So, yeah, I wrote Dirty Secrets, a detective noir game. And that meant that I read a lot of the source material. So, trust me when I say that this sounds like something that I would have expected to find in the pages of a Ross MacDonald novel:
Rolling Acres woman’s death remains mystery
Police are releasing few details regarding the homicide investigation of a Rolling Acres woman found dead in her home Friday morning, to the dismay of worried neighbors….”She was a quiet woman,” Lowe said Saturday afternoon. “But she was the most wonderful person you would ever meet.”
Lowe met her neighbor when she moved in five years ago and said Finnegan would always check up on her and see if she needed help around the house.
Lowe returned the favor, recently watering the woman’s flowers while she was out of town. She said she’d planned to have dinner with Finnegan the night she was found dead.
“When I found out she was killed, I was so confused,” she said. “I can’t understand, why would someone kill her?”
Son arrested in Rolling Acres death
Police have arrested the son of a woman who was found strangled to death in her Rolling Acres home Friday morning.
Stark County deputies found John W. Finnegan, 20, sleeping in his mother’s car at a rest stop in Toulon early Sunday. He was detained in Stark County until Peoria police picked him up for questioning.
He was later booked into the Peoria County Jail on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his mother, Mary T. Finnegan, 43, with whom he lived at 5513 Merrimac Ave.
Bond set for Peoria man accused of killing his mother
Bond was set at $2.5 million Monday for a Peoria man accused of strangling his mother last week.
The death occurred sometime Thursday, when John Finnegan, 20, entered his mother’s room, found her sleeping and “swiftly killed her emotionlessly,” Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons said in court, repeating what Finnegan reportedly told detectives.
Mary Finnegan, 43, was found dead around noon Friday, when her other son, 23, stopped by her house and found her naked and wrapped in bedding.
During a five-minute bond hearing in Peoria County Circuit Court, Lyons said the situation had “peculiar” overtones. He cited a “consensual but inappropriate” sexual relationship that had existed between John and Mary Finnegan for about four years. John Finnegan said he and his mother had sex the day before he allegedly killed her.
Finnegan initially denied killing his mother but later told police he felt like he was “bottled up with rage.” He also told detectives he sexually assaulted his mother’s body and then tried to kill himself.
Lyons said Finnegan first tried to drown himself in the bathtub before trying to overdose on various household medications and pills. When that didn’t work, he grabbed some money and left the house in his mother’s car.
He was arrested about 1 a.m. Sunday by Stark County sheriff’s deputies, who found him sleeping in the car. He was then brought back to Peoria.
