Plea deal in Downers Grove man’s 1997 murder?

A plea deal is on the table for a man arrested last year in the 1997 murder of a father of five in Downers Grove, his attorney said in court Friday.

Defense attorney Rick Kayne said suspect Jose Ruvalcaba-Quezada would consider the offer from prosecutors over the weekend.

“I should have an answer by Monday,” Kayne told DuPage County Judge George Bakalis. “I’m not saying he’s going to accept the offer.”

If there’s no agreement, Kayne said he would proceed with a motion to suppress statements the defendant made over two days of questioning after his January 2012 arrest at a restaurant in South Carolina.

Kayne says authorities ignored his client’s request for an attorney and a Spanish interpreter, and did not explain his rights under the Vienna Convention to contact the Mexican consulate.

Ruvalcaba-Quezada, formerly of Joliet, fled Illinois after fatally shooting 39-year-old Jose J. Ortiz outside Ortiz’s Downers Grove home early Dec. 27, 1997, authorities allege. The defendant was deported to Mexico in 1999 after becoming the target of an unrelated rape investigation in Utah, then illegally returned to the U.S. in 2003 and lived under a false identity with his wife in South Carolina, according to prosecutors.

During the rape investigation, authorities recovered a diary in which the suspect allegedly described receiving “good pay” to shoot a man with a 9 mm firearm as the victim left home for work, prosecutors have said.

Authorities filed charges in 2008 but did not locate Ruvalcaba-Quezada until last year. Prosecutors have said he was “crystal clear” in a videotaped police interview that he killed Ortiz for money.

Kayne declined to comment on the plea negotiations, as did Assistant State’s Attorney Steve Knight. Ruvalcaba-Quezada is being held without bail and is due back in court Monday.