ILLINOIS 1985 Cold Case Solved – DNA Caught Him After 32 Years

Michael Jones will spend 80 years in prison for the murder of 15-year-old Christy Wesselman. This is a joyful and at the same time very sad day.  We will always miss Christy.    A warning to our viewers.  What you are about to see is a true story. The following program contains content that some viewers may find disturbing.

Viewers are strongly advised to exercise caution. On the afternoon of July 21, 1985, a 15-year-old girl left her home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.  She was walking to the nearest Jewel store to buy a candy bar and soda for herself and her mother.  She had no reason to think she was walking into danger, and her mother had no reason to think she was saying goodbye for the last time .

When she went out the door, her mother said, ” Be careful, princess.”  I love you.  And then she left.  She will never return home again. For the next 32 years, her mother remained with one question that remained unanswered.  “Who took my daughter?” Kristi Wesselman was 15 years old, preparing to start her second year at Glenbard South High School.

She wasn’t the kind of teenager whose life seemed to be going nowhere.  At 15, she was very active in school and was the freshman class president.  And she was also elected sophomore class president.  She played basketball and volleyball well and began to think about what she wanted her adult life to be like. Christie wanted to become a psychologist.

  She even imagined that one day she would move to New York and open her own practice there.  She was only 15, and she was already working on who she could become. However, on July 21, none of this seemed particularly important. Because that day she was just a teenage girl walking to the grocery store.  She left her home in the Valley View neighborhood and headed to the Jewel store near Butterfield Road and Highway 53.

 The drive home was familiar.  People in the neighborhood used a trail through overgrown wooded areas as a shortcut between the store and the block.  Christie knew this route. She had no reason to think she should avoid him.  At the Jewel store, she bought what she came for.  Bar and soda. The seller confirmed that he had seen her in the store.

  And then she went back home.  This would become one of the last known moments of Christy Wesselman’s life.  Because somewhere along this familiar path, something has changed. Christy’s mother was waiting for her return. Minutes passed, then hours .  Eventually, she realized that this wasn’t just a teenager who had stayed longer than expected.

Christie disappeared.  She began her search. She called the police around 1 a.m., and when officers arrived, they began to reenact her final moments.  But there was no immediate explanation.  She didn’t disappear into some remote place. She was going home. The route I knew .  A route that other people used.

  And yet, she just disappeared.    The next morning, July 22, a sheriff’s detective walked the same route that Christie was supposed to take. The detective was surveying the area around the trail when something caught his attention.  The grass looked crushed, as if someone had been fighting for their life there.  He walked further, and what he found first wasn’t Christy.

  It was something much smaller: a chocolate bar and a soda—things she had bought at the store. Then the detective found Christie.  Her body was lying in the field. Further examination revealed eight stab wounds and a shoelace tied around the neck.  A teenage girl who left home for a candy bar and soda will never cross the threshold of her home again.

Biological evidence was recovered from the crime scene.  Investigators were able to create a DNA profile, but in 1985, the DNA evidence could not identify the perpetrator . The investigation continued. Detectives checked the versions.  They interviewed people.  They were looking for witnesses.  They tried to figure out who could have attacked a 15- year-old girl in broad daylight on a trail that people regularly walked on, but there was no answer.

  Years passed, then more years. Ultimately, the case became a “capercaillie,” but it was never officially closed. Investigators retired, but the department continued to work on the case.  Over the years, they have worked through hundreds of versions and spent thousands of hours trying to identify Christie’s killer .

  There was another clue that investigators were hiding.  Christie wore a family ring that had been passed down through generations .  After the murder, the ring disappeared.  Investigators assumed that the killer had taken her, but for years they did not tell the public about it. They hoped to use this to weed out false claims and verify suspects.

  And for 26 years, the police kept this detail a secret. But by 2011, the case was still unsolved, and investigators decided it was time to uncover the secret.  They spoke publicly about the ring.  They asked if anyone had seen this ring. They reached out to people who had lived in the area for decades.  They offered a $10,000 reward for any information leading to a conviction.

  They hoped that someone had seen this ring. Or maybe the killer told someone about it.  But again nothing happened. The ring did not help expose the murderer. The reward did not help expose the killer.  And decades of investigations have not yielded a name. Christy’s mother was still waiting. And somewhere out there, the man who killed her daughter was continuing to live his life.

  Investigators believed that Christie’s killer was likely a local.  It seemed logical. He attacked a girl who was walking a familiar route. He seemed to know the area.  After that, he disappeared.  So investigators searched near the home for years. But there was something they didn’t know yet. The man they would later identify did not live in Glen Ellyn.

But they were wrong. He lived about 150 miles from there.  In 2015, a man named Michael Jones was arrested in a completely different case. He pleaded guilty to aggravated domestic violence in Champaign County.  And under Illinois DNA law, he was required to provide a biological sample.  Jones had no reason to believe that this sample would be related to the teenage girl murdered three decades ago.

When his sample was entered into the database, it matched evidence collected from Christie’s body in 1985.  On September 10, 2015, investigators received the notification they had been waiting for for decades .  A DNA profile from Christie’s biological evidence pointed to the perpetrator of the crime— Michael R. Jones.

