Nightmare on Hickory Street Teen Mom’s Life Sentence Upheld

JOLIET, IL — A Shorewood mom locked up when she was just 18 for the Nightmare on Hickory Street murders had her life sentence upheld by an appellate court.

Bethany McKee, now 22, was found guilty in the double murder case and sentenced to life in prison even though she did not lay a hand on either of the men she was convicted of killing — and was not even in the same room with them when they died.

McKee went down for the January 2013 murders of Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22, because a judge believed she came up with the idea to lure Rankins to the Hickory Street home of her friend Alisa Massaro.

McKee, Massaro, 23, Josh Miner, 28, and Adam Landerman, 23, were broke and wanted to buy more cigarettes and alcohol, so they hatched a scheme to kill and rob Rankins, whom McKee believed would be carrying drugs and a lot of money.

Miner and Landerman actually killed Rankins and Glover, strangling them to death, but the women were also charged with the murders.

After Glover and Rankins were killed, Miner and Massaro had sex atop the dead men’s bodies, according to police reports obtained exclusively by Patch.

In the wake of the slayings, Miner also spoke of flaying one of the dead men and wearing his face like a mask, McKee told detectives during an interrogation at the Kankakee Police Department.

“He was going to take a picture later on with his face pulled off like Leatherface,” McKee said, telling how Miner was inspired by the horror film "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," in which Leatherface goes on a murderous rampage and wears a dead man’s face like a mask.

“I think it’s because of the dreads” the man wore, McKee explained to Joliet police detectives. She said Miner wanted to “scalp his head and wear it like a hat.”

Miner and Landerman were also sentenced to life in prison.

Massaro made out a lot better than her friends. She squirmed out of the murder case by pleading to reduced charges of robbery and concealing homicides. She was sentenced to five years in prison but will be released within four years of striking her deal.

Massaro got the plea in exchange for agreeing to testify against her three friends. She took the stand at McKee’s trial but prosecutors didn’t even bother to call her for Miner’s or for Landerman’s.

At McKee’s sentencing hearing, her mother, Teresa McKee, said her daughter is bipolar, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, cuts herself, is unsure who fathered her then-3-year-old daughter and has been hospitalized for extensive periods of time due to her psychiatric problems. Bethany McKee’s attorney, Neil Patel, told how she was raped when she was 14 and shortly after abducted and forced into prostitution.

Before sending Bethany McKee to prison for life, Judge Gerald Kinney said he was handing down the sentence “with some reluctance.”

“The way the law is written, I really have no authority,” Kinney said, adding, “Mandatory sentencing is just inappropriate.”

In an exclusive interview with Miner behind the walls of maximum security Menard Correctional Center, he told Patch how he believes both Bethany McKee and Massaro got “bogus deals.”

“And the Bethany girl, I really think that she should have got a deal or something like … just the robbery or conspiracy or something,” Miner said. “She shouldn’t have to be charged with both bodies.”

McKee had no part in planning the killings, Miner said, because there was never a plan in the first place. Miner said he disliked Rankins and Glover after meeting them for the first time that night, so he ordered them to leave Massaro’s home. Glover and Rankins refused to go, Miner said, so he swung at one of them — he’s still not sure which of the two men he hit and ended up strangling — and a fight broke out.

The altercation went on, Miner said, until Rankins and Glover were dead.

“I’m holding him and finally he stops moving, and from what I heard in the trial, like I guess I was holding him like way too long, because he was still moving,” Miner said. “In my mind he was still moving, but the lady (testifying at his murder trial) was saying he was spazzing out or whatever.”

Bethany McKee | image via Illinois Department of Corrections