75 years for Lombard man who attacked family

Christopher Rood sat stoically and unflinching as he was sentenced to 75 years in prison Wednesday for stabbing his wife and teenage daughter two years ago.

The 46-year-old Lombard man had just finished pleading for mercy from DuPage County Judge John Kinsella, complaining that his mental illnesses had caused what he described as "a horror story" that still haunts him every night. He asked the judge for a minimum 26-year sentence for the crimes he blamed on being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and a mild form of autism.

"There really is nothing in jail in terms of psychiatric care and I want help for these problems," Rood said during his sentencing hearing. "Jail hasn't helped me yet."

While Kinsella agreed that Rood would be unlikely to find assistance for his mental health issues in prison, the judge relied on testimony from psychiatrists who testified earlier in the two-day hearing that there was little help anywhere for Rood's issues.

"The psychiatric and mental health issues don't amount to a defense, but it does offer some insight to what precipitated this awful event," Kinsella said. "It was evil. That's the only way to describe it."

After reading a 32-page letter Rood had sent him and listening to Rood's nearly five-minute plea Wednesday, Kinsella was unconvinced that Rood deserved leniency.

"I read and heard a lot of I and me," Kinsella said. "It's a very self-centered view of life and the world he has."

Rood was sentenced to 25 years for each of the two counts of armed violence and one count of home invasion he pleaded guilty to in April. Kinsella ordered that the sentences be served consecutively. He will have to serve a minimum of 85 percent of the home invasion sentence and 50 percent of the armed violence sentences. With credit for the nearly two years he has been in jail in DuPage since the September 2008 attack, Kinsella estimated Rood could be released from prison when he is 90 years old.

Rood's rampage was instigated by his now-ex-wife Jayne filing for divorce a few months before the attack. He told Kinsella the mental anguish he was experiencing from the breakup of his marriage manifested in his physical inability to swallow his medications.

Rood pleaded guilty in April to breaking into his estranged wife's home and attacking her and their daughter with hunting knife. Before fleeing, Rood ripped the stove away from the kitchen wall and severed the gas line with the hose. He was captured several minutes later when he was tracked by a police dog and found hiding in a Wheaton creek, submerged up to his head.

Rood's wife suffered a deep cut to her face, a punctured liver, wounds to her stomach and diaphragm and lost 14 quarts of blood in the attack, she told Kinsella Wednesday.

"I truly believe that if he is ever allowed to walk free again, he will hunt us down and he will kill us," she told Kinsella. "I will continue to fear him for the rest of my life and it saddens me to know, with just as much surety, that my kids will also carry this fear with them throughout their lives."

Rood's daughter Molly testified Friday that she still feared her father, and detailed a history of physical and mental abuse he perpetrated against her and the rest of the family throughout their lives. Rood's youngest son Ben testified that he feared his father would one day "finish what he tried to do that night" if ever released from prison.

But Rood denied he would ever try to hurt his family if freed.

"There's no job to finish," he said. "They're my loved ones. They're everything in the world to me."

But Kinsella was unmoved by Rood's pleas and admittedly moved by the words of Rood's children.

"In all my time, it's difficult to recall a more compelling or heartbreaking set of victim impact statements than those from this defendant's children," Kinsella said. "It was his hope that his family would die, especially with that business with the stove."