Friday, March 11, 2005
Friday, March 11, 2005
Bart A. Ross, 57, killed himself when the police stopped his car. March 11, 2005 Electrician Says in Suicide Note That He Killed Judge's Family By JODI WILGOREN
HICAGO, March 10 - An out-of-work electrician whose delusional, decade-long legal crusade against doctors, lawyers and the government was dismissed last year by a federal judge, killed himself Wednesday night, leaving behind letters in which he admitted murdering the judge's husband and mother here last week. The man, Bart A. Ross, 57, had sued the federal government and a raft of others for $1 billion, saying they persecuted him with "Nazi-style" and terrorist tactics as he pursued a medical malpractice claim stemming from the severe disfigurement of his cancerous jaw. He left a suicide note in the van where he had been living confessing to the killings, and, in a letter to a local television station, said he had planned to assassinate the judge, Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Federal District Court, but "had no choice but to shoot" her loved ones when they discovered him hiding in the basement. Late Thursday night, David Bayless, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, said Mr. Ross's DNA matched that left on a cigarette butt in the Lefkows' sink, leaving little doubt about the case. "I regret killing husband and mother of Judge Lefkow as much as I regret that I have to die for the simple reason that they personally did me no wrong," said the lengthy letter signed by Mr. Ross and sent to WMAQ, NBC's Chicago affiliate, according to excerpts posted on the station's Web site. "After I shot husband and mother of Judge Lefkow, I had a lot of time to think about 'life and death' - killing is no fun, even though I knew I was already dead." Along with the confessional suicide note, the police said they found some 300 .22-caliber bullets, the same caliber used in the execution-style slayings, in the Plymouth van where Mr. Ross, who had no criminal record, shot himself in the head after being stopped for a missing tail light in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis. Mr. Ross's death and admissions were a shocking turn in a vast investigation that had thus far focused on white supremacists. Superintendent Philip J. Cline of the Chicago police said Thursday that Mr. Ross's name was on a list of people, culled from Judge Lefkow's caseload, that investigators had planned to interview. He also said Mr. Ross resembled one of two composite sketches released two days after the killings, and that his account of leaving the Lefkows' home at 1:15 p.m. on Feb. 28 matched witness reports. The other sketch was of a younger man seen nearby in a red car that morning, but the chief said Thursday, "at no time did we say they were together." Until Wednesday night, the search had largely concentrated on sympathizers of Matthew Hale, the Aryan leader convicted last year of soliciting his security chief to kill Judge Lefkow. That the confessed killer was not part of an extremist group but one of many troubled litigants with pending matters left Mr. Hale's supporters seeking apologies and sent new waves of fear and insecurity through the jittery courthouse. Judge Lefkow, who expressed "sincere empathy" for Mr. Ross in legal papers even as she said his claims "lack any possible merit," described him in an interview Thursday as "a very pathetic, tragic person" and said the news was "very chilling." "I guess on one level I'm relieved that it didn't have anything to do with the white supremacy movement, because I feel my children are going to be safer," Judge Lefkow said as she left for Denver to bury her mother, Donna Humphrey. "It's heartbreaking that my husband and mother had to die over something like this." Neighbors of Mr. Ross, an electrical contractor who changed his name from Bartilomiej Ciszewski upon emigrating from Poland a quarter-century ago, said he was an angry loner whose huge black dog terrorized children on their quiet street in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago. They recalled his disrupting a block club meeting several years ago to solicit support for his suit, and said that early last month, facing eviction, he asked neighbors to adopt his dog and cat because he could no longer afford to feed them. Soon after, they said, he packed his belongings and left. "When I looked out this morning and saw all the police tape, I said to my husband, 'It has to be Bart Ross,' " said Jennifer Fernandez, a neighbor. "He obviously had a chip on his shoulder about this." Lawyers involved in the case, in which Mr. Ross represented himself, said that his physical and mental condition had deteriorated through the years and that they had fretted for their own safety around him. "Because he was delusional, he kept seeing bigger and bigger conspiracies," said Thomas L. Browne, who represented a law firm singled out by Mr. Ross, and said he immediately thought of him upon hearing of the Lefkow killings. "We really didn't think he was going to do anything violent, but he was getting less and less stable with all of these pleadings." Mr. Ross's ranting odyssey through the judicial system began in June 1994, two years after he was