Convict in '84 murder wins new DNA tests

A Lake County judge said Monday he will allow new testing of some evidence in a 1984 case that originally sent a man to death row.

Hector Ruben Sanchez, 60, was one of two men convicted of dragging Michelle Thompson, 21, from a car in a Gurnee tavern parking lot after shooting her companion.

She was taken to Sanchez's home, where Sanchez raped her repeatedly, strangled her and then dumped her body in a Wisconsin field.

Attorneys for Sanchez asked Chief Judge Christopher Starck to allow new DNA testing of cotton swabs used to collect evidence from Thompson's body.

Assistant Public Defender Eric Rinehart said that he did not expect the testing to produce results that would immediately free Sanchez.

But, Rinehart said, he did think it could serve to discredit Sanchez's co-defendant, Warren Peters, who testified that Sanchez acted alone in the rape and murder.

Peters, who is serving an 80-year prison sentence, testified he left the woman alone after the kidnapping and did nothing to stop Sanchez because he feared for his own life.

Starck said he was not making a comment about the sufficiency of other evidence against Sanchez in the case, but only that the current state of the law required him to order the new testing.

Sanchez's original death sentence was converted to life in prison when former Gov. George Ryan issued a blanket clemency that emptied death row.

Sanchez is also facing a life sentence imposed in Wisconsin for the murder of a woman there.