Sherman Skolnick
Sherman H. Skolnick (July 13, 1930 – May 21, 2006) was a Chicago-based activist and conspiracy theorist. Early life. Born in Chicago in 1930, at the age of six, Skolnick was paralyzed by polio, and he used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. His parents, a homemaker and a tailor, were Jewish European immigrants. Skolnick's father was from Russia. Career. Skolnick was founder and chairman of the Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts, which he started in 1963. He used the local press to distribute his reports, later establishing a telephone hotline–"Hotline News", a  public-access television show on cable TV, and a web site. Skolnick's investigations put Otto Kerner Jr. in prison for three years; and led to the resignation of two Illinois Supreme Court justices, Roy J. Solfisburg, Jr. and Ray Klingbiel, who, as Skolnick reported, had accepted bribes of stock from a defendant in a case on which they ruled. The scandal catapulted John Paul Stevens, special counsel to an investigating commission, to fame as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2001, the story became the subject of a book, "Illinois Justice", by Kenneth A. Manaster. Skolnick's  final written works include an 81-part series entitled "The Overthrow of the American Republic," and a 16-part series entitled "Coca-Cola, the CIA, and the Courts." Later life and death. Skolnick died of a heart attack on May 21, 2006.