William Curl's appeal for trial in Keller murder denied

SYCAMORE – Stephanie Klein, first assistant state’s attorney in DeKalb County, let her head subtly fall.

The relief was palpable for her, more than a dozen members of law enforcement, and for friends of the family of Antinette “Toni” Keller, who found out Friday morning that William P. “Billy” Curl won’t be allowed a trial for Keller’s murder in 2010.

Curl, 41, a former DeKalb resident who now is an inmate at Menard Correctional Center, will continue to serve his 37-year sentence for Keller’s murder after Chief Judge Robbin Stuckert denied his appeal for post-conviction relief.

Curl would be 71 when his sentence is up in 2047. He must serve the entire sentence, which is the case with all first-degree murder convictions, Klein said.

Although there will be no trial, the grieving won’t end for Keller’s family, Klein said.

“I’m glad this piece of it is over for them,” she said. “But at the end of the day, they still lost their daughter. I don’t know that this does much at all to help them with that.”

Curl was not in court Friday morning, and his lawyer, Dan Transier, said he'll likely speak to him next week, and anticipates he'll want to appeal Stuckert's ruling.

“I anticipate that would be his next step,”

John Szatkowski, a cousin of Keller's mother, Diane, said she was on standby for him to text her in the event Curl showed up and was granted the chance to speak.

“I’m glad she didn’t have to be here,” “It would have been very emotional. I’m just glad not to see them upset."

Brenda White, a longtime close friend of the Kellers, said it was important for her and Szatkowski to be there.

“We’re very relieved,” White said. “It’s horrible going through this. Roger and Diane have been through a lot of hell dealing with this. I can’t even imagine if it was my own kids. This has been a nightmare.”

Curl had asked Stuckert to throw out his guilty plea and order he be tried for the killing. Curl pleaded guilty in April 2013 in exchange for a 37-year sentence, but Transier argued during a three-day evidentiary hearing in September that the plea should be invalidated because Curl was coerced by prosecutors.

He said former DeKalb County State’s Attorney Richard Schmack threatened to charge Curl's son in connection with Keller's murder. Curl testified in the hearing, and claimed he had received ineffective legal representation from the public defender’s office in the case. He said they should have suppressed hours of police interviews with Curl, and that he would have gone to trial if they’d helped him build a defense.

Stuckert didn't buy it, however.

"The defendant failed to testifiy as to any plausible defense he may have had," Stuckert wrote in her ruling. "Additionally, according to the testimony of [public defender Chip] Criswell, the strengths and weaknesses of the case were thoroughly discussed with the defendant over time."

Curl testified that because he smoked salvia, a plant with psychoactive properties, before he was interviewed by police in Louisiana, he was “wasn’t right in the head,” and his lawyer should have tried to suppress the statement.

In her ruling, Stuckert pointed out that Curl led much of the discussion with police, that he was calm and cooperative, and that he deftly changed his story under questioning.

“It is unlikely that a person whose will was overborne would be able to fabricate a story and instantaneously change his story in response to a specific question in order to tailor his response to the evidence,” Stuckert wrote.

Curl admitted to being with Keller along the trail at Prairie Park at the time of her death, and a nearby business owner told police a man heard a woman’s scream just before Curl said she died.

Police found Curl's glasses near where Keller’s burned body was found Oct. 16, 2010. In interviews with police, he admitted setting the fire, and that he changed his clothes. Later, he fled to Mexico in his mother’s car, then came back across the border before he was arrested in Louisiana.

However, the case was not airtight. Authorities never found a murder weapon. They never established a cause of death or a time of Keller's death, and there were no eyewitnesses.

Schmack cited those gaps in the case as key in his controversial decision to plea-bargain with Curl.

DeKalb Police Cmdr. Bob Redel, who went to Louisiana to arrest Curl in 2010, admitted Friday morning that he was anxious before the ruling came down.

“It’s like the verdict of a trial,” he said. “You still get the same butterflies in your stomach, and you want the right decision to be made, and it was.”

Redel echoed Klein’s sentiment, and sympathized with the family.

“These cases are hard, because you have a victim, and the family’s got to go through this, come back and listen to this stuff two or three times,” he said. “When a decision like this is made, it’s great for law enforcement, it’s great for the state’s attorney’s office, and the community.”

“This case is done. He’s going away. He’s sentenced.”