Man accused of killing father, burning Fernwood home held without bail: prosecutors

A man accused of beating his father to death and setting fire to their Fernwood home in April was ordered held without bail Thursday after being extradited back to Chicago from Georgia.

James Dyer, 33, was charged with first-degree murder for the slaying of his 68-year-old father, also named James Dyer, who was found dead inside a burning home early April 23 in the 400 block of West 104th Street, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

The elder Dyer, however, had been killed before the fire even started, prosecutors said. An autopsy by the Cook County medical examiner’s office found he died of blunt force trauma to the head and had several depressed skull fractures, and no traces of soot or carbon monoxide were found in his lungs or blood.

Prosecutors said that the younger Dyer had been staying at his father’s home for a few months when he brought a woman back home early in the morning of April 23. Dyer allegedly asked her to wait in his room while he went to his father’s room to give him his medicine, but the woman, who noticed that Dyer appeared “jittery and out of sorts,” followed him to the hallway, where she saw his father lying on the edge of the bed with his legs dangling over the side, prosecutors said.

Dyer saw the woman watching and ordered her to wait in the car, but she refused and stuck around the house while Dyer returned upstairs, prosecutors said. She allegedly heard loud banging, “as if a body was being thrown around,” and then saw Dyer’s shadow on the wall exiting the room, only to return with a hammer in hand, at which point the banging resumed.

Dyer then drove the woman back to her home in Gary, Indiana, using a GMC Yukon truck his father had been fixing for another person, prosecutors said. Hours later, after ditching the truck at a gas station near 99th and Halsted streets, Dyer allegedly texted the woman that his house had burned down, despite never having called 9-1-1. He also tells her his father is dead and that he’ll be returning to Atlanta, where he lived before moving to Chicago.

An arson investigation into the fire found that it was started by hand, the result of someone lighting a flame to a pile of clothing and other items by the bed, prosecutors said.

Dyer was arrested on July 17 in Marrieta, Georgia, and was extradited back to Illinois on Wednesday. A Cook County judge ordered him held without bail, and he is due back in court Jan. 4.