Man gets 20-year plea deal for killing cousin in Woodridge

A Chicago man was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday in a plea deal in which he admitted to fatally shooting his cousin in Woodridge.

Carlos Oden, 28, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the fatal shooting. He is eligible for parole after serving half of the prison term.

His cousin, Carzell Edgar Oden, 27, was found just before 3 p.m. Dec. 21, 2005, with a single gunshot to his head in an idling black Lexus in a townhouse parking lot near 3514 83rd St., where he and his fiancee lived.

Witnesses placed the cousins together that day shortly before Oden's body was discovered. Police found the murder weapon, later traced to the defendant, one day later at the bottom of a nearby trash bin.

Carlos Oden was arrested March 9, 2006, after providing Woodridge police detectives with a videotaped confession. He originally faced first-degree murder charges that carried a possible 45-year minimum prison term.

But his defense team, Jeffrey York and Ricky Holman, both senior assistant DuPage County public defenders, said their investigators dug up evidence to support the defendant's claim of self-defense.

For example, Carzell Edgar Oden had a violent past that included an attempted murder when he was a juvenile in which he shot a man in the head in California. And he went to prison for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. He also attacked the defendant with an aluminum bat during their troubled relationship.

"Carlos is not proud of what he did that day, but he thought he was going to die," York said. "He truly did. It's a fair sentence given all the circumstances."

Prosecutors Helen Kapas-Erdman and Timothy Diamond said the two men argued over their "drug clientele" the night before the shooting. The dispute continued that day while they ran an errand together and headed back to the slain man's condo.

Carzell Edgar Oden punched the defendant in the head in the car, prosecutors said. Carlos Oden then shot him, before fleeing, leaving the passenger door ajar.

Despite the slain man's violent past, his fiancee wrote a letter to the judge in which she said he was her best friend and treated her son as if he was his own, often helping him with his homework and teaching him how to play basketball.

Sarah Christodolos described the heartbreak of losing her fiance just days before Christmas.

"Carzell had bought me a ring only days before he was murdered," she said in the letter, which a prosecutor read in court. "He had just put it in the shop to be sized. I had to pick up my ring alone. A ring that once promised marriage, love and hope now only brought me painful memories."

DuPage Circuit Judge Kathryn Creswell presided over the plea deal. The defendant's only criminal history was for drug possession.