After murder, victim’s family forced to battle southern Illinois coroner for remains
A gruesome murder in Marion County was just the beginning of a year-long nightmare for a metro-east family.
It started in December of 2019, when Clender Edmond Jr., 39, a former Centreville man living in Centralia, was beaten and shot multiple times in the garage of a rural home. His killers then rolled his body in a tarp, took it to a brush pile, set it on fire and left the charred remains for animals to desecrate further.
Edmond’s family members helped police with the investigation, and some attended the main suspect’s trial in August.
“It’s been devastating,” said Vickie Langston, 52, of O’Fallon, Edmond’s sister. “I miss him. I think about him every day. ... It’s unimaginable how they did it. They didn’t just shoot him. They tried to get rid of the body by burning it.”
The family’s experience was made even more difficult by Marion County Coroner Troy Cannon, according to Langston and Nicole Johnson, 40, of Belleville, the mother of Edmond’s two teenage sons.
They say Cannon refused to release Edmond’s remains for 13 months, even after police and prosecutors no longer needed them as evidence; forced family members to call an estimated 100 times seeking information and closure; told a Salem funeral director that Edmond had no next of kin; and incorrectly completed his death certificate.
After complaining to other Marion County officials, the family received Edmond’s ashes on Jan. 19. Now the funeral director is asking for his name and license number to be removed from the death certificate because he didn’t handle the arrangements.
“It’s not acceptable to treat people like this,” said Johnson, who works as community coordinator for the village of Alorton. “It’s just not acceptable.”
Cannon didn’t return calls for comment.
A Marion County assistant state’s attorney, sheriff’s department investigator and the county clerk all expressed regret that Edmond’s family had such a hard time getting his remains released by the coroner’s office.
“(The murder) left a huge, gaping hole in their lives, and they’re just really good people,” said Melissa Doran, assistant state’s attorney and lead prosecutor in the case.
Brother had a ‘good heart’
Edmond grew up in Centreville in a blended family with seven siblings. He quit school, earned a GED and welding certificate and worked in that field for a while, but he got involved in drugs and other illegal activity, according to his sister.
Edmond did keep in touch with family, including sons Jalen, now 18, and Bralen, 15, from an early relationship with Johnson.
“My brother had a good heart, but of course he was on the street,” said Langston, an ER technician at Memorial Hospital Shiloh. “When my mom was living, we all tried to get him on the right track, but he never wanted to get on the right track.”
Edmond was living with a woman in Centralia when he was murdered on Dec. 3, 2019. Police didn’t know about it until three days later, when they arrested Krystal Scerba, now 31, for alleged drug possession, and she offered to provide information about a shooting death, according to local news reports.
Police went on to arrest Scerba and four other suspects, concluding that Mantez Duncan, now 27, was the shooter. He was found guilty of first-degree murder in August after a five-day bench trial and sentenced in October to 55 years in prison.
“(The other suspects) testified at his trial, so it was their cooperation that led to his conviction, but we had lots of evidence as well,” said Sgt. Anthony Decker, a Marion County sheriff’s deputy who led the investigation.
Duncan’s attorney, Public Defender Matt Wilzbach, told reporters that Duncan planned to appeal, noting inconsistencies in the stories of Scerba and the other three suspects, Blake Shahan, now 29, Cardell Thomas, 54, and Darleedria Flippen, 29, who lived with Duncan in Centralia.
Shahan and Thomas pleaded guilty to second degree-murder and Flippen and Scerba pleaded guilty to robbery last fall.
Duncan filed an appeal on Dec. 9, 2020, that will go to the Fifth District District Appellate Court in Mount Vernon, but Witzbach isn’t representing him, according to his office.
Shooter upset over money
The Edmond murder was particularly shocking for residents of Centralia, a city of about 12,000 people 25 miles northwest of Mt. Vernon that’s known for its historic downtown, hot-air balloon festival and enthusiasm for high school basketball.
“Luckily, we do not have things like this happen very often,” said Doran, the assistant state’s attorney.
Duncan’s trial took place Aug. 11-17, 2020, at the Marion County Courthouse in Salem with Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Koester presiding. The prosecution laid out the following timeline:
- Duncan was upset over money that Edmond allegedly had stolen from him.
Duncan directed Scerba and Shahan to pick up Edmond at the Industrial Tavern in Wamac in the early morning of Dec. 3, 2019.
Edmond was carrying a bag with a large amount of cash.
Scerba and Shahan drove Edmond to Thomas’s home just east of Central City, a village north of Centralia, where he was robbed and beaten.
Duncan and Darleedria Flippen arrived at the home, but Flippen left before the murder.
Edmond was taken at gunpoint to the garage, where a blue tarp was spread out, and he begged for his life.
Edmond told Duncan more money could be found in the apartment he was sharing with Darla Flippen, Darleedria’s mother, in the same building where Duncan and Darleedria lived.
