Blast from the Past or "How I told the police to charge the Cookie Monster with Murder"

When I was an Assistant State's Attorney, I would periodically be assigned the 'felony authorization hotline'. All the felony ASAs got a week at a time on this assignment. You would get the call, usually at absurd hours in the early morning, from each local police department (or the Sheriff) to authorize charges on felony cases.

If it was a particularly serious case, like a murder, you would go to the scene or the police department. One early morning back in 2000, I got a call of a triple shooting with one fatality. When I got to the police department, the Sergeant I spoke to said "yeah, we need murder and attempt murder charges for the Cookie Monster." As it was 2:15AM, I thought just maybe I had misheard. But it turns out that the suspects nickname was 'the Cookie Monster'. It was quite a bad situation, and I ended up approving a whole raft of charges... but the suspect had fled to Mexico and I thought I had heard the last of it.

Not so.

I hope that this case gets a just ending.

UPDATE:

You decide if the nickname was warranted.