For now, anyway, Eileen Herbert says she has some peace of mind.
Her estranged husband, Ted Herbert, 47, a Cook County sheriff’s police officer, is behind bars, charged with stalking the 37-year-old McHenry County resident.
His arrest early Saturday morning by Richmond police made him the first McHenry County resident to be charged under the state’s new stalking law, enacted in July, prosecutors said.
And Herbert’s arrest gave Eileen Herbert at least a respite from what she and authorities described as months of harassment, threats and intimidation.
“I saw the ingredients here of another Wayne Chaney,” said McHenry County State’s Atty. Gary Pack. “He has access to weapons; he’s threatened to use those weapons; he’s violated an order of protection; and he’s threatened to kill her and kill himself.
“I can see a murder-suicide,” Pack said.
Wayne Chaney was charged with killing his wife, Connie Chaney, in the Mt. Prospect advertising agency where she worked a little more than a year ago. The killing capped a long history of threats and violence, and gave rise to the state stalking law. Chaney was later killed in a shootout with police.
Herbert, who has been employed by the Cook County sheriff’s office since 1977, was placed on a disability leave in early 1991, said Sally Daly, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office. Details of the disability leave were not disclosed Sunday.
The case against Herbert began taking shape early this year when he was charged with battery for allegedly beating his wife, McHenry County Assistant State’s Atty. Judith Guy said Sunday. He is scheduled to appear in court April 5 on that charge, she said.
In February, prosecutors said, Herbert threatened to harm his wife and was caught shortly thereafter outside Eileen Herbert’s apartment. When asked by a police officer what he was doing behind the apartment, he reportedly said “I’m watching her house, and I’m watching her,” Guy said.
Most recently, Herbert violated a protection order barring him from making any contact with Eileen. He allegedly sent her letters, and last week, he allegedly followed her into a laundermat near her home, Guy said.
On Friday afternoon, Herbert was arrested and charged with two counts of violating the order of protection, but he posted $1,200 bond immediately and was released, throwing Eileen Herbert into a panic.
She appealed to police and prosecutors to do something to keep him in jail, she said.
“I’ve been going crazy, and no one was listening,” Eileen Herbert said Sunday, noting that she got the first order of protection against him in August. “I purchased caller ID so I could prove he was calling me, I’ve got a stack of letters that he’s written me, I have no friends because he’s been calling them and threatening them.
“I finally called the state’s attorney’s office myself and I cried and I bitched, and I just kept calling and calling. Finally, they listened to me. After nine months, they listened.”
Prosecutors got McHenry County Circuit Judge Conrad Floeter late Friday night to approve the charges and the arrest warrant. By early Saturday morning, Herbert was in custody.
Bond was set at $500,000. He’s scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.
At that time, prosecutors expect to submit numerous police reports and other evidence, Guy said.
“He has submitted a number of threats to her over a period of time,” Guy said. “There are so many incidents and we’re investigating all of them.”
Eileen Herbert said she left her husband in May 1992 because, “I was scared for myself and my children.”
Divorce proceedings were underway by the fall, she said.
She said her husband attributed his problems to the death of a co-worker by an apparently self-inflicted gunshot in 1991. She said her husband found LeRoy Instone, a radio dispatcher, in the a washroom at the headquarters of the Cook County sheriff’s police with a gunshot wound to the chest.
