Aurora man pleads guilty to strangling DuPage jail nurse
A 38-year-old Aurora man faces 20 to 80 years in prison after pleading guilty to strangling to death his ex-girlfriend, a DuPage County jail nurse.
Jose Loera, 38, of the 38000 block of Gabriel Lane, in Aurora, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder Tuesday in the March 2014 strangulation death of Heather Jacobi. With Loera's plea, prosecutors agreed to seek no more than 80 years in prison at his Nov. 29 sentencing hearing.
The plea comes on the day his trial was set to begin.
Assistant State's Attorney Nancy Donahoe, deputy chief of the office's felony division, said Loera became enraged on the night of March 28, 2014, when he showed up at her apartment and discovered she had been texting and exchanging social media messages with another man. Jacobi, 32, had an order of protection against Loera after several previous domestic abuse situations. She fought and clawed away at Loera's face, before he strangled her to death with the scarf she wore.
Donahoe said Loera then used Jacobi's own stethoscope to confirm she was dead before taking her phone and carrying on conversations with at least two men she had been talking to.
One of the men, Donahoe said, had a feeling he was no longer conversing with Jacobi when her number messaged him and told him to "lose (her) number." He saved those messages on his phone and later gave them to police.
Jacobi, on two previous occasions, had orders of protection against Loera, after he had physically abused her and verbally abused her three children. The most recent order was still in place at the time of her death but had been amended earlier that day.
Donahoe said Loera appeared in DuPage County court on March 28, 2014 to have the order of protection issued in January 2014 amended to allow him to contact Jacobi but to have "no harmful or offensive contact with her."
The order was amended despite objections from both prosecutors and Loera's probation officer.
"That was the day he murdered the victim," Donahoe said.
Loera admitted to detectives that he was set off when Jacobi received a text from a male friend that said "Good night beautiful."
Jacobi's mother asked police to check on her about 6:17 a.m. the next morning and officers said nothing seemed disturbed. They were called back to Jacobi's apartment at 7:37 a.m. after she failed to show up for work.
When police entered the home, they found the woman dead with the knotted scarf still around her neck.
Loera has been held on $5 million bail in Kendall County Jail for his safety due to Jacobi's status as a jail employee and her friendship with at least one deputy.
Loera' sentencing hearing is expected to begin Nov. 29.