The man convicted in the brutal stabbing of 14-year-old Kelli O'Laughlin was sentenced Friday to 160 years in prison, the maximum sentence he could have received.
"It’s the maximum," O'Laughlin's father, John, said after the sentencing. "160 years doesn’t seem like enough, but it’s the maximum."
"It's just been amazing, the community, just people from all over that have really supported us," O'Laughlin's mother, Brenda said. "We cannot thank everybody enough."
Prosecutors said John Wilson broke into the Indian Head Park teen's southwest suburban home in 2011 and stabbed her multiple times with an 8-inch carving knife after she discovered him in the process of committing the burglary.
The jury reached its verdict on Sept. 15 after deliberating for just two hours.
"This is a horrific crime and clearly anyone who's a parent, who's a mother, who's a father, who has a teenager, this crime hits home," Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said when the verdict was handed down.
Assistant state's attorney Guy Lisuzzo said Wilson used a landscaping rock wrapped in a knit cap to break into the family's home and that Wilson's DNA was found on the cap.
[[275223171, C]]
Prosecutors said Wilson's cell phone records tracked him to locations near the O'Laughlin family home on the day of the murder.
After the murder, Wilson made his way back to his Chicago home, prosecutors said, by paying for the cab ride with coins stolen from the family's home. He's also accused of stealing the victim's smartphone and sending a series of disturbing text messages to the girl's mother, who discovered her daughter stabbed in the head, neck, shoulders and chest.
O'Laughlin's mother, Brenda, said the first text came the day after her daughter's death, asking "what Brenda?"
The text was followed by another that read "love your pic," and the most haunting of all: "she wanted me to tell you something before I killed her."
Prosecutors also revealed that a haunting message was posted under the teen's Facebook profile one day after she was found murdered.
LaGrange Police officer Patrick Fulla testified the message read, "Next time the b**** will do as told."
