Jury finds Mount Sterling man not guilty of criminal predatory sexual assault of three family members

MOUNT STERLING, Ill. — Quincy attorney Drew Schnack was sipping on a beer outside the Sportsman’s Club in downtown Mount Sterling late Monday afternoon after a long day in court when a friend of Gary Welty’s approached.

“That’s my best friend,” the teary-eyed man said.

“He’s a good guy,” Schnack replied. “It was just the evidence. Nothing I did.”

“Somebody had to bring it up,” the man said. “That was your job, and you did your job well.”

The evidence — or lack of it, as Schnack said repeatedly in his closing argument — led to a not-guilty verdict from a jury of five men and seven women at the Brown County Courthouse, bringing a six-day trial to a conclusion. The jury deliberated for slightly more than two hours.

Welty, 72, had been charged with three counts of criminal predatory sexual assault of a child under the age of 13 — all Class X felonies. If he had been found guilty of at least two of those charges, Judge Kevin Tippey would have sentenced him to life in prison.

Welty, who operates a fertilizer-spreading business in Mount Sterling, didn’t want to speak to the media after hearing the verdict. He only said, “I’ve been through enough.”

Vanessa Minson with the Illinois Attorney General’s office, who prosecuted the case, told the jury that six women claimed previous inappropriate conduct by Welty. Three of them were named in the charges against Welty.

• Granddaughter Carol Dunlap said she remembered Welty wrapping his legs around her while she took naps as a child. She said the offenses happened between May and August of 1997, the summer before she started second grade. 
• Step-granddaughter Kortni Dunlap said she was assaulted for three minutes when she was seated with Welty in a brown chair during a Christmas gathering in his Mount Sterling home. She said the offenses happened in December of 2004, 2005 or 2006.
• Kember Logsdon, a granddaughter of Everett Welty (Gary Welty’s older brother), said she was 11 when she was assaulted when riding in a truck with Welty on days when she went with Everett to mow the grass at her uncle’s home. She said the offenses happened between May and August of 2007.

“The defendant put his hands under their shorts, under their underwear and into their vaginas,” Minson said. “They didn’t even understand that’s what it was until they were older.”

Also testifying during the trial that they were inappropriately touched as children by Welty were Stacy Dunlap, Welty’s daughter; Beth Preston, the daughter of Welty’s wife’s sister; and Kacy Dunlap, another granddaughter.

“This isn’t a case of ‘he said, she said,’” Minson said. “This is a case of ‘he said, she said, and she said, and she said, and she said, and she said, and she said.’”

Minson explained the women didn’t bring charges against Welty because many of them thought they were the only ones he allegedly molested.

“Carol specifically said, ‘I would have taken it to my grave if I didn’t find out he touched my little sisters,’” Minson said.

Sheryl Woodham with The Guardian Center, a children’s advocacy center in Carmi, previously told jurors that only five percent of sexual assault cases have DNA evidence. Minson said the law doesn’t require physical evidence for a conviction.

“Consider the courage it would take for a victim of sexual assault to come forth, knowing that people might not believe them, especially when they’re a figure of importance or a beloved grandpa or family member,” Minson said. “They bear their trauma because they want Gary Welty to finally be held accountable for his actions.”

Schnack consistently reminded jurors of a lack of evidence. He said proof of that began last week when Lyle Bloomfield with the Illinois State Police testified.

“One of the first things he said to you is, ‘We really didn’t expect to find any evidence in this case, despite all of our efforts,’” Schnack said. “His expectations were met. They found nothing.”

Schnack then said 10 agents spent eight hours apiece searching Welty’s home, computer, cameras and cellphones for evidence that he committed a crime or evidence that he was a pedophile.

“Did you hear any of that evidence? No. We heard none,” Schnack said. “Believe me, if they would have found one dirty picture in there or one magazine subscription or one article or one letter or one picture or anything that would indicate Gary is a pedophile, we would have seen it. But we didn’t get that.

“When you consider the money spent and the effort spent and the result they got, I suggest to you that not only does it not make the state’s burden of proof but, ladies and gentlemen, that is proof of his innocence.”

Schnack said a critical part of the trial came when Bloomfield testified that it is common for investigators to find child porn in sex offender cases.

“And what did (Bloomfield) find? He found nothing,” Schnack said. “What does that tell us? The reasonable conclusion is Gary’s not a sex offender.”

Schnack said each of the women allegedly assaulted by Welty had prior inconsistent statements. As an example, he told jurors that Carol claimed her grandfather molested her, yet she later moved into her grandparents’ home on two occasions — once for a year and six months the second time, bringing a minor daughter with her.

“You can also consider a person’s actions that are inconsistent with what they testified in court,” Schnack said. “It’s a nice way of saying, ‘Actions speak louder than words.’ If your actions are that you’ve been molested by your father, you certainly don’t move your minor daughter into his home on multiple occasions.

“Do you really go back and live with a child molester? It tells me one of two things. You’re incredibly stupid or it didn’t happen. I don’t think she’s stupid.”

Schnack also said Stacy moved back into her parents’ home with her husband and children — once for three to five years, and again two years later. Earlier in the day, Welty’s wife, Barb, testified that they once loaned Stacy $9,800 to help her buy a house, then later co-signed for another loan to buy the house she and her husband, Travis, now live in. She said neither loan has been repaid.

Everett Welty testified in the morning that Carol had asked Gary and Barb to pay for a wedding in Florida three years ago. When Gary and Barb refused, Everett said that’s when the allegations of abuse began.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s reasonable doubt dripping from the ceiling,” Schnack said.

“If all these witnesses got on the stand and said, ‘Gary robbed a bank,’ we don’t have any evidence the bank was robbed. But (they say) Gary did it. Would you convict him? I would hope not.”

Welty did not react when Brown County Circuit Clerk Rhonda Johnson read the verdict. Schnack quietly bowed his head. Several of the women claiming Welty abused them rushed out of the packed courtroom in tears after hearing the not-guilty verdict. 

After the verdict was read, Minson said any comments about the case should be referred to the attorney general’s office. Drew Hill, deputy press secretary for the attorney general’s office, told Muddy River News in an email, “We do not have anything to add to our comments on the record in court.”

Schnack said the jury “had a lot of intelligent people” and were good listeners.

“I said it before, and I’ll say it forever: If (the jury) followed the law, the appropriate verdict was not guilty,” he said. “If they wanted to just say, ‘We believe all these women,’ then they were going to find him guilty.

“I’m relieved. Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad. In this case, I found myself liking Gary a lot. He’s an American success story. He’s a good guy. He has lots of friends, and he didn’t deserve this. I still do feel he’s not guilty.”