Vice Lord Slayer From Shorewood Got New Phone Number After Joliet's Mass Murder Spree: JPD Detective

JOLIET, IL — Prosecutors claim that when Jon Hansen awoke on Sunday morning, Jan. 21, 2024, the Milwaukee Kings street gang member from the village of Shorewood had one thing on his mind as he contacted three friends, including Joliet mass murderer Romeo Nance. Hansen let it be known he had some people he needed to murder: his archrival Vice Lords, according to the prosecution's trial testimony.

Before the start of Monday's jury trial proceedings in Courtroom 502 of Judge Jessica Colon-Sayre, outside the presence of the jury, the Will County prosecutors were playing a short video clip showing Hansen yelling a racial slur as he got into what sounded like a scuffle inside the Louis Joliet Mall, prompting mall security to take charge of the situation.

By Monday afternoon, Joliet police detective Jeff German, a cell phone data expert in law enforcement, was called as an expert witness by prosecutor Mark Shlifka. German testified that in addition to working for Joliet police, he has his own company called High Tech Investigations that has probably generated about $200,000 in additional income, and it's allowed him to travel to places including Hawaii, Alaska, Florida and Texas.

German has testified in court as an expert witness seven times, always for the prosecution and police, never for the defense.

His expertise pertains to cell phone data extraction chiefly from the three big companies: Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. In the Jan. 21, 2024, Joliet mass murder slayings involving lifelong pals Romeo Nance and Jon Hansen, German testified he also analyzed video surveillance footage from businesses including Joliet's Calderon Liquors on Collins Street and the former 7-Eleven store in Shorewood at Route 59 and Route 52.

German testified that the surveillance footage showed a person believed to be Hansen with Nance on the date of the mass murders because Hansen has a bunch of tattoos all over his hands. German said the Joliet police obtained the smartphone records for Hansen, Nance and Hansen's girlfriend Madison Bulow-Padilla and that the data from Hansen's cell phone showed that all of his past text messages were gone as of Jan. 22, 2024, the day after the mass murders.

German testified that he came to the conclusion "that the text messages were removed from the device."

German testified he figured out that Hansen obtained a new phone number for himself the day after the Joliet murder spree. The jury saw some of Hansen's text messages that he had sent to his girlfriend shortly before Nance picked them up in his maroon car before the last two shootings that day.

In one his texts to her, Hansen revealed Nance was coming to get him.

Eventually, the jury learned that Hansen canceled his long-standing T-Mobile service on Jan. 21, 2024, for one of his phone numbers, and the billing data showed Hansen lived in Shorewood at 308 Ravinia Drive, German revealed on the witness stand for all the jurors to hear.

By Jan. 24, 2024, Hansen had obtained a new phone number for his T-Mobile phone, and his girlfriend had added Hansen and his new phone number to her contacts list, according to German.

Before ending the day's testimony, German opened a sealed envelope that contained the cell phone for dead Joliet mass murderer Romeo Nance, who fatally shot himself in Texas.

Hansen, the childhood pal of Romeo Nance, met up with Nance hours after Nance slaughtered his entire family inside their two houses on Joliet's West Acres Road. Nance ultimately fled to Texas, where police said he took his own life after the police had him surrounded at a small-town gas station.

Prosecutors maintain that Hansen — not Nance — was likely responsible for the two additional Sunday afternoon shootings that took the life of innocent 28-year-old immigrant Toyosi Bakare of Nigeria, who was gunned down at the Pheasant Run apartments in Preston Heights, and the non-fatal shooting of Mario Guerrero on Joliet's Davis Street.

The 44-year-old Guerrero was carrying two 24-packs of bottled water from his driveway back to his house when he became the eighth of nine Joliet shooting victims on Sunday, Jan. 21, 2024. Guerrero was the only survivor, and last week he took the witness stand during the second day of the Joliet first-degree murder trial for Hansen. Guerrero was wearing a Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan sweater at the time Hansen and Nance pulled up to him and shot him, and Bakare was shot taking out his garbage at the Pheasant Run apartments in Preston Heights while wearing black and red checkered pajamas — street gang colors for the Vice Lords that Hansen was trying to shoot, prosecutors allege.