Crystal Lake officers, detectives and leaders
honored for work in solving case of murdered 5-year-old boy

They will be recognized as the ILACP Officers of the Year

August 16, 2021

Twelve members of the Crystal Lake Police Department will be recognized this week as the 2019 Most Outstanding Law Enforcement Officers of the Year for their work in solving the case of a 5-year-old boy, Andrew “AJ” Freund, who was murdered in 2019. Both of AJ’s parents, JoAnn Cunningham and Andrew Freund, Sr., were eventually charged with homicide in connection with the boy’s death.

The officers will be honored on Friday, Aug. 20, at the Annual Awards Banquet of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police in Tinley Park, Illinois. The recognition was planned for last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.

On the morning of April 18, 2019, the parents of AJ Freund reported little AJ as missing. They called the Crystal Lake police and said they had put the child to bed the night before at 9:30 p.m., and when they checked on him in the morning, he was nowhere to be found. AJ did not turn up in a search of the house that morning. In their first reports, the police noted that the house was in disarray; there were mouse droppings on AJ’s bedsheets and on the floor of his room. It was later revealed that the police and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) had been to that house many times.

“And so began some of the best police work ever seen in the state of Illinois, revealing terrible abuse of a boy by his addicted and troubled parents,” said ILACP Executive Director Ed Wojcicki.

Over the next few days, the story became national news while Crystal Lake detectives, in collaboration with the FBI, worked tirelessly in search of this boy and for clues about what happened to him.

Six days into the search, the police presented the elder Freund with video evidence from his phone that the parents showed patterns of physically and verbally abusing AJ.  Among other things, they forced him into a cold shower and beat him. Being presented with the evidence, one of the parents who had earlier denied any wrongdoing directed the police to a shallow grave in a remote area near Woodstock, which is in McHenry County. The boy was wrapped in plastic, and the cause of death was later determined as blunt force trauma to the head.

Both parents were charged with murder. The day the body was found, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI, Jeffrey Sallet, was at the press conference with Crystal Lake Chief James R. Black. Agent Sallet congratulated the Crystal Lake police department for its incredible professionalism in working to solve this case.

Below is a brief summary of the actions of the twelve Crystal Lake sworn officers who worked on this investigation:

  • Sergeant Mike Gasparaitis - Supervised several search warrants at residence; supervised burial site/recovery efforts; served as department liaison to several outside assisting agencies.
  • Detective Frank Houlihan - Conducted the execution of search warrants at the residence, secured and processed property; interviewed Andrew Freund in the initial days.
  • Detective David Eitel - Case agent; conducted interviews on both suspects; worked collaboratively with FBI while interviewing Andrew Freund; present in interview when Freund confessed.
  • Detective Jason Duncan - Instrumental with generating and presenting search warrants for social media, vehicles, and residence.
  • Detective Dimitri Boulahanis - Conducted interviews on Joanne Freund at MCSO the morning the case was solved; conducted stationary surveillance activity.
  • Detective Russ Will - Conducted stationary surveillance on the Freund residence the morning case was solved; made contact with Freund at residence that morning and successfully transported him to PD, where he soon thereafter confessed.
  • Detective Jeff Mattson - Conducted stationary surveillance on the Freund residence the morning the case was solved; made contact with Freund at the residence that morning and successfully transported him to PD, where he soon   thereafter confessed.
  • Officer Chris Sanders - Assisted with search warrant executions and the collection and processing of evidence.
  • Officer Zachary Morse - Assisted with search warrant executions and the collection and processing of evidence.
  • Officer Scott Torkelson - Assisted with search warrant executions and the collection and processing of evidence.
  • Officer Mike Maloney - Instrumental with generating and presenting search warrants for social media; obtained video from subpoena return that provided the ability to set up the final strategy for solving the case.
  • Commander Ron Joseph- Provided overall direction of criminal investigation; worked in cooperation with several outside agencies.

“In addition to the individual actions of these officers, all worked tirelessly over the course of several days in order to bring the investigation to a conclusion,” Chief Black said.

The 12 were recognized privately last year with the ILACP Medal of Valor, but the association believes they still deserve public recognition now as the Illinois Chiefs’ 2019 Officers of the Year.

“That is why we invited them to our awards banquet this week in Tinley Park,” said Executive Director Ed Wojcicki. “They will all likely say, as cops always do, that they were just doing the jobs they were trained to do. We want them to know that the rest of us in Illinois are deeply grateful for their service and their dedication to bringing a little boy’s murderers to justice. It’s just tragic that those killers were his parents.”

Earlier this summer, ILACP announced that East Peoria Officer Jeffrey Bieber is its 2021 Most Outstanding Officer of the Year. He will also be recognized this week at the ILACP Annual Awards Banquet. 

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Video of the press conference the day the boy’s body was found