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- The Webb report says the Chicago Tribune didn’t pick up some police files.
Buried in the recent report by special prosecutor Dan Webb, “The Death of David Koschman,” is this tantalizing suggestion: that the Sun-Times campaign to fix responsibility for Koschman’s death in 2004 and find out why Chicago police were so unwilling to might have been a Tribune campaign instead.
Koschman had been knocked unconscious when he was punched by R.J. Vanecko—nephew of then-mayor Richard M. Daley—early the morning of April 25, 2004, outside a Rush Street bar. Eleven days later he died of his injuries. According to the Webb report, on May 26, 2004, the Sun-Times carried a story in which then-police superintendent Phil Cline said there was “no basis” for criminal charges. “It appears,” says the Webb report, “the media did not publish another article regarding the Koschman case until 2011.”
In other words, Novak would get nothing of value. The Sun-Times appealed, and ultimately CPD was overruled by the Illinois attorney general’s office.
