Man charged in Kristy Wesselman slaying points finger at suspected serial killer
Attorneys for a Champaign man accused of the 1985 slaying of 15-year-old Kristy Wesselman near Glen Ellyn are hoping to point the finger at a long-deceased suspected serial killer.
According to court documents filed Monday, DuPage County public defenders want to present evidence that a twice-convicted murderer named Ralph Raymond Andrews could have been responsible for stabbing and sexually assaulting Kristy.
Michael Jones, 64, was charged with Kristy's murder in 2015 and is scheduled to stand trial beginning Jan. 23.
Andrews died in an Illinois prison on Jan. 31, 2006, where he was serving a life sentence for the 1991 murder of a Chicago woman and the 1977 slaying of a Chicago teenager.
Judge George Bakalis will hear arguments on the motion on Dec. 20.
Prosecutors filed a motion in mid-October to bar Jones' defense from introducing any trial evidence suggesting a specific third party killed Kristy.
According to the motion, "such evidence should only be allowed if a close connection can be demonstrated between the third party and commission of the offense." Prosecutors say Jones is the only one with a connection to the crime.
Senior Assistant Public Defender Robert Gifford, in his latest motion, argues that authorities interviewing Andrews investigated allegations of other murders and crimes linked to Andrews.
"It was asserted that Mr. Andrews murdered young women, during the course of sexual assaults, using ligatures and knives and was active from the early 1970s through the early 1990s," Gifford wrote. "In the course of interviews with investigators, Mr. Andrews listed approximately 24 other victims by first name, one of which was listed as 'Kris,'"
Prosecutors previously said the case against Jones, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in the 1970s at his Schiller Park home, primarily will be based on DNA evidence. Jones submitted DNA to a database following a domestic abuse conviction in 2015, and his sample came back as a match for DNA recovered from Kristy.
On July 21, 1985, prosecutors allege Jones sexually assaulted and murdered Kristy in broad daylight as she walked along a path near a Jewel store at Butterfield Road and Route 53 that led to her home in the nearby Valley View subdivision.
Kristy's body was found in a pile of leaves near a half-eaten candy bar and soda bottle by a sheriff's deputy about 11 a.m. the following day. She had been stabbed eight times and sexually assaulted while a shoelace was tied around her neck.