Family of slain teen returning to Naperville
After enduring unimaginable loss, Chelsea King's family is coming home.
The father of the slain California teen said his family will move back to Naperville next month where they lived for 10 years before buying a home north of San Diego in 2007.
Brent King said that he and his wife, Kelly, want their 13-year-old son Tyler to be able to live more anonymously in a familiar place with a group of friends he has stayed close with despite the distance.
"This tight-knit group will welcome him with open arms," Brent King wrote in an emotional letter posted Friday on the website chelseaslight.org. "It is in Naperville where Kelly and I feel we can provide Tyler with an environment that will enable him to best adjust to his new life without his best friend Chelsea."
The King family left Naperville in January 2007 when Chelsea was a freshman at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora. Her friends said they tried to literally glue Chelsea to her front porch to keep her from leaving.
Chelsea, a gifted student, musician and distance runner, vanished Feb. 25 during a daytime jog at a popular San Diego County park near her home. After the teen's disappearance, many of her friends gathered in Naperville - as thousands did in California - to pray for her safe return.
Authorities said DNA evidence found on the teen's discarded clothing two days later led them to registered sex offender John Albert Gardner III. He admitted sexually assaulting and strangling Chelsea before burying her body in a shallow, lakeside grave.
Gardner was sentenced last month to a life prison term after pleading guilty to the murder, as well as a similar sex slaying one year earlier of a 14-year-girl he abducted on her way to school.
Brent King said their Chelsea's Light Foundation will remain in San Diego. The couple plans to keep a second residence in San Diego and commute monthly.
They are leading a campaign for "Chelsea's Law" to allow life sentences for some convicted child molesters in California and lifetime electronic monitoring of others. The bill, which is pending before the California Senate and garnered more than 36,600 signatures in a petition drive, also bans sex offenders from parks.
Brent King said the decision to leave was difficult, but returning to Naperville will allow the parents to provide Tyler with "a sense of normalcy in these very trying times."
"As certain as we are that we have made the right decision, it did not come easily and without trepidation," Brent King wrote. "Our San Diego community has cradled us in the darkest time of our lives and made it possible for us to put one foot in front of the other in a moment when it felt utterly impossible."