Judy Hawtree, a 53-year-old white woman, was killed on September 4, 1972, inside her family's rural home near Monee, Illinois. She died alongside her husband, 56-year-old machine designer Stephen Hawtree, and their youngest son, 17-year-old Thomas Hawtree. Contemporary accounts described gunmen entering the farmhouse, forcing the family into the basement and shooting all three at close range in what investigators considered execution-style killings.
The Hawtrees appeared to have been attacked without warning. Nothing publicly reported suggested that Judy, Stephen or Thomas knew their assailants or had been involved in a dispute that might explain the violence. The apparent lack of a conventional motive made the triple homicide especially alarming. Investigators eventually determined that a. 25-caliber firearm associated with the Hawtree killings had also been used in the September 1972 murder of Army Specialist Five William Richter, who was shot while sleeping inside a pickup truck near an expressway in suburban Highland Park.
The firearm evidence became part of a much broader investigation involving nine killings across Illinois. Detectives also connected weapons used in the Hawtree case or related shootings to the August 1972 massacre of retired insurance executive Paul Corbett and three members of his family in Barrington Hills, as well as the May 1972 shooting death of Southern Illinois University student Michael Gerchenson near West Frankfort. The similarities between the attacks—including victims being confronted inside their homes, grouped together and shot at close range—led authorities to believe that the crimes might have been committed by members of the same group.
In October 1972, law-enforcement officials announced the arrests of several Chicago men associated with a loosely organized group known as De Mau Mau. The suspects publicly identified in connection with the wider series of killings included Reuben Taylor, also reported as Ruben Taylor; his brother Donald Taylor; Michael Clark; Nathaniel Burse; Edward Moran Jr.; and Robert Wilson. Authorities initially portrayed the organization as a violent group whose membership included disaffected veterans and former students from Malcolm X College. Officials speculated that racial hostility might have motivated attacks against the Hawtrees and the other victims, although that theory was contested at the time and no clear personal motive for the Hawtree murders was established publicly.
Will County prosecutors specifically charged Reuben Taylor, Donald Taylor, Michael Clark and Nathaniel Burse with murdering Judy, Stephen and Thomas Hawtree. Because the men were also facing prosecutions in Cook County, Will County obtained warrants while the Cook County cases proceeded. Some of the defendants were ultimately convicted of the Corbett family murders, but those convictions did not legally establish responsibility for the deaths of the Hawtrees.
The prosecution of the Monee triple homicide remained unresolved for more than two decades. On July 20, 1994, Will County dismissed the Hawtree murder case after Reuben Taylor, Donald Taylor and Michael Clark had already been convicted and imprisoned in connection with the Cook County killings. Nathaniel Burse had died while being held in the Lake County Jail, reportedly after being strangled by another prisoner. Donald Taylor also later died in prison, while Michael Clark received an extremely lengthy sentence in the Corbett case.
Although suspects were arrested and formally charged, no defendant was tried and convicted specifically for murdering Judy Hawtree and her family. The dismissal of the Will County charges meant that the evidence linking the accused men to the farmhouse killings was never fully tested before a jury. Judy, Stephen and Thomas Hawtree therefore remain associated with one of the most disturbing clusters of Illinois murders from the early 1970s—a case in which investigators identified suspects and alleged connections to other massacres, but never obtained a final conviction for the three deaths in Monee.
