CHICAGO, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- A man who claims Chicago police tortured a confession from him said the officers responsible for his 23 years in prison will get what they deserve.
Michael Tillman was released Thursday after special prosecutors dropped charges against him for the 1986 rape and murder of Betty Howard in an abandoned apartment on Chicago's South Side, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
Tillman is the latest inmate to be freed because of allegations of torture by detectives under disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge.
The special prosecutors said in court papers the state would be unable to disprove that the confession had been coerced and they didn't have enough reliable evidence to convict him of the crimes.
"They'll get what they got coming," Tillman said during a news conference Thursday at the Cook County Criminal Courts Building. "The system will do to them what they did to me."
The special prosecutors said they found evidence of "a pattern and practice of abuse" at what now is the Calumet Area police headquarters under Burge and his detectives.
Tillman was convicted of abducting Howard, a single mother, and her 2-year-old in their apartment building and taking them to a vacant unit, the Tribune said. The boy was locked in a bathroom as his mother was raped, stabbed and shot.
When claiming last year that he was tortured during questioning, Tillman said Burge's detectives beat him with a phone book, punched in the face and stomach until he vomited, covered his head with plastic bag and poured soda in his nose, the Chicago Sun-Times said.
Howard's daughter, Angelita, and fiance, Ora Russell, told the Sun-Times they believe Tillman was involved in Howard's death and were angry about his release.
