Man gets 80 years in prison for teen’s 1985 murder in Glen Ellyn cold case

A downstate man has been sentenced to 80 years in prison for killing a 15-year-old girl more than three decades ago in west suburban Glen Ellyn.

Michael R. Jones, 64, of Champaign, was sentenced Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree murder last week, the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office said.

On the afternoon of July 21, 1985, Wesselman was walking home from the Jewel store near Butterfield Road and Route 53 in unincorporated Glen Ellyn when she was attacked, prosecutors said. She was last seen walking on a well-traveled path back toward her home.

Her body was found about 11:15 a.m. the next day in a field between the store and her home, prosecutors said. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed multiple times.

A DNA profile from a sexual assault kit performed during her autopsy was submitted to a national database in 2000, according to prosecutors. In September 2015, the DNA profile was matched to Jones, who had pleaded guilty to aggravated domestic battery earlier that year in Champaign, where he lived at the time.

Investigators obtained a warrant to take a DNA sample from Jones on Sept. 18, 2015, and he was subsequently arrested and charged with two counts of murder and one count of aggravated sexual assault, according to the state’s attorney’s office. He has been held without bond at the DuPage County Jail since Sept. 21, 2015.