Police reopen three SIU murders

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- It's been more than 20 years since Southern Illinois University students Susan Schumake, Kathleen McSharry and Theresa Clark were stabbed to death in separate crimes that shocked this college town.

Now police will try to solve the murders that took place in 1975, 1976 and 1981 by exhuming the body of a convicted killer they say may have been responsible, Carbondale Police Chief R.T. Finney said Friday.

Williamson County Circuit Judge Paul Murphy granted a request by Jackson County State's Attorney Mike Wepsiec Thursday to exhume the body of John Paul Phillips.

Phillips was buried in Williamson County after dying of a heart attack in 1993 while on death row at Menard Correctional Center. He had been sentenced to death in 1986 for the rape and murder of Carbondale waitress Joan Wetherall five years earlier.

Police say DNA tests that didn't exist when Schumake, McSharry and Clark died will be conducted and could tie Phillips to the killings.

Clark, a 22-year-old graduate student from Lemont, was found stabbed to death in her apartment near SIU in January 1975. McSharry, a 24-year-old junior from Chicago, was found stabbed to death in her home near campus the next year.

Both women had been sexually assaulted.

During Phillips' sentencing hearing for Wetherall's murder, one of his former cell mates testified that Phillips' had bragged about killing Clark and McSharry and described the crimes in detail.

But after Phillips was sentenced to death, prosecutors never tried him for the other killings.

Finney said police were recently reviewing evidence from cold cases when they found a new DNA sample from the August 1981 murder of Susan Schumake, a 21-year-old student from Chicago Heights who also was slain and raped near SIU.

That discovery prompted police to seek to exhume Phillips' body to try to solve the three crimes, Finney said.

The news was welcomed by Schumake's mother, Caroline, 72, who lives in Chicago Heights with a caregiver.

"I think about her every minute of every day," said Schumake, who was partially paralyzed from a stroke several years ago. She said time has not healed her sorrow.