Oct. 13--After a three-decade wait, Sandy Wesselman on Tuesday finally saw a man stand in court accused of murdering her daughter.
Wesselman and her surviving children were in a DuPage County courtroom when Michael Jones, 62, of Champaign, entered a not-guilty plea in the 1985 murder of 15-year-old Kristy Wesselman.
Sandy Wesselman, a grandmother of six who now lives in Colorado, declined to comment after the brief arraignment hearing before Judge George Bakalis. About two dozen friends and family members attended with her.
State's Attorney Robert Berlin said that earlier Tuesday a grand jury had indicted Jones on eight counts of first-degree murder and three counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault. The judge advised Jones of the possible penalties should he be convicted -- which range up to life in prison -- and asked Jones if he understood the charges.
"I do, your honor," he said in a quiet voice.
Jones was arrested last month. In the summer, a sample of his DNA had been entered into a national database after he had been convicted in a domestic abuse incident in Champaign. The registry returned a hit to DNA recovered from Kristy Wesselman after her slaying.
The 15-year-old sophomore was last seen alive on July 21, 1985, when she walked form her Glen Ellyn-area home to a nearby grocery store to buy a candy bar and a soda.
Her body was found the following day in a field not far from the foot trail that connected her neighborhood and the shopping plaza at Illinois Route 53 and Butterfield Road. She had been stabbed to death and sexually assaulted.
At the time of the murder Jones lived in Champaign, where he had settled following his release from prison on a conviction for abducting and sexually assaulting a woman in his family's home in Schiller Park in 1977.
In interviews with police last month, Jones denied ever seeing Wesselman, authorities said.
In court Tuesday, prosecutors tendered more than 2,000 pages of discovery to the public defenders who are representing Jones.
Bakalis was the third judge who Jones saw Tuesday.
His case was originally assigned to Judge John Kinsella, who was a DuPage prosecutor in the 1980s. Jones' attorneys asked for a substitution, which is routinely granted if the request is filed within 10 days of arrest, as it was in Jones' case. The motion also asked that Judge Daniel Guerin, who presides over the criminal division, not take the case.
Jones briefly appeared before Guerin, who assigned it to Bakalis. Jones, who is being held without bond, is due back in court Nov. 24.
Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter.
