Waukegan man guilty of murdering wife outside Lincolnshire hotel

A Lake County jury deliberated a little over four hours Thursday before convicting Clarence Weber of murdering his wife in a Lincolnshire hotel parking lot.

Weber, 60, will face a sentence of between 20 and 60 years in prison for stabbing Adelina Weber, 31, on July 5, 2008, because he was enraged she had decided to divorce him.

Associate Judge Theodore Potkonjak ordered Weber to return to court June 15 for sentencing.

Four days after he was served with divorce papers, prosecutors said Weber persuaded his wife to meet him behind the SpringHill Suites in Lincolnshire, across the street from the restaurant where she worked.

She did, and Weber stabbed her once in the neck. He then fled to Indiana, where he caught three days later.

Weber's three-day trial in Lake County circuit court was as notable for the testimony that was not presented as it was for the evidence that was but before the panel of seven women and five men.

In her opening statement, Assistant Public Defender Katherine Hatch told the jurors that her client had acted in self-defense when he stabbed his wife with the knife she used to attack him. The defense conceded that Weber had stabbed the woman and that his DNA was found on cigarette butts found near the crime scene.

But after Weber declined to take the stand on Thursday, Associate Judge Theodore Potkonjak barred the defense from arguing self-defense to the jury.

"You can argue the facts, you can argue the evidence," Potkonjak said in a ruling just before closing arguments. "But you cannot argue self-defense, because there has been no testimony to support that claim."

Assistant Public Defender John Bailey delivered the closing argument and simply asked the jury to reject the case against Weber.

"They haven't proven him guilty of anything," Bailey said. "No one saw what happened."

In a surprise move of their own, prosecutors did not call witnesses to testify that Weber tried to hire someone to kill the witnesses against him while he was being held in the Lake County jail.

Weber is charged with solicitation of murder for hire and faces a separate trial on that charge, but prosecutors won the right to present evidence pertaining to that charge in the murder trial after a hearing last month.

But they rested their case against Weber on Thursday morning without calling any witnesses to testify about that charge, and Assistant State's Attorneys Bolling Haxall and Eric Kalata declined to discuss their strategy afterward.

In his closing argument, Haxall told the jury that the case against Weber had been made. He said there was testimony that Weber had been stalking Adelina since she moved out of their house two months before she was killed.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this man killed Adelina Webber," Haxall said as he pointed at Weber. "We have proven him guilty beyond any doubt, beyond all doubt and certainly beyond a reasonable doubt."