Corn deal turned out be a horse of a different color
(Published Sunday, December 18, 2005)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
By Jim Leute Gazette Staff
Ken Hendricks was simply interested in a few horses that he could corral for his kids.
But he ended up staring at a very different type of pen: a state penitentiary.
"It may seem funny now, but it wasn't at all funny at the time," Hendricks said. "I was in deep."
Back in the mid-1970s, Hendricks was looking for horses for his kids.
He hooked up with Stan Mannino, a Beloit mortgage broker who said he might be able to help Hendricks buy horses from a farm that was being sold near Rockford, Ill..
"Stan was kind of a shifty guy, but he was a nice guy," Hendricks recalled.
The horses never materialized, but about $20,000 worth of seed corn and fertilizer did.
"Stan asked me if I knew anyone in Wisconsin who might want to buy the stuff, and I said I'd make a few calls," Hendricks said.
Hendricks found a buyer and, as a middleman, ended up borrowing a van to haul the corn and fertilizer to the Janesville area.
"Because I had borrowed the van, I didn't want Stan driving it," Hendricks said. "So we loaded the stuff up, drove it up here, unloaded (at the buyer's) place. Stan drove off, and I returned the van."
Then the trouble started.
"The next night on the news it comes off that this seed corn and fertilizer were stolen from the farm in Rockford," Hendricks said. "I couldn't reach Stan, and the buyer called me up and said, 'What in the hell did you get me into? The FBI is calling.'"
Hendricks told him there was some sort of mix-up.
"He said, 'I don't give a s--, I want this s-- outta here now.'"
So Hendricks borrowed the van again and moved the corn and fertilizer to one of his warehouses.
"The next morning, the FBI, the Rock County Sheriff's Department and the Janesville Police Department were at my house with guns drawn," Hendricks said. "There were 25 cops there if there was one."
A federal grand jury indicted Hendricks and Mannino on charges of interstate transportation of stolen goods.
"I went to the sheriff's department, where they booked me, fingerprinted me, took my picture, the whole bit," Hendricks said. "They get a hold of Stan, and he comes in and says I planned the whole thing. He turned state's evidence … got away with the whole thing.
"I was just helping a guy sell the stuff. I never saw any money; I never asked for any money."
Hendricks provided officers with a Freeport, Ill., address.
"I wanted to keep it out of The Janesville Gazette," he said.
Hendricks hired Arthur Zimmerman, a high-profile Chicago attorney, to represent him at the trial that would take place a year later. He also hired Janesville attorney Greg Hunsader, who would be responsible for much of the evidentiary legwork and preparing witnesses.
"It was a five-day trial, and when I left home on that Monday, my kids were crying, and I'm thinking I might not see them again because if you lose, you go directly to federal prison."
In Chicago, Hendricks and his stable of attorneys dined well, even frequenting a restaurant where Frank Sinatra was eating in the next room.
"We were going to these restaurants, and it was scary because I was paying the bill," Hendricks said. "There were 10 to 12 of us every time we went out to eat, and each night Art would look at the menu and order about five of everything on there. We had a smorgasbord every night, and it was some of the best food you ever tasted in your life.
"But I was sitting there sweating about the bill and going to prison."
Hendricks never went to prison.
He was found innocent. He had 25 character witnesses who the judge and prosecuting attorney later told Hendricks were some of the finest they'd ever seen.
"I was proven unequivocally innocent," Hendricks said.
"He was falsely accused," Hunsader said recently. "I was able to help dig up some evidence about some things that key witnesses testified to that could not have occurred."
At the end of the trial, the judge and prosecuting attorney picked up the tab for dinner with Hendricks, his wife, Diane, and Hendricks' lawyers.
And Zimmerman, the Chicago attorney, decided not to bill Hendricks.
"He said, 'You don't owe me a thing,'" Hendricks said of Zimmerman. "He said, 'We just enjoy you and Diane, and you're some of the nicest clients we've ever had.'"
