Intruder sentenced to 5 years for involuntary manslaughter in 1994 Lisle case
A Peoria man was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for involuntary manslaughter in the 1994 death of a Lisle woman.
Thomas Spear will receive credit for time served in the DuPage County jail since his arrest in October 2017.
DuPage County Judge George Bakalis pronounced the sentence. Spear pleaded guilty last week.
He was initially charged with first-degree murder in the death of Illa Venard, 71, in August 1994 in her second-floor apartment on Walnut Creek Lane.
Venard's son and his then-wife found her dead. An autopsy at that time could not determine a cause of death; it appeared Venard may have been dead for several days.
A thumbnail was broken and several rings had been removed from her hands. The apartment seemed to have been ransacked, prosecutors said at an October 2017 bond hearing.
Three years after Venard's death, a neighbor told police Spear had spoken to her and her boyfriend about Venard before the break-in, noting the jewelry he saw her wearing. After her death, Spear showed the woman and her boyfriend four checks with Venard's name on them, and asked them to help him cash them, the neighbor told police.
Lisle police reopened the case in 2017. Venard was re-examined, and the examiner ruled she may have died of a cardiac arrhythmia caused by being startled by Spear during the break-in. Spear told police he found Venard unconscious on the floor and tried to revive her.
In August, Bakalis ruled that much of what Spear said to police in a 2017 interview, after he had been arrested, was inadmissible at trial because police continued to question him after he asked for a lawyer.