Crack Junkie Guilty Of Body Shop Double Killings

JOLIET, IL - After roughly two hours of deliberations, a jury of Will County citizens reached a unanimous verdict Tuesday afternoon in the March 2016 blunt-force trauma slayings of Mike Oram, 48, and Jamie Wills. The jury found Billy Krasawski, now 43, guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. The verdict came as a surprise to one of the defendant's lawyers, Alex Beck.

"He was disappointed," Beck said of his client, who chose not to testify on his own behalf. "We thought the jury would take a while longer. We felt there was a good chance of him being found not guilty. We were surprised by the verdict.

"We truly thought there would be a not-guilty verdict. We didn't believe that the State proved their case."

The Will County State's Attorney's Office team, consisting of Mike Fitzgerald, Dan Egan and Jeff Tuminello, presented strong circumstantial evidence pointing to Krasawski, a crack-cocaine junkie, as the killer of Oram and as the killer of Wills, the girlfriend of Oram. The brutal killings on Joliet's east side were investigated and solved quickly by the Joliet Police Department.

Krasawski was taken into custody within days of the slayings. He had been hiding out in a cheap motel in Chicago Heights.

Over the past week, prosecutors argued that Krasawski, now 43, clubbed his two murder victims over their heads with a pipe wrench and a steel hammer inside Specialty Fleet Painting, the family business on Cass Street started by Oram's father.

He was at the shop late into the night of March 8, 2016 to smoke crack-cocaine with Oram and Wills, according to testimony.

Blood spatter of Wills was recovered from Krasawski's shoes, shirt, hat and jeans, the evidence showed.

Fitzgerald suggested that Krasawski killed Oram first, then Wills.

"We don't have reason to believe that there were two killers in the place," Fitzgerald remarked on Monday. "We have him as the last person ... (or being) one of the last people to see him alive."

Last week, the prosecution showed the jury Krasawski's more than three-hour interview inside the Joliet Police Station. During his interview, Krasawski claimed he saw a "mysterious black guy" who he didn't know open the body shop garage door, take a hit off Krasawski's crack pipe, then freak out, bend down and grab a wrench and start attacking Oram and then Wills.

"The state doesn't believe his other story matches the evidence in this case," Fitzgerald told the judge.

Judge Carlson set a sentencing date of Aug. 8. Krasawski faces life imprisonment.

Mugshot via Will County