A DuPage County jury found Edward Tenney guilty Wednesday of the execution-style murder of a young Aurora father killed three weeks after his second child was born.
Members deliberated about four hours over two days before convicting the three-time killer of a crime that brought such pain, it reverberates still, nearly 18 years later.
The panel now will begin hearing evidence in the trial’s next two phases to decide if Tenney is eligible for a death sentence and, finally, whether his execution is the appropriate punishment.
Tenney opened fire on Jerry Weber late April 16, 1992, before robbing him of a wallet containing $6 during a chance encounter in a muddy field at Sheffer and Vaughn roads, near what is now the sprawling Stonebridge subdivision.
The slain man’s widow, Sharon Weber, and his mother, Karen Bond, waited nearly two decades to hear the guilty verdict.
Tenney, 50, showed no outward reaction upon learning his fate.
He maintained his innocence during the hard-fought trial. But his cousin, Donald Lippert, 34, testified he watched Tenney commit the murder after the two spotted Weber trying to free his white work van from a muddy Aurora field.
Lippert, also armed and admittedly drunk and high during the fatal robbery, said he gave Tenney his weapon after the other one jammed.
Tenney is serving life prison sentences for the 1993 shootings of two Kane County women, killed in separate home invasions, including dairy heiress Jill Oberweis. Lippert was his co-defendant in those cases, too.
Prosecutors David Bayer, Robert Berlin and Michael Pawl argued Tenney executed Weber, 24, a carpet installer whose wife, Sharon, discovered his bullet-ridden body the next morning when he failed to return home from gathering flagstones for a backyard garden project.
Sharon Weber, a widow at 21, gave birth to their second child just three weeks earlier. She has not remarried and raised their two sons, David and Erik, while putting herself through school to become a registered nurse.
Lippert received an 80-year prison term in a 1996 plea deal for his role in the three slayings. He is eligible for parole in 2035 after serving half the sentence.
In a 1999 handwritten letter, Tenney told Lippert: “I still can’t see why you ran your mouth. All you had to do was keep quiet. No evidence then. Damn, I want to pop you in the eye for putting me through this.”
“I think we got a chance. It’s up to you,” Tenney wrote at the end of the letter.
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