On the run for five days in 2009 after allegedly murdering his uncle in New Lenox Township, Ill., Jason Gonzalez was found by Joliet police asleep in his mother's car when he turned on his cellphone for the first time since the slaying.
Gonzalez declined to talk to Will County sheriff's detectives, asking six times for a lawyer, according to his attorneys. So police turned to what in some murder cases is one of the most powerful levers at their disposal - the suspect's mother.
Kimberly Gonzalez was brought into the Joliet interview room, outfitted with video and audio recording equipment, where her son was being questioned. He told her he fatally shot his uncle - her brother Lance Goebel, 48 - then repeated his confession to Will County detectives who handed him a letter from his mother urging him to talk.
A Chicago Tribune review of hundreds of murder cases from the last decade provides a glimpse of the unique power of moms, who records show can sometimes break down the defenses of the most hardened killers.
"It's pretty obvious that when someone you love and respect tells you that this is what you need to do, there's nothing more powerful than that," said Susan Bandes, a DePaul University law professor. "You have to sort out whether the government can leverage those moral and emotional concerns to get around their constitutional obligations."
"Sending in an undercover mom is an end run around the government's known obligation" to a suspect's rights and would be "highly objectionable," she later wrote in an email.
Attorneys for Gonzalez, who are asking a judge to throw out the statements because they say their client had repeatedly asked for an attorney, called the conversation with Gonzelez's mother the "functional equivalent of a police interrogation" and a "psychological ploy to elicit incriminating testimony."
"Her interests were very much aligned with police interests," said Dana Jakusz, one of Gonzalez's attorneys.
A judge was scheduled to rule on the issue Tuesday but delayed his ruling until later this month, a defense attorney said.
Will County police are hardly the first to use the tactic.
Waukegan police had for months suspected Freddie Ramirez and another man in the 2000 murder of a Chicago Heights gang member, but the 20-year-old felon wasn't saying a word, records show. So police turned to his mom, whose first name is tattooed on Ramirez's chest and leg, according to prison records.
Ilona Saa agreed to wear a wire while visiting her son at the Shawnee Correctional Center in exchange, according to her son, for consideration on a pending Lake County forgery charge.
His mother first told Ramirez police were "hounding" her and she wanted to hire a new attorney, according to an affidavit filed by Ramirez. Then she asked for him to tell her everything the new attorney would need to know about the case.
Saa, now 49, accomplished in a few minutes what detectives had been trying to do for about nine months, drawing out a confession from her son which was then used by police to extract a full confession to the fatal shooting of Victor Chavez.
"Had I not been deceived ... by my mother acting as an agent of police, I would not have felt compelled to cooperate (with police)," Ramirez later wrote in an affidavit.
Ramirez's case is still winding its way through the courts. An appeals court, on instruction from the state Supreme Court, has ordered the Lake County court to consider Ramirez's claim that his trial attorney was ineffective when she allegedly told him that the statements collected by his mother would be upheld. Ramirez then pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 34 years in prison.
These are extreme examples of a common police tactic. Before formally filing murder charges last month against accused Blue Island, Ill., serial killer Sonny Pierce, police leaned hard on his mother, urging her to get him to confess before allowing her to speak with him, she says.
Scott Eby, now serving a life sentence, first confessed to his mother that he raped and murdered 3-year-old Riley Fox after FBI agents came to collect his DNA, a confession that caused the FBI to interview him again soon after.
After Curtis Leach strangled his wife in their south suburban Robbins bedroom before taking their three young children to school in 2004, the first person he confessed to was his mother, records show. And Brookfield resident David Vida first told his mother the grisly news that he'd killed Scott Harast and dismembered his body with an axe after the two got into a fight in the home they were rehabbing, records show. He is now serving a 100-year sentence.
Just over the state line in Janesville, Wis., William Mereness beat his estranged wife, a school teacher, to death in 2002. Police had a circumstantial case but charges weren't filed until after Mereness confessed to his mother, evidence that an appeals court found was the "most damning" presented at trial.
DePaul's Bandes said that depending on the circumstances of the case - whether charges have been filed yet, whether the suspect asked for an attorney - it can be difficult to judge whether the tactic violates a suspect's constitutional rights.
The Miranda warnings familiar to anyone who's ever watched a TV police drama are intended to protect a suspect from feeling compelled to talk. But Bandes said an argument could be made that those safeguards don't apply when a mom, as opposed to an intimidating police detective, is sitting across the table.
"It would feel like I'm just talking to my mom," she said.
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