Friend, Cellmate Testify Against Skokie Boy's Accused Killer

SKOKIE, IL — The man charged with murder in the 1992 killing of 15-year-old David Chereck admitted being in the area where the boy's body was found and visiting the scene after the fact, witnesses said Tuesday. A Cook County judge is due to determine later this week whether there is enough evidence to prove 76-year-old registered sex offender Robert Serritella strangled the Niles West High School sophomore to death with his own scarf and left his body in a Morton Grove forest preserve more than 27 years ago.

In the second day of testimony in Serritella's bench trial, prosecutors called the detective who led the police investigation, a former mechanic who recalled fixing Serritella's car, one of his former cellmates at Cook County Jail, a friend from a Los Angeles church he attended and the Cook County chief medical examiner. Serritella was charged with the murder in 2014 and has been jailed ever since. Maintaining his innocence, he rejected a plea deal that would see him released in five years and waived his right to a jury trial.

Former Detective Carla Alfini of the Cook County Forest Preserve District Police Department recalled a task force was formed involving about 20 officers between police from Chicago, the Cook County Sheriff's Office, Morton Grove and Skokie. Alfini arrived at the scene shortly after Chereck was found dead on the morning of Jan. 2, 1992, in Linne Woods. He was missing his shoes and jacket, his pocket had been left inside out and his wallet found nearby. He had been strangled to death by his scarf, which was left double-knotted behind his neck, Cook County’s chief medical examiner would later testify.

"I think he was was placed there," Alfini said. After Serritella contacted sheriff's police to say he thought he had seen Chereck on the night of his death, Alfini tried to conduct a follow-up interview. She recalled staking out Serritella's former apartment on Touhy Avenue in Park Ridge for about a week before getting a search warrant. Inside, police found a list titled "Boy Profile for Exploitation" and a stamp of Serritella's business card, with his alias, "Ricco Rocco," several phone numbers and the tagline "Let's Come Together."

Prosecutors next called a former mechanic at Hillerich's Car Care in Glenview who remembered Serritella came in to repair fresh damage to the bottom of his mother's 1983 Chrysler a week after Chereck's body was found. It was memorable, the mechanic said, because he always arrived to work at 6:45 a.m. in order to have 15 minutes of "Rob Time" to have coffee and a cigarette before getting started. But the ex-mechanic testified he "reluctantly" obliged when his boss asked him to get started early on the day the accused murderer showed up, anxious for a repair so he could travel to California.

The first of two of Serritella's former cellmates called by the state as witnesses against him testified next. A man convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing a man to death in a parking lot — he has said he is "being held by the state for being the victim of a crime" — said Serritella had given him details only someone at the scene would know while the two were cellmates for about two months around January 2016. He testified Serritella told him about an account by a police officer who saw a suspicious white car leave the forest preserve where Chereck was found on the night of his death.

"He said that when the officer testified, the officer made a left or a right, [Serritella] said that's not true, the officer made the opposite," said the witness. "Serritella said that he was driving down the alley with his brights on in the dark so there's no way the officer could have seen him."

The jailhouse informant was moved between jails several times and received a plea deal last summer with a sentence of four years fewer than had been initially on the table. Diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder and major depression, he testified authorities had cut him off from his medications when he was switched from correctional institutions.

The witness had earlier threatened to refuse to testify, describing being "threatened, intimidated and tortured" by authorities, with the lead prosecutor torturing him "by proxy" while offering the promise of aid, according to his testimony at a pre-trial hearing. The witness said he had been physically disabled as a result of batteries suffered during his time at Cook County Jail. The fact the jailhouse informant had been "essentially putting himself at risk," Assistant State's Attorney Ethan Holland argued, "makes him more reliable."

The prosecution's 10th witness against Serritella — the final person called to the stand on the trial's second day before the county's chief medical examiner reviewed autopsy photos in order to establish Chereck's death was indeed a homicide by ligature strangulation — was a man who had become close friends with Serritella in Los Angeles. He described listening on speakerphone along with other members of their East Hollywood church family to Serritella's bizarre July 2013 phone call with Chereck's mother, which was recorded by law enforcement and played during Ms. Chereck's testimony during the first day of the trial.

"The gist of it was he was ascertaining that he was a witness of the boy getting into someone else's car," said the witness, an English-born former contractor and current church volunteer. "I think I just let it go at the time, and I did some research later and Googled the information" about the Chereck case. He said he learned about the missing jacket and shoes and asked Serritella about them.

"When I asked him a particular question directly, there was no answer," the witness testified. "He came up with a plausible theory," he recalled Serritella suggesting the clothing could have been removed because "there may have been blood on the jacket and shoes at the time." Serritella spoke hypothetically, never saying it was his blood, according to the witness. In July 2014, after Serritella was arrested and detained in Los Angeles County, he spoke on the phone with his friend, who was helping manage his finances at the time.

"[Serritella said] he had gone back to the crime scene on several occasions," the witness said. "I asked why and I didn't get a response."

Prosecutors indicated Tuesday they do not intend to call WLS-TV investigative reporter Chuck Goudie to the stand as a witness during the trial. The journalist tracked Serritella down in Las Vegas and interviewed him years before detectives were reassigned to the case.

"You're a seeker of the truth, and I like that, my friend," Serritella told WLS in a 1998 interview. In that interview, he gave a slightly different witness account of a boy flagging down and getting into "another white car, similar to mine." On Tuesday, David Chereck's mother told Goudie she had felt abandoned by the Forest Preserve police. Charges were eventually filed 22 years after Chereck was found dead as a result of a joint investigation by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the cold case unit of Cook County Sheriff’s Police.

Two more days of testimony are expected before Associate Judge Lauren Edidin will issue a verdict and potential sentence. Prosecutors are able to call as witnesses another former cellmate of Serritella's and several men as "proof of other crimes," which they argue points to his motive for killing Chereck.

Earlier: Cold Case Murder Trial Begins In Death Of Strangled Skokie Teen

UPDATE: Robert Serritella Found Guilty Of 1992 Murder Of David Chereck