Darleedria Flippen was told to look for the money but couldn’t get into her mother’s locked apartment.
Duncan shot Edmond multiple times in Thomas’s garage.
Edmond’s body was rolled up in the tarp, loaded in Thomas’s truck and taken to a wooded area, where it was covered with brush and gasoline and set on fire.
The public first learned details of the murder in January of 2020, when Decker testified at a preliminary hearing for the five suspects. Perhaps most disturbing was the description of what investigators found on Dec. 12, 2019, when searching woods east of Thomas’s home with the assistance of a cadaver-sniffing police dog.
“(Decker) said there was a torso and left arm on the burn pile, but the pelvis region was ‘obliterated’ and animals had carried off the legs,” reported WMiX94 radio station in Mount Vernon.
DNA used for identification
After investigators discovered Edmond’s remains, they drove to the metro-east and questioned Johnson, the mother of his two sons, and some of his siblings. They also obtained DNA samples to help with identification.
The family planned to hold a funeral service at Serenity Memorial Chapel in Belleville before learning that the remains were being sent to Champaign for an autopsy. That is standard practice because Marion County doesn’t have its own morgue, according to Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup.
“We had a memorial at a church in Cahokia (in January of 2020),” Johnson said. “We had preaching, pictures, flowers ... The only thing missing was a body.”
In the coming weeks and months, Johnson and Langston said they repeatedly reached out to Cannon, asking when Edmond’s remains would be released, but he wouldn’t return their calls; and when they did speak to him, he told them he was waiting for the investigation to be over, then the trial, then “paperwork from the state.”
The explanations didn’t make sense to the family after Duncan was convicted on Aug. 17, 2020, and particularly after Thomas and Flippen pleaded guilty in October and Scerba and Shahan pleaded guilty in November. The case was over.
With most homicides, autopsies are completed within 48 hours and coroners release bodies to funeral homes soon after, said Northrup, who also is chairman of the Illinois Coroner Training Board. But occasionally prosecutors ask them to hold onto bodies if they suspect more forensic testing may be needed.
“I know for a fact that the coroner (in the Edmond case) was being told by the prosecutor not to release the body,” Northrup said. “That’s why he was storing it at our facility. He doesn’t do that with any of his other cases.”
The remains were stored at the Champaign County morgue in Urbana for about 11 months, according to office records.
Marion County’s state’s attorney in 2019 and most of 2020 was Bill Milner, who returned to private practice in December after deciding not to run for re-election. He didn’t return calls for comment this week.
Doran recalls discussing the release of Edmond’s remains with Milner last fall, after Duncan’s trial had ended.
“It was my understanding that, on at least two occasions, (Milner) had flat-out advised the coroner that we did not need Mr. Edmond’s body held for any legal reason,” Doran said. “... He had asked me, ‘Do we still need Mr. Edmond’s body?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Sgt. Decker said police were finished with the remains well before Duncan’s trial began on Aug. 11, 2020, and that Cannon knew Edmond had loved ones who wanted them.
Beyond the family’s phone calls to the coroner, interviews with investigators and conversations with prosecutors, Johnson drove the 120 miles from Belleville to Salem and back every day for five days to attend the trial. Langston came on the last day.
“It’s not about who he was,” Decker said, acknowledging that Edmond had been in trouble with the law. “He still didn’t deserve to get murdered, and his family (deserves) to have closure with the body.”
Remains called ‘abandoned’
Edmond’s remains were picked up at the Champaign County morgue on Nov. 10, 2020, according to office records.
Later in the month, Langston called Decker with one of her regular inquiries and learned that the remains had been moved to Crouse Funeral Home in Salem. Cannon hadn’t contacted her or Johnson, whose teenage sons were next of kin.
“How do you not notify a family when you take a body to a funeral home?” Johnson asked.
According to owner Rich Crouse, Cannon stopped by the funeral home on Nov. 11 and asked if he could store a box of “abandoned” remains in his cooler for a few days. Crouse agreed to do it as a favor.
The remains ended up being at the funeral home for two months. Crouse told Johnson he couldn’t release them to Edmond’s sons or siblings without Cannon’s permission. None of their names were on a temporary death certificate.
Cannon had listed himself as the “informant,” instead of the usual family members or close friends. Northrup said coroners sometimes do that in homicide cases because bodies aren’t being released right away and families are holding off on funeral arrangements, so there are no funeral directors to create death certificates.
“(A death certificate) can be transferred over to the funeral home once the family chooses one,” Northrup said.
But that never happened in Edmond’s case because of the way his remains were ultimately released.
$1,500 bill for cremation
Edmond’s family had decided in November of 2020 to allow Crouse to handle his cremation when the time came. But Cannon showed up at the funeral home on Jan. 14 and took the remains to Merz Vault Co. in Salem to be cremated, according to Rich Crouse.
