Despite being on court-ordered electronic monitoring, a woman accused of stalking Chicago Cubs President Theo Epstein was able to slip away from her family's Boston-area home earlier this month and wander into a local grammar school while acting erratically. The episode prompted Cook County authorities to call Epstein early on Jan. 10 and notify him that Kathleen Kearney's “location was unknown” and that “he would be informed when alerts have been cleared,” court records show. She was discovered at the school about seven hours later. Now the judge overseeing Kearney's case has issued a warrant for her arrest, and prosecutors are seeking to extradite her to Chicago once she is released from the Boston mental health facility where she has been undergoing treatment for the past two weeks, according to court records. Kearney, 45, of Canton, Mass., was charged last summer with felony stalking and criminal trespass after authorities said she flew from Boston to Chicago to look for Epstein at his home and at Wrigley Field. According to prosecutors, Kearney struck up a conversation with Epstein's wife at the front door of their Lakeview home, at one point telling her she had brought a gift for the couple's young son. Later, Kearney tried to stop Epstein as he went inside. She previously had been warned to stay away from Epstein when he was the general manager of the Red Sox, authorities said. The Harvard-educated former librarian, who has been diagnosed with chronic psychotic illnesses, was freed on bond last July after her attorney argued she needed mental-health treatment closer to her home. After her release from a psychiatric facility, Kearney was fitted with an electronic monitoring device and allowed to stay at her sister's home in the Boston suburb of Kingston, court records show. At about 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 10, authorities in Cook County were alerted that Kearney's GPS device hadn't been charged and was no longer emitting a signal, according to a pretrial services report. About 9 a.m. that day, authorities reported Kearney's family had discovered her missing and her last known location was on a train headed north in Boston. Fearing that she may be on her way to the airport, Cook County authorities notified Massachusetts State Police to be on the lookout for her, according to the report. That afternoon, police were called to Holy Name School in Boston's West Roxbury neighborhood. Officials reported a woman had gone into the grammar school “and was now wandering around,” according to a report by Boston police. In a letter to parents obtained by the Tribune, school principal Lynne Workman said the woman -- whom she did not identify by name -- recently had inquired about a librarian position at the school. While she was at the school, the woman was able to leave a waiting area and walk to a nearby kindergarten classroom, where she knocked on the door and asked the teacher “if she could sit down and rest,” according to the letter. Officers who arrived and spoke with Kearney noticed she appeared confused and had small cuts on both of her hands that she could not explain, according to the police report. Kearney was taken to the nurse's office, where officers noticed the GPS device on her ankle. In October, a Cook County clinical examination found that Kearney was mentally fit for trial if she remained on her medication. The evaluation, however, noted that she appeared to have been “experiencing hyper-religious and delusional” thoughts involving Epstein that had rendered her legally insane at the time of the alleged stalking incident. Assistant State's Attorney Frank Marek said Thursday that prosecutors may ask for a second mental evaluation once Kearney is brought back to Chicago on the warrant.
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