Lockport Murders: Mom Was Blocked On Snapchat Before Her Killing

JOLIET — Lockport Police Detectives John Arizzi and Jacob King struggled to make sense of Anthony Maggio's answers related to the Oct. 2, 2020, deaths of his 14-month-old daughter Hazel and the infant's mother, Ashtin Eaton. The body of Eaton, 32, was found on her kitchen floor on Hamilton Street. Little Hazel's body was found on her mother's bed.

Both deaths were later classified as homicides, but at the time of Maggio's initial questioning, four days after the gruesome discoversies, the two detectives concentrated their suspicious death investigation on Maggio. He worked as an on-duty paramedic inside Joliet's Amazon facility, and also worked as a firefighter-paramedic for the tiny Cook County community of Phoenix, which is near Harvey.

This week, Maggio is standing trial in Will County on two counts of first-degree murder. Maggio's trial is in Courtroom 405 of Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak.

Maggio and the young divorced Lockport mother became close friends through their jobs in Joliet at Amazon. According to prosecutors, their friendship blossomed into a romance, then a sexual relationship that resulted in Hazel's birth in August 2019. However, for most of 2020, Maggio and Eaton went their separate ways, not talking with one another.

Maggio also provided nothing in terms of child support. He already had a family, having two young girls with his fiancée, who worked at the hospital in Olympia Fields, according to Thursday's trial testimony.

In October 2020, Maggio acknowledged during his Lockport police interview, that he considered Eaton a girl on the side, a "late-night booty call."

As for Eaton, she was willing to rekindle their romance, shortly after the two began talking again, around Labor Day 2020 — a month before her murder.

According to Thursday's testimony from Lockport Police Detective Jacob King, these were the following key events coinciding with the double murders on Hamilton Street:

Early September 2020: Eaton needs help at the Amazon facility trying to reach something on a tall shelf. She enlists the assistance of Maggio. During that month, Eaton and Maggio exchanged hundreds of text messages, including nude photographs and selfie photos of Maggio.

In several of his text messages, Maggio continues asking Eaton about sending him videos.

September 20, 2020, Maggio visits Eaton at her Lockport apartment building. He stays overnight to have sex with her.

End of September 2020: Eaton and Maggio exchange a flurry of text messages, and Eaton lets him know that her grandmother wants her to get a court order to require Maggio to make monthly child support payments. Their text messages become unfriendly and come to an abrupt end about three or four days before the murders.

According to prosecutors, Maggio did not want to be burdened by a court-ordered child support payment, especially since he was hoping to get hired as a firefighter-paramedic with Cicero. Maggio estimated the child support payment would be about $400 per month.

Maggio wanted to speak with Eaton, face to face, to discuss the child support topic, according to their texts read in court Thursday for the jury. When Eaton stopped responding to his texts, Maggio tried unsuccessfully to speak with her two consecutive days at the Amazon plant.

After being rebuffed by Eaton at work, Maggio blocked Eaton on social media, notably on Snapchat, he told Lockport police.

About 12 hours after blocking Eaton on Snapchat, Detective King reminded Maggio, the double murder happened inside Eaton's apartment in Lockport.

Eaton, 32, was found sprawled across her kitchen floor. A large box cutter knife was near her body and one of her arms had a nearly 3-inch-long gash to make it appear she took her own life. On Eaton's bed, buried in a cocoon blankets, was the dead infant, Hazel.

Her killer had smothered her.

The killer did not harm Eaton's oldest daughter, Jessica, who was sleeping in her own bedroom and was in sixth grade at the time. Eaton's ex-husband is Jessica's father, not Maggio.

Most of Thursday, the three prosecutors for the Will County State's Attorney's Office showed the jury Maggio's five-hour-long videotaped interview and interrogation with Detective King and Commander John Arizzi inside the Lockport Police Department.

Leading up to the interview, Detective King testified he called Maggio on the phone to tell him about Hazel's death.

"I asked him if the name Hazel meant anything," King testified. "'Yes,' he said, 'Technically, that's my daughter.'"

Maggio did not ask the detective for any details of the little girl's untimely death, according to King. At no point did Maggio inquire about Hazel's mother, Eaton.

"He was quiet ... he then asked what happened after being prompted," King told the jury. "I told him we would discuss it at a later time."

After he broke the news to Maggio, the Lockport detective later learned that Maggio stayed silent, not informing other family members about Hazel's death. Instead, Maggio sat down on his couch and watched television, according to King.

When Maggio came to the Lockport police station for questioning, King and Arizzi asked him about his relationship with Eaton.

