Former County Pol Wants Guy Pal's 'Personal' Pics Destroyed

By Joseph Hosey

Former Will County Board Member Kathleen Konicki said a boyfriend "took carefully staged pictures designed to embarass" her, and then passed them off to a pal who distributed them "to a number of other people."

Konicki, 63, petitioned a Will County judge Tuesday for a protective order against the allegedly treacherous photographer, New Lenox man John Bassett. In her petition, Konicki identified Bassett, 62, as a "boyfriend."

Konicki said in the petition that she "broke up with John about five years ago," but that he has returned to call her and frighten her by driving "around my circle gravel driveway at a very high rate of speed that sent gravel flying and made a lot of noise."

Konicki also wrote in her petition that she secured a previous protective order against Bassett in 2005, one which supposedly instructed Bassett to "destroy some pictures of me."

According to Konicki, the pictures are still around.

"I found out ... recently that John did not destroy these pictures," the petition said. "He gave these pictures to another friend of his who I dated some time ago. This person emailed the pictures of me out to a number of other people."

This other boyfriend is not identified in the petition. Konicki declined to comment on the petition or the nature of the photographs, which Bassett planned to use against her, according to her 2005 petition.

"He has threatened to use these pictures and other, more personal ones, to keep anyone else from being interested in me," Konicki wrote.

Calls to the listed number for Bassett's Marley Road home went to a message saying the line has been temporarily disconnected.

Konicki, a Homer Glen Republican, lost her seat on the county board when she was defeated in the March 2012 primary. While still in office, she was a fixture at the Drew Peterson murder trial, attending regularly, if not every day.

After Peterson was found guilty in September of drowning his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Konicki sent an email to then-Chief Judge Gerald Kinney. The email criticized Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow for supposedly praising a Cincinnati tycoon jailed for muttering an obscenity at Peterson while both were in the courtroom.

After the email surfaced in September, Glasgow's spokesman, Charles B. Pelkie, pointed out factual inaccuracies in Konicki's account—including her claim that the jury was in the courtroom when the tycoon, restaurateur Jeff Ruby, allegedly cursed Peterson.

"The letter itself is detached from reality," Pelkie said at the time. "Some of the things she alleged happened just didn't happen."

Konicki succeeded in securing an emergency protective order against Bassett during a Tuesday hearing. The case was scheduled to return to court Sept. 5.

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