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The Illinois Department of Corrections is struggling to find a home for a man who was granted parole after serving 45 years for murdering five people. As Max Green from member station WBEZ reports, the case is forcing the state to wrestle with the unusual situation of a paroled convict communities keep pushing out.
MAX GREEN, BYLINE: Seventy-seven-year-old Carl Reimann is technically on parole. He was released in April, but he's living in prison. This is the last place the state tried to put him.
MICHELLE MARKIEWICZ QUALKINBUSH: OK, we're standing in front of Woodrow Wilson Elementary School, about a block away from where the parolee mass murder was placed by the state.
GREEN: Michelle Markiewicz Qualkinbush is the mayor of Calumet City, a suburb south of Chicago and the third place the state put Reimann that he was forced to leave. Every time they placed him, the state notified his victims' families, and his address went on a registry. And each time, there were protests and then threats. And the Illinois Department of Corrections had to move him for his own safety.
QUALKINBUSH: Certainly, I believe in redemption. I believe in that. But I think you have to place them in areas that they will succeed in.
GREEN: The state tried to do just that. Reimann first lived with a friend, then had to move to a halfway house, then to Calumet City. At a hearing this week, a panel ruled Reimann will still be let out of prison, if they can find him a place to live.
BARBARA WARTELLE: I never suspected or even gave it a second thought that he would ever be eligible for parole.
GREEN: Barbara Wartelle's father-in-law was one of the people Reimann killed when he robbed a restaurant in Yorkville, Ill., in 1972. Reimann and his girlfriend took money from the register and those inside at gunpoint. As they were leaving, for no apparent reason, Reimann shot and killed five people, including a 16-year-old girl.
WARTELLE: I mean, five murders. You know, really - this was a heinous crime.
GREEN: Wartelle says she's trying to rally people to make it difficult for Reimann wherever the state puts him. Reimann himself, who spoke with me from prison, says he can understand the outrage.
CARL REIMANN: They're all good people. I would probably do the same thing. But they're hearing the viciousness of my - what I did, which - it was true. Everything you said about me was true at that time but not no more.
GREEN: Reimann says he's changed since he's been in prison. He leads Bible studies for other inmates and has volunteered with the prison's hospice program for decades.
REIMANN: I would be at peace and about the Lord's work no matter where it is. If it's the Lord's will, that's what I was meant to be. I will worry about his work here.
AVIVA FUTORIAN: Carl Reimann has become an ideal prisoner.
GREEN: Aviva Futorian is an attorney and board member with the John Howard Association, a nonprofit prison reform group. She says if the goal of prison time is to rehabilitate someone, then that's exactly what has happened with Reimann. The Illinois Prisoner Review Board weighed Reimann's prison record and testimony about his character against the pleas of those damaged by his crimes when it voted to parole.
FUTORIAN: If our society believes in second chances and believes that people can change, then nobody is as bad as the worst thing they've ever done. At least some people aren't.
GREEN: But Barbara Wartelle, whose father-in-law Reimann killed, says 45 years isn't justice for his crimes, and the alleged rehabilitation isn't good enough.
WARTELLE: For him to come out now and say, well, I found Jesus, and I want to help other people - no, it doesn't go that way.
GREEN: There's nothing stopping Wartelle and the others from protesting Reimann wherever the state places him. And they say they'll keep doing it. The state says he will be rereleased when the Illinois Department of Corrections approves a place for him to live. But until that happens, he'll stay locked up. For NPR News, I'm Max Green in Chicago. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.