JOLIET — Scott Wayne Eby is to spend the rest of his life in prison without parole for the June 6, 2004, murder of 3-year-old Riley Fox of Wilmington.

The 39-year-old, already in prison for a later, unrelated sex crime, admitted to the slaying Wednesday in Will County Circuit Court.

Eby pleaded guilty before Circuit Judge Richard Schoenstedt to five counts of first-degree murder and one count of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child. By entering the guilty plea, Eby avoided the death penalty. No possibility of parole is connected with the sentence, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said Wednesday.

Prior to presenting the plea and sentence to the judge, prosecutors reviewed all evidence in the case and application of the death penalty in Illinois. They also consulted with the little girl’s parents, Melissa and Kevin Fox, and their attorney, Kathleen Zellner of Joliet.

The parents concurred with the sentence.

In a five-page letter presented to the court by Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Fitzgerald, Eby admitted he had been drinking and using cocaine the day of the murder. He said this prompted him to break into the Fox home early that morning and molest the youngster.

A bandana hiding his face, he put the little girl in the trunk of his car and drove to a nearby forest preserve, the letter stated. He bound her wrists and mouth with duct tape, then put her on the floor of a men’s restroom and sexually assaulted her.

His bandana apparently slipped, because he saw the youngster looking at his face. Then, afraid she could identify him, he took her to the nearby Forked Creek and held her under the water until she stopped struggling, Eby wrote in the letter.

“She was defenseless ... and that makes you a coward and a monster,” Melissa Fox noted of Eby in her victim impact statement to the court. “I’m opposed to you getting the death penalty and dying a quick, painless death.”

Kevin Fox was initially charged with first-degree murder in the case, on Oct. 28, 2004, and spent eight months in jail awaiting trial until he was cleared of the crime by DNA evidence.

“I will never forgive you for what you have put myself, my family, and, most importantly, Riley through,” Kevin Fox noted in part to the court in his victim impact statement.

“ ... your days of raping little girls are over. May God help us all that you are the last of your kind.”

Fox and his wife were awarded $12.2 million in damages after accusing Will County investigators of fabricating evidence. The amount was later reduced by a federal appeals court to $8.6 million.

Glasgow’s predecessor was in office at the time of Fox’s arrest in the case. Glasgow inherited the case after he was elected state’s attorney. He dismissed the charges and released Fox from jail on June 17, 2005, after the DNA test failed to link the little girl’s father to the crime.

Other evidence, including a pair of Eby’s shoes with his name written on them, was collected by investigators at the time of the crime.

Glasgow, two years ago, sought the FBI’s assistance with the case. Information developed by the federal agents led to Scott Wayne Eby, who was then serving time In Lawrenceville Correctional Center for a different sexual assault after the little girl’s slaying.

The FBI found Eby’s DNA matched that retrieved from Riley’s body and from the duct tape with which she was bound. Eby then wrote his confession to the murder, along with a detailed videotaped confession to FBI agents.

Glasgow thanked Robert D. Grant, special agent-in-charge of the Chicago FBI office, for the critical assistance that led to a resolution in  the case.

“The FBI brought unprecedented resources and expertise to this investigation,” he said. “These special agents deserve tremendous credit for dogged investigative work that brought a dangerous killer to justice.”