Predict the future by creating it

You didn’t come this far to stop

My thoughts are different than others, the darkness is so overwhelming and stretching beyond the confines of a distorted reality. I want to fit in but their world seems so intimidating and impossible to comprehend. I want to run but there's nowhere to run where I don't intermingle with their world. How can anyone live with this type of remorse and not every second of their day be affected to the point of wanting so delve deeper into the darkness where society say's you belong. You're a monster they say, you are incorrigible, you can and never will conform to our social norms. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO LIVE AMONG US! Hide her away from us, punish her by putting her into an incarcerated environment to which is worse than the one she is in now, confuse her mind, even more offer her no hope. 

 This reality is not just mine to live but countless others that have found themselves facing the same darkness that surrounds their existence. There seems to be no hope in understanding why we are different and at the same time, the same. Only we as a collective can help give hope and confidence to those who have been forgotten. We can never give up but as God tells us to have faith the size of a mustard seed so to be able to move mountains. We must first be able to comprehend where we have been in order to predict and move forward into the future and that cannot happen unless we as a whole act as a whole, no one member of the whole can function differently and expect and outcome of perfection.

       " More spiritual progress will be made through failure, disappointment, hard times, and tears than will be discovered as a result of success, laughter, easy times, and trivialities."

                             Alistair Begg

Excerpt from Joliet Patch article dated Jan 29, 2023

JOLIET, IL — Even though Bethany McKee did not commit the "Nightmare On Hickory Street" strangulation murders of Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, the Shorewood native is serving a life sentence at the Illinois Department of Corrections. Now 28, McKee has made a remarkable turnaround of her life, according to lawyers at the Illinois Prison Project.

And that's partly why reducing McKee's sentence for her double murder conviction has become one of the top priorities for McKee's lawyers, Rachel White-Domain and Sarah Free at the grant-funded Illinois Prison Project in Chicago.

They are committed to regaining McKee's freedom, and trying to accomplish that goal in 2023.

"First and foremost, we do not intend for our advocacy for Bethany, who was also the victim of violence during her life, to minimize the tragedy that two young men lost their lives," White-Domain told Joliet Patch during last week's interview. "The fact is that Bethany was not in the room when these young men were tragically killed. When she came back in the room and learned what had happened for the first time, she was devastated and terrified. She knew that she could become the next victim."

The Illinois Prison Project is trying to convince Will County Judge Sarah Jones to allow for an evidentiary hearing on their efforts to reduce McKee's mandatory life in prison sentence. The next hearing for McKee's case at the Will County Courthouse is set for late March.

"The place we are in (right now) is post-conviction. Our hope and expectation is we don't want to get tied down with technicalities," White-Domain told Patch, "but that we get to tell her whole story. I absolutely feel optimistic. I feel once this story is told, anybody would understand."

Even though Josh Miner and Adam Landerman the ones who strangled the Hickory Street murder victims, Rankins and Glover, both 22, McKee was also found guilty under an accountability theory presented by the Will County State's Attorney's Office.

McKee was only 18 years old at the time of her first-degree murder arrest by Joliet police. She also had a young daughter. The house where the Nightmare on Hickory Street murders happened was owned by Alisa Massaro's father. Alisa Massaro and McKee had been best friends since they were little girls. Unlike McKee, Massaro pleaded guilty to a reduced felony charge and she got out of prison in 2018, after only five years of incarceration.

"Bethany’s life sentence in these circumstances is unconscionable," White-Domain told Patch last week. "Judge Kinney thought a life sentence was 'inappropriate' for Bethany, and we believe that anyone who has all of the information about Bethany's story would agree with him."

Sentencing Judge Didn't Want To Give McKee Life Prison Term

At McKee's November 2014 sentencing, now-retired Will County Judge Gerald Kinney did not want to impose a life prison term for McKee, but he was obligated to do so, the Illinois Prison Project attorneys have emphasized in their petition for executive clemency.

“The way the law is written, I really have no authority,” Judge Kinney said, citing his lack of sentencing options for McKee, whom he found guilty in August of 2014. The double murder conviction meant an automatic life sentence for McKee, Kinney said, adding he’d prefer to give her 40 years, or something in the range of 20 to 60 years.

“Mandatory sentencing is just inappropriate,” Judge Kinney declared in 2014.

In addition to pursuing a post-conviction appeal in Will County, the Illinois Prison Project has a separate executive clemency petition in front of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

With a clemency petition, there's no telling when the governor will rule on the request. Generally, a decision takes between two and four years, according to the Illinois Prison Project.

According to their filing before Judge Jones in Will County, "Bethany McKee is a survivor of rape, sex trafficking and physical abuse — all during her childhood. At age 17, she became a single mother. At age 18, she was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

"No one argues that Bethany wanted or even knew that Eric Glover and Terrance Rankins would be killed. While Bethany is remorseful, a life sentence in this case is widely inconsistent with principles of justice and mercy. The courts, however, have refused to correct this injustice, upholding Bethany's sentence on appeal and rejecting her post-conviction petition at the first stage."

The Illinois Prison Project revealed that "Bethany is seeking a commutation of her life sentence to time served, or in the alternative, to a period of 20 years of 100 percent, which would not result in her release until January 10, 2033.

"Bethany is a brilliant and kind person who has spent her incarceration working to understand her past trauma and remain a supportive mother to her now 10-year-old daughter. She deserves mercy as it is properly bestowed through the clemency process," argued McKee's lawyer, White-Domain.

To Write to Bethany

Bethany McKee #R91596

PO Box 1000

Lincoln, IL. 52656

Updates coming soon.....