A wrongfully convicted Illinois man will be exonerated decades after he died in prison.
The Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield said the person granted clemency will be Grover Thompson, who was convicted after the 1981 death of a Mount Vernon woman.
Grover decided to rest in the lobby of a Mount Vernon post office during a bus journey to see family in Mississippi while, at the same time, a man broke into the home of 72-year-old widow Ida White, hid in her shower and stabbed her.
The Innocence Project says Lt. Paul Echols, a now-retired member of Carbondale’s police department, ended up getting a confession to the crime from Tim Krajcir, who it says was “sometimes mistaken for a dark-complexioned man”.
Krajcir has a history of sex crimes dating back decades and admitted to killing nine people, police say.
This is the first posthumous exoneration in Illinois history and the 21st nationwide.
This story aired on WAND on January 14, 2019.
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