Friend testifies suspect confessed to Glen Ellyn slaying
A day after Myron Ester stabbed his girlfriend to death and buried her body in Glen Ellyn's Panfish Park, he needed to talk to someone, authorities said.
That someone, Arlinda Shaw, of Naperville, was a longtime friend and former lover. And she thought he was kidding when he whispered in her ear, outside her home, that he killed Linda Valez.
“I told him quit playing,” Shaw testified Monday in DuPage County court. “I thought he was saying that so I would let him in.”
But when she realized he may be serious, she immediately had a plan.
“I said ‘I'm calling Crime Stoppers for the reward. I get half and I'll put the other $500 on your (prison commissary) books,'” Shaw testified. “Then he said he was just joking.”
She said Ester also asked her if anyone could track his phone if he took the battery out and she told him yes.
Shaw never did call the police and Ester stayed with her and her children for five days until officers showed up on Sept. 29 and arrested him.
Prosecutors say Ester, who was homeless, stabbed the 33-year-old Valez, who was also homeless, more than 30 times and left her body in an 18-inch grave he dug in Panfish Park on the night of Sept. 24, 2013.
A friend of Valez, Giesele Mershon, of Wheaton, also testified Monday regarding Ester and Valez's tumultuous relationship.
On different occasions, within weeks of the murders, Mershon testified that she heard Ester tell Valez he would kill her if he couldn't have her and that she was his property.
Judge Brian Telander told jurors he expects closing arguments and for the case to be given to them sometime on Thursday. The trial resumes at 10 a.m. Tuesday.