Koschman cop found soft landing with state job

Three years after he led the initial botched investigation into David Koschman’s death in 2004 at the hands of a nephew of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley, Ronald E. Yawger retired from the Chicago Police Department and took a plum job with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Even though he’d once been indicted by a federal grand jury, Yawger was hired over dozens of other applicants as one of only 13 investigators on Madigan’s staff.

His salary, like that of other investigators there, has soared since then. He now makes $81,264 a year — up 60 percent since he was hired seven years ago.

Not only is it a prize position, it also allows Yawger to double-dip — collect two government checks at the same time, one from the state, the other the city police pension he began taking after 34 years as a cop.

His annual pension — largely funded by Chicago taxpayers — now comes to $77,443. Add that to his state salary, and the 63-year-old retired cop now makes $158,707 a year, records show.

He landed the job with Madigan in 2007 after interviewing with two top members of her staff — William P. Walsh and Ellen Mandeltort. Both had worked for Daley when he was Cook County state’s attorney, before his election as mayor in 1989.

Yawger applied for the job in the summer of 2005 — around the time he transferred from the police department’s Area 3 detective division on the city’s North Side to the cold-case unit. He was among 71 candidates interviewed by Walsh, a divison chief director who supervised the attorney general’s staff of investigators, and Mandeltort, a deputy attorney general.

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