No home for a child
domestic calls at the home. York said he was in the house trying to collect his children’s kittens from his former basement apartment when his daughter came running down the basement stairs screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!”
Consistent with his statement to police, York told the Tribune he raced up the stairs to see Freund with a clenched fist standing over Cunningham saying, “You want another one of these?” York said he tried to intervene and Freund nearly knocked him down the stairs, ripping York’s shirt in the process. Freund was arrested on a charge of battery in the incident.
“I’m holding on to the railing with one hand and calling the police with the other,” York said.
Grandmother steps in
Amid the chaos was a 12-year-old boy. Hughes said her grandson began spending more time at her McHenry County home to escape the “madness” of his mother’s life. The grandmother was relieved when the boy came to stay with her full time in late 2012, as Cunningham served her 30-day jail stint.
“He came to me with a shirt, shorts and some shoes I had to throw away because they were so dirty and old,” said Hughes, who had gone through a second divorce four years earlier and was living with a boyfriend.
Two days before Christmas, Cunningham tried to pick up her son after her release from custody. Hughes refused to give the child back, and Cunningham called police.
According to the police report, the boy did not want to leave. An officer who interviewed him wrote that “he loves his mother very much, however, he does not want to move back with her right now because she has (substance) abuse problems and she needs to get herself better. He also advised he is not comfortable with the living conditions at (his mother’s) residence.”
Police allowed him to stay with his grandmother that night after he promised to spend Christmas Day with his mom, the police report said.
Hughes called the DCFS hotline that next day — Christmas Eve — and accused her daughter of being mentally unstable, abusing drugs, neglecting her son and living in squalor with Freund.
Hughes told the Tribune she loved her daughter but “I knew I had to protect him.”
DCFS investigated Hughes’ hotline call and ultimately determined the allegations were unfounded. Hughes said she realized she was on her own, without help from the state.
In January 2013, Cunningham asked a judge to force her mother to return her son. Hughes quickly responded with a lengthy petition for legal custody. In court records, Hughes accused her daughter of being an unfit parent, stating that Cunningham even had told the boy she’d kill herself if he did not come home.
In her petition for custody, Hughes described conditions she had witnessed months earlier inside her daughter’s home with Freund. She stated the home often was without heat, running water or a working telephone. Hughes said she cleaned floors covered in dog waste, dirty dishes and piles of cat urine-soaked laundry.
Though Freund never served in the military, he had acquired a U.S. Army uniform and medals and walked “around the house with a gun in hand,” frightening her grandson, Hughes’ petition alleged.
There was often no food in Cunningham’s house — just marshmallows and water — and the boy would go to school without lunch money or clean clothing, the grandmother said in court documents.
She said he slept in a basement that was a AJ’s mother had been court-ordered to get anger management counseling and drug treatment. His father was to get help for drug and alcohol issues.
“dumping ground for animals” and he was often neglected, including once when he had strep throat. The boy witnessed violence between Cunningham and Freund, the petition stated, including when his mother “drew a knife and threatened” Freund and Freund shoved her down the stairs.
Freund was abusing cocaine and Oxycontin, Hughes alleged. She said Cunningham and Freund drove with the boy to Wisconsin several times while under the influence of medications, seeking to buy Vicodin illegally. Cunningham, she also alleged, had admitted to the boy that she took illegal drugs.
A McHenry County judge allowed Cunningham’s son to remain with his grandmother as the court case continued. Hughes was awarded permanent custody nine months later in October 2013.
Cunningham again petitioned the court to get back custody in 2015, citing her sobriety and ongoing drug treatment, but she was not successful. Freund acted as her attorney.
Her son never did live with Cunningham again after 2012.
Though Hughes would bring the boy to visit with his mom, she said her relationship with her daughter was never the same. The child flourished in school and sports while being raised by his grandmother and her boyfriend. Now 19, he is a college sophomore.
“With everything that he has gone through, he’s been so successful and mature,” Hughes said. “I’m very proud of him.”
A new pregnancy
By 2013, police records show, the struggling lawyer and the former hairdresser were scrounging for any money they could find to support their drug habits.
One fight began when Cunningham accused Freund of stealing some of the $18 they had collected that morning after recycling soda cans and empty ammunition casings.
A friend who had stopped by the couple’s home called police after witnessing Cunningham pummeling Freund and calling him a loser. Freund crouched down, covering his face with his hands, not fighting back, according to the police report.
Freund had a black eye from a previous, unknown incident, the report said. The couple denied the argument was physical, but the friend who witnessed it signed a complaint against Cunningham and she was charged with aggravated battery.
Cunningham was arrested three more times that June and July on retail theft charges and for a related warrant. Freund was picked up once for retail theft as well.
Authorities allege Cunningham used discarded receipts she found to “return” items she had just taken off store shelves, and Freund layered stolen clothing beneath his own or hid items in his spandex shorts and compression socks.
Searching their car, police found stolen merchandise from stores as well as syringes and other drug paraphernalia. In Cunningham’s purse, officers once reported finding handwritten notes on pink paper that listed various stores to visit and which items to take.
In court, Cunningham was convicted in one of the retail theft cases and of battering Freund. She was ordered as part of her sentence to undergo anger management counseling and drug treatment. In his case, Freund agreed as a sentencing requirement to get help for his drug and alcohol dependency as well.
Freund had suffered a stroke and was not allowed to practice law after failing to register with the state and neglecting to fulfill continuing education requirements. He got a temporary job through a friend doing manual labor. But after a service elevator fell on his hand, crushing it, the couple lived on Freund’s disability checks, records show.
York said Cunningham approached him that spring at the grocery store where he still worked and asked for help. He gave her a few dollars and stopped by the house a couple of times afterward to drop off groceries and food for the couple’s pets, York said.
Once while there, York said he asked Cunningham if she knew who had adopted his kids’ kittens. He had been led to believe by Freund that the kittens were given away after his attempt to collect them was disrupted, York said.
Cunningham told him the animals were still in the basement. “We don’t go down there,” he recalls her saying. “Those cats are like wild animals.”
York was taken aback and later filed an animal cruelty report with police, who found a broken window pane in a basement door had allowed the cats to come and go.
“How could you watch an animal suffer like that without even blinking an eye?” York said. “They may have been good people at one time, but the drugs turned them into monsters without affection or empathy.”
At the time, Cunningham was pregnant with her second child. The baby was due that fall. Coming next Sunday: Part Two. Read both parts and see additional photos online at chicagotribune.com/aj