Kustok Sentenced to 60 Years for Wife's Murder, Judge Calls Him 'Cowardly and Despicable'

By Lorraine Swanson | Patch Editor

Before a judge handed down a 60-year sentence, convicted wife-killer Allan Kustok professed his innocence and tried to explain his mind the morning of Sept. 29, 2010, and why he didn’t call for help when he found his wife dead in their bed with a bullet in her head.

A jury found Kustok, 64, guilty of murdering his wife, Anita “Jeanie” Kustok, in their Orland Park home following a four-week trial in March.

With the exception of his daughter, Brooklyn Nets sideline reporter Sarah Kustok sitting in the back of the courtroom, there was no one to speak for Kustok except for his attorney and himself.

Jeanie Kustok’s bereaved siblings had plenty to tell Cook County Associate Judge John Hynes, however, in their victim impact statements during Kustok’s sentencing hearing Wednesday afternoon.

Cook County prosecutor Jennifer Gonzalez read Peggy McKain’s statement in the Bridgeview courtroom, recalling the horror of receiving her nephew’s phone call to inform her that her sister had been shot and didn’t make it.

“I had the unthinkable responsibility of telling my mother, brother, sister and relatives,” McKain’s statement said. “It was heartbreaking to tell my mother the devastating news that no parent should ever have to hear.”

McKain said her mother was never the same and passed away the day after Jeanine’s birthday the following year, forced to live the last year of her life with a broken heart and unanswered questions.

“If I could say one thing to Allan, it would be … ‘Jeanie was the best thing that ever happened to you, yet you desecrated your marriage with infidelities … You traded the American dream for a life of incarceration, was it worth it?”

Jeanie’s other sister, Patricia Krcmery, read her own statement in court, stating she missed her sister so much “that it hurts to put into words.”

Gonzalez recounted Allan and Jeanine Kustok’s seemingly perfect life, telling the judge that Jeanie Kustok lived a life of God, love and family.

“She dreamed of a life with grandchildren and life with Al, but she didn’t know what Al really thought of her,” Gonzalez said, referring to Kustok, who sat with his hands folded staring at down at the defense table.

“She never saw the bullet coming, she didn’t even have time to pray for herself,” Gonzalez continued. “Jeanie deserves a just and fitting punishment for a man who ended her life.”

Defense attorney Rick Beuke mentioned that Kustok had never been arrested in his entire life. No matter how many years that the judge gave him, the 64-year-old Kustok would probably die in the penitentiary.

“What I can’t get my arms around to accept is knowing Allan Kustok at 11:30 p.m. Sept. 28, 2010, texting his daughter what kind of birthday present to give to her mother, and five or six hours later that he made the decision to get that cannon of the gun and walk around the bed, point the gun at his wife’s face and pull the trigger,” Beuke said.

In his heart, the attorney said, he knew that an innocent man was going to the penitentiary.

Kustok opened his own prepared statement expressing condolences to Jeanie’s siblings for her loss and the loss of their mother. He told of his life growing up as the son of a Chicago police officer on Chicago’s South Side.

Later, during his marriage, he and Jeanie often took road trips for family vacations and to their children’s athletic games. When he woke up the morning of Sept. 29, 2010, and saw his wife’s blood loss, calling 911 wouldn’t have helped her.

“I wanted to be with her as long as I could, to hold her, talk to her, be with her on my own terms,” Kustok said. “It’s easy for people who’ve never experienced this tremendous agony to tell me what I should have done … instead of turning her over to a useless stranger. Our final ride together wasn’t going to be with 911.”

Kustok professed his innocence, saying he was innocent of the charges.

“I never could have committed the lies concocted by the prosecutors and Orland Park Police Department,” he said.

Judge Hynes called Kustok’s actions in September 2010 “cowardly and despicable.”

“Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to know Jeanine Kustok in life,” Hynes said. “As her husband, you were supposed to be her protector.”

With a minimum sentencing range of 45 years, the judge sentenced Kustok to 60 years – 30 years each for first-degree murder and aggravated discharge of a firearm.

Sarah Kustok, left before her father’s sentencing was over, telling a Cook County Sheriff’s deputy that she had to leave early for work. The Nets are in town to play the Chicago Bulls.

Read Patch’s complete coverage of the Allan Kustok trial.