Lockport's 'Butcher' Murderer John Raue Moves To Channahon

CHANNAHON, IL — Lockport native John Raue, who killed his 22-year-old wife Sonya Rene Raue while their 3-year-old son slept— then cut off her head, arms, legs, torso and put them into separate trash bags for the garbage truck to retrieve — was granted parole from the Illinois Department of Corrections, Patch found.

Raue, who just turned 59, resides in an upscale Channahon subdivision, according to the Illinois Murderer and Violent Offender registry.

In July 1990, Raue, then 26, dismembered his wife's body after using a rope or cord to suffocate her; she also suffered one blow to her head, according to autopsy findings. He almost got away with murdering her. On July 2, 1990, he hauled several trash bags containing her dismembered body parts to the street curb in the 400 block of East 14th Street. Two garbage men unknowingly threw the bags into the back of their garbage truck. But as the men compacted the garbage, one of the bags tore open, and a human leg came out. Horrified, the garbage men notified Lockport's Police Department, and the rest of Rene Raue's body was recovered from inside the five other garbage bags.

At the time of his arrest, Raue had worked the past five years at the Conco Western Stone quarry near Aurora. His father was a U.S. Department of Agriculture meat inspector and his grandfather had once been a butcher, according to a July 19, 1990, story in the Herald-News. John Raue's grandfather, Harold, served as mayor of Lockport from 1937 through 1949.

"Mrs. Raue's body was dismembered in a manner similar to butchering meat," Will County's State's Attorney Ed Burmila told the newspaper at the time of Raue's first court hearing.

Rodney Lechwar was the presiding judge for Raue's jury trial at the Will County Courthouse. Raue had hired Ira Goldstein, one of Will County's most high-profile criminal defense lawyers during that time period.

John Raue's first-degree murder case became the focus of numerous front-page banner headlines in The Joliet Herald-News during 1990 and 1991.

Here's a sampling of headlines:

"Grisly Slaying Shocks Lockport."

"Security Tight For Butcher Suspect's First Day In Court."

"Raue Wanted Weekend Alone With Wife."

"I'd Never Been This Mad Before."

"Raue Admits Killing His Wife."

"A Troubled Marriage, A Grisly Death."

"Jury Didn't Cry For John Raue."

At the time, Lockport Police Chief Robert "Whitey" Miller said that Sonja Rene's murder marked the community's first homicide since 1986 and only the second in 25 years.

'A Terrible Sight'

Miller said each of the woman's limbs, her head and torso were found inside separate garbage bags after the garbage truck was emptied at the Lockport city garage and searched.

"It was a terrible sight," Miller told reporter Scott Koeneman of the Herald-News. "I've been here 30 years this November, and I've never seen anything like it. This was just terrible."

The chief deputy coroner for Will County at that time testified about two puncture wounds near the victim's belly, caused by a barbecue fork used to hold her body in place during the dismemberment process.

Sonya Rene Holsey was born in West Virginia and lived in Lockport the last 10 years of her life. She was buried at the Resurrection Cemetery in Romeoville.

In a shocking development at the start of his 1991 jury trial, John Raue pleaded guilty to the crime of concealing a homicidal death.

Goldstein's trial strategy was to convince the jury to convict his client of a lesser included felony such as manslaughter, which carried a maximum prison term of 15 years, compared to first-degree murder, which carried a prison term of 60 years.

"Mr. Raue is guilty of homicide, but he is not guilty of first-degree murder," Goldstein told the courtroom during his client's trial.

According to the newspaper coverage, Goldstein argued that John Raue was a loving father who couldn't take his wife's drinking, infidelity and poor treatment of their 3-year-old son. Since 1989, Sonya Rene had a habit of leaving the house in Lockport, going out all night and not returning home, he said.

"She would stay out, and the next day there would be no explanation," Goldstein told the jury. "Her drinking problem would interfere with her duties as a wife and mother."

On Sonya Rene's last night alive, Saturday, June 30, 1990, she informed her husband of her plans to go out around 10 p.m. He stayed home and fell asleep, along with their young son. When she came home at 2 a.m. on Sunday, July 1, John Raue got up and asked where she had been.

When he saw her panties were inside her purse, a fight ensued, the jury heard.

"She hits him. He hits her. They struggle for the purse and in the struggle he lost all control and goes into a blinding red rage," Goldstein told the jury. "It was not something done cold-bloodedly. It was in the heat of passion."

'Ice In His Veins'

Jeff Baldacci, Will County's Assistant State's Attorney at the time, reminded the jury it took at least two to three minutes for Sonya Rene to die from strangulation. Baldacci reminded the jury how John Raue dismembered her body and put her in the trash bags for the garbage truck to get.

"Is that sudden and intense passion?" Baldacci asked the jury, according to the newspaper accounts. "Is that sudden rage? He says he loved her. Is that evidence of passionate rage? I think he has ice in his veins. He loved her? Is that what you do to someone you love after your sudden passion has gone away?

"Before you go back in the jury room and take a handkerchief and dab your eyes for John Raue, remember he never cried for Sonya Raue."

"Man Gets 70 Years For Murdering, Dismembering Wife," declared the Chicago Tribune headline from June 15, 1991. Raue got 60 years for murder and 10 years for concealment of a homicide.

Years later, an Illinois appeals court ordered a re-sentencing in connection with the lesser felony. The appeals court judges determined that Will County's trial judge had not made it clear to Raue when he pleaded guilty to concealment of a homicide, that Raue's potential sentence could run consecutive to any murder conviction sentence the judge imposed.

Raue's sentence for concealment of a homicide got reduced from 10 years to five years, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections website.

Raue now living in Channahon

Then, on Feb. 24, 2022, the 58-year-old Raue was paroled from the Stateville Correctional Center, after being incarcerated for 31 years and seven-and-a-half months. According to the Illinois Department of Corrections website, Raue is 5-foot-10 and weighs 190 lbs. He has a tattoo across his chest of a wizard, a tattoo across his back of an eagle, and a tattoo on his left arm with the letters V and H.

On Dec. 15, Raue celebrated his 59th birthday. The Illinois State Police maintains a Murderer and Violent Offender Against Youth offender, and that's how Joliet Patch discovered Raue is now free and living in the village of Channahon, a 24-minute drive from his hometown of Lockport.

Incidentally, Raue is the only murderer identified on the Illinois State Police website who's a current Channahon resident. Another man on the registry was convicted of attempted murder and home invasion in Channahon, but that man remains in prison at the Illinois Department of Corrections facility in Pinckneyville. A woman convicted in Grundy County of domestic battery against an 8-year-old child is also on Channahon's registry.

The Illinois Murderer registry indicates Raue lives on South River Trail in the Indian Trails north subdivision. The two-story house where Raue resides was built in 1995; it's appraised at $367,183, according to Will County's assessment records. Will County property records list the homeowner as John Raue's sister-in-law.

After the funeral service and burial at Resurrection Cemetery, Sonya Rene's family told the Joliet newspaper that her marriage to John Raue was rocky from the beginning.

"They fought on their wedding night," remarked her brother William Holsey II for a story published July 12, 1990. "They were fighting over him not allowing any of her friends to come over to a party after the wedding."

Her sister, Mirinda Swinson, also told the newspaper, "Nothing is ever going to be the same again. We are going to have to face this every day for the rest of our lives. In everything I look at, I see Rene."