Indian Head Park, IL – Police say 38-year-old John L. Wilson Jr. stabbed 14-year-old Kelli O’Laughlin to death back on October 27th after she walked into her home and interrupted his burglary attempt.
Her body was discovered by her mother later that day. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck, back and chest. If that isn’t enough of a nightmare situation for anyone to endure, O’Laughlin’s mother began receiving cruel texts from her dead daughter’s stolen phone.
Police have not released the exact messages, but they say the person sending them taunted the grieving family with details of the teen’s murder.
Police were finally able to identify Wilson as a suspect after a police officer, returning from work after a few days off, remembered stopping a man on the night of the murder four miles from the O’Laughlin’s that looked a lot like the composite sketch that had been released to the media.
The man had told the officer his car had broke down and he needed a cab. Investigators were able to locate the driver of the cab and then have Wilson positively identified in a line-up. Wilson was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and residential burglary. When he was finally arrested, Wilson had O’Laughlin’s phone in his possession.
Prosecutors say DNA found on a knit cap found at the murder scene, splattered with the dead girl’s blood, was matched to Wilson. Sounds like a pretty slam-dunk case to me.
I know this may not come as a surprise, but Wilson has been in trouble with the law before, having served time in prison on prior convictions for drug possession, carjacking, aggravated battery and possessing a stolen vehicle. In fact he was just paroled a year ago after serving eight year in prison on a 2002 robbery conviction.
As pointed out by one of our readers, this isn’t the first time we’ve had a story in which an accused killer sent text messages to the family of the person the allegedly murdered. Evans Ganthier was charged with the murder of Rebecca Koster and used her cell phone to send texts to her family in an attempt to make it look like her boyfriend was involved with her death.
Tags: Crime, Illinois, John Wilson, Kelli O'Laughlin, Murder, Stabbing, texting



























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