Prosecutors Want Life Sentence For Alleged Mom Murderer

Prosecutors are gunning to send an alleged mother-murderer away for the rest of his life due to the particularly grisly and cruel circumstances surrounding the woman’s death.

Charles McCullum didn’t merely kill his 54-year-old mother, Jeanie Parker, police said. He allegedly strangled her, left her for dead, returned to her First Avenue home to find her still breathing, then thrust a knife into her until blade bent inside her body.

McCullum then took another knife and stabbed his mom repeatedly before finally grabbing a baseball bat and using it to pound the knife into Parker’s body until its handle broke.

With his mother at last butchered and dead, McCullum allegedly dragged her body from her bedroom down to the garage. He loaded Parker into her car and drove her around awhile before heading for the Des Plaines River, then pulled her out and dropped her into the water, an assistant state’s attorney said during McCullum’s bond hearing.

The vicious killing was a display of “brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty,” a prosecutor said in a recent court filing. The filing put McCullum on notice that a life sentence would be sought if he was found guilty of his mother’s murder.

McCullum, now 23, has been locked up in the Will County jail since the March 2013 killing. He was living at his mother’s home when she was murdered.

During his bond hearing, a prosecutor said McCullum made a videotaped statement to detectives and explained he had become “upset” with his mother.