Living The Nightmare

Amy Leichtenberg quietly approached the casino boat gamblers with fliers, hoping they may have seen her ex-husband, a known gambler. Three weeks earlier, he abducted the couple’s two young sons and by now all other leads had come up snake eyes. Then her phone rang.

An investigator on the case told her to drive to the McLean County Sheriff’s Department to discuss something new in the case.

Leichtenberg excitedly made the two-hour drive to the police station, allowing herself to daydream about her two boys—9-year-old Duncan and 7-year-old Jack—happily greeting her there.

Inside the station, she didn’t see her boys waiting for her. Instead, Beth Kimmerling, the county coroner, introduced herself.

"No!" Leichtenberg screamed, quickly realizing her hopeful daydream turned into her worst nightmare. "No! No! No!"

The coroner couldn’t even get the words out, telling Leichtenberg that Duncan and Jack—the joys of her life—were dead. And her ex-husband was dead, too, taking his own life after killing both his sons.

"Where are my babies?!" Leichtenberg remembers asking frantically through sobs. "Where are my babies?!" The coroner told her the boys’ bodies were with their father’s body in the back of the police station.

"I want my boys as far away from him as possible!" Leichtenberg remembers yelling, punching a desk and nearby concrete walls.

As the coroner left, Leichtenberg dissolved into a chair, crying, screaming and shaking. She felt numb. She felt empty. She felt like joining her sons in heaven. "I want to see my babies," she remembers telling authorities. No, they told her. Not yet. Not now. Not in their condition.
She begged them. They refused.

To read the entire story about Amy Leicchtenberg in the October issue of Chicago Parent click HERE.

Amy Leichtenberg was a guest on the Susan Murphy Milano show to listen to the interview it plays from this site automatically make sure the volume of your computer is turned on. Susan's show will resume again on Wednesday October 7, 2009 at 4:00 PM.