If you ask them, 37 years isn’t enough.
For four hours on Monday, demonstrators stood in front of the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore, sharing their frustration over a plea deal that will allow Antinette "Toni" Keller’s killer to walk free when he’s 71 — assuming he lives that long.
The event drew several dozen people, some spurred on by posts on the Summoning of Yellow Facebook page, created in support of Toni’s parents, Diane and Roger Keller of Plainfield.
“I think it’s terrible that he’s going to walk the streets as a free man after he brutally killed someone,” said 21-year-old Jade Parks, a Kishwaukee College student.
Parks didn’t know Keller, who was an 18-year-old freshman at Northern Illinois University when she was attacked by William “Billy” Curl as she walked in a DeKalb park in October 2010. But Parks said she felt she had to attend Monday's demonstration to show her support for the Keller family.
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Last week, DeKalb County State’s Attorney Richard Schmack announced a plea deal was in the works. In exchange for pleading guilty to Keller’s murder, Curl — who was accused of raping and murdering the teen before setting her remains on fire — got a 37-year prison sentence. While he will be required to serve 100 percent of the sentence with no time off for good behavior, Curl will receive credit for the more than two years he’s spent in the DeKalb County Jail awaiting trial.
Last Monday, Keller’s family learned the trial would never happen.
READ: 'This Could Be Anybody Else's Kid Next Time:' Curl Gets 37 Years in Toni Keller Murder
Diane Keller took to Facebook, blasting Schmack and the prosecution team:
So there is a plea agreement for a lighter sentence. So, that is OK after a man beats, rapes, murders and burns my baby Toni in a firepit and he doesn't get life? So he can finally plead guilty after putting the family through the absolute worst hell? ... The system is so, so wrong. Just for the record, we, the Keller family, wants to go to trial, to prosecute a murderer who threw my baby in a firepit and burned every freckle on her face, every beautiful piece of her. I blame the City of DeKalb for [taking] the easy way out to save money, time and their reputations.
“I can’t imagine what her family is going through,” said NIU graduate Kelly Haas. Like Toni Keller, Haas was an art major at the DeKalb university, but she never met the Plainfield teen.
“I was a senior when she was a freshman,” said Haas, who was disillusioned by the plea deal.
“We’re taught to believe in the American system and told that people will take care of you and justice will prevail,” Haas said. But she said she doesn’t believe Toni’s family got justice — a feeling her boyfriend, Josh Richter, shared.
“The word justice isn’t defined here at all,” he said. “If this can happen once, what’s to stop it from happening again?”
DeKalb resident Thelma Holderness organized the event after members of the Summoning of Yellow Facebook page continued to express their outrage following last week’s plea deal.
Holderness said she and several other members have called and emailed Schmack’s office to express their anger over the plea agreement. As of Monday, she said, prosecutors had not responded to her messages.
Donna Di Tusa made the drive from Plainfield to Sycamore Monday to stand with others at the courthouse.
“I’m just here to support [Toni’s] parents,” Di Tusa said. “The decision last week was devastating.”
DeKalb resident Darla Cook wasn’t shy in expressing her disappointment with Schmack, who successfully ran against incumbent State’s Attorney Clay Campbell last fall.
Cook carried a bright yellow sign — a nod to Toni’s favorite color — with the words “Schmack is a Schmuck!,” calling the new state’s attorney a hypocrite and a coward, among other things.
Cook said she hadn't been following the Keller case very closely, but felt moved to do something after she heard about the plea deal.
“It’s like something really snapped when I saw what they were going to do,” she said. “I was very angry.”
In a press release issued last week, Schmack defended his decision to accept the plea agreement.
“[Prosecutors had] to consider the gross injustice of a potential verdict of not guilty, and the unimaginable pain that would have meant for her loved ones. Some may be able to put that risk out of their thoughts, but prosecutors cannot,” Schmack wrote. “We recognize that we can never fully understand the pain of the families of murder victims, even as we attempt to fully explain all of the intricacies of the legal system… Sometimes, as is the case here, we do not reach a point where the victim’s family is in full agreement with everything we have done.”
Read more about Toni Keller:
- Judge Denies Motion to Delay Toni Keller Murder Trial
- Toni Keller Murder Trial Delayed Again
- Judge: Defendant Will Face First-Degree Murder Charges in Death of Toni Keller
- Toni Keller Trial: New Start Date Falls on Slain Student's 21st Birthday
- Accused Killer Seeks to Have Murder Charges Dismissed in Toni Keller Case
- Remembering Toni, Two Years After