Prosecutors and defense lawyers are battling over whether jurors will learn of the alleged past misdeeds of a man charged last year with the notorious 1992 slaying of a 15-year-old Skokie boy.
Robert Serritella, formerly of Park Ridge, is charged with killing David Chereck. Serritella was arrested in Los Angeles in July following a cold case investigation by Cook County authorities.
Last week in the Skokie branch of Cook County court, Assistant State’s Attorney Ethan Holland filed a 34-page motion asking Judge Lauren Edidin to allow prosecutors to tell jurors at Serritella’s trial about a host of other alleged crimes and misconduct spanning decades. Defense attorneys oppose the motion, and the judge said she will rule on the matter during Serritella’s next court hearing, April 21.
“We don’t think it’s relevant to his charges,” defense attorney Matthew Amarin said. “They’re trying to prove the (murder) charges with other conduct.”
Serritella, a convicted sex offender, was in court during the brief hearing Tuesday but did not speak.
On Jan. 2, 1992, a man walking his dog found Chereck’s body in a forest preserve in Morton Grove, prosecutors said. Authorities said the boy, who’d disappeared after spending time with friends, was found with his jacket and a shoe missing. His scarf was pulled tightly around his neck, authorities said, and he died of strangulation.
When investigators asked Serritella what he thought happened on the night of the killing, he told them he thought Chereck accepted a ride from someone, that they drove to the forest preserve and smoked marijuana, that the killer “posed a question” to Chereck and things “got out of hand,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors hope to introduce evidence that Serritella was convicted of “child annoyance” in California in 1992 following allegations that he repeatedly followed a 14-year-old boy out of his high school, told him he wanted to have sex with him and tried to run him over with a vehicle.
The motion also lists a host of Serritella’s other alleged acts, though it does not suggest he was charged or convicted in those matters. The motion accuses of Serritella of repeatedly trying to have sex with teenage boys in Illinois and California over the last three decades. In Los Angeles in the late 1980s, he would dress as a priest and try to befriend boys at a youth club, prosecutors allege.
In 1991, investigators served a search warrant on his home and found a handwritten note labeled, “Boy profile for exploitation,” according to court records. Prosecutors attached the note to the motion, and it reads, in part, “between 8 & 17 years old; an underachiever in school or home; come from a home where parents were absent either physically or psychologically, usually want previous homosexual experience …”
Prosecutors also said that in June 2013, Serritella called Chereck’s mother, Esther, from Los Angeles on two occasions and told her that although police considered him a suspect in the Skokie killing, he was just a witness. He also told Esther Chereck, who was in court Tuesday, that he had seen her son get into a vehicle and that he had a description of the cigar-smoking man who had lured her son into the car, prosecutors said.
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Outside the courtroom, Esther Chereck said: “I’m just looking for justice for David. It’s been 27 years. It’s time.
“I just wish my husband was still alive to see David get justice,” she added.
Cox is a freelance reporter; Hinkel is a Tribune reporter.