William A. Krolik felt cheated.
Two years after the convicted murderer was paroled from prison, prosecutors allege, he hatched a plan to take back what he considered rightfully his from a stepsister who inherited their deceased father’s assets.
After deliberating one hour, a DuPage County jury on Wednesday convicted the 44-year-old Chicago man of being behind a violent Dec. 4, 2007 encounter in Westmont that sparked precedent in Illinois law.
Krolik’s father left everything to the stepdaughter who took care of him until his January 2007 death.
The woman testified during the two-day trial that she managed to escape into her home after a hammer-wielding assailant attacked her in the back yard.
The woman, who lives one block from the police station, called 911 as her assailant tried to kick in her door.
Police quickly nabbed Louis P. Demeo, who confessed and identified Krolik, encircling the block in a Chevy Blazer, as his co-defendant.
Krolik confessed in a videotaped police interrogation to a plan to burglarize his stepsister’s home. He said the plan was for Demeo to overpower his sister, bind her hands with electrical tape and cover her face, so that she would not recognize him.
“Listen to the defendant’s words,” Prosecutor Mary K. Cronin encouraged jurors. “He admits everything. He felt cheated. It was only because his feisty stepsister was on the ball that his plan was foiled.”
The six-member jury found Krolik guilty Wednesday of attempted armed robbery and attempted home invasion. Krolik faces four to 30 years in prison when DuPage Circuit Judge Blanche Hill Fawell sentences him this spring.
The criminal case set legal precedent in Illinois after prosecutors objected to the defense’s request for a six-member jury.
The defense attorney, Brian Jacobs, a senior DuPage County public defender, sought a smaller jury than the typical 12 after a defendant in another high-profile case was acquitted with a smaller jury.
DuPage State’s Attorney Joe Birkett objected.
In an unanimous Oct. 8 2009 ruling, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled if a criminal defendant wants a jury with fewer than 12 people and the trial judge allows it, a prosecutor can’t stand in the way.
Demeo, 41, of Chicago, received a 12-year prison term in an earlier guilty plea.
Krolik was paroled in May 2005 after serving more than 20 years in prison for a 1982 road-rage murder in Chicago in which the male victim was dragged one block by the defendant’s car as he fled the scene.
At the time, the 17-year-old Krolik used an alias last name of “Steffens.”
Krolik received a 30-year term for the murder – which was prosecuted when Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley was the Cook County state’s attorney – but first district appellate court justices reduced it to 20 years in a Feb. 15, 1985 opinion after citing the defendant’s age and lack of significant criminal history.
The opinion read: “We believe that defendant’s rehabilitative potential was not given adequate consideration.”
Krolik received an additional 5-year prison term after being accused in 1987 of having a homemade weapon as a felon while incarcerated for the murder.
Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services