Man sentenced to 50 years in fatal Elgin townhouse stabbing

SHARE Man sentenced to 50 years in fatal Elgin townhouse stabbing
Screen_Shot_2015_09_21_at_5.42.33_PM.png

Paul Johnson | Kane County State’s Attorney’s office photo

A man convicted of murder for the 2013 stabbing death of his neighbor, whose home he was burglarizing, was sentenced to 50 years in prison Monday.

Paul A. Johnson, 36, was convicted in May of stabbing Lisa Koziol-Ellis to death in her townhouse. Monday, Circuit Judge Susan Clancy Boles sentenced him to 50 years in prison, according to the Kane County state’s attorney’s office.

Sometime between the night of March 1 and early morning March 2, Johnson broke into Koziol-Ellis’ home in the 1-99 block of Garden Crescent Court in Elgin, thinking no one was there, authorities said.

Koziol-Ellis, 19 at the time, found him there, and he stabbed her 55 times in the head, neck, torso and arms, according to prosecutors. Thirteen of those wounds were defensive and “consistent with being stabbed by a knife and an object such as a screwdriver.”

Koziol-Ellis’ husband found her dead in their home when he returned from work about 2:30 a.m., according to the state’s attorney’s office. Johnson was arrested on March 17.

At the time of the murder, Johnson was on parole for a 2010 residential burglary conviction. He was also onvicted of armed robbery twice in 2001, authorities said.

“Mr. Johnson has proven many times in his adult life that he has no interest in living in a community of decent citizens,” state’s attorney Joe McMahon said in the statement. “It’s sad that the only place he fits in is in a prison cell.”

By law, Johnson must serve the entire sentence, prosecutors said.

The Latest
The man was shot in the left eye area in the 5700 block of South Christiana Avenue on the city’s Southwest Side.
Most women who seek abortions are women of color, especially Black women. Restricting access to mifepristone, as a case now before the Supreme Court seeks to do, would worsen racial health disparities.
The Bears have spent months studying the draft. They’ll spend the next one plotting what could happen.
Woman is getting anxious about how often she has to host her husband’s hunting buddy and his wife, who don’t contribute at all to mealtimes.
He launched a campaign against a proposed neo-Nazis march at a time the suburb was home to many Holocaust survivors. His rabbi at Skokie Central Congregation urged Jews to ignore the Nazis. “I jumped up and said, ‘No, Rabbi. We will not stay home and close the windows.’ ”