Videos Palos Hills Man Filmed Of His Alleged Sex Assault On Woman Surface: Prosecutors

PALOS HILLS, IL—A Cook County judge will decide Tuesday morning whether a Palos Hills man accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman he met at a concert should remain free while his case is pending. Timothy O’Connell, 36, appeared in front of Judge Linzie Jones on felony charges of criminal sexual assault.

The prosecutor filed a new motion Monday for a new detention hearing after she claimed new evidence came to light since O’Connell’s initial hearing on May 28, when he was placed on a GPS tracker while his case is pending.

“This new evidence significantly changes things,” the prosecutor said.

On April 19, the woman and her boyfriend drove from Michigan to Chicago for the Slaughter to Prevail concert at the Aragon Ballroom on Chicago’s North Side. During the concert, the woman became separated from her boyfriend after crowd surfing. Earlier she had seen O’Connell and his two friends, identified as “Witness 2” and “Witness 3” in court documents. Unable to locate her boyfriend, she struck up a conversation with O’Connell, who bought her a drink, the prosecutor said.

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After taking a few sips, the woman alleges she doesn’t recall anything else until she woke up the next morning in a state of undress. Video from the Aragon also purportedly shows O’Connell carrying the woman out of the venue. Prosecutors say additional security video shows her, O'Connell and his friends getting into Witness 3’s car and driving back to Palos Hills.

O’Connell’s friends also corroborated the woman was emotional, crying and drifting in and out of consciousness. When they arrived at Witness 2’s condo on Spathis Drive in Palos Hills, O’Connell’s friends said she was dry heaving and had to be assisted into the building. Security video from the building also showed O’Connell and his friend carrying her.

The prosecutor said that Cook County Sheriff’s Police received a search warrant request for O’Connell’s phone on May 27, but the extraction of videos from his phone was not fully completed until the day after O’Connell’s hearing. The prosecutor said videos extracted from O’Connell’s phone show him sexually assaulting the woman in his friend’s living room.

The victim identified herself in screenshots showing her unconscious and unresponsive, the prosecutor said. The video is filmed from the defendant’s perspective, where the prosecutor said O’Connell’s face appears in the frame at one time.

“I watched the videos,” the prosecutor told the judge. “She doesn’t move. She is completely passed out. Her eyes do not open. Was he going to extort her? Send the videos to her boyfriend? I think this new evidence significantly changes things in this case.”

Prosecutors also say they have statements from O’Connell’s estranged wife, who claimed to have been drugged by O’Connell in 2016 and then sexually assaulted by O'Connell and his friend in a hotel room while unconscious. The estranged wife contends that O'Connell showed her a video of her being assaulted while she was unconscious, they said.

“This shows a propensity of the defendant to do these types of acts,” the prosecutor said. “[Electronic monitoring] doesn’t monitor a defendant’s conduct. He’s allowed two days of movement. He could be doing this to any woman in the community.”

O’Connell’s attorney, Robert Olson, said there was no denying that his client attended the concert at the Aragon Ballroom on April 20.

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He said the victim was on federal parole. After crowd surfing, Olson said the victim started arguing with her boyfriend, whom she kept pushing into the back of people.

Olson said Palos Hills police requested assistance from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office because of a potential conflict of interest because O'Connell's mother is a Palos Hills alderman.

“There is [an image from the Aragon security video] showing the victim straddling my client from the front, leaving the concert,” Olson said.

Further, a toxicology test at a Michigan hospital, where the woman and her boyfriend went immediately after arriving back from Chicago, came back negative except for one unidentified “intoxicating compound.”

As for O’Connell’s estranged wife, Olson called it a “contentious divorce.” At the time of the alleged threesome, Olson said his wife was his girlfriend.

“She didn’t call police to report it,” Olson said. “She did something worse. She married him.”

The prosecutor said that being on federal parole doesn’t negate a rape. She said that “date rape” drugs, such as Rohypnol (flunitrazepam), have been known to leave the body after six hours.

“In the videos she is completely unconscious,” the prosecutor said. “There are whole minutes of a criminal sexual assault. Ninety-nine percent of people would wake up.”

As for O’Connell’s estranged wife, the prosecutor said her statement matched the current victim’s.

“Many women don’t report criminal sexual assault,” she told the judge. “They're afraid, they're humiliated.”

Olson countered that O’Connell’s wife knew what to mimic because of news media coverage.

Judge Jones said he wasn’t prepared to rule on pre-trial detainment. The hearing is continued until Tuesday morning at the Bridgeview Courthouse.