An Illinois man charged with killing a teenage runaway in 1997 and leaving her body in a Wisconsin marsh has pleaded not guilty to two felony charges.
James P. Eaton is charged with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse. Online court records say he pleaded not guilty Wednesday.
Messages left with his two public defenders were not immediately returned.
The 36-year-old from Palatine was arrested in Chicago this month. He's accused of killing Amber Creek, a 14-year-old also from Palatine.
Creek had run away from a state-run juvenile shelter in Chicago in 1997, just hours after police in Rolling Meadows returned her to the facility. She was last seen getting into a man's car after leaving a motel party.
Her body was found two weeks later in a Racine County marsh. She'd been beaten, sexually assaulted and suffocated with a plastic bag.
Police were unable to develop a suspect for years. They say a federal DNA database connected Eaton to the crime in February, and that investigators confirmed by tailing him and recovering DNA from a cigarette he discarded.
