Fool Me Once

EPILOGUE

One afternoon in late 2021, an email appeared on my computer screen. The writer had big news: Rita Crundwell was getting out of prison.

“No way!” I said aloud.

It was true. Dixon, Illinois, was another pandemic casualty.

Here’s how it went down. On April 22, 2020, Rita had written a letter to Judge Phillip Reinhard requesting compassionate release from the Federal Prison Camp in Pekin, Illinois, where she had spent the last few years.

A district court can reduce a defendant’s sentence and release him or her when “extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction” or when a defendant with a mandatory life sentence reaches at least seventy years of age, has served at least thirty years, and is not a danger to the safety of ...