Susan Dineff, a brown-haired woman of 28, was changing her son’s diaper when the doorbell rang at her split-level house in Hickory Hills. It was about 4 PM on a Wednesday in June of 1987, and Susie wasn’t expecting a caller. Full diaper in hand, she trooped to the door and opened it, and found a strange man standing on the far side of the screen. A companion was a step back. The man in front identified himself as Douglas W. Lenhart, an agent of the FBI, and he proceeded to do most of the talking. He was excessively polite.
But in late November Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheldon Zenner, who was working up bribery and racketeering charges against judges and lawyers operating in the courts of the Fifth Municipal District, asked both Dineff brothers to waive the five-year statute of limitations. Zenner wanted everyone named in the alleged conspiracy to be indicted at once. The Dineffs refused. On the afternoon of November 24, 1987, Lou Dineff called Dave in his office in southwest suburban Justice and told his brother that Zenner was in the process of presenting evidence against them to a federal grand jury. Dave tuned his office radio to all-news WBBM AM, and a while later heard a radio headline trumpeting the indictment of “two attorney brothers.” Dave knew immediately whom that meant.
Genial Dave Dineff was 39 years old. He had Susie, two kids, and a law practice that he was successfully rebuilding after an auto accident that nearly cost him his life. Federal officials considered him a small fish in the murky seas of Greylord; Dave Dineff considered himself unlucky beyond words.
“My father thought a legal education was the most important thing for his children,” says Dave. “He didn’t care if any of us practiced law. His philosophy was this–become a lawyer and then you can do anything you want. People will treat you differently, with more respect.”
Representing people charged with misdemeanors, with minor assaults, and with driving under the influence took Dave through the courtrooms of the Fifth District. That’s how he liked it. “I’d rather be in a courtroom any day than sit behind a desk. I need contact with other people. I like people and the chance to do things for them. The lonely life behind a desk is not for me.” And one day a week he was a village attorney, over the years acting as prosecutor not only for Willow Springs but for Summit and Justice as well.
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Dave Dineff had cases before judges Seaman, Maher, and Glecier, and an array of other judges who rode the Fifth District circuit. He remembers Roger Seaman as sour and severe; he was a judge, Dave insists, that he did his best to avoid.
Susie and Dave were living together at the time in Willow Springs: Susie says she bolted from sleep with a premonition of something horrible and for a reason she can’t explain got in her car and drove toward Bedford Park. She arrived at Archer and Roberts moments after the crash.
