Drifter Gets 35 Years in Prison For Murdering Man at Burial Vault Company

A drug-addled drifter was sentenced to 35 years in prison for beating a man to death at a burial vault company.

Michael Eberle, 44, murdered 69-year-old Patrick Shaughnessy in March 2012.

The killing of Shaughnessy put an exclamation point on a day-long crime spree Eberle had carried out in an around Shorewood.
Eberle started out by trying but failing to force his way into a home in Shorewood’s Saddlebrook Estates subdivision. After a resident scared him off, he stole a pickup truck from a nearby Troy Township farm.

Eberle drove the pickup down the Interstate 55 frontage road to Knauer Industries, a burial vault manufacturer. Once there, he broke into the business’ office and happened upon Shaughnessy, who was working alone.

Eberle beat Shaughnessy with a crowbar and fire extinguisher, then tangled with another employee who had just shown up to start his day.

Eberle fled but sheriff’s deputies found him hiding in the weeds a short time later. Shaughnessy died before an ambulance could make it to the scene.

Eberle pleaded guilty to the murder in March.

Nine days before Eberle killed Shaughnessy, the woman he lived with leveled accusations of drug-induced delirium in a petition to keep him out of their home.

“Michael has a history of substance abuse. Currently I believe he is abusingbath salts that are making him irrational, paranoid and delusional,” Karen Trajkovich wrote in a petition for an order of protection in Kendall County Court.

The night prior to Trajkovich seeking the order of protection, she claimed Eberle “tore apart my entire garage because he thought everything was burning. He broke or threw away or threw water on my shovels, gardening tools, books, food, my bike, skateboards, etc. ... When I asked him to stop, he got agitated and got in my face because I wouldn’t believe that everything is burning.”

Trajkovich told of Eberle threatening to kick in her door and strangling her if she locked him out, and said he was hospitalized for psychiatric care after the police took him away.

Eberle’s chronic drug abuse left him brain damaged, his attorney argued at a previous court hearing. Eberle was still found fit to face murder charges.