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By Tamara SharmanFormer Will County Coroner Robert Tezak’s sentencing hearing on federal arson charges has been postponed until Monday.The sentencing hearing was set to resume on Friday, after being recessed on May 16. But instead the hearing will resume Monday morning in a federal courtroom in downtown Chicago.Assistant U.S. Attorney Dean Polales said lawyers likely will finish with testimony from witness Sheldon Shannon on Monday. He expects the hearing then will be recessed until a later date.Shannon and Tezak were once housed together in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. Tezak remains jailed at the facility.Shannon testified on May 16 that Tezak asked him to arrange to have a co-conspirator in his admitted arson activities and possible witness against him killed because Tezak believed the man was preventing him from being released on bond.In October 1993 Tezak pleaded guilty to hiring others in 1987 to burn down a Crest Hill bowling alley he owned to collect the insurance money.He also pleaded guilty to threatening to kill his former daughter-in-law, who reportedly also was his ex-lover, if she testified against him in court.As part of a plea agreement, federal prosecutors will dismiss charges that Tezak hired others to set fire to a building he owned in downtown Joliet which housed the Will County Private Industry Council, but the former coroner has admitted his role in the 1987 blaze.Tezak said he had the building torched to collect insurance money and to destroy records kept there that were wanted by a federal grand jury in an investigation of others.Tezak, who made a fortune after obtaining the rights to the UNO card game and who was once a powerhouse in Will County Republican circles, faces a maximumof about 19 years in prison.
Newspaper Details
Matteson Star
Matteson, Illinois, US
Sun, Jun 26, 1994
Page 3
Full Page
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Anonymous
AZ, USA 28 Jan 2020
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