I’m a bit late on publishing this statement, but since has appeared no where else and since Nichole Owens did such a splendid job arguing why mass murder Mark Smith should not be let out on the street, I’m putting it up anyway.

I remember Mark Smith as the laundromat murderer.

But he was much more.

McHenry County State’s Attorney Chief of the Criminal Division Nichole Owens refreshes our and the Illinois Parole Board’s members’ minds in her statement below. I have added some paragraphing to make it easier to read.

INMATE MARK SMITH
PAROLE HEARING ARGUMENT
PRESENTED BY NICHOLE D. OWENS,
McHENRY COUNTY STATE’S ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
JUNE 18, 2008

On January 27, 1970, at approximately 9:30 pm, Jean Bianchi, a young wife and mother of two small children, drove to a laundry mat in the town of McHenry.

She called her husband about an hour later to tell him that the family laundry was almost done and that she would be home soon.

Jean never returned home again.

She never saw her husband again.

She never saw her children again.

Her vehicle was found near the laundry mat by the police.

Her laundry was found at the laundry mat with a half-written letter to a friend nearby.

For three days, Jean’s family frantically searched for her.

On January 30th, their worst nightmare came true.

Her body was found partially clothed, floating under an icy ledge in a small creek not from the laundry mat where she was abducted.

Jean’s face was unrecognizable.

Her teeth were knocked out, her face badly distorted from the vicious beating she endured.

An autopsy revealed that Jean had been stabbed 17 times in the neck, back, and chest. Her liver was lacerated.

Her vagina was traumatically lacerated.

Sand and grass were discovered in her throat.

Inmate Smith admitted that he abducted Jean Bianchi at the laundry mat at knife point.

He confessed to forcing her into his car.

He described how he raped her in the back seat, attempted to strangle her, beat her, threw her from a bridge, attempted to drown her in the shallow icy creek, and ultimately stabbed her to death.

And then, as Jean Bianchi lay dead or dieing, Inmate Smith still wasn’t finished with her.

He then sexually assaulted her with his fist.

Jean Bianchi’s family missed her right away.

The desperate search for her began that very night.

And as she lay alone in her watery grave while her family frantically searched, Inmate Smith went home, cleaned off his knife, and went to sleep in his bed, without a second thought.

Jean Bianchi’s family still suffers to this very day, thirty-eight long years later.

This is her sister, Betty Portlander’s 11th appearance before this parole board protesting Inmate Smith’s release from prison.

Exactly four months after murdering Jean Bianchi, on May 27, 1970, Inmate Smith viciously raped and murdered a seventeen-year-old high school senior named Jean Ann Lingenfelter.

Jean Ann was about to graduate from high school. She had her entire future ahead of her.

More tomorrow.

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The head shot is of Nichole Owens, Chief of the Criminal Division, McHenry County State’s Attorney.