Man gets life in prison for killing Tinley Park man in 2009

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Updated: January 9, 2012 6:28PM

A 32-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison Monday for killing a Tinley Park man in his apartment in May 2009.

Cook County Judge John J. Hynes handed down the sentence against Lazzerick Mosley, who Hynes convicted last month of murder in the death of 53-year-old William Schmidt.

After a bench trial in November at the Bridgeview courthouse that featured dueling DNA experts, Hynes said he believed the testimony of Mosley’s father and brother, to whom Mosley had confessed days after stabbing Schmidt in his own home before stealing his car.

Before Illinois abolished the death penalty, prosecutors had been seeking capital punishment for Mosley.

He could have faced as little as 26 years behind bars for the murder, but Hynes instead gave him the maximum sentence.

Evidence during the trial showed Mosley for months had stalked Schmidt, who worked overnights at a truck stop, then approached him the morning of May 2, 2009. Mosley pushed Schmidt inside the older man’s messy apartment in the 15900 block of Westway Walk, told him to hand over all his money and valuables, and stabbed and sliced him with a knife Mosley had stolen out his own father’s kitchen.

Mosley told his family he watched Schmidt die, then fled the apartment in Schmidt’s blue Honda Fit to Dolton, where his father lives. But he’d dropped the knife and told his relatives later he couldn’t find it in the apartment’s clutter.

“He provided details only the killer would know,” Hynes said when he issued his guilty verdict in December.

He blamed his father for not getting him a gun, and he enlisted relatives to help him find the keys so he could go back and retrieve the knife, but it was too late, testimony showed.

One of Schmidt’s relatives asked Tinley Park police to do a well-being check; police found his body on May 4 and the knife nearby. Then they found the Fit in the parking lot of a Dolton nursing home where Mosley dumped it.

DNA taken from the knife handle and parts of Schmidt’s car matched Mosley, an Illinois State Police forensic scientist testified. But a private expert hired by Mosley’s attorneys disagreed, saying the DNA profile actually excluded Mosley.