Glendale Heights dad admits fatally burning sons

The Glendale Heights father who lured his two young sons into the family's bathroom with new toys, doused them with gasoline and set them ablaze pleaded guilty Tuesday to their murders.

Kaushik Patel was spared a possible death sentence in exchange for the guilty plea. He will spend the remainder of his life in prison.

DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett called the crime "horrific," but his office agreed to the plea deal at the wishes of the boys' mother.

"Maybe the most important factor in that decision was (the victims' mother) approving and wanting this," said lead prosecutor Alex McGimpsey. "She wanted to put this behind her and that was our most important factor."

She was not in court Tuesday.

"Obviously, if we had gone to trial there's a substantial possibility he would have gotten death," Patel's attorney Jeff Kendall said.

Patel only spoke Tuesday to answer Judge Kathryn Creswell's questions. An interpreter translated the India native's responses. Most replies were simply "yes" or "no." His most substantive response came when Creswell asked if he was pleading guilty or not guilty.

"This sentence means you have no possibility of ever getting out of prison," Creswell said. "And that you will die in prison. There is no good-behavior credit and no possibility of getting out."

"I accept my guilt," Patel said through the interpreter.

When details of the boys' deaths were read by Creswell or McGimpsey, Patel dabbed away tears with a tissue and the sleave of his jail-issued shirt.

Authorities said the 36-year-old Patel wanted to kill 7-year-old Vishv and 4-year-old Om after becoming despondent over the state of his marriage. After he set the boys on fire in November 2007, they clung to life in the burn unit at Loyola Medical Center in Maywood for weeks. The younger boy died in January 2008, while his older brother eventually succumbed to his injuries a month later.

Vishv's death was preceded by a recounting to his mother of the events leading up to the fire. While the boy's father claimed in a jailhouse interview with the Daily Herald that he only meant to harm himself, Vishv told his mother that Patel purposely set the two boys on fire after having them bathe in gasoline.

The boy told his mother that Patel poured gasoline on the two boys as they sat in a green tub that Patel had placed inside a shower stall in the master bedroom's bathroom of their Glendale Heights home. Vishv said his father told them that he was pouring water on them, but Vishv told his mother that he knew it was gasoline. The brothers were playing in the gasoline-filled tub with Matchbox cars that Patel had bought for them earlier that day before he set them ablaze.

McGimpsey read an account of what the boy told his mother about the fire.

"Vishv said his father lit a lighter, there was a loud noise and then he hurt," he said.

Doctors were scheduled to testify that the youngest boy suffered life-threatening burns on 75 percent of his body, while the older boy was burned on 90 percent of his body. Patel suffered burns in the fire as well over about 65 percent of his body, but has since recovered from his injuries. McGimpsey said the doctors also would have said Patel's injuries weren't as extensive as his sons because he was still clothed when he caught fire.

McGimpsey said police detectives would have testified that Patel changed his story about what happened several times, including an account where he blamed the boys for pouring the gasoline on themselves. Investigators would have testified how they discovered that two of the house's smoke detectors had been disabled.

"This is something I'll never forget," said Glendale Heights Det. Charles May. "I've done several homicide investigations, but not one ever quite like this."