Laptops possibly containing confidential information on criminal cases stolen at Cook County courthouse
Several laptops possibly containing confidential information on criminal cases were stolen from the state’s attorney’s offices at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, disrupting at least one murder trial.
The break-in was discovered Tuesday morning and is believed to have occurred after hours. Between three and five computers were thought to have been stolen, sources said.
To enter the offices, the burglar presumably would have had to get inside the courthouse through a secure entrance staffed by sheriff’s deputies and take an elevator to the state’s attorney’s offices in the high-rise office building next to the old courthouse.
To enter the prosecutor’s offices, a person would typically need to be buzzed in by a receptionist stationed in the office’s main lobby.
A source with knowledge of the situation said the burglar is believed to have stacked several chairs together to keep the buzzer pressed while rigging a pulley system to open the door at the same time.
“It’s a lot of trouble to have gone through, really not worth the effort,” the source said of the laptops, which were likely at least four-year old Windows models unlikely to be in demand on a second-hand market.
“Unless they were looking for something in particular,” according to the source, who said the break-in was being viewed as “an inside job” to get “information.”
A second source said the burglar also took a lunch box and a secretary’s sweatshirt with a Cook County state’s attorney’s office emblem on it. A potential suspect was recorded on security cameras leaving the building while wearing the shirt and using a cart that prosecutors use to move case files between courtrooms.
“We don’t know who he is yet," the source said. "Our investigators collected a whole bunch of fingerprints. He left a jacket with a cigarette butt and information regarding second-chance probation in the pockets.”
The source said the computers have confidential information and “stopped one jury trial dead in its tracks.” The computers are password protected, but "personal files with motions [and] power points for trials, those things will be irreplaceable," the person said, explaining the delay to prosecutors working the case.
“The worry is if he took any files," the source said. "A lot of files have original pieces of evidence. Inventories. Search warrants. Identification paperwork with original signatures, etc. That paperwork is totally irreplaceable. And that’s the worry that he may have taken some files.”
A spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office confirmed the break-in but declined to provide more information, citing the ongoing investigation.