Crystal Lake officers to be recognized for work on AJ Freund investigation

A group of Crystal Lake police officers will be recognized Friday for their work investigating the death of 5-year-old Crystal Lake boy AJ Freund.

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police on Friday will honor 12 Crystal Lake police officers as the 2019 Most Outstanding Law Enforcement Officers of the Year for their work investigating AJ’s murder, according to a news release.

AJ’s parents reported him missing in April 2019. In their first reports, the police noted that the house was in disarray and mouse droppings were on AJ’s bedsheets and on the floor of his room. It later was revealed that the police and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services 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,” ILACP Executive Director Ed Wojcicki said in the release.

Six days into the search, the police presented the child’s father, Andrew Freund Sr., with video evidence from his phone, which showed the parents’ patterns of physically and verbally abusing AJ, according to the release.

After being presented with the evidence, Freund, who had earlier denied any wrongdoing, directed the police to a shallow grave in a remote area near Woodstock, where they found the AJ’s body.

The boy’s mother, JoAnn Cunningham, and father were arrested in connection with their son’s death. Cunningham now is serving 35 years in prison for first-degree murder. Freund was sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated battery of a child, involuntary manslaughter and concealment of a homicidal death.

The Crystal Lake officers who helped investigate the case will be recognized at the annual awards banquet of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police in Tinley Park, according to a news release from the association. The recognition, originally planned for last year, was postponed because of the pandemic.

Below is a brief summary of the actions of the 12 Crystal Lake officers who worked on the investigation:

• Sgt. Mike Gasparaitis: Supervised several search warrants at residence; supervised burial site recovery efforts; and served as department liaison to several outside assisting agencies.
• Detective Frank Houlihan: Conducted the execution of search warrants at the home, secured and processed property; and 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; and 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 with Cunningham at the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office the morning the case was solved and 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 transported him to the police department, 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 transported him to the police department, 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 and obtained video from subpoena return that provided the ability to set up the final strategy for solving the case.
• Cmdr. Ron Joseph: Provided overall direction of criminal investigation and 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,” Crystal Lake Police Chief James Black said.

The 12 officers also were recognized privately last year with the ILACP Medal of Valor, according to the release.

“They will all likely say, as cops always do, that they were just doing the jobs they were trained to do,” Wojcicki said in the release. “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.”