Former Mascoutah priest serving time for child porn and meth dies
A former Mascoutah priest who pleaded guilty last fall to charges of possessing child pornography and methamphetamine has died.
Perry County Coroner Paul Searby verified that Gerald R. Hechenberger was pronounced dead Friday morning at Pinckneyville Community Hospital. He had been serving a nine-year sentence at Pinckneyville Correctional Center.
“We’re not releasing any other information (including cause of death) until after the autopsy on Monday,” Searby said.
The autopsy will take place at 1 p.m. Monday at Searby Funeral Home in DuQuoin. Perry County doesn’t have its own morgue. Autopsies are common in deaths of correctional center inmates, Searby said.
Hechenberger, 56, was a former associate pastor at Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church and School.
On Nov. 7, he pleaded guilty to four of the 17 counts with which he was charged two years ago, including three counts of possessing pornographic photos of children and one count of possession of methamphetamine.
Hechenberger was sentenced to nine years in prison by St. Clair County Circuit Judge Zina Cruse, despite defense lawyer Randall Kelley’s argument that sentencing him to any form of incarceration would be a “death sentence” because of his poor health.
Pinckneyville Correctional Center is a medium-security prison for adult males with 19 buildings on 148 acres. It has more than 2,000 inmates, who are allowed seven visits per month.
Hechenberger’s Illinois Department of Corrections page describes him as 6-foot-2 and weighing 475 pounds with no tattoos.
Hechenberger was arrested at Holy Childhood Catholic Church by Belleville police on Jan. 8, 2018. The investigation grew out of a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which flagged an image coming into his Google account as child pornography.
At his sentencing hearing, Hechenberger told the court that his behavior resulted from a “perfect storm” of mental health issues, including depression and bipolar disorder, drug use, hypersexual thoughts and grief over the death of his father in 2014.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 1:39 PM.
