Rick Church

I do not want to say that I have “discovered” the show Unsolved Mysteries because that would indicate that I knew nothing about the show and that would not be true. But I have “re-discovered” it and have been binge watching it while I research cases. It is not as if I really need more cases to add to my list, but then again you never know what types of cases may intrigue me at any moment. And, the while I do not care for cases that are unsolved as there is not an “ending” per se many of the cases that aired on the show back in the late 1980's have since been solved. This is one of them. I am unsure if it was a benefit that I had looked up the case from the promo for the show and since I was in between cases I was actually researching this case as that segment aired. There were several things I found that seemed to be different from my research. Normally I would give more credence to the news articles than a television show because they are generally bias or sensational in many ways but there were a few things that I felt were likely more accurate on the television show.

In the early morning hours of August 21, 1988 The Ritter family was attacked in their home in Woodstock Illinois. When it was all over the parents, Raymond and Ruth Ann would be dead and two of their three children would be injured, one of them critically. There was no secret who had been the perpetrator. It was nineteen year old Rick Church. Rick Church had dated the Ritters' daughter, Colleen for two years and they had recently broken up. Now, almost all of the article both before and after Rick's arrest state that he blamed Raymond and Ruth for the break up, hence why they were attacked to the point of death and while it may be true that he may have felt that way it seems that the decision for the break up was all Colleen's. By the time officers arrived at the scene of the Ritter house Rick Church was long gone and he was not at his home either. It seems he had taken his mother's truck and had left the area. This is why the case was on Unsolved Mysteries, Rick was on the run.

Rick and Colleen had known each other since they were small children but did not start dating she was a sophomore and he was a senior in high school. Their families were friends too and they even all went to the same church. It appears that Woodstock is a small community because even later the State Attorney in charge of prosecuting Rick Church would say he too went to the same church as the families and his son had played football with him. After graduating high school Rick had gone on to college and the couple had attempted to continue the relationship. It seems that as so many young romances tend to do this one had ran its course, well, that is how Colleen felt. She also felt as if Rick was becoming more possessive as time went on. I am sure that had to do with the distance between them throughout the school year. That summer of 1988 was a brutal one for Rick Church. First he would come home to find out that his parents had separated and he would technically no longer be living in the home he grew up in. Whether that house was being sold and that is why he could not stay is unclear. I would think as a college student he would have likely been able to stay with whichever parent he chose. Then of course there was his relationship with Colleen. He had to have known it was not going well, but then she made it official when she split up with him.

It was said that on the night of August 20^th Rick Church was at his mother's home watching television and had been drinking and sulking most of the night. Raymond and Ruth Ann Ritter had gone to Milwaukee to the Irish Fest and returned home about one the next morning. Their middle son was staying somewhere overnight but both seventeen year old Colleen and ten year old Matthew had friends of their own spending the night. Colleen would say that Rick had called her that evening wanting to get together “one last time” and had become angry when she told him she had friends over. She would say later she did not think it was a big deal or any more unusual than other arguments they had had in the past. Around five in the morning Rick left his mother's home, about a mile from the Ritter home, and headed that way. Some reports say that when he got there he got a hammer out of a tool shed while other reports say that he had obtained a block of wood that had a nail in one end. The Unsolved Mysteries segment indicated that Rick knew where a spare key was hidden and used it to enter the home. He made his way to Raymond and Ruth's ground floor bedroom. They both would be beaten to death. Later Raymond would be found at the foot of his bed while Ruth was found in the bed with a pillow over her face. Rick then made his way upstairs and to Matthew's room.

It seems that Matthew had been awakened during the scuffle downstairs because he remembered hearing someone come up the stairs and into his room. A towel was pressed over his face and he was stabbed in the side of the abdomen. He was struggling and calling for his sister to help. Colleen heard his screams and ran into the bedroom. Now, my research says that Rick chased her in the hallway and after she was laid down he pulled her by her hair and put her in a sitting position. While he began to repeatedly stab her with a seven inch knife that would later be found with the blade bent, Colleen was saying whatever she thought she could to save her life. Still, according to articles Rick then ran downstairs but it was not long that he had come back up and found Colleen on the phone. She had called 911 but before she could tell them anything the phone was ripped from the wall. While all the articles about what happened next seem a little vague I believe this is where the television show explains better. It seems that after the phone incident Colleen ran outside with Rick chasing her. Some neighbors in the area had heard some commotion and as Colleen ran out they went out to assist. When they did Rick Church took off. It was said he had left and was back home in less than a half an hour. In the meantime the call Colleen had made to 911 was traced and the home was called. Matthew answered the phone in Colleen's room and gave them the address. Amazingly neither of the two friends who were staying the night were harmed.

For the next three years Rick Church was on the run. There were fliers and notices and even billboards around the country looking for him. He was finally capture on November 21, 1991 in Salt Lake City Utah after a police officer had eaten at a diner he was working in. The officer knew that Rick Church looked familiar and when he returned to the station he discovered one of the fliers. He and another officer went back to the diner on the following day to talk to the owner. According to the owner the person the officer believed was Rick Church went by the name Danny Lee Carson. In fact, he had recently even gotten a Utah identification card with that name. This particular day was Rick/Danny's day off so the officers went to his apartment. It seems that he readily confessed that he was in fact Rick Church. His lawyer would contend that Rick was caught and subsequently allowed his arrest without incident simply because he was tired of running. Who knows if that was actually true.

In July of 1992 Rick Church would plead guilty to two counts of first degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and one count of home invasion. He did so in order to avoid the death penalty as he would be sentenced to multiple terms of life without parole. In Illinois that means the only way he leaves prison is on a gurney. But, his plea agreement was not just that easy. It also required that he talk to the investigators about his time on the run. They wanted to know how he had been able to stay on the lam for so long, especially considering there were rumors that he narrowly escaped capture more than once.

Rick would tell them that his first scare came as he was leaving town just after the murders. He claimed that there was an officer in front of him and one behind him on the highway. He was certain he was “done for” but apparently they were not out looking for him yet because neither of them pulled him over. At some point Rick made his way out to California. While there he had cashed in some savings bonds in the amount of $400. While the bank required a three day wait for the money and the government does trace such things, it took much longer for the trace. By the time investigators got to Los Angeles, they had lost him. They did apparently find his mother's truck there though. It was while in Los Angeles that he joined a religious group called “Alamo.” This group has been described as a “Christian Cult.” In fact the founder, Tony Alamo was convicted in 2009 as a child sex offender and died in prison in 2017. Whether the group moved around the country “spreading their word” or to avoid criminal charges seems unclear but at some point Rick Church ended up in Arkansas around the summer of 1989 with the group. He would say that it was there that the police and the IRS had raided the compound and he had hidden in some nearby woods in case he was recognized. It seems that after this Rick was pretty much done with the religious group and he and another member left and began traveling. At some point the two ended up in New York. It was not clear exactly what happened but it was here that Rick Church claimed he spent more than three weeks in jail “in connection with a friends domestic dispute.” It was not clear but it seems that he was not using his real name at the time but what name he was using is unclear. They even fingerprinted him in New York and ran them but got nothing in return. The national fingerprint system was already in service but because Rick had never been in trouble before they had only been able to get partial prints from items in his home to put in the database. I suppose to be fair they may not have been certain they were even his prints. Let us just say that should not longer be a problem at this point. It seems that officers did not just want to know what he was doing and how he had eluded them for over three years, they wanted to now where the loopholes were in the system.

The three Ritter children were raised by Ruth Ann's family and have hopefully recovered physically and emotionally. It was said that in 1991 when Rick Church was captured Colleen was engaged to be married.