Newly unsealed transcripts from his emancipation case.
In the United States District Court,
Northern District of Illinois
KEVIN McCALLISTER, Plaintiff
-v.-
PETER McCALLISTER and KATHERINE McCALLISTER, Defendants
Opening statement of Mr. Kenneth Brogan, attorney for plaintiff:
My client, Mr. Kevin McCallister, a ten-year-old minor, has been subjected to years of physical and mental abuse by his parents, Peter and Katherine McCallister, whose cruel and negligent behavior has put his life in danger on at least two occasions. Mr. McCallister has since demonstrated a keen ability to manage his own affairs, and so hereby asks to be granted emancipation from his parents.
Mr. McCallister contends that on December 23, 1989, while the McCallister family was preparing to spend Christmas in Paris, he, then only eight years old and around three feet tall, was subjected to repeated acts of mental cruelty, ridicule, and physical abuse by virtually all members of his immediate and extended family in their Winnetka, Illinois, home. When Mr. McCallister, desperate for assistance, reached out to his older cousins and siblings (Buzz, Megan, Linnie, and Jeff), he was showered with ugly insults — “completely helpless,” “phlegm-wad,” and so on.
After his physically abusive older brother Buzz denied him food, my client finally attempted to fight back against the much larger boy. The resulting melee was then blamed only on Mr. McCallister, who was publicly denigrated by his uncle and reprimanded by his mother, who had done nothing to stop any of the day’s ill treatment. Mr. McCallister maintains that his mother then forced him spend the night alone in an unfinished, cold, and scary attic, despite the fact there was an abundance of space available in the McCallisters’ stately 5,398 square-foot, six-bedroom mansion (property records for 656 Lincoln Boulevard are entered in evidence as Exhibit A).
On the morning of December 24, Kevin learned that the punishment was to continue. His parents, brothers, cousins, aunt, and uncle had traveled to Paris without him. As the court is no doubt aware, abandoning a child under the age of 13 is a Class 4 felony in the Illinois Criminal Code, and those who do it are subject to one to three years in prison. For reasons unclear to us to this day, criminal charges were never filed.
Yet Mr. McCallister was left alone in a dangerously frigid Chicago winter (lows the night before had reached -10 Fahrenheit; meteorological reports are marked Exhibit B) and without any proper sustenance, money, or even a working phone line to call for help. The home, with the garage door left wide open, contained, among many other dangerous items, a defective furnace, a poisonous tarantula, pornography, violent R-rated movies, and grooming products that burn the skin. All of this is on film. Intentional neglect of a child who is in a parent’s care or failure to adequately feed, clothe, or supervise that child or to supply medical care is also illegal. (See 705 ILCS 405/2‐3 (1) (a); 720 ILCS 5/12‐21.5; 720 ILCS 130/2.)
Mr. McCallister states that left to his own devices, he was: (1) induced to steal a toothbrush from the local pharmacy, barely escaping the authorities, (2) induced to lie to adults to find a way to procure food, and (3) induced into deceiving a pizza-delivery boy into believing he was being shot at by a Tommy Gun using the audio from a VHS copy of the film Angels with Filthy Souls. (Exhibit C, item 3.)
My client also states that his parents abandoned him with the knowledge that both the murderous “South Bend Shovel Slayer” and two burglars (later identified as Harry and Marv, a.k.a. the “Wet Bandits”) were operating in the area, putting his life in imminent danger.
Their paths soon crossed. On Christmas Eve, as he was searching for more provisions, the Wet Bandits attempted to run over my client with their van, missing him by less than an inch. That same day, Mr. McCallister observed the same would-be killers parked across from the McCallister home. At this time, my client constructed an elaborate silhouette to fool the Wet Bandits into believing his family was at home protecting him. Soon, however, Mr. McCallister would overhear the burglars planning to rob the home at night.
While the rest of his family was resting in a hotel on the Champs-Élysées, Mr. McCallister decided to defend his home, a decision that would plunge him into a life-altering violent encounter with two hard-boiled criminals.
For the next several hours, Mr. McCallister demonstrated an imaginative and resilient ability to fend for himself by setting up an elaborate maze of snares to ward off his enemies, including, but not limited to:
- Dousing the front and back steps of his home with water, allowing it to freeze over, making them nearly impossible to traverse.
- Heating up the doorknob to burn anyone who touched the handle.
- Coating the basement stairs with tar — yet leaving the last few steps intact so anyone walking would step on sandpaper and a nail that was placed in an upward position.
- Placing glass Christmas ornaments on the floor next to a window.
- Tying metal paint cans to banisters and then hurling them at intruders.
- Rigging a blowtorch up to a door to light one intruder’s head on fire.
- Using his brother’s 4.3 mm caliber assault weapon (Exhibit D) and shooting intruders in the face and groin.
Mr. McCallister maintains that after this string of vicious encounters, during which his life was constantly in danger, he escaped using a rope from the attic window to a backyard tree house. After attempting to find shelter in a neighbor’s home, however, the Wet Bandits ambushed and captured him. It was then that the two criminals detailed, with great specificity, the kind of torture they would inflict on Mr. McCallister — including, but not limited to, biting off his fingers. My client was only saved from this fate by a good-hearted neighbor (a man the family had sought to deceive my client into believing was a serial murderer).
Mr. McCallister also recalls that once the bandits had been arrested, even though it was way past his bedtime, he spent the night meticulously cleaning up the destruction from this harrowing episode — collecting every shard of glass, mopping up every drop of blood, fixing every broken cabinet, collecting every ounce of tar — rather than face the admonishment of his demanding parents should they come home the next day.
And after leaving my client on his own for over 60 hours, the McCallisters finally returned home on Christmas Day. And despite assurances from his mother that the abandonment had been inadvertent, Buzz threatened him within minutes.
Mr. McCallister further contends that on December 23, 1990, exactly one year after his first abandonment, he was once again subjected to the same kind of abuse by his extended relatives (his naked uncle, for example, threatened to “slap [him] silly”). And once again, my client was left to fend for himself — though this time in even more extreme and dangerous conditions, as he was deserted in O’Hare International, the busiest airport in the United States.
Without any knowledge of air travel, my client found himself on a flight to New York City, an urban area that was experiencing all-time highs in violent crimes (212,458) and murders (2,605) in 1990. Mr. McCallister roamed the city and Central Park at night and again was almost murdered at the hands of the Wet Bandits, who had recently escaped from prison. Nearly the same exact bloody scenario would play out, though this time in an even more violent fashion, leaving my client in mental anguish (paragraphs 3-6 of the Report of Attending Physician, Exhibit E, prepared by Dr. Thaddeus Harding, M.D., D.O., details the emotional suffering endured by Mr. McCallister). This time, my client was saved by a homeless pigeon enthusiast.
Petitioner respectfully requests this Honorable Court to accept the claim that being subjected to such treatment once is bad enough but that the chances of it occurring twice, by accident, in back-to-back years are so infinitesimally small that it should be considered impossible. And thus, Mr. McCallister asks the court to conclude that his family purposely abandoned him twice for Christmas, and that he is eminently more capable than his parents of caring for himself.