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Prosecutors: Carpentersville man proposed, using dead woman’s rings

Five days after a Carpentersville man robbed, beat and left a 73-year-old Chicago woman for dead in Chicago, he offered the dead woman’s engagement and wedding rings to his girlfriend for her hand in marriage, prosecutors said in court Thursday.

Raymond Harris, 36, of the 0-99 block of Oxford Drive, was charged Thursday with first-degree murder and robbery. Hours later, Judge Peggy Chiampas ordered him held without bail, and he remains in custody in Chicago.

According to prosecutors: At 7:45 p.m. Oct. 22, a neighbor found Virginia Prillo severely beaten and lying in a pool of her own blood in her garage, on the 3300 block of South Parnell Avenue in the Bridgeport neighborhood. That neighbor phoned 911 and the South Side woman was taken to Stroger Hospital, where she was declared brain-dead. Prillo was pronounced dead two days later. Her official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. But she also had defensive wounds on both of her forearms, indicating she fought back.

ABC 7 Chicago is reporting Prillo worked as a nurse and that she had just returned home from visiting her husband at the hospital at the time of the attack.

Details are not known about the actual crime, but Prillo’s wedding and engagement rings, as well as her purse, were missing, authorities said. Meanwhile, Harris attended a party the same day of Prillo’s attack, wearing new clothes. He showed Prillo’s rings to a friend there and asked which one he should present to his girlfriend for marriage, prosecutors say.

Harris proposed to his girlfriend on Oct. 27 — three days after Prillo died — using both of the dead woman’s rings, prosecutors said. Prillo’s family has confirmed the rings belonged to her and the girlfriend told police Harris gave them to her when he proposed.

DNA from a man’s watch that Harris left in a car at the scene of the crime led Chicago police to him, authorities said. Police arrested him in Elgin Tuesday afternoon.

Harris’ girlfriend has told police the watch belonged to him and prosecutors confirmed his DNA already was on file, due to prior convictions.

Harris was paroled for attempted murder and aggravated arson on May 20 and originally had been sentenced to 30 years, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

In 1997, Harris was found guilty of breaking into a Chicago woman’s home, raping and beating her, then threatening her with a knife. After knocking her unconscious, he set three separate fires to her house and the woman woke up with third-degree burns to her legs, Simonton said.

At the time of that crime, Harris had been out of prison for three weeks after serving time on a 1993 burglary case in Chicago.

Harris is scheduled to appear in court on the fresh charges Nov. 29 in Chicago. If found guilty of first-degree murder, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The public defender’s office, meanwhile, has yet to be assigned to Harris’ case.

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