Ross, who was facing an eviction notice, said he lost all his upper teeth during the treatment and needed to have his jaw rebuilt. The hospital said in a statement Thursday that Ross received "conservative and appropriate care" and that disfigurement is a common result of the treatment.
"He was becoming obsessed with the issue and more and more paranoid," said Don Rose, a Chicago political consultant whose partner hired Ross to do electrical work. He said Ross asked for help in filing his lawsuits -- and later asked for money. Rose said he recommended several lawyers but did not give Ross money.
Police said Bart A. Ross shot himself after being stopped at this intersection.
(Allen Fredrickson -- Reuters)
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Video: Police Press Conference
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Investigators studying the killings of Michael Lefkow, 64, and Humphrey, 89, had reached stalemates. DNA and a fingerprint taken from the Lefkows' house found no matches on federal databases. Interviews of Hale and his associates turned up nothing substantial.
Cline said Ross's name was on a list of litigants whom FBI agents and detectives had intended to interview. He said police were working through 600 tips and hundreds of cases in Lefkow's court and the business relations of her husband, a labor lawyer.
On Wednesday evening, a patrolman in West Allis, Wis., spotted a man in a brown van on a little-used street. He appeared to be writing something. When the man made a U-turn and drove away, the officer pulled him over for having no taillights.
As the officer approached, the man -- who turned out to be Ross -- shot himself. Several hours later, police discovered in the vehicle what investigators described as a suicide note linking him to the Lefkow case. They also found .22-caliber shells consistent with the bullets used in the shootings.
The letter to NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV, which Cline described as consistent with the document found with Ross, portrayed Ross as a victim no less than the Lefkows are victims. Ross wrote in a sometimes illegible scrawl that the people who tormented him killed Michael Lefkow and Humphrey as much as he did.
Ross said he intended to hide until he could kill the judge when he broke into the house at 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 28. He said he waited for several hours after the killings before giving up around 1:15 p.m. Lefkow found the bodies about four hours later.
"Judge Lefkow was No. 1 to kill because she finished me off and deprived me to live my life through outrageous use of judicial power and decicration [sic] of the judicial office," Ross wrote to WMAQ. "Judge Lefkow, to her neighbors, is a church-going 'angel.' To me, Judge Lefkow is a Nazi-style criminal and terrorist."
Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
