CHICAGO, March 10 -- The killer broke into U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow's house and hid in a utility closet. Furious that she had rejected his rambling lawsuit, he planned to wait until she came home and then shoot her dead.
But the judge's husband found the man first.
Police said Bart A. Ross shot himself after being stopped at this intersection.
(Allen Fredrickson -- Reuters)
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"I had no choice . . . but to shoot him," Bart A. Ross wrote in a suicide note received Thursday by a Chicago television station. "Then I heard a voice, 'Michael, Michael,' so I looked to the hallway . . . and saw an older woman. I had to shoot her, too.
"I followed with a second shot to the head in both cases to minimize their suffering."
Chicago police announced Thursday that Ross, who killed himself with a single shot to the head in a Milwaukee suburb Wednesday night, is responsible for the Feb. 28 killings of Lefkow's husband, Michael, and mother, Dorothy Humphrey, a case that sent shudders through the federal judiciary.
Late tonight a Chicago police spokesman confirmed that Ross's DNA matched evidence found in the Lefkows' house. Police Superintendent Phil Cline told reporters that letters left by the electrician, 57, contained details only the killer would know. He also said a witness saw someone resembling Ross leaving the North Chicago house on the day of the shootings.
But Cline emphasized that police are not prepared to make a definitive statement about all aspects of the case until the evidence has been analyzed. "This case is by no means closed," he said.
The sudden development in the case startled investigators, who had focused on the fact that Joan Lefkow had been targeted for assassination by white supremacist Matthew Hale. Investigators considered it likely that a Hale sympathizer committed the killings, and specialists pointed out that Lefkow's address was posted on hate groups' Web sites.
It remains publicly unknown how Ross found Lefkow's home, but investigators said they had discovered no connection between hate groups and Ross, who blamed his anger on a legal and medical establishment that he said had "violated me Nazi-style" for 12 years. In his writings, Ross named other potential targets, including judges and doctors he believed had done him wrong.
More than one judge and lawyer fearful that Lefkow was targeted by supremacists said the prospect of a disgruntled and murderous litigant is even more worrisome. Judges in all jurisdictions must deal with aggrieved petitioners whose problems they cannot fix.
"In many respects this is more sobering and more frightening, because there are many more people like this man who could have a similar grudge against a judge," said Chicago Bar Association President Joy Cunningham, a former judge. "Many litigants come to court with expectations the system is not able to deliver."
Ross's grievances began in the mid-1990s, after he had been treated for mouth cancer at the University of Illinois at Chicago Hospital. Disfigured by the treatment, which left him cancer-free, according to the hospital, he became convinced that he had been the victim of malpractice.
After a string of state and federal judges had rejected his claims, Ross filed a federal lawsuit last year that was randomly assigned to Lefkow. His anger came through in documents seeking more than $500 million from the state of Illinois and millions more from doctors and lawyers.
"Lawyers are telling me to get a doctor and doctors are telling me to get a lawyer," Ross wrote. He said he drove more than 5,000 miles and contacted more than 100 lawyers and 200 medical experts in search of someone who would fight his case. After one lawyer took the case and lost, Ross sued her.
