For more than four years, the family of Vanessa Ramirez has been fighting for Cook County sheriff's investigators to find the person who killed the then-22-year-old teacher's aide.
Dakota Petrey, of Lewiston in central Illinois, was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Ramirez on Tuesday, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said. While Petrey was arrested in Lewiston, at the time of the murder in 2020, he was living at an Oak Forest apartment complex, not far from the Midlothian Forest Preserve where Ramirez's body was found, authorities.
"He was living not far from the area at the time this occurred, so he was definitely someone that we had been interested in, you know, early on," Dart said. "It just, you know, frankly, it took longer than we had thought."
Ramirez's family and friends spoke out after the 22-year-old was reported missing in November 2020. When Ramirez's body was finally discovered, investigators determined that she had been sexually assaulted, strangled - and partially burned.
According to sheriff's investigators, DNA connected Petrey to the crime.
"His attempt to cover up his crime by trying to incinerate this poor young girl...some of the clothing we were able to get more things out of than other things...and so just that took us a little longer, but these the DNA things put him all there," Dart said.
Petrey was in custody at the Cook County Jail as of Friday and is expected back in court in February.
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