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Marcy Oglesby appears in a booking photo. (Knox County Jail)
An Illinois woman has been formally accused for the second time of killing a former police chief after an appeals court reinstated a murder charge that was dismissed by a trial judge earlier this year.
Marcy Oglesby, 51, was arrested in October 2022 after the body of Richard “Rick” Young, a former Maquon Police Department chief, was found in the unit she was renting at Roberts Self-Storage in Maquon – a tiny village roughly an hour south of the so-called “Quad Cities” in Illinois and Iowa, which make up the metropolitan area.
On Tuesday, the Fourth District Appellate Court reinstated the murder charge in an 18-page order obtained by Law&Crime.
At the time of her arrest, the Knox County State’s Attorney’s Office only filed charges of concealment of a non-homicidal death. Later, in February of this year, additional charges of murder in the first degree, attempted murder, and aggravated battery were filed against her.
In March, Oglesby’s defense attorney filed a motion to dismiss the additional, more severe, charges under the state’s speed trial law.
The Land of Lincoln’s version of speedy trial rights mandates that crimes based on the same act must generally be charged together. Additionally, a person must be tried for the crimes emanating from that same act within 120 days of being arrested.
Oglesby was arrested on the concealment charge on Oct. 11, 2022. The additional charges were filed on Feb. 6 of this year. Defense counsel argued her trial “had to begin no later than February 8, 2023.”
During a motions hearing, the state argued that they did not, at first, believe they had sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.
An investigator who worked on the case and testified for the defense said that a third person who lived in the house with the victim and the defendant, Karen Doubet, had made several admissions about Young’s death.
According to Knox County Sheriff’s Office Detective Gregory Jennings, Doubet was initially “deceptive” about the body in the storage unit. Eventually, Doubet said Oglesby had poisoned Young’s food and beverages “with eye drops and some crushed medication” over the course of the past year.
“Prior to interviewing Doubet, Jennings was unaware someone could be poisoned by eye drops,” the court of appeals noted. “Jennings testified he attended the preliminary autopsy on October 10, 2022, which provided no conclusions as to the cause of death and found no antemortem fractures.”
Oglesby, on the other hand, allegedly claimed that Young died after a bout with COVID-19. She later allegedly admitted to keeping Young’s body in the storage unit because, she said, his last wish was to be buried in an “Indian burial mound,” and she did not know how to accommodate that request, according to Knox County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeremy Moore, who also testified at the motions hearing.
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Moore testified that a December 2022 toxicology report found tetrahydrozoline in Young’s body, which, he said, was “one of the ingredients in most typical over-the-counter eye drops.”
Moore also conducted a follow-up interview with Doubet, he testified, during which she admitted to buying multiple bottles of eye drops that Oglesby allegedly put into Young’s food and drinks.
During this confession, Doubet allegedly told law enforcement that she and the defendant wanted Young out of the house, but he wouldn’t leave. A search warrant was then executed at the shared residence in January 2023. There, Moore said, law enforcement found “a copious amount” of discarded eye drop bottles, a pill crusher, packaging for the pill crusher, and “a receipt that showed the purchase of some eye drops from a Dollar General in Elmwood, Illinois.”
Taking all of the testimony into consideration, Knox County Judge Andrew Doyle dropped the later charges against the defendant, finding “the state did have sufficient evidence to give them a reasonable chance to secure a conviction” and that they arose from the same act, therefore mandating compulsory joinder.
Doyle also found that Oglesby had actually been placed in custody on Oct. 7, 2022, when police took her to the hospital before her formal arrest, and that the newer charges were filed well after the 120-day timeline. Because the charges should have all been filed at the same time, the later charges were dismissed.
The state’s attorney subsequently appealed.
In reinstating the more serious charges against Oglesby, the appeals court agreed with the trial judge that sufficient facts for a conviction were “known to the proper prosecuting officer” for purposes of the compulsory joinder rule. And, the appeals court noted, this knowledge was present “well in advance of the 120-day deadline.”
On the other hand, the appeals court took issue with the trial judge’s determination that hiding the body and allegedly committing the murder in the first place were based on the same act.
The appellate judges offered the example of running a stop sign while traveling over the speed limit, saying that an initial speeding violation that later has a stop sign violation tacked onto it would activate the compulsory joinder rule. Oppositely, the court drew a comparison to a person speeding, running multiple red lights, and driving on the wrong side of the road, committing multiple crimes that would not activate the rule.
“Prosecution for concealing a death is restricted to situations where the body itself is hidden, such as performing some act other than merely withholding knowledge or failing to disclose information in order to prevent or delay the discovery of a death by nonhomicidal means,” the order reads. “This is substantively different from the crimes of attempt (first-degree murder), first-degree murder, and aggravated battery charged here, which require the administration of a poisonous or controlled substance, physical harm, death, and a substantial step toward the commission of the offense.”
The state’s attorney’s office hailed the ruling in a press release.
“As a result, the Knox County State’s Attorney’s Office may proceed in its prosecution of Oglesby for allegedly committing these offenses,” Knox County State’s Attorney Jeremy Karlin said.
