John Hall convicted of torturing, murdering girlfriend
September 19
JOLIET Will County States Attorney James Glasgow announced Wednesday (Sept. 19, 2007) that a man who brutally beat his girlfriend to death inside his Joliet Township apartment over an extended period in July 2005 was convicted of first-degree murder.
John Hall, 33, of the Preston Heights area of Joliet Township, also was convicted of concealing a homicidal death and arson.
Hall attempted to conceal the murder by burning his victims body on a wood pile in a rural area in Kankakee County. He also destroyed physical evidence of his crime by torching the apartment where he killed 20-year-old Rose Bailey.
Testimony during the week-long trial revealed that Hall beat Bailey, struck her in the head with a clothes iron, slammed her fingers in a door hinge and tied her up with speaker wire and put her in his bathtub.
Hall, a local drug dealer and rap musician who went by the name of Spiderman, was angry with Bailey because she took between $100 and $120 from him. The beating occurred at his apartment on Zarley Boulevard overnight on July 1, 2005.
Hall faces up to 74 years in prison when he is sentenced by Circuit Judge Carla Alessio Policandriotes. A status date has been scheduled for Oct. 1. A sentencing date has yet to be scheduled.
John Hall is a diabolical, sadistic killer with an abandoned and malignant heart who tortured a defenseless young woman and viciously beat her to death, Glasgow said. Rose Baileys life ended in a nightmare of unspeakable pain and fear at the hands of a brutal monster. The murder conviction will remove this vile beast from civilized society.
Another of Halls girlfriends testified during the trial that she was in the apartment on the night Bailey was killed and was present when he beat her for hours and struck her with the iron. Hall refused to allow the woman to help Bailey and rejected her request to take the dying victim to the hospital. Hall also threatened to harm the witness and her family if she told anyone about the beating.
Yet another of Halls girlfriends testified that she had been beaten by Hall and burned on her back with a clothes iron. On one occasion, she escaped a beating by jumping from his apartment window.
A third girlfriend testified that Hall beat her in a liquor store parking lot and broke her nose.
Glasgow credited his assistant states attorneys lead prosecutor Dede Osterberger, Jessica Colon-Sayre and Chris Messina for their expert trial work.
Their presentation of the evidence in this horrific case left jurors with no doubt as to who murdered Rose Bailey, Glasgow said.