Lester Bobby Mason chopped cotton in Mississippi as a youth along with 11 brothers and sisters. But when 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally beaten to death in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Mason’s mother decided in order…
Editor’s Note: Cleve Heidelberg was found dead in his apartment Saturday morning March 24. He was released from prison 10 months ago after spending 47 years behind bars for a crime he always insisted he did not commit. In a…
Early Saturday morning, police and property management found Cleve Heidelberg dead in his Peoria apartment after a friend failed to reach him. No foul play is suspected. “He died a free man. I don’t care what legal technicalities are pending,…
Legacy of the Heidelberg case There is no way to compensate for a wrongful conviction. It destroys lives and taints the entire judicial system – a key foundation of democracy. Totalitarian states don’t need or want a fair judiciary. Just…
BY CLARE HOWARD Released after almost half a century in prison on a vacated conviction, Cleve Heidelberg waited in the shade of a tree near the parking lot at a free specialty health clinic on Peoria’s south side on a…
UPDATE: Judge Albert Purham orders appointment of special prosecutor to review Cleve Heidelberg case from 1970. Steve Heidelberg remembers nothing from the 1970 murder trial of his father Cleve Heidelberg, but he now sees some of the legacy that trial…
