Thursday, March 02, 2006 5:20 P.M.
Mystery still surrounds Lister’s death
By Barb Ickes | Comments(0)
Area police and a Rock Island County coroner’s jury are in agreement that the death of an East Moline man was no accident.
At a coroner’s inquest Wednesday, the jury ruled the death of George Lister, 74, a homicide. Two dozen members of the Lister family attended the hearing.
Rock Island County sheriff’s detective Eric Holton described the mysterious circumstances surrounding Lister’s Oct. 16 disappearance and the discovery of his badly decomposed body almost three weeks later. The case began with a missing person’s report filed by the victim’s wife, Dorothy Lister.
She last saw her husband at the couple’s home and, when he failed to show up for work early that evening, she called police.
Cellular telephone records showed that the last call Lister took was from someone wanting the self-employed contractor to bid on a retaining wall job. Holton said the caller was questioned by police who said they could not be certain whether the call was legitimate or “a ruse.”
Many people have been interviewed about Lister’s disappearance and death, police said, but a suspect has not been identified.
“I hope there’ll be an arrest,” Dorothy Lister said after the inquest. “They’re gonna get ‘em.”
Two days after he disappeared, Lister’s pickup truck was found in the parking lot of an East Moline Walgreen’s store. The keys, along with several credit cards, were inside the vehicle.
Holton said police watched an in-store surveillance video that showed “Mr. Lister was never in that store.”
On Nov. 5, his body was found in a remote, wooded area near a service road off Interstate 280 in Rock Island. Judging from the position of the body, Holton said, it either was carried to the location where it was found or it was dumped before rolling down an incline.
Because of decomposition and “animal activity,” investigators struggled to confirm an identity. Ultimately, however, the body was identified as Lister’s. An autopsy was conducted several days after the body’s discovery, but no cause of death could be determined.
“It is the opinion of the Rock Island County Sheriff’s Department that Mr. Lister died as the result of another (person),” Holton said.
Police continue to investigate the case.
‘A huge debris field’
Also during the inquest, a Moline police officer described a remarkable single-vehicle crash on the Interstate 74 bridge last month that resulted in the death of a Rock Island man.
Officer Mike DeBacker told the coroner’s jury the rollover crash that claimed the life of Humberto Meza, 29, included an accident scene that stretched along nearly 400 feet of roadway. He said a stunningly large section of pavement near the 7th Avenue exit in Moline was covered in baby clothes and car parts from the smashed vehicle.
“There was only one piece of glass left in that vehicle,” he said. “It was a huge debris field.”
The accident occurred Feb. 5, he said, when Meza lost control of the sport utility vehicle on a curved area of the bridge. The SUV was traveling “well in excess of the speed limit,” he said, when it skidded and rolled, ultimately coming to rest upright.
Meza, the driver, was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the vehicle. As it spun out of control, the vehicle’s tires peeled off their rims. Meza was thrown under the vehicle and, with the tires no longer inflated, the SUV was found sitting low to the ground, adding to the man’s injuries.
The cause of death was head trauma. Meza’s blood-alcohol level was .148, or nearly twice the legal limit for driving. A smashed bottle of Crown Royal whisky was found in front of the vehicle, DeBacker said.
“That car was covered with scratches, scrapes and gouges,” he said.
The death was ruled an accident.
Barb Ickes can be contacted at
(563) 383-2316 or
bickes@qctimes.com
http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2006/03/02/news/local/doc44068fb4e6f8d782127363.txt