Murderer Sentenced to 70 Years For Slaying Friend, Hiding Body

A Frankfort man was sentenced to 70 years in prison for shooting a friend in the head and hiding her body in the trunk of her Ford Mustang.

Brian Trainauskas, 40, denied killing his friend and houseguest, 36-year-old Monica Timar, and told her family he was the “only one helping her with her issues,” which included depression and mixing medications that gave her suicidal thoughts.

During Trainauskas’ sentencing hearing Monday afternoon, prosecutors spent nearly all their time arguing that he plotted from behind bars to put a hit on one of their former colleagues. More than two years after Trainauskas was jailed for Timar’s murder, he was charged with conspiring with another inmate to kill the assistant state’s attorney trying his case, Nicole Moore. Moore has since moved into private practice, and testified Monday that Trainauskas’ alleged attempt to have her killed factored into that decision.

Moore, who was visibly emotional during her time on the witness stand, told of the ordeal she and her family endured after her boss, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, informed her of the alleged scheme to have her killed.

Glasgow was also supposedly the target of a jailhouse murder plot, one allegedly concocted by serial marrier and convicted wife-killer Drew Peterson. After he was found guilty of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Peterson allegedly enlisted the assistance of a fellow prisoner to have Glasgow killed. Peterson’s case remains pending in Randolph County court.

Trainauskas’ murder solicitation case also remains pending, but that didn’t stop prosecutors from trying to use it to get a stiffer sentence for the Timar Slaying. Besides Moore, they also called Will County Deputy Anthony Policandriotes and the prisoner with whom Trainauskas allegedly discussed murdering Moore — lifelong criminal Samuel Wright, 51, of Wilmington.

Wright, who did prison time for numerous burglary and theft convictions, as well as for the unlawful use of a weapon, escaping, robbery, home invasion and theft, at some point in his life beat a murder charge, according to testimony. Wright said that when Trainauskas learned of that, he approached him in May 2011 about killing Moore for $100,000.

The plan supposedly involved bringing in another man whom Wright would also kill, then frame for murdering both Moore and Timar. Trainauskas and Wright nicknamed Moore and the unidentified patsy as “Olive Oyl” and “Elmer Fudd.”

Wright said he took this news to his attorney, whose name he could not recall — “He had a weird name,” he said, and the attorney then contacted the authorities.

Wright’s attorney at the time was Cosmo Tedone.

Wright went on to wear a wire and record his conversations with Trainauskas. Policandriotes said he transcribed these recordings without assistance. Excerpts of the recordings were played in court. They were unintelligible.

Will County Judge Dave Carlson found Trainauskas guilty of the murder in June. Trainauskas faced up to life in prison.

Trainauskas shot Timar in the back of the head with a Mossberg shotgun while they were in the basement of his Acorn Ridge Home. Two days after Timar was reported missing, her body was found in the trunk of her car. She was wrapped in a comforter.

Glasgow called the killing a “vicious assassination by a dangerous killer who failed miserably in his desperate efforts to cover up his crime.”

“Thanks to a first-rate investigation by the Will County Sheriff’s Department, Brian Trainauskas will spend the rest of his life in a prison cell,” he said.