"So, it was a very complicated relationship," Maggio, then 26, told them in the interview. "Then, I was engaged and had one kid. Then I actually found out Ashtin was pregnant with Hazel. I really don't know what to do, so she said she didn't need me to be there for the baby."

Eventually, Maggio told Lockport police, his fianceé "found out" he had impregnated his fellow Joliet Amazon co-worker, "so I kind of cut off communication with Ashtin. Hazel was probably a couple of months old," Maggio told the two detectives.

Maggio recalled Eaton was on maternity leave for months from Amazon. He estimated they "stopped talking around October 2019" and "she didn't come back to work until May or June" 2020.

Then, according to testimony, about a month before the double murders, Maggio and Eaton rekindled their friendship and their sexual relationship, and Maggio slept with her about 10 days before she was killed. However, during her last week alive, she and Maggio were feuding in their text messages about child support.

"I am the father, but I have no idea about the birth certificate or anything like that," Maggio told the detectives. "I told her multiple times that I would give her money."

Maggio said that Eaton was being pressured to get a child support court order from her grandmother.

"She didn't want to go against her family," Maggio told police.

As for his relationship with Hazel, "I went over there a handful of times ... I didn't really see Hazel, that was a couple weeks ago, Sunday, it was at night. She was sleeping."

The autopsy showed that Eaton's blood alcohol concentration was 0.09, which is slightly above the legal limit to be considered intoxicated in Illinois.

"I know she did cocaine a few times, and she was pretty heavy into drinking before Hazel was born," Maggio told the police, advising them that he did not drink alcohol "because too many friends got DUIs," and a DUI could be a career-ender for a firefighter-paramedic.

Maggio said that his text conversations with Eaton ended abruptly and that she was avoiding talking to him in person about the child support matter. "She never responded and I just kind of gave up after that," Maggio insisted.

At one point, Maggio told the detectives, "I feel like a bigger piece of s**t for not being there for the baby."

Eventually, the interview turned into an intense interrogation. Arizzi and King reminded Maggio that none of his answers make any sense, including the fact that Maggio never asked them anything about Hazel's mother.

And they reminded him that he skipped the memorial vigil held in honor of his little girl. And why didn't Maggio tell anyone in his family about Hazel's death?

"What happened? That's the real question," Arizzi explained. "Absolutely terrible, just the worst tragedy of all time. Did somebody do something to your poor baby? I would want every stone turned for this little one."

Inevitably, Maggio admitted that in the hours prior to Eaton's murder, he blocked her from his Snapchat, along with three other young women who worked or previously worked with him at Amazon. "I blocked a couple girls from work, they were just girls that tried talking to me."

Detective King reminded Maggio that Eaton turned up dead only 12 hours later, and so did his daughter, Hazel.

"Your answer to things are very strange," Arizzi noted. "When you do it 12 hours before one of them's dead."

"It's still odd you decided to do that on that particular day," King explained.

When reminded that he never asked about Hazel's mother, Detective King told him the most obvious reason was because Maggio already knew the answer — he knew she was dead.

Lockport's detectives complimented Maggio, telling him he was highly intelligent, and for a young man, seemed to have "a great sexual chemistry. Good for you. You're both pretty young," Arizzi told him.

Then, they told him that as a result of having "a night of fun," with Eaton, the end result was Hazel's birth.

As far as his finances, Maggio told them he had the mortgage for his condominium and a car payment and he owed about $8,000 in debt for his credit card.

"You had a night of fun," Arizzi told him. "Why not just pay the $400?"

"I would rather pay her on the side,"Maggio told them.

"This seems like an easy fix for you," Arizzi continued. "Like I said, for $400."

As for Maggio's refusal to ask the Lockport police any questions about Hazel's death and never even mention Eaton's name during the death notification phone call, "I would ask, I'd want to know what happened to the baby?" Arizzi explained.

Maggio insisted that he remained quiet, because "he was mad, he was upset."

As for Maggio's decision not to discuss his daughter's death with his own family, and instead choose to sit down and watch television, "Anthony, I've got to tell you, there's no part of your answer that makes any sense to us," one of the detectives remarked.

"Why do you block someone (on Snapchat) who's already not talking to you? It does not make sense."

At one point, Arizzi raised his voice and exclaimed, "Come on, Anthony, come on, Anthony, it doesn't make sense, either. Your story does not add, that's our problem. No way in hell this story is the final story."

Friday's trial at the Will County Courthouse resumes at 10:30 a.m. with about an hour of interrogation video still to be shown to the jury.