GIRL'S BROTHER TESTIFIES FATHER FATALLY BEAT HER

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GIRL'S BROTHER TESTIFIES FATHER FATALLY BEAT HER


By Jeff Coen - Tribune staff reporter
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Source of Article

Published April 26, 2006


Testifying against his father, Leon Slack whipped a piece of electrical cord across a bed frame in the courtroom. The cord, he said, was like the one his father used to beat Slack's sister to death.

Jurors watched as Slack repeatedly slapped the cord, demonstrating how he said his father struck his sister more than 100 times after she was tied to the same frame in November 2001.

Laree Slack had screamed out, her brother said, but their father, Larry Slack, stuck a towel in her mouth to muffle her.

Leon Slack, now 21, testified in Cook County Criminal Court on the first day of Larry Slack's trial in the murder of 12-year-old Laree. Leon Slack said his father routinely beat him and his five brothers and sisters with electrical cords.

"You felt it not only in your back, but in the front of your chest," Slack said. He then described the force his father used--like "you were hammering a nail into wood."

Larry Slack and his wife, Constance, were charged in the case after paramedics responded to a 911 call from the house in the 7900 block of South Brandon Avenue, Chicago. Prosecutors have said the couple were strict Jehovah's Witnesses who practiced corporal punishment.

Constance Slack has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is expected to testify against her husband, who faces the same charge.

On Tuesday, Assistant State's Atty. Meg Blade told jurors the facts of the case are so horrible that justice demands a guilty verdict.

Assistant Public Defender Denise Streff urged the panel not to let sympathy sway them. Larry Slack did not intend to kill his daughter, Streff said.

The couple loved their children but did whip them as a form of discipline, just as their own parents had, Streff said. Larry Slack worked as a Chicago Transit Authority machinist and Constance Slack worked as a nurse.

"It got out of hand," Streff said of the discipline. "It absolutely got out of hand."


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