Man sentenced to 67 years in prison for murdering woman, daughter

A South Side man was sentenced to 67 years in prison Tuesday for brutally stabbing a woman and her daughter to death.

Thadeus Ridley pleaded guilty to killing Cherie Adams, 42, and her daughter Curtria Duncan, 24, court records show.

Ridley, now 27, had dated Duncan but police did not know why he killed the women.

Their bodies were found by firefighters in a burning Chatham home in February 2013.

Duncan was found in the bathtub with two stab wounds. Adams, on the bathroom floor, was stabbed an estimated 60 times. The fire was set afterward to conceal the murders, police said at the time.

Two days later, police arrested Ridley in the fatal stabbings while they were transporting him to a mental health facility. Officers responding to a report of a suicidal man at Ridley’s South Shore apartment had found a chair on fire.

They also saw Ridley holding a sword and two military knives.

While he was being driven to a hospital for psychiatric treatment, Ridley admitted his role in the murders, police had said at the time.

“I should be going to 26th and California” — the site of Leighton Criminal Courts building and the Cook County Jail, Ridley allegedly said.

A relative told the Chicago Sun-Times that Ridley suffered from mental illness and was discharged from the Navy because of his health.