Man Goes On Trial For Killing Mom Over Concert Tickets
WHEATON, Ill. (CBS) -- The trial has begun for a Carol Stream man accused of brutally killing his mother three years ago when she refused his demands to ask a friend to arrange for skybox tickets to an Avril Lavigne concert.
Robert Lyons, 39, allegedly beat and stabbed Linda Bolek to death in the kitchen of the Carol Stream condo they shared, DuPage County prosecutors said at the start of Lyons' murder trial on Wednesday.
Lyons allegedly hit his mother twice in the head with a champagne bottle, then stabbed her nine times — an attack so violent the knife blade snapped off in her body, prosecutors said.
"This defendant committed unspeakable violence against his mother," Asst. State's Attorney Ann Celine O'Hallaren told jurors.
After killing his 61-year-old mother, Lyons poured several household chemicals on her body, then changed clothes and went shopping at several stores before being arrested hours later hanging out at a Hooters restaurant in Schaumburg, O'Hallaren said.
Before his arrest, Lyons called several people and told them he had struggled with his mother after she attacked him with a kitchen knife during an argument, O'Hallaren said.
"He blocked the knife — and somehow the knife ended up in her back," O'Hallaren derisively told jurors.
Lyons has a history of bi-polar disorder, O'Hallaren acknowledged, but insisted he murdered his mother on a day she stayed home sick from work simply because he was mad at her for refusing to help him get his concert tickets.
"This defendant was so angry with his mother that he bludgeoned and repeatedly stabbed her in a fit of rage," O'Hallaren said.
Lyons' court-appointed attorneys didn't dispute he was responsible for Bolek's death, but suggested he didn't intentionally kill her.
Lyons and his mother had a troubled, turbulent relationship since he had moved in with her a year earlier, and on the day she died, Bolek held a kitchen knife to her son's face during a loud, profanity-laced argument.
"She threatened to stab him in the eye, Rob Lyons reacted," Asst. Public Defender Valerie Pacis said. Lyons' "reaction was not intended, that reaction was not planned."
(The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.)
