Dec. 11--Before Allan Kustok was sentenced to 60 years in prison for killing his wife, he proclaimed his innocence, his voice cracking as he explained that he waited to call 911 the morning of Anita "Jeanie" Kustok's death because he couldn't bear to be apart from her.
"I wanted to be with her as long as I could because once I gave her up, I knew I would never have that opportunity again," Kustok said in a Bridgeview courtroom Wednesday.
The couple's daughter, sportscaster Sarah Kustok, who testified at her father's March trial that she believed he was innocent, watched silently in the back of the courtroom, her hands folded in her lap. She left without comment immediately after the hearing.
The Kustoks' son, Zak Kustok, who did not support his father's bid for acquittal, did not attend the hearing.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge John Hynes said he agreed with the jury's verdict and called Jeanie Kustok's death a loss for both her family and the community.
"This is one of the most baffling cases I've been involved in," Hynes said in handing down the sentence. "The defendant had it all. He had the American Dream, yet that was not good enough, he wanted more."
Kustok, 63, was found guilty of first-degree murder in March after a nearly four-week trial and less than two hours of jury deliberations. He faced a minimum sentence of 45 years and a maximum of life in prison for the Sept. 29, 2010, murder of his wife of 34 years.
Jeanie Kustok's sister, Patricia Krcmery, testified during the sentencing that her family misses her sister so much "that it hurts to put into words."
Krcmery said her mother, who died about a year after Jeanie Kustok's death, was "tormented in the final year of her life."
"She couldn't believe that someone she had loved and trusted for over 30 years could have taken her beautiful daughter from her and from our family," she said.
Throughout the trial, Kustok maintained that his wife, a teacher at Riverside's Central Elementary School, shot herself in their Orland Park home.
Kustok told investigators that on the morning of Sept. 29, 2010, he awoke to the sound of a gunshot and saw his wife dead beside him in bed, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the face with the .357 Magnum pistol he gave her as an anniversary gift either in or near her hand.
Kustok waited some period of time -- prosecutors have said two hours or more; the defense argued as little as 45 minutes -- with the body, wiping blood from his wife's face and hands and firing the remaining five bullets in the gun into an armoire at the bedside, claiming he feared he might turn the weapon on himself.
Prosecutors contended Kustok, whose sentence included three years of mandatory supervision if he's ever released, shot his wife while carrying on multiple extramarital affairs. The prosecution called as witnesses several women with whom Kustok had affairs, some of whom testified that Kustok said he was unhappy in his marriage and planned to seek a divorce.
Kustok's lawyers last week argued unsuccessfully for a new trial, saying prosecutors had not completely ruled out the possibility that the gun accidentally discharged or that Jeanie Kustok used the weapon to take her own life.
In his ruling, the judge put the weapon squarely in Allan Kustok's hands, dismissing the notion that Jeanie Kustok was contemplating suicide and describing her as a "person who was happy, was planning for the future."
In some of the March trial's most gripping testimony, Sarah Kustok, a former Chicago SportsNet broadcaster who now works in New York, said she did not believe her father killed her mother.
She told jurors that her father was "absolutely not" capable of taking her mother's life. She said her parents fostered the "most loving, supportive household that I could imagine" and "did everything together." The night before her mother's death, she exchanged a series of text messages with her father, and they planned to meet the following night for pizza, she testified.
Zak Kustok, 35, a star quarterback at Sandburg High School and Northwestern University, did not take the stand during the trial and didn't agree with his sister. In an interview with the SouthtownStar after his wife testified, he said he wasn't supporting his father but declined to comment when asked if he believed his dad was guilty.
Defense attorney Rick Beuke said during the hearing that he still couldn't understand how Kustok could have gone from exchanging texts with his daughter and planning his wife's birthday to shooting her the following morning.
"For the very first time in my 30-plus years, I can honestly say in my heart I believe an innocent man is going to be going to the penitentiary," Beuke said.
Outside the courtroom, Beuke said he intends to file an appeal.
Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer Gonzalez maintained that while Jeanie Kustok was dreaming of her future with Allan Kustok and hoping for grandchildren, Kustok desired a different path.
"Allan Kustok saw Jeanie as a weight, and she was holding him back from the life he wanted to live."
