Family of former Pinckneyville inmate wants cellmate from Springfield charged in homicide

More than two years is a long time to wait for authorities to decide whether to charge a former Springfield man in the alleged strangulation death of a prison cellmate, the attorney for the dead man’s family says.

Chicago lawyer David Lipschultz said he hasn’t received answers from Rob Jeffreys, acting director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, or David Searby Jr., state’s attorney for Perry County.

Lipschultz, who represents the family of Earl Little, formerly of Rushville and Quincy, sent a letter Nov. 18 to Jeffreys and Searby asking why former Springfield resident Daniel Mueller, 33, hasn’t been charged with any crimes in connection with Little’s death.

“Earl’s family demands to know why your offices have not respected their rights as victims by keeping them apprised of the investigation and prosecution” of Mueller, Lipschultz said in his letter.

Corrections spokeswoman Lindsey Hess said in an email to The State Journal-Register that the department “is investigating the death of Earl Little.” She added, “To protect the integrity of the investigation, no further details can be provided at this time.”

Searby didn’t return a phone call from The State Journal-Register.

Lipschultz said the Department of Corrections rejected his Freedom of Information Act request for documents that would indicate the status of the investigation into Little’s death July 6, 2018. At the time, he and Mueller shared a cell at medium-security Pinckneyville Correctional Center in Perry County, 130 miles south of Springfield.

Lipschultz wrote in his letter that Searby recently told him that the investigation by Corrections was “finally complete.”

Little’s sister, Dana Caley, 40, of Quincy, said her brother’s family hasn’t received any information from the state or Perry County on the manner of his death. Caley said the cause of death on his death certificate is listed as "cervical ligature placement."

She said family members think Little was strangled by Mueller. Little’s ex-wife, Megan Little, administrator of her ex-husband’s estate, made the same allegation in a federal wrongful-death lawsuit she filed against the prison’s former warden in 2018. Megan Little dropped the lawsuit the next year, though Lipschultz, who represented her, wouldn’t say why.

Earl Little was 33 and had begun serving a 21-year sentence for an armed robbery in DuPage County only a few months before he was found dead in his prison cell.

Little was a U.S. Air Force veteran and former factory worker and prom king when he was in high school in Rushville. The DuPage County conviction was based on allegations of armed robbery and unlawful restraint involving a victim who lived in Aurora.

Little’s two sons, ages 8 and 9, live with Megan Little in Beardstown.

Mueller was serving a 30-year sentence after being convicted in 2014 for the 2012 strangulation murder of his girlfriend, Kayla Dillon, 25, inside the house they shared in Springfield. Mueller was unemployed at the time, and Dillon was a direct-service provider and job coach for developmentally disabled clients of a social-service agency.

When Mueller was sentenced as part of a negotiated plea agreement, Dillon’s mother said the murder sentence wasn’t long enough.

Mueller told a Sangamon County judge that he dropped out of school in seventh grade, later earned a GED diploma, and was institutionalized twice for mental illness — once when he was 10 and again in 2012.

Caley said Little, who was 6 feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds, expressed concerns for his safety in prison.

In Lipschultz’s letter, he said Mueller, who was 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 175 pounds, strangled Little with an electrical cord to a fan belonging to Little sometime before dawn July 6, 2018.

“Mueller had coveted Earl’s fan for some time,” Lipschultz wrote. “Critically, Earl and Mueller’s cell door was locked so only Mueller could have killed Earl.”

Mueller now is housed at Lawrence Correctional Center in southeastern Illinois.

Caley said she and other family members worry that authorities won't charge anyone in connection with her brother’s death. "Our hope is that some sort of pressure can be put on them to do something." 

Contact Dean Olsen: dolsen@gannett.com; (217) 836-1068; twitter.com/DeanOlsen.