Killer's Cruel Text: 'She Wanted Me To Tell You Something Before I Killed Her'

Caption: Kelli Joy O’Laughlin

Opening statements got underway Wednesday in the first day of trial for a Chicago man accused of stabbing a 14-year-old Indian Head Park girl to death.

John Wilson Jr., described by the Chicago Tribune as wearing slacks that barely covered his leg irons, sat sprawled at the defendant’s table in Cook County Associate Judge John Joseph Hyne’s courtroom in Bridgeview on Wednesday.

Wilson is charged for the murder of Kelli O’Laughlin, after the Lyons Township High School freshman walked in on someone burglarizing her family’s home on Oct. 27, 2011.

Opening statements and testimony from five witnesses were heard on Wednesday:

• Both of her parents took the stand on Wednesday and recounted how they found their daughter lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, and later, cruel texts they received from their daughter’s killer on her stolen cell phone, the Chicago Tribune reported.
• Reportedly, one of the texts sent said, “She wanted me to tell you something before I killed her.”
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney Guy Lisuzzo described in his opening statement how investigators used the GPS tracking device on Kelli’s and Wilson’s cell phones, which led police to Wilson on Chicago’s South Side five days after the girl’s murder.
• Wilson’s defense attorney John Paul Carroll laid the groundwork for his client’s defense, stating that landscapers working on the the O’Laughlin property were never questioned by investigators.
• Carroll also argued that other DNA besides Wilson’s was found inside a knit hat that the killer left behind at the scene. He also suggested that the Kelli’s mom may have tried to cover up her daughter’s suicide, the paper said.

The trial resumes Thursday in Room 110 in the Bridgeview Courthouse. Read more in the Chicago Tribune.