Elk Grove Village man’s trial begins in mother’s death

When Ramona Pekarek thinks about her older sister Marilyn Wood, she recalls years spent in their childhood home in Duluth, Minn. exploring the attic, jumping on the bed and gathering around the dining room table for family dinners and holiday celebrations.

But that was long ago. The sister Pekarek knew — the former nurse and devoted daughter who cared for their terminally ill mother and Alzheimer’s afflicted father — is gone, murdered three years ago, authorities say, by her youngest son, Jonathan, whose trial begins today in Rolling Meadows.

Jonathan Wood, 42, lived with his mother in her Elk Grove Village home until about a month before her death when, records show, she took out an order of protection against him. After the normally punctual 70-year-old failed to show up to work at Schaumburg’s Healthcare Resources on Oct. 30, 2008, colleagues called police. Officers noticed nothing unusual at her home, but returned the next day after Marilyn’s boss received a fax telling him she’d be out of town for a few days. During their second visit, police found Marilyn Wood’s bound and gagged body in the basement. She had been beaten and strangled.

Police traced the fax to an Arlington Heights insurance company, where employees say a man came in off the street and asked to use the fax machine. The employees gave police a description of the car that police say Jonathan Wood was driving. Police spotted him driving the car near the crime scene that day and attempted to stop him. Wood fled and led police on a high-speed chase that ended in Glencoe with Wood being taken into custody.

If convicted, Jonathan Wood could face up to 60 years in prison. He has been in custody on a $3 million bail since his arrest more than three years ago.

Pekarek said Marilyn Wood tried several times to get professional help for her son, who was originally found unfit to stand trial by a court-appointed psychiatrist. Last year, a psychiatrist found him fit, provided he takes his medication.

Wood’s attorney, Cook County Assistant Public Defender Jim Mullenix, says he does not intend to mount an insanity defense when the trial begins today in front of Cook County Judge Bridget Hughes.

“Marilyn was fun,” emailed Pekarek, from her St. Paul, Minn. home, recalling how she and Marilyn went boulder hopping along the shores of Lake Superior.

Pekarek says she and her family members have asked themselves what Marilyn would want for her son. She would not have wanted prosecutors to seek the death penalty and would have been glad they decided against it, Pekarek said. At the time of Jonathan Wood’s arrest, Illinois’ death penalty remained in effect.

“I want Marilyn to be remembered as a fun and industrious person,” wrote Pekarek, “and especially remembered for her loving and skilled care of our mother as she was dying and so much loving care for our father, too, during that difficult time.”