Cannon later texted Johnson, saying Edmond’s ashes were ready and she would need to pay $1,500 for cremation services.
Johnson didn’t want to deal with the coroner anymore, so she arranged to pick up the ashes at Crouse Funeral Home on Jan. 19. She also went to the Marion County clerk’s office, where employees who seemed familiar with her story gave her five free copies of Edmond’s official death certificate, saving her $60.
“We tried to help her as best we could,” said County Clerk Steven Fox. “... I felt terrible for the family.”
Fox noted that it was highly unusual for a death certificate to be filed more than a year after a person died, but that the county clerk’s office is responsible only for distributing such documents, not creating or revising them.
Crouse had reached out to Fox on Jan. 17, when he discovered that Cannon had listed his funeral home and license number on Edmond’s death certificate, even though Crouse didn’t handle the arrangements. Fox referred him to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which keeps vital records for the state.
“(The death certificate) puts us in a situation where it looks like we were more involved than we actually were,” Crouse said last week.
Johnson later noticed that the death certificate stated that Edmond was cremated on Dec. 4, 2020, which couldn’t have happened if Cannon picked up the remains at the funeral home on Jan. 14. She started wondering if she even had the right ashes.
Crouse believes they are the right ashes.
As for the delay in release of the remains, “I have no answer for it, I’ll be real honest,” Crouse said. “We tried from November on. We made multiple phone calls to (the coroner’s office) see when this was going to be taken care of.”
20 years in coroner’s office
Cannon is a well-known figure in Marion County. The Republican served 12 years as deputy coroner before being elected in 2012 as coroner, which is considered a part-time position with an annual salary of $28,800.
Cannon is retired from the U.S. Air Force and Illinois Air National Guard, according to a bio published by WRXX FM-95 Radio in Centralia. He served 22 years in local law enforcement, five years as an investigator for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and two years as an international police adviser and camp commander in Ramadi, Iraq.
Cannon announced his candidacy for a third term as coroner in 2019, telling WJBD Radio in Salem that the decision followed “considerable reflection, discussion and prayer.” He promised to continue modernizing the office.
“We are trying to do things digitally on the computer and store documents that exist,” Cannon said. “Paper files, for example, that have been generated over the last several decades, saving those on digital files so they can be protected, and that kinda brings about changes in the way we do business as we keep up and not just catch up.”
Cannon won re-election in November of 2020, beating out Democratic candidate Nick Heath, a Central City police sergeant, with a vote of 10,671 to 6,398.
That followed a controversial second term.
In 2017, Cannon ignited a Facebook firestorm by sharing a meme that showed a bearded man sitting on a toilet, along with the Starbucks coffee logo. The caption read, “This is a Muslim they don’t use toilet paper they use their hand. This is Starbucks they vow to hire 10,000 Muslims. Enjoy your coffee.”
Cannon got both positive and negative feedback on the post. He responded that he knew about Muslim toilet etiquette from his military service in Iraq.
“I only shared something that, from my own experience, is absolutely true, and in response to Starbucks making a very discriminatory, inflammatory announcement,” Cannon wrote. “I don’t ask anyone to agree with me, it’s factually accurate. Sorry you feel disheartened, but the truth is uncomfortable at times.”
Post blocked on Facebook
In August of 2020, Rich Miller, author of an Illinois political blog called “Capitol Fax,” called out Cannon for sharing a story that quoted Vice President Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator running for president, as saying, “After we impeach, we round up the Trump supporters.” Facebook blurred out the story and labeled it “false information.”
In December, Cannon shared a fake logo for President Joe Biden and Harris that read “Joe and the Hoe.” That post also resulted in a variety of comments.
“Troy while this may be true my friend it’s not really a good comment from a public official,” one person wrote.
Cannon has had an ongoing public feud with Creighton Engel, chairman of the Marion County Board’s finance committee. Engel has accused him of mismanaging the coroner’s office budget. Cannon argues that the board hasn’t provided enough funding for operations, noting that his secretary was reduced from full to part time eight years ago.
In October of 2020, a Sandoval man sued Cannon in Marion County Circuit Court for refusing to honor a Freedom of Information Act request for financial records.
Cannon maintained that he didn’t have the administrative capacity to respond until after the COVID-19 pandemic ended, but a public access counselor with the Illinois attorney general’s office rejected that argument, according to the complaint.
Johnson and Langston have praised other Marion County officials for their kindness, support and hard work over the past year, particularly those who brought Edmond’s killers to justice.
But when it comes to Cannon and his handling of the case, they keep asking “Why?”
“I’m kind of relieved (to get Edmond’s remains), but at the same time, I’m angry,” Langston said. “When you’re an official, you’re supposed to have compassion for the family. Why would make them go through more grief?”
This story was originally published February 5, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
