Search Warrants Reveal New Information Revealed Into 1997 Murder Case

Search warrant documents revealed some new information into the case against a 36-year-old Palatine man accused of the 1997 murder of 14-year-old Amber Creek, according to the Daily Herald. 

Racine County investigators last month seized a laptop, iPhone and Facebook data belonging to James Paul Eaton who is accused in the murder and also searched his work space at the Chicago branch of the Private Bank & Trust Co., according to the article. 

And while court records from the search warrants did not point to whether any relevant information or evidence had been recovered, it did indicate that police during the first two years of investigating the case learned Amber was a known prostitute and learned from an FBI analyst that "it was very likely that one of (Amber's) clients killed her," according to the Daily Herald. 

Eaton was charged with first-degree murder and hiding a corpse after police said an Illinois criminalist in February decided to run a set of fingerprints from the 1997 case through an updated FBI database and made a match — the prints from a bag found around Creek's head matched Eaton's prints, according to the Chicago Tribune.  

Racine County investigators then set up surveillance of Eaton retrieving his DNA from a cigarette he discarded at an area train station, according to the article. 

Two men found Creek's body in February 1997 in the Karcher Wildlife Refuge northeast of Lake Geneva and it took police almost 16 months after she was found to identify her through dental records and a missing child database, according to the Chicago Tribune. Creek, police said, was a habitual runaway, according to the article. 

She died of asphyxiation and her partially clothed and frozen body was found with a garbage bag over her head, according to the Chicago Tribune.

There was a $5 price tag on her arm, which police learned was from a bookstore in the Schaumburg area, and her body had been situated with her hand raised and the word "Hi" was written on the back of her hand, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

Amber was last seen on Feb. 1 or 2, 1997, at a party in Rolling Meadows and was a ward of the state at the time of her disappearance after her father in December 1996 brought her to the Palatine Police Department "and told them he didn't want her living with him anymore," according to the Daily Herald. 

The Department of Child and Family Services took custody of Creek before she was placed in the Columbus-Maryville Center in Chicago, according to the article. She spent the first six years of her life living in Lake Zurich with her mother, according to the Daily Herald.