Kane County Assistant State’s Attorney Greg Sams, who has presented the state’s case in 35 first-degree murder trials, didn’t start out as a prosecutor – or even a lawyer.

He started out as a journalist and worked for the Journal Star in Peoria.

“I got out of that and I didn’t know what I really wanted to do,” Sams said. “I worked retail sales to figure it out.”

He did not go to law school until age 32, about 10 years after graduating from college.

“There were people there older than me. Law school is one of those things that’s common for a second career,” Sams said. “I thought I was going to get into environmental law or international law.”

He worked for an insurance company for a year, then interned at the McLean County State’s Attorney’s Office in Bloomington.

That did it.

“I knew I wanted to do prosecution,” Sams said.

He met his wife in law school and they moved to Kane County, where he began as a prosecutor while she became a litigator in civil employment law.

In March, Sams received the Lifetime Achievement Award, Pursuit of Justice, from the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office, in recognition of his 29 years there as a prosecutor, his 35 first-degree murder trials and his mentoring of younger lawyers.

“What does pursuit of justice mean? It means always doing the right thing,” Sams said. “As an adjunct to that, it’s really standing up for the victims of crime in Kane County.”

Sams started the office’s Domestic Violence Unit in 1997 when David Akemann was the state’s attorney.

“Of those 35 first-degree murder trials, probably half are domestic-related murders,” Sams said.

The domestic violence protocol that was becoming prevalent was the idea of a no-drop policy.

“We would not drop charges because the victim wanted us to,” Sams said. “As prosecutors ... it’s being able to say to a jury that your victim is testifying and recanting, ‘Oh, I hit him first.’ It’s getting the jury to understand the reasons why victims may recant.”

A jury may think, ‘If the victim does not care, why should we care?’ Sams said.

“It is our job as prosecutors to get the jury to understand,” Sams said.

He devoted a lot of his career to prosecuting domestic cases, starting in McLean County. He also served on the board for 13 years and as president for three years for Mutual Ground in Aurora, which assists people affected by domestic violence, sexual violence and substance use.

As he approaches retirement in May after 29 years, the thing he’ll miss the most is mentoring younger lawyers.

“Getting them to open up their eyes to the beauty of the law,” Sams said. “It’s one of those things that we do our best to try and protect victims, but we also make sure there is an even playing field for those who are charged with crimes. There’s a lot of wiggle room in the law. There’s also a lot of rigidity in it that makes it predictable.”

Sams said he will also miss the families of the crime victims, as he has gotten close to many of them.

He prosecuted and secured convictions against Frank Hill and Aurelio Montano, and led the prosecution team in securing Shadwick King’s conviction.

“These three first-degree murder cases are interesting because each of them, in different ways, was not a typical ‘who-done-it’ case, but first required that we prove that a murder actually occurred,” Sams said in an email. “I first had to prove that there was a murder, in addition to who did it.”

Hill was convicted in 2007 for the murder of his girlfriend, Karyn Pearson of Gilberts, and sentenced to 90 years.

She was found dead amid the remains of a fire at their condo – “a fire that was so intense, the victim could only be identified by the four teeth that remained that were not melted,” Sams wrote in an email.

Montano was charged in 2008, some 17 years after his wife, Maria Montano, went missing.

“Her body was never found, even when we charged the case,” Sams’ email stated.

“The story he had told people was that he had killed her, wrapped her body in an area rug and buried the body on the property of a horse farm in DuPage County,” Sams said. “In 2007, the FBI and Aurora police, acting on a tip, did a forensic dig at the horse farm. They did not find her body, but exactly where they were told to dig, they found an area rug buried underground, and cadaver dogs ‘alerted’ to both the spot of the dig and the area rug itself.”

Montano is serving a life sentence, records show.

King, a Geneva resident, was tried twice for the murder of his wife, Kathleen. He was first convicted in 2015; the Illinois Supreme Court granted him a new trial in 2020, and then he was convicted again in 2022. King is serving a 30-year sentence, records show.

Assistant State’s Attorney Mark Stajdohar described Sams as “a mentor’s mentor.”

“He really is a great teacher,” Stajdohar said. “Every time we have a case, every time we have an issue, he’s one of my go-to guys.”

Stajdohar said he handled many cases with Sams, including many serious felony cases.

“He has as much legal knowledge as anybody I’ve worked with and far more than most of the people who worked with or for or against,” Stajdohar said. “He is also the most ethical person I’ve ever worked with. ... He will be missed, I can tell you.”