Man Pleads Not Guilty To 1985 Rape And Murder Of Glen Ellyn Teen
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Champaign man pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges he raped and killed a 15-year-old girl in DuPage County 30 years ago.
Michael R. Jones, 62, has been charged with two counts of murder and one count of aggravated sexual assault in the 1985 death of Glenbard South High School student Kristina Wesselman.
She was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in broad daylight on July 21, 1985, while walking home from a grocery store near Butterfield Road and Route 52 in unincorporated Glen Ellyn. The next day, her lifeless body was found half-naked along the prairie path where she had been walking.
Proseuctors have said DNA taken from the victim matched a sample Jones provided in July, when he pleaded guilty in an unrelated domestic battery case. Jones has been held without bail since he was arrested last month.
Prosecutors said Jones was out on parole on a 1977 rape case in Cook County when he assaulted and killed Wesselman. In that case, he allegedly crashed his car into a woman riding her bicycle, tied her up, dragged her to his home, and repeatedly raped her in the basement. He served seven years in prison for that crime, and was paroled in 1983.
Bridget King, a friend of Wesselman, said a scholarship fund has been set up in honor of the slain 15-year-old girl, with $1,000 being awarded every year from now on to the Glenbard South High School senior who served as class president during his or her freshman year, just as Wesselman had done.
"Her life had such a positive impact on us in so many ways, not just the negative impact of her death, but her life meant a lot to a lot of people, even though she was only 15 years old, and we've never forgotten that," King said.
The idea for the scholarship came from Dr. Robert Dieter and another classmate of Wesselman's. Dieter received a one-time $500 scholarship from Wesselman's mother in 1988, the year Wesselman would have graduated high school.