Mass killer will move away from elementary school

LA GRANGE, ILL. — The La Grange, Ill., police department says that a man released from prison on parole after being convicted of killing five people in 1972, who had moved into a home across the street from Seventh Avenue School, is relocating.

The decision to relocate Carl Reimann was made by the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

“It’s reassuring that it will calm a lot of anxiety of a lot of people,” said Jackie Packard, president of the Seventh Avenue School Parent-Teacher Organization. “Kids today are more in tune with what’s going on in the world, and they don’t need the extra stress.”

News that Reimann was granted parole April 26 and was living across from Seventh Avenue School was posted on the La Grange Elementary District 105 website last Monday and prompted uproar in the community.

Superintendent Glenn Schlichting said that school officials had contacted the Illinois Department of Corrections, chief of paroles, to express concerns.

Reimann was convicted of what has been described as a “bloody massacre” at a restaurant near Yorkville, Ill.

Jason Sweat, legal counsel for the Prisoner Review Board, said a family from a church that has long been in contact with Reimann, now 77, offered to be his host during his parole.

The board deemed Reimann “a good risk for parole” in an 8-4 vote at Reimann’s 20th parole hearing. They weighed a number of factors and brought up a religious conversion Reimann had in the mid-1980s, Sweat has said.