Security High at Judge's Husband's Funeral

EVANSTON, Ill. – As scores of police officers stood guard, hundreds of mourners filled a church Saturday to bid farewell to a federal judge's slain husband, less than a week after the judge discovered his body in their home, along with that of her mother.

Mourners filed slowly past the casket of attorney Michael Lefkow (search), his trademark gray fedora resting on top. They remembered that he would sometimes show up at the federal courthouse to take his wife, U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow (search), to lunch and brought her flowers. The couple often held hands.

Judge Lefkow and the couple's children greeted people arriving at St. Luke's Episcopal Church (search) for a 90-minute service that was conducted under tight security. Several of the daughters cried, but Lefkow appeared to comfort some mourners.

The Rev. Jacqueline Schmitt, the Episcopalian chaplain at Harvard University and the couple's longtime friend, addressed the family's anger about the slayings in her eulogy.

"You must know the depth of your grief is more than overcome by hope, that the garden you shared as a family is not really gone, that nothing will ever take that from you," she said.

The family has been in protective custody since the judge discovered the bodies on Monday.

More than two dozen police and federal marshals were outside the church Saturday morning, and parking was banned on nearby streets. The line to enter the church stretched down the block. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline and a number of federal judges were present.

Funeral services for Judge Lefkow's mother, 89-year-old Donna Humphrey, were expected to take place in Denver.

FBI officials have said they do not have a suspect. They have asked for the public's help and offered a $50,000 reward to shake loose information.

FBI Agent Robert D. Grant said one avenue of investigation was white supremacist Matthew Hale and his associates.

Hale, 33, faces sentencing next month for soliciting an FBI informant to kill Lefkow after she ruled against him in a trademark lawsuit. He has denied any involvement in the slayings, which he called "a heinous crime."

A friend of Hale's, Kathleen Robertazzo, told The New York Times and Chicago Tribune in Saturday's editions that authorities seized 100 letters Hale sent her from prison and made copies of her computer hard drive.

Robertazzo told the Times the idea that Hale would be involved "defies logic." In the letters, she said, Hale describes singing opera in jail, taking Prozac and being buoyed by the presence of a man with the same name as Adolf Hitler's boyhood friend.

Humphrey and Lefkow's 64-year-old husband had been shot multiple times, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.

Experts are analyzing several pieces of evidence, including a broken window with a fingerprint, a bloody footprint and cigarette butts. Investigators released composite sketches Wednesday night of two men seen near the Lefkow home the day of the killings.