Strangers pay respects to 5-year-old AJ: ‘I just felt compelled to come’

In a world where senseless killings have become so much the norm as to have a numbing effect, a parent killing a child still commands our attention.

Maybe we should be grateful for that much — that death doesn’t always have to come in multiples to penetrate our consciousness.

But grateful didn’t seem right either Friday as I sat outside the Crystal Lake funeral home where thousands of mourners attended a public visitation for 5-year-old AJ Freund.

The vast majority of those who came didn’t know AJ, had no connection to him or his family beyond humanity and proximity. But they came anyway.

Why exactly? To pay their respects, to unburden their souls, to show their support, to protest the “system” that betrayed him, to vent their anger or to feel less powerless. All those reasons and more.

Many said they came to show him that the community loved him, and who am I to say it’s too late for that, even if my own philosophy is that funerals are for the living not the dead.

Jack Conley, 73, drove from Muenster, Indiana.

“I just felt compelled to come. I don’t know why. Somebody should have been able to do something for that boy,” Conley said as he started to choke up and hurried off to take his place in line.

Mourners began lining up outside Davenport Funeral Home and Crematory along busy Route 176 an hour before the visitation’s 1 p.m. scheduled start.

By the time the doors opened, there were probably already a thousand people in line, more women than men, snaking their way through a strip mall parking lot.

Among them was Michelle Murphy, 46, from nearby Cary, wearing an Army jacket over a Cubs T-shirt.

“This really bothers me for some reason that I can’t explain. If you don’t want your kid, there’s other things you can do besides kill him,” Murphy said.

Murphy said her own drug-addicted father had given her up for adoption by her maternal grandparents after her mother died when she was 3.

“My father knew he couldn’t take care of me,” she said.

Not far away from her was Detective George Hilbring of the Chicago Police Department, who stood out from the crowd in his dress blues.

“Police officers, you know, we’re parents, too,” said Hilbring, who added that he’d cried all week after AJ’s body was found.

Hilbring has been on the job for 17 years.

“I’ve seen some horrific acts. Even in a city like Chicago, where violence is usually our No. 1 topic of conversation, this is the most heinous crime I have ever heard of,” Hilbring said.

As the saying goes, the line moved quickly, and mourners were soon trickling back out of the funeral home after taking their turns besides the small closed casket.

Once outside, many could be seen fighting back tears or heard sniffling audibly.

A pair of Crystal Lake moms, Jenny Carlini, 49, and Yolanda Ramos, 45, consoled each other in the parking lot. Minutes earlier, they had been strangers, but had bonded over their shared pain.

“It was hard,” Carlini said.

“It hits you,” said Ramos.

They said mourners were allowed to spend as much time inside the funeral home as they wanted but said the absence of family members to greet them kept things moving.

Carlini said she was very glad she came.

“It’s closure for me,” she said. “Now the real work begins.”

The real work?

“We have to change the rules [regarding parental custody in child abuse cases],” she said. “We have to get more funding.”

Many of those with whom I spoke said they’d had their own encounters with the child welfare system, often as grandparents trying to wrest their grandchildren away from an abusive parent.

“The secrecy has to go,” said a grandmother from Kane County who declined to give her name because her son’s custody dispute is ongoing. “They’re not protecting the kids. They’re protecting the abuse.”

Crystal Lake Police said they would enforce a request by the funeral home to keep reporters and photographers off their property during the visitation.

Fine by me. I have attended enough funerals in my reporting career.

Mourners told me the funeral home was packed with floral arrangements. A number of “comfort dogs” were also present to help those struggling with their emotions.

Jack Conley had almost made it back home to Muenster when I caught up with him by phone. He said he felt better.

“This thing just got to me. That poor kid. I just wanted to say I’m sorry I couldn’t help him. A little late, but you know…,” he said as his voice started to crack again.

The line dwindled as the afternoon wore on, then replenished itself. But the line will be exhausted by evening’s end. The number of child abuse cases won’t.

As I sit here writing this in my car, another young woman walks past, crying inconsolably.