Man gets three years for cyber-stalking former store clerk

Nearly two years after his arrest on charges that he cyber-stalked a former convenience store employee, a former Des Plaines man pleaded guilty to the charges Monday in a Rolling Meadows courtroom.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Fecarotta sentenced Thomas Brodnicki to three years in prison, the maximum for the class 4 felony. Brodnicki, 45, received credit for the 661 days he has served in Cook County Jail since his July 2008 arrest.

The court also issued a two-year order of protection against Brodnicki on behalf of the victim. The order goes into effect when Brodnicki is released from custody, said his attorney, Cook County Assistant Public Defender Larry Kugler.

Police charged Brodnicki with sending e-mails to a woman he met in 2000 when she was 18. Brodnicki told the victim he wanted to impregnate her, that he had developed a youth serum which made him look 24 and that he wanted to inject it into her, authorities said.

Authorities described Brodnicki as infatuated and said he pursued the woman off and on for eight years, even going so far as to show up at her out-of-state college, where police arrested him for harassment in 2002.

Fecarotta found Brodnicki unfit to stand trial in late 2008 and remanded him to the Department of Human Service for treatment. He was found fit to stand trial with medication several months ago, Kugler said.

Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Mike Gerber acknowledged that Brodnicki has "psychiatric issues."

Court records show that he was arrested on charges of stalking another victim in 2003 and remanded to DHS for treatment after the court found him unfit to stand trial. Restored to fitness, he pleaded guilty in 2008 and was released from custody having received credit for time served. He was also convicted on a 2005 charge of communicating with a witness, Gerber said.

Additionally, Brodnicki pleaded guilty to battery in 2001 and received two years of supervision, which terminated unsatisfactorily, court records show. He also received probation for a 1986 charge of possession of a controlled substance, a sentence that court records show he violated.