Two-Time Loser: Joliet Man Again Convicted of Killing Baby

A Joliet man’s second shot at beating a baby-murder rap ended the same way as the first, with a jury delivering a verdict of guilty.

Santos Loza, 34, learned his fate Tuesday afternoon. The jury took about three hours to reach its verdict, which was longer than the last time. In September 2013, the jury was only out for about two hours.

Loza allegedly killed the 8-month-old baby of a West Chicago woman who was coming over to his Joliet home to have sex about four nights a week. The woman, 33-year-old Sandra Sitko, always brought along both the 8-month-old, Kevion Bender, and her older son, Dillion. Kevion would sleep on a floor and Devion on a couch while she shared Loza’s bed, Sitko said.

Sitko met Loza on a website in 2008. About three months into their relationship Sitko left Kevion alone with Loza for hours while she worked at a McDonald’s.

After Sitko arrived that night with Dillion, she did not go into the bare bedroom where Kevion was sleeping on the floor to check on him until the next morning. When she did, he was dead. During Kevion’s autopsy, a forensic pathologist found evidence of 35 separate injuries, including a fractured skull and broken ribs.

For more than a year after her baby was killed, Sitko continued to have sex with Loza, she said, in an attempt to unravel the mystery of Kevion’s death.

“I wanted to find out what happened to my son,” Sitko explained. “I was trying to find out what happened to Kevion every time.”

Loza may have gotten Sitko pregnant twice during this time. One pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. The second resulted in the birth of a girl in 2010.

After the first time a jury found Loza guilty of murder, in September 2013, Will County Judge Sarah Jones cleared away the conviction, putting the case on course for another trial.

Jones decided to give Loza the new trial when she ruled that limiting the questions lawyers could ask Sitko about her sexual relationship with him was a mistake. Judge Jones had forbidden defense lawyers from asking about the couple’s sexual history after February 2009.

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