WAUKEGAN, Ill. — The trial of the man accused of opening fire at a Fourth of July parade in the affluent Chicago suburb of Highland Park ended almost as quickly as it began Monday when the suspect surprised the courtroom by pleading guilty.
Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III, who faced 69 counts of murder and attempted murder stemming from the July 4, 2022, mass shooting, entered the plea shortly before opening statements were supposed to get underway.
“Is that what you went over with your attorneys?” Lake County Circuit Court Judge Victoria Rossetti asked Crimo to make sure he understood.
“Yes,” Crimo replied.
Crimo faces life in prison for killing seven people and wounding nearly 50 more when he is sentenced April 23. Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011.
Dressed in a black suit, his face tattooed with the number 47 and more tattoos adorning his neck and hands, the 24-year-old suspect made no additional statements before he left the Lake County Courthouse.
Earlier, Crimo’s mother Denise Pesina, was called to the bench after one of her son’s lawyers announced the change of plea and she yelled out “There’s a court order on this!”
Rossetti told her if she wanted to stay in the courtroom she would have to sit down and be quiet. Pesina complied and was allowed to remain in the courtroom.
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart, in a written statement, said “This was not a negotiation. This was not a deal.”
“He made a free decision to plead guilty to every single count that this trial team and this law enforcement team was about to present to this jury,” Rinehart wrote. “He received nothing in exchange for this plea today. We were 1000% ready” to go to trial and present evidence today.
Asked when they found out Crimo was pleading guilty, Rinehart told reporters, “We learned this morning.”
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said “we’re all just sort of surprised and relieved that they don’t have to experience the unbelievable pain of reliving this experience for the next three to five weeks.”
Shooting survivor Ashbey Beasley, who was at the parade with her 6-year-old son but escaped unharmed, said she felt “relief and shock” when Crimo pleaded guilty.
“I think we were all just surprised and waiting to see what happened,” said Beasley, who has since become an anti-gun activist.
Later, the law firms representing dozens of shooting victims released a statement expressing relief that Crimo pleaded guilty and vowing to continue “civil litigation against this individual and others including Smith & Wesson and the companies that sold the assault weapon that was used in the shooting.”
Last week, while jury selection was underway, Crimo gave no sign that he was intending to plead guilty.
From time to time, Crimo watched while his defense attorneys, Lake County Public Defender Gregory Ticsay and Assistant Public Defender Anton Trizna, and the prosecutor took turns posing questions to the jury candidates.
But mostly Crimo sat scribbling on a sheet of paper as the pool of jurors was narrowed to the six men and six women picked to serve on the panel.
Before the first juror was seated, prosecutors moved to dismiss an additional 48 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm against Crimo.
Monday, Rinehart said they already had “a mountain of evidence.”
“He attempted to murder every single person that he shot at at that parade,” he said.
Rinehart got no pushback from the defense team or Rossetti.
Police said Crimo, an aspiring rapper who used the stage name Awake the Rapper and was described by friends as a music-obsessed loner, spent weeks planning the massacre.
On that July Fourth, Crimo climbed up a fire escape to the rooftop of a building above the parade route and, at 10:14 a.m., began raining down bullets onto the spectators below, police said.
Killed in the attack were Stephen Straus, 88; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69; Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; and married couple Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35.
Dozens more were wounded, the youngest of whom was 8-year-old Cooper Roberts, who was left paralyzed from the waist down when a bullet severed his spinal cord.
Also wounded was 63-year-old John Kezdy, who took a bullet to the elbow. Kezdy worked for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and had earlier been the lead singer of Chicago’s influential punk rock band The Effigies. He died a year after the attack in a bicycle accident.
Crimo disguised himself by wearing women’s clothing during the rampage, police said.
“Following the attack, Crimo exited the roof, dropped his rifle, and he blended in with the crowd and escaped,” Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Chris Covelli said at the time.
Crimo made it home, took his mother’s car and drove north to Madison, Wisconsin, where he considered staging another massacre, police said. He was arrested when he returned to Illinois.
“He went into details about what he had done,” Rinehart told reporters after the incident. “He admitted to what he had done. We don’t want to speculate on the motives right now.”
This was just the latest surprise from Crimo.
Last June, Crimo was expected to accept a plea deal but surprised the court by suddenly changing his mind and keeping his not-guilty plea.
In late 2023, Crimo fired his public defenders, saying he would represent himself at trial. The next month, he asked a judge to reinstate his public defender.
Meanwhile, Crimo’s father, Robert Crimo Jr., pleaded guilty to seven felony counts of reckless conduct and was sentenced to 60 days in prison for agreeing to sponsor his then-19-year-old son’s gun license application. He did so even though a relative had reported to police only a few months earlier that Crimo had a collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone.”
Prosecutors had turned over some 10,000 pages of evidence along with a videotaped interrogation during which police say Crimo confessed to the mass shooting.
In December, Rossetti declined an attempt by Crimo’s lawyers to throw out statements Crimo made to police when he was arrested. The judge said Crimo willingly gave up his right to remain silent and police did not prevent him from speaking with the lawyer his family had hired to represent him.
Corky Siemaszko
Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital.
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