July 24, 1964 - Mrs. Tillie Majczek (left in 1945), who scrubbed floors for 11 years to free her son from a 99-year term in prison, died today.
Mrs. Majczek’s story was the basis of the movie “Call Northside 777,” which told of her fight to free her son, Joseph Majczek (right, after his release), from Illinois’ Stateville Penitentiary.
She saved her scrubwoman’s pay and mortgaged her home to get money to reopen her son’s defense against a charge that he had killed a Chicago policeman in 1932.
Mr. Majczek, now a 55-year-old insurance agent, telephoned the news of his mother’s death to Jack McPhaul, one of the newspapermen instrumental in helping Mrs. Majczek win her son’s freedom.
On Oct. 1, 1944, Mrs. Majczek placed a classified ad in the Chicago Times which read: “$5,000 Reward for Killers of Officer Lundy on Dec. 9, 1932. Call GRO 1758. 12-7 p.m.” (There is no Northside 777.)
The ad caught the eye of a reporter, Terry Colangelo, who showed it to his city editor, Karin Walsh. Mrs. Walsh assigned a reporter to get a feature story. After Mrs. Majczek told her story, the newspaper joined her fight.
As reporters went back over the evidence, they found that that the state’s chief witness, Mrs. Vera Walush, had falsely identified Mr. Majczek as the killer.
One of the state’s witnesses, John Zagata, told the reporters that Mrs. Walush could not possibly have seen the killer because “there was not enough light in that back room to recognize anybody” and that she had ducked into a closet as the killer entered the room.
“Fact is,” he was quoted as saying, “I decided later that Joe [Majczek] couldn’t have been one of the [two] gunmen. He wasn’t tall enough.”
It took a year for reporters to collect the evidence proving his innocence. On Aug. 15, 1945, Governor Dwight Green signed a pardon. Two years later, the state tried to make amends for his years in prison by paying him $24,000 in damages. The son deposited the money in his mother’s account.
During the sixth year of his imprisonment, Mr. Majczek’s first wife obtained a divorce because she felt he “would never get out.”
Mr. Majczek has since remarried and lives in suburban Oak Lawn with his wife and three sons.
The real killers have never been identified.
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