Like most 10-year-old girls, Dallas Trznadle wants to be with her mother.
“I see my mother in my future, but I want to hug her now,” wrote the child, who asked in a letter to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board that it recommend clemency for her mother, who is serving a 22-year prison sentence for the December 1990 murder of Michael Rhodes of Carol Stream.
Kathleen Zellner, the attorney for Denise Trznadle of Carol Stream, told the board during a clemency hearing Thursday that her client and Dallas were victims of repeated abuse from Rhodes, with whom the mother and daughter shared an apartment.
Dallas lives with her father in Arizona.
Denise Trznadle pleaded guilty in 1992, despite the advice of the DuPage County public defender’s office and psychiatrists, who said they believed she had a valid claim of being abused over the two months she lived with Rhodes.
Rhodes’ body was discovered three months after Trznadle shot him in the head.Trznadle fled to Arizona to live with family members. She was arrested there and extradited to Illinois.
“She did the crime and she made a 31-page confession, but she would have been found innocent of the murder if it went to trial,” Zellner said. “But she has a conscience and she is a moral person and she wanted to plead guilty.
“But her daughter, Dallas, has been punished the most. She was living in the apartment with Rhodes and she remembers some of the abuse against her mother.”
Dallas talks with her mother in prison and always ends the conversation by singing the Janet Jackson song “You Are Not Alone” to her, Zellner said.
Trznadle met Rhodes, 46, at a tavern and accepted an offer to share his Carol Stream apartment.
Rhodes regularly abused her, beat her, raped her as often as three times a day and threatened her and her daughter with a handgun, Trznadle said when she pleaded guilty.
She contended she could not take the abuse anymore and needed to escape.
DuPage prosecutors countered that Trznadle had numerous chances over the two months she lived with Rhodes to report allegations of violence to police and said that she had time to move from the apartment.
Jane Radostits, deputy chief of the criminal division of the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office, opposed the request for clemency and said the 22-year sentence was fair.
“Abuse is not an issue in this case,” Radostits said. “The sentencing judge heard the claims of abuse, and he also heard how she never mentioned abuse until she was told she was being charged with murder.
“There were never any police reports of abuse, no medical reports of abuse, and no one ever saw the injuries. She said she accepts responsibility, but she just doesn’t want to accept the punishment.”
Radostits said the sentence for murder is 20 to 60 years, and Trznadle was given a 22-year sentence, two years longer than the minimum. Under Illinois law in effect in 1992 when she pleaded guilty, she is required to serve half her sentence if she is a good prisoner, making her eligible for release in about four more years.
Trznadle lost her appeal before the Illinois Appellate Court. She was one of 18 women in prison who in 1995 asked Gov. Jim Edgar for clemency on the grounds that they committed acts of violence because they were victims of abuse. Edgar freed some of the women, but Trznadle remained behind bars.
The Prisoner Review Board will issue a confidential recommendation to Edgar in about a week.
