Missing Man’s Sister Wins FOIA Fight

In the more than four years since her brother mysteriously vanished without a trace, Stephanie McNeil has struggled with the DuPage County cops to find out what — if anything — they have been doing to find out what happened to him.

McNeil resorted to filing a freedom of information request for DuPage County’s police reports on her brother John Spira’s disappearance, only to be denied on the grounds that the records remain "part of an on-going investigative file."

But McNeil did not quit. She appealed the denial to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office. And she won.

“They said it was an ongoing investigation — I figured there was nothing really going on,” McNeil said following the ruling by the attorney general’s office that cleared the way for her to see what DuPage County’s detectives have been doing with her brother’s case since he disappeared in February 2007.

But if the DuPage County Sheriff’s Department hasn’t been actively investigating Spira’s disappearance, what have they been doing? And why didn’t they want his family to see their investigative reports?

Dawn Domrose, the spokeswoman for the DuPage County Sheriff’s Department, failed to answer these very questions, or to return numerous telephone messages. DuPage County Sheriff John Zaruba has also ignored inquiries not only from the Shorewood Patch, but from McNeil herself.

“My feeling is they never wanted this case, that this was more of a thorn in their side than something they were gung ho about,” said McNeil, who grew up in Winnetka but now lives in Phoenix. “I think it was just easier to blame John.”

And DuPage County’s detectives did blame her brother for vanishing, McNeil said.

Not only that, but one of the department’s highest-ranking officers — Cmdr. Mark Edwalds — said as much on a Discovery Channel show devoted to the Spira case.

Edwalds appeared on the program and said his department was investigating the case as a willful disappearance “until there’s evidence that points us to another theory.” McNeil has said she considers Edwalds' attitude “insulting.”

Spira was 45 when he disappeared. He was last seen at the West Chicago office of his cable construction company, where he left his parked car.

At the time of his disappearance, Spira, an accomplished blues musician who went by the stage name "Chicago Johnny," was in the midst of a tumultuous divorce, McNeil said. He and his wife, Suzanne Spira, were living in the same St. Charles home throughout their divorce proceedings and the domestic arrangement was hellish, McNeil said.

Suzanne Spira died in her Orchard Park, NY, apartment Oct. 30. McNeil, who insisted for years that her brother's estranged wife knew more about his disappearance than she was letting on, learned of her death from one of Suzanne Spira’s associates. The DuPage County Sheriff’s Department refuses to comment on whether they had any idea Suzanne Spira had died.

McNeil believes this is just further evidence that the DuPage County detectives were not working on her brother’s case.

“If there was something going on, they would have known something about Suzanne’s death before I did,” she said.

“Something needs to be done,” McNeil added. “People out there are responsible for his murder and know where he is.”

While she believes her brother was murdered, the DuPage County Sheriff’s Department will not publicly classify Spira's case a homicide — a fact McNeil finds particularly rankling.

"Call it foul play," she said.

“Just say it," McNeil said. “It’s just a sentence.”

Despite the decision handed down by Madigan’s office Aug. 12, the DuPage County Sheriff’s Department has yet to abide by the ruling.

“I hope they’re forthcoming with the documents,” McNeil said. “I hope they don’t withhold documents or redact them so much we can’t read them.”

And she also hopes her brother’s case catches the attention of the media, as did the high-profile disappearances of Will County mothers Stacy Peterson and Lisa Stebic.

“I think that’s really what drives cases — the more media there is the more action there is,” McNeil said. “That’s the sad fact.”