Kimberly Globis was told time and again by her former boyfriend that he would kill her, then himself, and that nothing could stop him, according to court records.
Early Tuesday in Waukegan, authorities said, Leslie H. Peace made good on his threat, gunning down Globis in front of her two small children-a slaying that rendered impotent the police, court orders and a state stalking law that might have stopped him.
Globis became at least the fifth Chicago-area woman in the last 2 1/2 years to be killed by men suspected of stalking them after they had obtained court orders of protection.
After a standoff with police, Peace was arrested after he was shot by a SWAT team officer. But his capture after the explosion of violence raised serious questions about why he had not been arrested weeks earlier, before a shot was fired. And it has renewed doubts about the effectiveness of court protective orders and the authorities charged with enforcing the state’s vaunted anti-stalking law.
Globis was struck from behind by four bullets from a .357 Magnum, making her the latest slaying victim who had sought court protection from men they believed were out to kill them. They include:
– Lona Krull King, 26, of Hometown, who was fatally shot Feb. 19. Her estranged husband was charged.
– Connie Chaney, 26, of Des Plaines, who was fatally shot March 17, 1992. Her estranged husband was charged a later died in a police shootout.
– Shirley Prudhomme, 45, of Libertyville, who was fatally shot Nov. 4, 1991, by her former husband, who killed himself.
– Joann Young, 32, of Chicago, who was fatally shot March 25, 1991. Her former boyfriend was charged.
In the latest slaying, months of harassment, violence and threats are catalogued in court records and the memories of those who knew Peace and Globis.
Globis, a 25-year-old unemployed house cleaner, carried her newborn infant in a car seat, and her 6-year-old daughter was by her side as they approached the apartment in the 4100 block of Continental Drive that Globis recently had rented under an alias, police said.
Peace, 34, a one-time carpenter who had drifted between southern Wisconsin and Waukegan for years, had driven from Kenosha earlier in the night and was waiting for her, police said.
As Peace emerged from between parked cars, witnesses said, Globis placed the infant seat on the ground and ran. Shots were fired. Globis collapsed and Peace ran away, police said.
On Tuesday night, Peace was listed in serious condition in St. Therese Hospital in Waukegan and under police guard, charged with first-degree murder.
Among women’s legal advocates, the prevailing belief is that the flaw in the system is not in the orders of protection but in the enforcement of them. Most protective orders do not end in death: Since 1991, 22,274 orders of protection have been issued in Cook County alone.
“Orders of protection are really nothing more than a piece of paper,” said Ruth Jones, staff attorney for the National Organization for Women Legal Defense Education Fund in New York City. “Without the police and prosecutor’s office treating this with a level of seriousness before these become homicides, then the paper is meaningless.”
With the word “domestic” preceding it, violence at times gets treated with a different attitude in the criminal justice system, women’s advocates said. Many domestic disputes are dismissed by police as a family spat, they said. Limited law enforcement dollars are channeled into fighting other crimes, while minor domestic disturbances may build into something as horrifying as the slaying in Waukegan this week.
Illinois has publicized its effort to protect women with a newly enacted stalking law. But prosecutors and police are still learning about the law’s nuances. And the Globis case offers an example of how misunderstandings kept the law from being applied.
Globis filed numerous complaints about Peace’s violence and harassment. But some reports were made to Waukegan police, and others to the Lake County Sheriff’s Department and other agencies. As a result, law enforcement officials, who never spoke to one another about the series of complaints, may have missed an opportunity to charge Peace with stalking, authorities said.
Had they known about the multiple threats, police might have been able to arrest him before Tuesday’s confrontation.
More Top Picks Desktops
“When you have two or more occasions when a person is stalked, or there is a threat involved, the police have the ability to invoke the (stalking) law,” said Steve McCollum, Lake County assistant state’s attorney. “This may have been a case where the officers involved did not have the full picture of what was happening.”
On Sunday, a Crystal Lake woman, Caroline Witt, was killed when her former boyfriend drove his car into hers head-on, police said. Though Witt had complained to police about his following and harassing her, police said they had not charged him with stalking because she had not been threatened with bodily harm.
McCollum said that hole in the system should be sewn shut next month when the first uniform guidelines for dealing with domestic violence are released to local police departments.
A search of court records reveals that a clear pattern of violence emerged over the last 18 months, from the time the couple spent together in Wisconsin to the tumultuous months they shared in Waukegan.
In Kenosha, where Peace sold wooden pallets and occasionally worked as a handyman, he pleaded guilty in March to disorderly conduct charges and use of a deadly weapon. The charges stemmed from a quarrel in September, in which he cut Globis’ fingers with a knife and threw a metal garden hoe at her, records show.
From July through September of this year in Lake County, Globis filed two battery complaints against Pace and a charge of criminal trespass when he barged into her apartment on Washington Street brandishing a knife in August.
After acting as her own attorney in filing a petition for court protection, she moved from Washington Street to the Continental Apartments, listing an alias on the building intercom system. Yet Peace later appeared at the complex and, armed with a crowbar, attempted to pry the doors off her building, neighbors and police said.
Those events persuaded the judge to extend his protective order in September and then again less than two weeks ago, barring Peace from engaging in “abuse, harassment and stalking.” Globis was due in court Wednesday morning, to seek another extension.
At a Tuesday-night news conference, Waukegan Police Chief George Bridges defended his department’s actions about why the warrant against Peace was not served.
“We have thousands of warrants,” Bridges said. “You have to wait until police have contact with that person. This individual had no permanent address (for police to serve him). Our last contact with him was July 13.”
To police and those who knew him, Leslie Peace was known as “Lester,” a slightly built man who bragged about his work as an narcotics informant working undercover for Waukegan cops.
Waukegan Police Chief George Bridges refused comment when asked whether Peace had worked as an informant with Waukegan police.
Ironically, it was Sgt. Wayne Hunter, an officer who court records show Peace reported to as an informer, who fired the shot that ended the morning standoff with police at the home of relatives.
The Waukegan SWAT team, with Hunter leading the pack, arrived at the one-story home in the 200 block of Fulton Avenue, clad in black jumpsuits and bullet-proof vests.
Peace lurched out of the house, holding a handgun to his throat with his right hand.
Standing just a few feet away from Hunter, Peace waved the gun back and forth.
Hunter fired one shot, striking Peace in the abdomen.