Former MVCC board candidate charged with harassment

A former South Florida police informant, disgraced Illinois private eye and one-time candidate for Moraine Valley Community College board turned himself in to Oak Lawn police Wednesday on charges he harassed a former political opponent.

Terry Cornell Jr., 50, is charged with disorderly conduct for showing up on the steps of Trustee Mary Nolan’s Oak Lawn residence in late January, police said.

Cornell has hired high-profile Chicago attorney Ed Genson to defend him against the misdemeanor charge.

“Once we get into discovery, I’m going to clean her clock,” Cornell said.

The charge stems from a Jan. 22 incident in which Nolan, 46, drove up to her building to find Cornell standing on the steps, according to police reports.

First, she asked why he was harassing her. Then she asked him to leave, the report said.

All the while, Cornell egged her on to involve the police, a report shows.

“They will be here in time to pick up the pieces,” Cornell told Nolan, according to the police report.

Fearing for her safety, Nolan went to another entrance of her building and waited for Cornell to leave, the report said.

But Cornell said he’s never been to Nolan’s house.

And he’s confident cell phone records will prove he was at least 45 miles away at a forest preserve party that day in question.

Police reports filed by Nolan say the exchange was only one in a series of confrontations between the two.

Nolan told police Cornell has called her multiple times since July 2008 and has appeared unannounced at her doorstep at least three times – a claim Cornell denies.

“No way in God’s green Earth,” he said.

Nolan also told police she thinks Cornell has been in the driver’s seat of a black vehicle that has aimed its headlights into her place six times.

Cornell’s response?

“No way,” he said. In fact, Cornell contended, Nolan’s got it backwards.

He said Nolan has driven by the Palos Park home he shares with girlfriend Susan Peloza “hundreds of times” in hopes of spotting him outside.

In October, Nolan confronted Cornell and Peloza in a Palos Park grocery store, he said. Peloza later filed a police complaint saying she feared for her and Cornell’s safety, police said.

But Nolan contacted police again in February after receiving a cell phone voice mail inviting her out for drinks that she believed was left by Cornell.

Cornell and Nolan were among candidates for three seats on the Moraine Valley Community College board in April 2007.

Cornell lost to Nolan, Sandy Wagner and Joseph Murphy, two trustees who Nolan said also have been harassed before by Cornell, police said.

Wagner and Murphy declined comment for this story. Nolan did not return multiple calls seeking comment.

Cornell said he called Nolan just once after the 2007 election because he felt sorry for her.

“They beat her up pretty good on that board,” he said.

Cornell even wrote a letter to the editor in the SouthtownStar defending Nolan’s actions on the board.

But Nolan doesn’t seem to want that courtship.

“I know (Cornell) is going to hurt me,” Nolan has told police.

Wednesday’s arrest was far from the first time Cornell’s been involved in controversy.

He’s a former Miami patrol cop who was fired five months after joining the force for “unacceptable job performance,” according to a 1984 Miami Herald story. Cornell said he was never fired, but left the force after four years after climbing the ranks to detective and bagging one of America’s biggest cocaine kingpins.

He turned police informant, then disappeared for four months after his mother was gunned down in a South Florida apartment. He reappeared on the Phil Donahue show in a segment called “Marked to Die.”

In the mid-1990s, he was charged with perjury in Cook County and ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor contempt of court and had to surrender of his state-issued private detective license.

Then in 2000, Cornell and the company he worked for, Intercounty Title of Illinois, lost a $1 million defamation lawsuit against the legendary late private investigator Ernie Rizzo.

Rizzo had accused Cornell of spreading a rumor that Rizzo planned to kill Cornell along with Intercounty’s owner and Peloza.

Intercounty was later shut down by state regulators after $35 million was discovered missing from about 3,000 homeowner escrow accounts.

One year later, Cornell was suspected in sending obscene, threatening letters to a Chicago attorney representing the company responsible for recovering the millions in the missing homeowner escrow money.

Cornell denied that, too, saying he couldn’t have sent the letters because he had a deadly allergy to envelope glue.

However this plays out, Cornell said, he plans to countersue Nolan for filing false police reports against him.

“I’m not afraid of this,” he said.

Cornell is scheduled to appear in court on the disorderly conduct charge on April 7 at the Bridgeview courthouse.