Shelby Co. (ECWd) –
After the resignation of the former Shelby County State’s Attorney, Nichole Kroncke, in January of 2023, it was discovered by the appointed special prosecutors that records were missing from the office computers.
As reported in this article, “According to an email dated February 10, 2023, from the court-appointed special prosecutor Tracy Weaver, numerous public records appear to be missing from the State’s Attorney’s office computers. While emails placed in a deleted folder are not technically the destruction of a record, it is a form of concealment of public records. More concerning are the other referenced missing files.”
“Elizabeth and I have also found that all documents (letters, charging documents, motions, subpoenas, orders, FOIA responses, press releases, etc.) have been deleted from Ms. Kroncke’s and Mr. Scott’s computers”.
While we do not know what Judge Harlow did with the information presented to her on this matter, a criminal investigation is active by the Division of Criminal Investigations at the ISP regarding something tied to former State’s Attorney Kroncke. We suspect it’s tied to possible record destruction but since they are refusing to provide records we will not know until the investigation is concluded.
We asked the ISP for the following in our FOIA request:
“Copy of all completed investigation reports recordings, and interview reports pertaining to an investigation of the former Shelby County State’s Attorney Nichole Kronke. It is believed this investigation would have begun sometime after January 31, 2023.”
The Illinois State Police Freedom of Information Officer was advised by the Division of Criminal Investigations that “search warrants, subpoenas, and further interviews are anticipated.” For those reasons, they denied the release of the records.
While not tied to this case, we did win our ISP lawsuit for the release of interview recordings regarding the investigation into illegal gun sales and payroll fraud at the Shelby County Sheriff’s office during former Sheriff Koonce’s term. The ISP fought the release of those public records for approximately 2 years and the court ruled against them and ordered their release. We recently obtained the recordings and listened to them. It will be most interesting to see how the lies told during those interviews are going be explained away by the locals. By all indications, the ISP failed to even follow up to validate many claims made which would explain why the AG chose to not pursue any criminal charges. We will have several articles soon on the recordings.
A copy of the FOIA response pertaining to the Kroncke investigation can be downloaded at this link or viewed below.
ISP FOIA on Kroncke
