemberment of a six-year-old girl.

But Thursday, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board is to decide if more than half a century of incarceration has provided enough rehabilitation for Heirens to go free.

"I figure I'll be getting out this year," Heirens told the Chicago Tribune. "It's a bad thing on the reputation of Illinois that they lock people up forever."

In a 19-page confession, Heirens admitted he stabbed Josephine Ross, 43, and stabbed and shot 32-year-old Frances Brown in 1945. He also admitted that he abducted, dismembered and killed Suzanne Degnan the following year. Authorities found the girl's body parts floating in sewers near her Rogers Park home on Chicago's North Side.

Heirens, also an admitted burglar, was sentenced to three consecutive life terms for the slayings.

Throughout his nearly 30 previous appearances before the review board, Heirens has proclaimed he is innocent.

His attorney Steven Drizin, the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's School of Law, has argued that the confessions made to authorities decades ago were coerced and police mishandled the investigation.

Heirens, then a student the University of Chicago, was interrogated for days without an attorney and injected with sodium pentathol, an anesthetic that was then considered a truth serum.

Heirens, who has diabetes uses a wheelchair, lives in the hospital section of the Dixon Correctional Center, 90 miles west of Chicago.

"Much younger, more violent criminals with much worse records have been paroled by this board," Drizin told the Chicago Sun-Times. "Heirens poses no threat to anybody. He's got an advanced case of diabetes, he's largely confined to a wheelchair ... and his eyesight is failing. This is a very sick man who isn't about to commit any crimes against anybody."

Drizin pointed to Heirens' model behavior in prison, where he's served as a jailhouse lawyer, helping other inmates with appeals. Heirens also became the first Illinois inmate to earn a four-year college degree while in jail.

But family members of the victims disagree and have lobbied to keep Heirens behind bars.

"There can be no sense of security if he gets out," said James Degnan, who was born after his sister's death.

Heirens said if he is released, he'd like to travel the world by train.

"I'd just like looking out the window and seeing things go by," he said.

Under Illinois law, if the board decides Heirens is not a threat to the public, he can be set free.

A telephone message to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board by The Associated Press Sunday was not immediately returned.