30 years after Christie’s murder, investigators finally learned the name, and it wasn’t obtained from a witness.  It was not obtained from a stolen ring. It was not obtained through confession.  It was obtained thanks to a DNA sample that Jones was forced to provide after another criminal offense.  The evidence was waiting for him.

Investigators began looking into Jones’ case, and the more they learned, the more disturbing the connection became.  Jones had a history of sexual assault.  He had already served his sentence and was released in 1983.  And now his DNA has been linked to biological evidence found on Christie’s body.  But Jones denied knowing Christie.

  According to investigators, they showed him a photo of her, and Jones replied, “As God is my witness, I’ve never seen her before.” That was his position.  But he couldn’t explain how his DNA ended up there. Prosecutors said the statistical probability associated with this DNA profile is approximately 1 in 1.5 quadrillion.

  However, investigators did not stop at just the database. They obtained another DNA sample from Jones—a swab from the inside of his cheek.  This sample has been tested. Biological evidence preserved since 1985 pointed to the man who stood before them in 2015. Michael Jones was arrested, and for the Christie family, 30 years of uncertainty finally got a face.

  Two DuPage County Sheriff’s deputies traveled to Colorado to tell Sandy Wesselman that an arrest had finally been made in her daughter’s case .  Three decades later, she finally learned that the identity had been identified. But knowing the suspect’s name doesn’t mean achieving justice. Jones had yet to appear in court.

  He did not admit his guilt. And prosecutors began to prepare a case that they believed could finally prove what happened to Christie.  On January 18, 2018, Michael Jones appeared in court.  He was 64 years old.  Christie had been dead for 32 years.  With just days left until trial, Jones changed his plea. He pleaded guilty to murder.

  There was no jury trial, no weeks of testimony.  The man whose DNA linked him to biological evidence in the Christie case has now pleaded guilty to murder. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 80 years in prison.  The judge accepted the guilty plea, but there was another hearing ahead.  Another day for the Christie family.

  On January 23, 2018, Michael Jones was sentenced to 80 years in prison.  At the age of 64, this sentence was effectively a life sentence. Judge George Bacalles told him he had earned every day of that term with his behavior. Jones did not speak at the sentencing hearing, but Christie’s mother did.  Sandy Wesselman gave an 11-minute statement about the impact of the crime on the victims.

  She waited 32 years to stand in this courtroom.  32 years since her daughter left home.  32 years since a detective followed the footprints across a field and found a candy bar and soda next to Christie’s body.  32 years since a mother lost the daughter she hoped to see grow up. Sandy talked about the life that Christy never got to live, the wedding she never had, the children she never had, the future she never reached.

  Christie wanted to become a psychologist. She wanted to build a life, but that life was cut short at the age of 15.  Her mother described it as an unfinished book, and that ‘s probably the hardest part of the story.  Because the investigators finally completed their case.  They found DNA.  They found a name .  They arrested Michael Jones, and the judge sentenced him to 80 years.

  But no one was able to finish Christie’s book.  No one could give her back the years that were taken from her .    There was something left that the case could not explain.  Why was Michael Jones at Glen Ellen that day? Investigators believed for years that Christie’s killer was likely local.  But Jones lived in Champaign.

  He was not the man investigators were looking for in that area. No witness recognized him. He wasn’t caught because someone recognized his face. He was identified by what he left behind 30 years ago.  And because three decades later, another crime forced him to provide investigators with something else.

  Jones pleaded guilty.  So, the question of who killed Christie was finally answered. But the questions of what exactly led him down that path, why he ended up there, and everything that happened between the moment Christie left Jewel and the moment her life ended— these questions were never fully answered in court.  However, there is one final detail in this case that is almost impossible to ignore .

  In 1985, Christie’s killer left behind biological evidence.    The investigators preserved them.  In 2000, they entered the DNA profile into a national database, but there were no matches .  Then Illinois expanded its DNA collection laws, and those laws were partly tied to the same unsolved crimes that had baffled investigators for years.

  And then, in 2015, Michael Jones was convicted of another crime.  That conviction required him to provide a DNA sample, and that sample finally matched the evidence left behind by Christie’s killer.  The law caught up with the evidence, and the evidence finally caught up with the killer.  30 years ago, Christy left home with a simple plan: go to the store, buy a candy bar, buy a soda, go home.

She completed the first two points. She never finished the third one.  Her mother asked her to be careful.  She told her that she loved her.  These were the last words she heard from her mother .  For 32 years, Sandy Wesselman had to live without knowing who took her daughter.  Then finally she heard the name.  Michael R. Jones.

The case was solved. The murderer was convicted.  And Christie’s family finally got the justice they had been waiting for .  But justice could not give Christy back the life she was meant to live.  Because somewhere beyond that path, beyond the field, beyond the candy bar and soda that she never managed to finish, was the future that belonged to a 15-year-old girl.

  A future she had already begun to imagine.  And this future will forever remain unfinished. Mm.