‘Depraved heart’: Prosecutor asks for maximum sentence for Richmond mom whose son overdosed on her drugs

Cara Ullrich was fidgety and laid her head on a table during an interview with a detective, insisting that she knew “nothing” about her son’s fatal overdose earlier that day at his father’s home near Richmond.

Ullrich, 46, and her ex-husband Eric Ullrich, 52, were both initially charged with first-degree murder in the death of their son, Trent Ullrich, 14, but have since pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Authorities said the teen ingested his mother’s fentanyl and overdosed Jan. 3, 2024.

This week, Cara Ullrich‘s case was heard before Judge Tiffany Davis in a sort of mini-trial to determine Ullrich‘s sentence. Eric Ullrich was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison.

In closing arguments Friday afternoon, Assistant State’s Attorney Ashley Romito asked for the maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, and that Cara Ullrich serve the time after she completes a four-year term that she was handed last year for a previous aggravated battery charge.

The judge will announced her sentence June 13.

The prosecutor said Ullrich already received a break in that she was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser manslaughter offense. Had she been convicted on the murder charge, she could have spent decades in prison, Romito said.

“I can’t fathom a set of facts more egregious than this case,” Romito said adding that Ullrich lied to detectives, did not call 911, hid in a bathtub, ingested more drugs while paramedics fought to save her son and did not provide any information that could have helped save him. Romito noted Ullrich’s multiple past interactions with police and the couple twice losing custody of their children.

“She behaved with a depraved heart” and “played Russian roulette” with her son’s life, Romito said.

Ullrich’s attorney, Brian Stevens, asked for leniency, saying that she has a longtime drug addiction and, “in essence, a mental illness.”

“It is no secret drugs and opioids have decimated this poor family,” Stevens said.

Ullrich, who wept during the statements, had a tough upbringing without a father, and her mother kicked her out of the house at age 12, her lawyer said. He also said Eric Ullrich played a “significant part” in Trent’s death, noting that it was his house and he had full custody of the children.

“I think Cara Ullrich wanted to be a good mother. ... She just could not get rid of this drug addiction,” Stevens said.

In video shown in court Thursday of Cara Ullrich’s police interview with McHenry County Sheriff’s Detective Sylvia Dekirmandjian-Dillon, Ullrich said she was a regular crack-cocaine and heroin user and last did heroin four days before. She appeared agitated and ill, and often asked to go back to her cell to rest and to grieve her son’s death. She cried and said: “I love my kids. I cannot believe my son is gone.”

She insisted she was not at the house that morning, which detectives already knew was false. She appeared to become frustrated with the detective’s questions seeking details about where she lived, where she was the night before and the events leading up to her son’s death. She said she lives “everywhere” and sometimes stays at her ex-husband’s house. However, authorities said they already knew she had been staying at the Richmond Township home for several weeks.

Dekirmandjian-Dillon then asked about the hours before Eric Ullrich called 911, which occurred about 11 a.m. that morning, when he said he saw his son unresponsive, drooling with blue lips sleeping on the couch.

Authorities have said the Ullrichs knew for several hours before calling 911 that their son had gotten into his mother’s drugs and was overdosing. They did not call for help, fearing they would get in trouble with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, and Cara Ullrich knew she was being sought on an arrest warrant, prosecutors said.

Instead, they put Trent in the shower to revive him, laid him on the couch wrapped in a towel and came up with their fictitious story, prosecutors said.

In actuality, after trying to revive Trent, Cara Ullrich “passed out” on the couch next to him, Eric Ullrich slept in a chair nearby, and they were supposed to take turns watching him. It would be about eight more hours before calling 911, prosecutors said.

As Eric Ullrich made the call, Cara Ullrich ran to the upstairs bedroom and locked the door, where she stayed until detectives later found her, according to prosecutors and body-cam video played in court.

During Eric Ullrich‘s sentencing hearing, a medical expert said the child would have lived had 911 been called hours earlier, when his parents realized he was overdosing.

In the police interview, Cara Ullrich continued to falsely deny that she had been at the house overnight, claiming that she had left the previous afternoon and was only there for about five minutes. She also said that neither she nor her ex-husband had brought drugs into or done drugs in the house. However, during the investigation, detectives found fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, marijuana and drug paraphernalia throughout the house. A baggie found in Trent’s bedroom contained powder matching a baggie with powder found in the master bedroom and later was determined to be fentanyl, detectives said.

Trent Ullrich died from adverse effects of fentanyl and xylazine, a tranquilizer used for large farm animals.

Photographs found on Cara Ullrich’s phone and shown during both hearings depicted the whole family holding up bags of marijuana on Christmas morning. Authorities said detectives also found a used naloxone container, although Eric Ullrich denied giving his son the opiate-reversing medication. Prosecutors determined that he had administered the nasal spray to his son that morning.

At first, Cara Ullrich denied the substance being in the house at all, then later said it was there because she had overdosed in the house weeks before.

That morning, while paramedics tried to revive Trent in the living room, Cara Ullrich continued hiding, officials said.

When Dekirmandjian-Dillon asked Ullrich how and when she got into the house that day, she said she’d come over about 11 a.m. – later saying it was noon – and climbed up the back deck and into the master bedroom, as she had done before, and laid on the bed.

She said no one was in the house when she arrived, and no one knew she was there. She then claimed she felt sick and thought she was going to throw up, so went to the bathtub in the adjacent bathroom, laid down and fell asleep.

She said she had no idea what was going on in the house until authorities found her in the bathtub and her ex-husband told her Trent had died. She also claimed that Eric Ullrich had woken up and “rushed [Trent] to the hospital,” which detectives knew was not true.

A police video of an interview with a woman who knows Cara Ullrich also was played Thursday. The woman said she spoke to Cara Ullrich about midnight the night before Trent’s death. She said Cara Ullrich told her she couldn’t find a bag of her fentanyl and suspected Trent took it because he did not want her to do drugs.