LUIGI ADAMO SENTENCED TO 38 YEARS IN 2000 BEATING DEATH
WHEATON - DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph E. Birkett announced today that 27 year-old Luigi Adamo (d.o.b. 5/28/81), formerly of 4600 N. Cumberland Avenue, Chicago, was sentenced to 38 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for the October 2000, bludgeoning death of 31 year-old John Conrad. On December 20, 2007, a jury found Adamo guilty of First Degree Murder in a trial presided over by Judge George Bakalis. At the time of the murder, Adamo lived in Wayne.
On October 28, 2000, the body of thirty-one year-old John Conrad was discovered in the Pratts Wayne Forest Preserve in unincorporated Wayne Township. An initial investigation into the murder did not yield charges and the case went cold. In May of 2002, the DuPage County Sheriff’s “Cold Case Unit” began working on the case. The investigation revealed that Conrad, a homeless man who had last resided in Schaumburg, died of massive blunt trauma to the head. Through their police work, authorities learned that on the evening of October 26, Conrad met Adamo and two of his friends including Jason Reardon, at a local restaurant. None of the men knew Conrad prior to this meeting. The three agreed to give Conrad a ride and lured him to the forest preserve near Munger Road. It was at this forest preserve that Reardon and Adamo escorted Conrad to a remote location where Adamo beat him to death with a tire iron and stole his wallet. The third man, who was never charged but did testify, fled the area before Adamo and Reardon returned to the car. In July, 2003, police arrested Adamo and Reardon and charged them each with First Degree Murder. In October, 2004, Reardon pled guilty to Armed Robbery and was sentenced to nineteen years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for his involvement in the murder of John Conrad and cooperated by testifying against Adamo. When the vehicle was finally searched three years later, the tire iron was missing and four of Adamo’s fingerprints were recovered from the underside of the spare tire near where the tire iron had been stored
“The Evidence in this case proved beyond any doubt that Luigi Adamo is a cold-hearted thug who took the life of an innocent man nearly eight years ago for fun,” remarked Birkett. “He thought he could get away with it. He was wrong.”
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