JOLIET, IL — Nearly three years after police suspected that Joliet's Romeo Nance fatally shot seven family members and then randomly shot two more Joliet residents hours later, Will County prosecutor Mark Shlifka and Joliet Police Detective Jeff German are working to scrub that history off the Internet and prove something else.
During Tuesday's first-degree murder trial for 27-year-old Milwaukee Kings gang member Jon Hansen, the prosecutor is working to convince the jury that Hansen—not Nance—carried out the last two Joliet shootings of Sunday, Jan. 21, 2024.
Hansen, not Nance, was obsessed with bringing harm to his rival Vice Lords, according to the prosecution's evidence.
Of the two childhood friends, Hansen, not Nance, went to great lengths to delete all of his incriminating text message conversations on his smartphone and through Facebook, according to German's testimony on Tuesday.
And when it came time to pull the trigger and shoot at Joliet 44-year-old Mario Guerrero for wearing his Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan sweater outside that winter while unloading his groceries, Hansen, not Nance, had already put his phone into airplane mode, German revealed to the jury.
And 10 minutes later, when it came to the homicide of Toyosi Bakare, Hansen, not Nance, had already taken the initiative to deliberately put his smartphone into airplane mode, German testified on Tuesday afternoon.
Luckily, Guerrero recovered from his gunshots to his leg; tragically, Bakare died on the spot, suffering a bullet to his head at the Pheasant Run apartment buildings just outside the city of Joliet limits along South Chicago Street. The innocent 28-year-old Joliet man wore black and red checkered pajamas outside to toss his garbage into a trash bin.
This marks week two of Hansen's jury trial on charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder. His defense lawyers from Tomczak Law Group maintain that Hansen did not commit any of the shootings and that Nance was the lone gunman.
During Tuesday's trial, prosecutor Shlifka and Detective German showed the jury scores of text messages that Hansen had tried to delete, but the Joliet police detective cell phone expert managed to retrieve them after the fact. Many of the messages indicated Hansen worshipped and was obsessed with Nance, his boyhood friend since second grade.
According to the videos and text messages, Hansen got into a scuffle inside the Louis Joliet Mall on a previous occasion with some apparent Vice Lords, and on the morning of Jan. 21, 2024, Hansen — not Nance — took the initiative to reach out to others about going out that day to spin (shoot) some Vice Lords.
Meanwhile, Nance spent his Sunday morning with his girlfriend going to the VASA Fitness gym and as Hansen continued trying to call and video chat with Nance by late morning, Nance's messages from Facebook showed he did not respond. Nance was involved in a heated argument with his own mother. Then at noon and at 12:07 p.m., Nance fatally shot all seven of his family members, including his mother, inside the family's two homes on West Acres Road.
Around that time, Hansen's text messages to his girlfriend asked her to get him a hot coffee with cream and sugar from McDonald's as he waited to hear back from Nance.
Some of Hansen's text messages from that afternoon included, "we gonna torch shit," "just know I ain't playing" and "u ready?"
"I love you king," Hansen wrote to Nance, professing his admiration. "King, we been thru so much shit makes me wanna cry."
German was asked by the prosecutor if he understood the gang code in which Hansen talked about having a compact 9 milli.
"What is a compact 8 milli?" Shlifka asked his witness.
"It's a small 9-millimeter handgun," German testified.
"King, you got a pipe?" Hansen asked Nance prior to Nance arriving at Hansen's family's house on Ravinia Drive in Shorewood.
"Are you familiar with pipe?" Shlifka asked.
German said that based on his 26 years as a police officer, he's heard that term "more than hundreds" of times.
"Gun," he answered.
At one point, Hansen messaged Nance, "I understand you don't want to let me hold pipe. I thought you was just showing love since all the shit I been going through .... Call me when you pull up."
German also provided the jury with a half dozen photos and locations where Joliet area Flock camera license plate readers captured Nance's red maroon car in the aftermath of the West Acres murders.
