Stephen Small, a 30-year-old media heir, died of asphyxiation after being buried alive in a 6ft box during a botched kidnapping in 1987. Small was the grandson of former Illinois governor Len Small and the son of Burrell L. Small, president of Mid America Media Group, which owned radio stations, TV channels, and a newspaper.
Drug dealer Danny Edwards, posing as a police officer, lured Small into his car on September 2, 1987, and demanded a $1 million ransom from Small's wife, Nancy. The family received five phone calls but could not understand the recorded instructions. Edwards buried Small in a homemade box equipped with an air pipe, water, and light in a forest in Kankakee, Illinois, but Small died of asphyxiation.
Edwards forced his partner, Nancy Rish, then 26, to assist under threat of killing her son. Rish was convicted of murder and kidnapping in 1988 and sentenced to 70 years for murder and 30 years for kidnapping. However, in 2022, she was released after a 2016 law allowed victims of intimate partner violence to challenge their sentences.
Rish expressed remorse, stating she did not knowingly participate but took responsibility. Her attorney argued Edwards threatened her son's life. The Illinois Attorney General's office opposed the reduced sentence, citing the brutality of the crime, but acknowledged Rish's rehabilitation efforts. Edwards was initially sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison.
