MURDER IN LAWRENCEVILLE; coverup underway?

LAWRENCEVILLE—The body of a male found at his residence at Lawrenceville’s United Methodist Village Sunday has the city’s police chief even more tight-lipped than usual, as the Illinois State Police has been called in to investigate—never a welcome thing anywhere in Lawrence County.

UMV

According to sources at the scene, the victim is Robert “Bob” Westall, 78 (adjusted information as sources are coming through), who lived in one of the cabin-type homes at the village (which is a retirement community of sorts, located in the middle of Lawrenceville). He was discovered Sunday morning by an acquaintance who stopped by to visit and found Westall slumped over, discolored and “cold to the touch.” This person described to authorities that there “seemed to be signs of a struggle.” According to sources peripherally involved in the investigation, the police were checking with the hospital in Lawrenceville to learn if anyone had come in Saturday night or Sunday morning with cuts or bruises that appeared to have been received in an altercation; however, there’s been no word on any results of that…and in Lawrenceville, it’s possible there never will be.

There has been no OFFICIAL word of cause of death; however, word is filtering out that he was not shot, but may have had his throat cut and/or was beaten.

As well, reports have reached Disclosure that the phone lines to Westall’s residence had been cut, as well as those of his neighbors. Neighbors have reportedly been told to keep their doors locked, this by police authorities.   These reports remain unconfirmed by officials in Lawrence County and of course, may never BE confirmed.

Lawrenceville police chief Mike Mefford adheres to the belief that the news organizations should only be spoon fed dribs & drabs of information, which is why we say what we do, and why we didn’t get this post up last night (which is when we learned of the apparent homicide). With ISP involved, it’s possible a lead might be developed and suspects questioned, but not very likely. That’s because with incidents like this, it’s imperative that public input be involved in order to develop the leads. However, in Lawrence, public KNOWLEDGE of even the basic FACTS is discouraged. So we’ll see how this works out….and we’ll keep you posted, so keep checking back.

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Posted by Jack Howser on Mar 26 2012. Filed under Breaking, Lawrence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry