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BRIDGEVIEW – Brenda O'Laughlin told prosecutors that she found her 14-year-old daughter, Kelli, lying face down in a pool of blood when she walked into their Indian Head Park home about 5 p.m. Oct. 27, 2011.
“I noticed blood and a knife, I called 911, I told them I thought she committed suicide,” Brenda O'Laughlin said.
It would be a startling detail Wednesday during the trial of John Wilson Jr., charged with murdering Kelli O'Laughlin after she returned home from school in time to catch him in the middle of an alleged burglary.
Brenda O'Laughlin, her husband, John, and three other witnesses took the stand after opening statements from assistant state's attorneys Guy Lisuzzo, Andreanna Turano and Michael Vojta.
"There is a killer in the courtroom with us today," Lisuzzo said, "and his name is John Wilson Jr."
Lisuzzo recounted the events of the murder and questioned why Wilson didn't simply flee.
“It would end with a knife being plunged into her body many times,” he said. “It would end with her lying in a pool of blood in her home.”
Meanwhile, defense attorney John Paul Carroll said there is no evidence proving Wilson killed the girl, and even suggested the ransacked home was a ruse to cover up a suicide.
“Why would someone cover up a suicide?” Carroll asked. “Some people might be embarrassed. They might think 'I want them to think stranger-danger, not suicide.”
Carroll also intimated that investigators were fixated on Wilson from the start, being a black man accused of a crime in what he described as a white, affluent community. He further questioned why some of the “Mexican” landscapers working at the home the day of the murder were never interviewed or fingerprinted.
Kelli's father, John O'Laughlin, testified that he called his daughter's cellphone the day after the murder.
“I just wanted to hear her voice,” O'Laughlin said.
Soon after, Brenda O'Laughlin began receiving several chilling text messages coming from her daughter's phone, which had allegedly been stolen by Wilson.
Brenda O'Laughlin said she received a text from her daughter's phone: “What Brenda.” The next read "love your pic." and finally "she wanted me to tell you something before I killed her."
All of the texts were received by the girl's mother who was getting a manicure while her husband waited outside in the car. She explained the manicure as something therapeutic. Brenda O'Laughlin ran out each time she received a text and told her husband, who called police investigators.
Carroll insisted his client could not have committed the murder.
“There will never be any evidence that John Wilson Jr. was ever in Indian Head Park — not just on that day, but ever,” he said.
Carroll's co-defender, Michelle Gonzalez, gave her account of today's hearing.
“I think it went well for us,” she said, adding that police jumped to conclusion in charging her client.
Asked if she thought the jury would actually believe he dead girl committed suicide by stabbing herself repeatedly, Gonzalez said: “they can believe what they want.”