At 2:36 p.m., Nance arrived at Hansen's house in Shorewood and at 2:44 p.m., they pulled into the Shorewood 7-Eleven store at Route 59 and Route 52. Hansen is seen on the video surveillance cameras as entering the store to buy a pair of gloves for $10.99 to wear while carrying out the shootings, the prosecution alleged.
By 3 p.m., a Flock camera captured Nance's car traveling in Joliet on Richards Street near Second Avenue. At 3:26 p.m., another Flock camera hit, this time in New Lenox along Nelson Road south of Laraway Road.
Then came a critical moment, according to Detective German. At 3:30 p.m. Hansen — but not Nance — made the conscious decision to power off his phone. The battery percentage for Hansen's phone was at 40 percent.
By powering off his office, police would not be able to collect any cell phone data from Hansen's phone during that time period, German informed the jury.
But because the police later realized that Nance and Hansen were traveling together, the jury was able to watch a PowerPoint presentation showing the whereabouts of both men as the afternoon carnage was still about to happen in Joliet.
Video surveillance showed Nance patronizing the Calderon Liquors store on Joliet's Collins Street. Nance then drove directly past the Joliet Police Department station, and the video surveillance camera showed Hansen, a white man with tattoos on his hands, as the passenger in Nance's car.
Then came the final two shootings of the day: at 4:18 p.m., Mario Guerrero was shot in his driveway in the 200 block of Davis Street, and between 4:22 p.m. and 4:24 p.m., Nance's car arrived and exited the Pheasant Run Apartments off South Chicago Street in Preston Heights, where Bakare, the Nigerian immigrant who worked as a computer programmer, was found slain after being shot in the head while taking out his trash.
The innocent 28-year-old Joliet man wore black and red checkered pajamas outside as he tossed his garbage into a trash bin at the Pheasant Run apartments.
By 4:31 p.m., another Flock camera hit occurred as Nance's car passed along Patterson Road. Nance drove into Rockdale and ultimately back to Shorewood where he dropped off Hansen.
As for Hansen, by 4:46 p.m., after leaving his smartphone on airplane mode for the previous 76 minutes, the Joliet first-degree murder defendant and Milwaukee King gang member made the decision to power his phone back on, German told the jury.
Shlifka asked German whether Hansen's cell phone was kept in airplane mode at the time of Guerrero's shooting on Davis Street as well as the homicide of Bakare at Pheasant Run apartments.
German answered yes to both questions.
By 5:06 p.m. Hansen and Nance parted ways, the final time they would ever see each other alive.
Back in Shorewood, with his cell phone powered back on, German told the jury that Hansen left the road and walked down to a body of water, the DuPage River, and then returned back to the road. Back in 2024, when Hansen was first arrested, Will County authorities revealed that Hansen had tossed one of the guns into the DuPage River, and the weapon was later recovered.
By Jan. 22, the day after the mass shootings, Hansen had changed his phone number and managed to delete all the text messages he had sent from his old cell phone number.
One of the most interesting moments in the murder trial came late Tuesday afternoon when Shlifka presented German with a slew of Facebook messages that had been recovered. The messages were sent by Hansen to two other apparent gang members, not by Nance. The messages came before Nance killed off his entire family.
It was Hansen alerting the others by way of Facebook messages and video chats to unsend all their previous messages.
Hansen gave this instruction at 11:53 a.m. The seven murders of the Nance family members did not occur until noon and at 12:07 p.m., Detective German testified.
Over the next couple of days, prosecutors say Hansen and his gang member friends continued to correspond on Facebook chats and videos, as Hansen expressed his profound sadness upon learning the news that Nance was dead and had taken his own life, according to German's trial testimony. Nance, the 23-year-old Joliet mass murder fugitive, fatally shot himself in Texas after being surrounded by the Texas Rangers
"I play everything back in my head," Hansen wrote. "Shit f***s me up. Lost my bro too. I'm f***ed up. Romeo's our guardian angel."
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