The adult son of former Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan was found dead over the weekend in the family’s Elmhurst home in an apparent suicide, police said Monday.
The death of Patrick J. Ryan, 24, was the latest tragedy to strike the family, which lost a daughter to a brain tumor in 1997 and has suffered other serious health setbacks while in the public eye.
“Patrick was a loving son, caring brother and a compassionate uncle. He was the joy of our life,” the Ryan family said in a statement Monday. “Our family asks that you respect our privacy as we mourn his unfortunate passing.”
Pat Durante, chairman of the Addison Township Republican Organization, said of the Ryans, “They’ve been through holy hell. They’re going to handle it with family.”
Elmhurst police said they were summoned to the Ryan home in the 600 block of South Mitchell Avenue at 6:30 p.m. Sunday by a female relative, whom police declined to identify. She told officers that Patrick Ryan was alone in the house with a gun.
The Elmhurst Police Emergency Response Team and crisis negotiators tried to contact him. He answered the telephone once, but there was no further contact, police said. Officers later entered the home and found Ryan dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said in a statement.
Police would answer no questions. Jim Ryan was elected to three terms as DuPage County state’s attorney beginning in 1984, then was elected Illinois attorney general in 1994. But personal crises soon intervened. In 1996, he was diagnosed with Stage 2 non-Hodgkin’s large-cell lymphoma and began chemotherapy. In January 1997, the youngest of Jim and Marie Ryan’s six children, 12-year-old Anne Marie, collapsed and died of a brain tumor. Ten months later, Marie Ryan suffered a near-fatal heart attack as the couple walked near their home.
Jim Ryan was the Republican nominee for governor in 2002 but lost the election to Rod Blagojevich. Ryan’s second term as attorney general ended in 2003.
He now teaches political science at Benedictine University in Lisle and practices law. He remains popular with Illinois Republicans and occasionally hits the campaign trail. Most recently, he attended a rally at the College of DuPage, where he was featured as a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.
“My heart goes out to Jim and Marie,” said state Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale) Monday. “It’s a burden no parent should have to bear, losing one child, let alone two.”
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jkimberly@tribune.com
