'I Held Her And Said Wake Up, Baby, Wake Up': Murder Victim's Grandma

LOCKPORT — On Oct. 2, 2020, Shirley Onderisin was inside her Lockport home, discussing her Bible study with one of her friends, when her oldest granddaughter was suddenly in distress. Something terrible had just happened to Onderisin's 32-year-old daughter, Ashtin Eaton, the sixth-grader alerted her grandmother.

On the morning her daughter and younger granddaughter were found, "I heard my granddaughter make a FaceTime. She sounded upset. I asked her what's wrong, and she said mom's not breathing," the 65-year-old Lockport woman testified Tuesday, the first day of the Lockport double murder trial for 30-year-old defendant Anthony Maggio.

Maggio and Ashtin Eaton worked together at the Joliet Amazon plant, where they struck up a romantic relationship and later had a child together, prosecutors said. Maggio was already engaged to another woman, with whom he had two small children, according to trial testimony.

During her granddaughter's frantic FaceTime, "I said let me see your mom," Onderisin told jurors. "She pointed the iPad to her mom. I saw my daughter and she looked bad. So I told her call 911."

Onderisin and her husband then ran out to their car and called 911 as well.

Assistant Will County State's Attorney Ashley Kwasneski asked what she saw upon entering the apartment kitchen.

"My daughter," she testified.

"What did she look like?" Kwasneski followed up.

"A little blue in the face," she answered. "Her left wrist was cut. She was laying on the floor ... There was a knife to the right of her."

Onderisin testified she did not touch or pick up the knife.

Then, the Lockport grandmother began crying as the prosecutor displayed a photo of her slain daughter, Ashtin.

Later, the prosecutor asked Onderisin about her discovery of her 14-month-old granddaughter, Hazel.

"I went to look for the baby," she testified. "I went to the bedroom where they usually slept."

There, on top of the bed, Onderisin found little Hazel.

"She was surrounded by blankets," Onderisin testified. "She was like tucked into the blankets. Her head was kind of tucked into the side."

Onderisin remembered how she reached into the bed and picked up Hazel.

"I was hoping she was ..." Onderisin testified, as she began crying. "I held her and said, 'Wake up, baby! Wake up! 'I ran into the living room because paramedics got there, and I said, 'Please save her! Please save her!'"

At that point, the prosecutor showed the jury a trial exhibit, which was the bed where little Hazel was found. Someone had smothered her to death.

"Where I found the body, it's Ashtin's bed," Hazel's grandmother told jurors. "In the middle, that big brown blanket. It looked like a cocoon. When I picked her up, I just put her on my shoulder."

At 14 months old, Hazel "was learning how to walk. She was chasing me around a few times. I helped deliver her."

Finally, the prosecutor turned her attention to Anthony Maggio, the Lockport double murder defendant. The aspiring paramedic is accused of smothering Hazel and strangling his ex-girlfriend to death, then staging her death to appear as a suicide.

Maggio's jury heard from Onderisin that Maggio was a no-show at the hospital for the birth of little Hazel.

The prosecutor wanted to know how many times during little Hazel's life of 14 months had Onderisin interacted with Maggio.

"How many times did you personally see Anthony Maggio in person?" Kwasneski asked her witness.

"Once," she testified.

During opening statements, Maggio's private defense lawyer, Michael Clancy out of Chicago, told the jury that his client is innocent of the double killings.

Clancy also suggested that Ashtin Eaton's T-shirt she wore at the time of her murder contained the DNA of four different men.

In the weeks before the murders, Onderisin testified, her daughter was not seeing any men.

"Any males?" the prosecutor asked.

"No," she repeated. "She was talking about getting a different job."

On the night before the murders, Ashtin Eaton stopped over her parents' house in Lockport after finishing her job at Amazon. They lived only about six or seven blocks away.

During Tuesday's trial, Clancy tried to insinuate that Ashtin Eaton was drinking glasses of wine at her mother's house, but the witness immediately put the defense lawyer in check.

"I was," Onderisin told Maggio's lawyer. "I had a couple glasses of wine. She didn't like my wine."

Onderisin's wine comment was the only time there was any laughter in Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak's courtroom.

Most of the packed pews in the gallery were filled with about two dozen friends and family of the Lockport murder victims. When photos of the mother and the infant's bodies were displayed on a large television monitor in the courtroom, some of the relatives openly wept and stormed out of the courtroom as they were overcome by emotion.

At one point, Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak dismissed the jury for several minutes to admonish the gallery of spectators in hopes of keeping her courtroom as silent as possible during testimony.

Eventually, Clancy inquired whether Ashtin's mother was responsible for touching the bedding where her 14-month-old granddaughter was found.

"I didn't touch the bedding, but I picked the baby up from it," she answered.

Clancy also wondered if the Lockport grandmother handled the knife found next to her adult daughter's body. She insisted she did not.

"I was right there," she continued. "That's my baby."

Sixth-Grade Student Finds Her Mother's Body In 2020

Now 15 years old, Jessica Eaton was the first witness to testify for the prosecution at Tuesday's double murder trial. Jessica was in sixth grade at the time her mother and baby sister were slain.

Because of COVID, Jessica was doing her sixth-grade studies from home over Zoom. Jessica termed herself a sound sleeper. She did not recall any loud noises or strange sounds during the overnight hours, when her mother and sister were slain by the intruder.

Jessica estimated she went to sleep around 11 p.m. and woke up around 8:45 a.m.

"I looked at the time on my iPad," the Lockport High School sophomore testified. "I left my bunk bed and looked in my mom's room to see if she was there. I seen my sister's butt in the air with blankets."

Jessica thought her baby sister was sleeping, not realizing she was slain.

As for their mom, "I thought she was cooking breakfast. So I started walking back to the kitchen. I seen blood on the floor. She was on the floor laying down. She was laying on the floor with blood around her arms. She was blue and purple."

Jessica told the jury, "I touched her chest."

There, her mother lay motionless. The prosecutor asked if her mother showed any signs of movement, any breathing.

Jessica answered no to both questions.

"There was a knife right next to her," Jessica said. "I ran and got my iPad."

After alerting her grandparents to her mother's emergency, "they told me to call police."

Because Jessica did not have her own phone, she ran to the neighbors' apartments, knocking on doors, screaming for help.

The prosecutors asked Jessica if her mother was dating any men in the weeks leading up to her killing.

"No boys came over," she replied.

Now 30 years old, Anthony Maggio has shaved off his beard for this week's double murder trial.

Even though most of Will County's criminal court judges regularly grant news media photography access for criminal trial coverage, Maggio's criminal defense lawyer Michael Clancy convinced Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak, Will County's longest-serving judge, not to allow any news media cameras in her Courtroom 405 for Maggio's double murder trial.

The trial is expected to take at least two weeks, possibly three.

Related Patch coverage:

Lockport Mom, Baby Hazel Killed Over Child Support: Prosecutors