CHICAGO — Nancy Rish, who was originally serving a life sentence for the 1987 kidnapping and murder of Stephen Small, a Kankakee businessman who suffocated after being buried alive, walked free Thursday after she won a sentencing appeal last July, according to one of her attorneys.
“Of course she’s very happy to be released from prison after 12,580 days,” said attorney Margaret Byrne. “But you know she has always asserted her innocence so it is bittersweet.”
Rish, 60, left the Logan Correctional Center at 10:30 a.m. Thursday on parole after being imprisoned since Dec. 27, 1988, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections and Byrne.