diagnosed with "squamous cell carcinoma of the floor of the mouth," according to court records, and originally focused on his complaints of botched surgery at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago. By the time his case reached Judge Lefkow's docket last year - having been thrown out of state court, dismissed by a different federal judge, and rejected by the United States Supreme Court - it had evolved into a tirade accusing the judiciary of treason and terrorism. Comparing his suit to those filed by relatives of victims in the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Ross sought $1 billion in damages, saying he had suffered "total financial destruction," having to sell his house, and "total destruction of every other aspect of his life over the past 12 years and in the foreseeable future." He said he had traveled 5,000 miles consulting 100 lawyers and 200 doctors, and that he had lost all his teeth, could no longer open his mouth more than a quarter-inch or eat solid food, and was "continuously 24/7 on pain relievers morphine and Tylenol with codeine." He sought the impeachment of judges involved in his case, and declared, somewhat incoherently, that "the same United States through judiciary is the Nazi-style criminal and violator of plaintiff's civil rights, and the same United States through the judiciary is the leader of the al-Qaeda style terrorist network." In a 2001 letter, Mr. Ross begged President Bush for help, though he noted that he had voted for Ralph Nader. "You all may regret it, if you Mr. President Bush avoid to make executive decision 'today' as 'tomorrow' will be too late," he wrote. Lawyers said Mr. Ross wore a sport coat over a sweater in court, and that his jaw got progressively thinner, practically preventing him from speaking aloud as the case wore on. One, Matthew Henderson, recalled Mr. Ross saying that "if he didn't get what he wanted, people were going to be sorry," while another, Barry Bollinger, remembered him making veiled threats like, "Somebody better take this seriously or things are going to happen." Mr. Bollinger said, "But I've heard that a thousand times in other cases." "This case was his life, and when it was over and he had nothing left to file," Mr. Bollinger said, his voice trailing off, "he had to be living in hell." Ruling against Mr. Ross's request to have a lawyer appointed to represent him at no charge, Judge Lefkow wrote: "The assigned judge expresses her sincere empathy with plaintiff's situation and by this brief decision does not intend to convey disregard for the cruel turn of fate plaintiff has experienced." But, she added, "the motion for appointment of counsel must be denied because the claims are certain to fail." At a news conference Thursday in West Allis, the police chief said one of his officers noticed Mr. Ross's van outside a school at 5 p.m. Wednesday, and followed him because the vehicle seemed suspicious. When the van stopped at a red light, the officer noticed a missing tail light and approached as a gunshot fired from inside exploded through the window. Finding the suicide note and other material linking Mr. Ross to the Lefkow murders, the police notified their Chicago counterparts and federal agents, who soon swarmed both the suburban street where the van remained and Mr. Ross's home in Chicago. In the letter to the television station, which ran four typed and three handwritten pages, Mr. Ross detailed the fateful day, saying he sneaked into the Lefkows' basement utility room at 4:30 a.m., and planned to lie in wait for the judge to return from work. "But Mr. Lefkow discovered me in the utility room about 9 a.m., he had an office next to the utility room," the letter says. "Then I heard voice 'Michael, Michael,' so I looked to the hallway (in the basement) and saw an older woman. I had to shoot her too. "I followed with a second shot to the head in both cases to minimize their suffering," he added. "Judge Lefkow was No. 1 to kill because she finished me off and deprive me to live my life through outrageous abuse of judicial power and decicration of the judicial office," the letter says. "Judge Lefkow, to her neighbors, is a church-going 'angel.' To me, Judge Lefkow is a Nazi-style criminal and terrorist." It is unclear why Mr. Ross was near Milwaukee, though several others vilified in his lawsuits live or work there. At the federal courthouse here, where judges have called for increased security, the news was greeted with relief and trepidation. "We all have these people, we all have people who are potentially unstable," another judge, Robert W. Gettleman, said.. "Of course, for something like this to happen, it's so over the top, nobody ever would have predicted it." Because of Mr. Hale's conviction for plotting to kill Judge Lefkow, much of the attention in the last week had fallen on him and his supporters. He faces up to 40 years at his sentencing on April 6. Mr. Hale's father, Russell, said, "It's a great relief to us that they found out, hopefully, who did this." "I'm sorry for the person's family that did do this," Mr. Hale added. "Somebody loved that person, and it is too bad that it happened." Billy Roper, a friend of Mr. Hale's who runs the Web site whiterevolution.com
