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News
Sheriff recalls worst Kendall mass murder : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisSheriff recalls worst Kendall mass murder
| Five were shot dead in Yorkville 40 years ago this week
| by Matt Schury and Tony Scott
| 1/3/2013
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It was 40 years ago last Saturday that the worst mass murder in Kendall County's history occurred at the Pine Village Steak House that once sat at the southwest corner of Routes 34 and 47 in Yorkville. A Walgreen's drug store now sits at that corner.
Five people were shot and killed following a botched robbery at the restaurant on Dec. 29, 1972. Carl Allan Reimann and Betty Frances Piche entered the restaurant demanding money and before they left Reimann used a .32 caliber handgun to take the lives of five innocent people.
Reimann's victims included: Dave Gardner of Yorkville, a 35-year-old grocery store manager and father of four who was sitting at the Pine Village bar waiting to pick up food to take home to his family; Robert E. Loftus of Bristol, a 48-year-old Navy veteran and bar patron; Catherine Rekate, 16, a Yorkville High School junior working part-time at the restaurant as a dishwasher; George Pashade, 74, a German immigrant and Aurora resident who worked as the restaurant's chef; and John Wilson, 48, of North Aurora, the bartender.
Following quick action by Kendall and Grundy County Sheriff's Departments, the couple was apprehended in Morris a short time after the crime. Eventually both Reimann and Piche were convicted of murder and robbery charges following a trial in May 1973.
Kendall County Sheriff Richard Randall was a young Yorkville Police officer at the time, and while the Pine Village wasn't in the city limits, he decided to check out the scene.
"I was only on the job like three years," he said.
Randall was on duty, driving around the newly constructed Countryside Shopping Center when a call came in from the Sheriff's Department reporting an armed robbery in progress.
He said he hasn't really reflected much on the events of that day but the recent shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. brought back some of the memories. Randall, a native of Massachusetts, grew up just 150 miles from Newtown.
"I really never-I don't want to say put it out of my mind-but I put it out of my mind," he said. "I never thought it bothered me or affected me until this year-like 40 years later.
"We experienced the same horrific situation 40 years ago on Dec. 29," he said.
Randall credits then-Sheriff Tom Usry for sending out a message with a description of the car and the suspects given to him by Rekate's father, who was waiting outside to pick up his daughter. It was relayed to all of the regional police departments through the Illinois State Police Emergency Radio Network (ISPERN).
"That was one of the defining moments in my career that a system like that works and you get that message out as accurate as you can and as soon as you can," Randall said.
During an interview in 2007, Randall recalled being the first officer on the scene.
"It was an extremely terrible scene," Randall recalled. "But... you're trained to look at it from a black-and-white perspective instead of a personal perspective. You try to make sure there are no more bad people there, and to try to help the people who've been shot."
While modern police and fire personnel have counseling at their disposal, such luxuries weren't available in the early 1970s, and because the Sheriff's Office had a small staff, it was back to business as usual after the crime occurred, according to David Earl Thompson, a 24-year-old rookie Kendall County sheriff's deputy at the time.
"We finished up that night, went home, took a shower and came back in," he said. "There wasn't any opportunity for grief counseling or anything. You went in and you sucked it up."
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