Overview
- Stephen Small, 30, was abducted in 1987, confined in a 6ft plywood box outfitted with an air tube, water and light, and died by suffocation after his family could not decipher recorded ransom instructions.
- Prosecutors said Danny Edwards posed as a police officer to lure Small and demanded $1 million; he was sentenced to death, a punishment later commuted to life imprisonment.
- Investigators traced phone calls and used surveillance to locate Edwards and his partner, Nancy Rish, within days of the killing.
- Rish maintained she acted under coercion and longstanding domestic abuse, a claim that allowed her to seek relief under a 2016 Illinois law for victims of intimate partner violence.
- Kankakee County Judge Brenda Claudio ordered Rish’s 1988 terms to run concurrently and cut them by 50%, a move the Illinois attorney general’s office opposed; she was released in February 2022 and later spent about three years on parole.