Bart Ross spent nearly a decade waiting to be heard, living with a face disfigured by cancer surgery, in constant pain, sinking deeper and deeper into a state of paranoia and growing ever more convinced the medical and judicial systems were out to get him.
People saw the frustration boiling. He went back and forth to the courts claiming the cancer treatment he underwent in the early 1990s destroyed his life, preventing him from working and causing him to pile up debt and sell his home.
Attorneys he approached said his quest for justice consumed him. Neighbors described a reclusive man. Surveillance cameras monitored his North Side home, and his back yard was hidden by a high fence and overgrown evergreen trees.
The downward spiral of Ross’ life ended Wednesday when he shot himself to death during a traffic stop in Wisconsin, leaving a rambling note that claimed responsibility for the murders of a federal judge’s husband and mother.
The judge, Joan Humphrey Lefkow, ruled against Ross four times last year and ultimately dismissed his case. In one of his filings, Ross compared attorneys and state and federal judges to “Nazi-style criminals.” Through hundreds of pages of court filings and an array of letters, one thing is evident: Ross was desperate to have his case heard, and the fact that no one would listen was making him angrier and angrier.
He was repeatedly rebuffed by attorneys telling him his case had no merit. He tried representing himself, but his cases all got dismissed, and his appeals failed.
In 1996, he sent a threatening letter to lawmakers in the Illinois House and Senate: “I would like you all to take into consideration and remember, if you conspire and play this game of law and justice against me for too long, you will bring me to the point of hatred toward you.”
In 1999, he sent a petition seeking $25 million in damages to, among others, President Clinton, the entire U.S. Congress, Ross Perot and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura.
Ross, a Polish immigrant who made a living in Chicago as an electrician, was diagnosed in 1992 with deadly metastatic head and neck cancer. He was treated at the University of Illinois at Chicago Hospital with radiation, but the cancer came back the next year, requiring surgery. Part of Ross’ jawbone was removed during the surgery, and his teeth had all been extracted before the radiation treatment.
According to a statement from the hospital released Thursday, Ross “provided full written consent at every step” of the treatment and was declared cancer-free in 1995. Ross filed numerous lawsuits against the hospital, “all of which were dismissed, including the most recent several-hundred-page complaint filed in 2004 alleging federal and state conspiracy to violate his civil rights,” the statement read.
In 1996, Ronald Scott, a radiation oncologist with the South Coast Tumor Institute in San Diego sought by Ross as a potential expert, wrote a three-page letter saying he had reviewed his medical case and did not see any indication of negligence.
“Indeed, I feel that the treatment you received was technically excellent,” Scott wrote. “My concern is your apparent complete lack of acceptance of your condition. I re-emphasize, nothing was done wrong in your treatment.”
But Ross remained convinced that the treatment caused him permanent damage. Throughout his court filings, he complained of near-constant pain, writing in 2003 that he was taking morphine, Tylenol with codeine and other pain relievers “24/7 for over a year.” He wrote that he could open his mouth only a quarter of an inch, had little control over his lower lip and was unable to “prevent spilling of drinks when drinking and spilling food when eating.”
The judges who ruled on Ross’ cases were not unsympathetic. Though Lefkow ruled last year that Ross’ claims “lack any possible merit,” she made note of his “understandably overwhelming frustration” and the tragic turn of events in Ross’ life “which have left him physically disfigured, in incessant severe pain and unemployed.”
The constant rejection of his claims seemed to feed Ross’ conviction that the medical and legal communities were working against him. His case became the focal point of his life, as he abandoned work and sought every judicial avenue possible.
“I can’t imagine what this guy’s life must have been like. He lived this case,” said Barry Bollinger, an attorney who represented the hospital’s doctors when Ross filed his malpractice suit in 1995. “He would file literally thousands of pages of documents.”
U.S. District Judge David Coar heard motions from Ross on several occasions, and he dismissed them each time. He described Ross–who was 5 foot 6 and about 130 pounds–as a persistent man who became visibly unhappy each time his case was dismissed. But he said Ross was never intimidating.
“He’s a very mousy guy,” Coar recalled. “Physically he was not imposing, and other than being a little slow to leave the courtroom, there was nothing that he did [in threatening fashion]. Sometimes he would, after I told him no, he would stare for a few minutes, just stare. You know how people sometimes when they don’t like something, they will leave more deliberately than you ordinarily expect people to leave.”
Don Rose, a Chicago political consultant, had known Ross since 1989 when he hired him to do extensive electrical work in his Lincoln Park home. Rose said he watched the man slowly deteriorate over the years from a competent electrician to a person who saw the whole world through the lens of conspiracy theories.
“He got to be paranoid,” Rose said. “The more he got turned down by lawyers, the more paranoid he became, and he thought the world was against him.”
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Path to murder
Bart Ross spent more than a decade pursuing a medical malpractice lawsuit, developing a deep mistrust for the justice system.
Fight with cancer
1992-93: Ross is diagnosed and treated for oral cancer that later returns. His teeth and part of his jaw are removed.
Frustration with the courts
1995: Ross files his first medical malpractice suit in state court, but it is dismissed because he misses the filing deadline. He fires his attorney.
August 1996: Ross sends a desperate letter to the governor requesting a pardon in which the tone turns aggressive.
November 1996: No violations are discovered after Ross’ medical records are reviewed by state officials.
September 1997: The final state court order dismissing his malpractice claim is entered.
December 1998: Ross’ earlier claims that he was unfairly represented by his lawyers are dismissed.
November 2000 to April 2003: Ross files federal civil rights claims against doctors, their attorneys, his attorney, the hospital and the State of Illinois. His claims are denied by the Federal Appellate and U.S. Supreme Courts. Ross continues to appeal and is repeatedly denied.
Judge Lefkow, the last option
June 2004: Ross files another federal civil rights case, this time against the U.S. government, and again several lawyers, his doctors and the hospital. Judge Joan Lefkow is assigned to the case.
July 2004: Lefkow refuses to assign Ross counsel in the case.
Sept. 2004: Lefkow dismisses the case because Ross fails to present any new relevant information.
Oct. 2004: Lefkow denies motion for reconsideration of her ruling. A higher court later affirms her ruling.
Lefkow murder investigation
Feb. 28, 2005: Judge Lefkow returns home to find her husband, Michael Lefkow, and her mother, Donna Grace Humphrey, dead in the basement. Each had been shot in the head.
March 2: Police release sketches of two men seen by witnesses. Investigators consider white supremacist Matthew Hale’s possible role in the murders. Hale had been charged with soliciting Judge Lefkow’s murder in 2003.
Police find a single .22-caliber casing, fingerprints on broken glass and DNA on a cigarette butt at the crime scene.
Suspect commits suicide
March 6: Authorities issue a parking ticket to Ross’ van in downtown Milwaukee, five blocks from a federal courthouse–and the chambers of a judge Ross claimed had mistreated him.
Wednesday: Police in West Allis, Wis., stop Ross for a broken taillight.
He shoots himself in the head before the officer reaches his vehicle, where a suicide note states he killed Lefkow and Humphrey.
Thursday: Police link Ross to the killings through DNA evidence found at the crime scene.
