A Riverside woman, accused last November of filing a false rape report in order to convince her daughter to move back home with her, was found guilty of filing a false police report after a three-hour trial at Maybrook courthouse last week.
Judge Geary Kull ruled that Mary Malik, 47, was guilty of felony disorderly conduct for filing the report, which had Riverside police on high alert in the week following the claim. She will be sentenced at a hearing scheduled for Aug. 27.
Malik claimed she had been followed, struck on the head and raped in an alley as she walked to her home on Forest Avenue from the train station in downtown Riverside. She told police she was coming home from her job in Oak Brook.
Within a day of filing the report, however, Malik became uncooperative with police. And her story began to unravel as police learned that she had a day off from work on the day she claimed to have been attacked. Public works employers working on a collapsed sewer line that night in the area of the alleged attack also reported seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary.
Police responded to the report by adding extra patrols during the night shift and reportedly spent $2,200 in overtime costs associated with the investigation. Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel said he will seek to have the department reimbursed for that cost.
“It is important to fully investigate any allegation of sexual assault,” said Weitzel in a press release. “However, false reports of this nature redirect very limited resources that are needed for other important investigations. While this report proved to be false, incidents of this nature do occur.”
In 5 minutes, golf clubs gone
A resident of the 4300 block of Blanchan Avenue, Brookfield, told police that on July 22 about 4:15 p.m., he was waiting for a friend to pick him up at his home to go to a golf outing. He put his golf bag on the stairs of his front porch and left them there while he drove his car around back to put it in the garage.
When he walked back to the front of his house, the bag, containing 11 clubs, a dozen golf balls and miscellaneous gear was missing. The loss was estimated at $1,500.
Burglaries reported in Brookfield
A resident of the 4500 block of Maple Avenue, Brookfield, reported to police that between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on July 19, someone entered the residence and removed several items, including $200 in cash, jewelry, a Playstation 3 videogame system, a Sanyo 26-inch HDTV, a Sanyo DVD player and a pink Mongoose mountain bike.
Someone entered an unsecured garage in the 9000 block of Sheridan Avenue, Brookfield, during the overnight hours of July 16 -17 and removed a DeWalt miter saw, a small power washer and a small generator.
A resident of the 3700 block of Madison Avenue, Brookfield, reported on July 20 at 9:43 p.m. that sometime after the evening of July 19, someone entered the garage and removed a 26-inch Giant Cypress bicycle valued at $300.
Between the hours of 4 p.m. on July 19 and 3:25 p.m. on July 20, someone entered an unlocked garage in the 3100 block of Morton Avenue, Brookfield, and removed a green Mongoose BMX-style bicycle valued at $350 and a bike helmet valued at $35.
30 days for pocketing magazine money
Calling Chicago-area residents the “easiest” to dupe into handing over their money to him, Frederick Dawson, 42, of Youngstown, Ohio, pleaded guilty on July 16 to stealing money from people to whom he had “sold” phony magazine subscriptions.
Dawson, who has 19 prior arrests, including one in Youngstown for attempted murder (which was reduced to aggravated battery with a firearm), received a sentence of 60 days in Cook County Jail and 18 months probation.
Riverside police arrested Dawson on July 10 as he was going door to door “selling” magazine subscriptions in the 100 block of Northgate Road. Dawson claimed to work for a company called Midwest Circulation LLC and showed police proper paperwork from the company.
However, police also learned that Dawson had been fired from the job in May and the company had been receiving complaints about unfilled subscriptions sold by Dawson, who admitted perpetrating the same scam in Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas and Utah.
These items were obtained from police reports filed by the Riverside, North Riverside and Brookfield police departments, July 17-22, and represent a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Unless otherwise indicated, anybody named in these reports has only been charged with a crime. These cases have not been adjudicated.
– Compiled by Bob Uphues
