RICHLAND CO. – Just days after entering a guilty plea in her Clay County felony case, a Flora woman ran afoul of the law in Richland County and is now facing a felony charge there.
Jennifer Block, 21, was the woman who was posing online as a downstate Illinois shyster, Zachary Leaf, for about a year before the law and numerous complaints finally caught up to her in January 2017.
At that time a local man finally was able to get law enforcement to look at the vulgar and violent messages Block was sending on social networking pages toward random people, in an effort to make Leaf – who was an ex of hers that she and her family claimed stole from them and generally used them, as he has a history of doing – as bad as possible and “expose him” for what he was.
Leaf has been charged in Richland County with a Class X count of Predatory Criminal Sexual Assault and a Class 2 felony count of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse of a victim under the age of 13, said to be an ex’s daughter.
He’s also facing a Felon in Possession of a Firearms charge in Richland. Both of these date back to 2014.
However, he’s facing nothing in Clay, where Block said he was when he was allegedly committing crimes against her family, so authorities apparently didn’t take the family’s complaints seriously.
What they did take seriously were the numerous vile threats of physical harm toward children made by Block under the guise of Leaf. For these, Block was charged with two counts of Cyberstalking Causing a Person Fear, and two counts of Harassment with threats to Harm a Person under the age of 18, all of them Class 4 felonies. And while she explained what she had done and why (that she was trying to bring attention to Leaf and what she claimed he was doing a bit of for real, which was stalking underage girls for sex), it didn’t help her situation any.
In March of this year, Block even tried the increasingly-popular “bona fide doubt as to fitness” argument that several in and around Richland and Clay have been claiming since accused murderer/rapist Glenn Ramey pulled it off successfully late last year, following the death of Olney girl Sabrina Stauffenberg, 8. The order for Block’s fitness exam was entered March 6, and the exam was conducted and submitted to the court about two months later.
In early May, judge Robin Todd received and examined the file under seal but made no declaration as to whether Block had met the criteria for fitness. It wasn’t until mid-June that the matter was brought up in the courtroom. At that time, the public heard that Block was stipulating to the findings of the fitness exam – which showed that she was indeed competent and able to stand trial and assist in her own defense – and the matter was scheduled to move forward on the Cyberstalking and Harassment instead of toward a jury trial for fitness (as Ramey is going to have in Effingham in September.)
On June 26, Block entered a negotiated plea (meaning her attorney, Mary Beth Welch Collins, worked it out with the state’s attorney, Joel Powless, to where both sides agree on a conviction and sentence) and pled to the two Harassment charges, with the Cyberstalking being dismissed.
For the Harassment, Block was sentenced on that same day to 24 months probation. Under the sentence, the terms were that she must perform 100 hours public service work, pay fines and fees of $3,489 (all of which have been paid), spend 70 days on monitored home confinement with one day already served, and a remaining jail sentence of 180 days to be stayed if all the rest of her terms – including seeking medical/mental health treatment – were completed successfully within the two-year time frame.
But it would appear that “success” isn’t exactly the way to describe what subsequently happened.
Four days after the sentencing in Clay, on June 30, Richland County authorities allege that Block committed the offense of Criminal Damage to Property when on June 29, she used a large knife to carve up a vehicle and the garage doors of a residence at 1118 Willow Drive in Olney belonging to one Rex A. Mattoon, 71, owner of Olney Bowling Center on West Lafayette.
Court documents don’t give any indication whatsoever as to what the problem may have been between Block and the objects of her alleged angst that she would take a knife to them.
With the damage to the vehicle and garage in excess of $500, it was filed as a Class 4 felony, and Block was thusly charged. Block was arrested on a warrant and her mother, Susan Block, posted $3,000 cash bond on her behalf July 10. Conditions of her release on bond were that she stay away from Mattoon.
Block, it’s already been reported this year, has been formally diagnosed with a mild autism spectrum disorder, which, says members of her family, seems to deprive Block of a filter generally possessed by most of humanity that enables them to acknowledge whether their actions are right or wrong. Block is said to have problems with focusing on/dwelling on things to the point that it makes her somewhat frantic and she acts out as a result.
That, anyway, was the impetus behind the Cyberstalking done in Leaf’s name.
Whether that will be used as a reason for the alleged carving of Mattoon’s property or not remains to be seen.
Block’s probation in the Clay County case had, as of press time (July 30) not seen a petition to revoke filed, but then, counties in southern Illinois – even those next-door to each other – don’t generally communicate about this kind of thing, and leave it up to the convicted person…as if the first thing they’d do after running afoul of the law while under punishment in another county would be to go tell on themselves quickly and voluntarily.
As of press time, Block wasn’t set for a next court appearance in Clay until October.
However, in Richland, she’s set for a first appearance on August 15.
Leaf, who, it was reported several months back, is doing his own form of disingenuous internetting by putting himself out as an individual named “Phoenix Winters” to the point that Richland County actually had to add it to his charging documents as another identity, is set for a jury trial on both the sex assault/abuse and weapons cases October 3. Considering that the prosecution of the cases has been taken over by former Richland County state’s attorney David Hyde (who is assisting Richland’s duly-elected prosecutor Brad Vaughn, who can’t appear in that role on a conflict with Leaf because Vaughn was his public defender in times past), it’s highly likely that Leaf will see all charges dismissed…which might leave the Blocks with no recourse but to sue Leaf as well as the public entities who ignored the complaints against him.