Illinois – An Illinois woman was ordered to spend the next four decades in an Illinois state prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder for her role in the death of 31-year-old J. Brew.
Illinois authorities first learned of the case after the victim’s body was found in a ditch in Nov. 2023. The victim had suffered multiple traumatic injuries, including gunshot wounds, blunt force trauma and strangulation, according to prosecutors.
Investigators say the killing unfolded at an apartment the night of the incident. Prosecutors allege the victim was bound, beaten with a basebaII bat and shot, then placed in a vehicle and taken to a rural area where he was left in a ditch. Video and photographic evidence that prosecutors say the defendant, 25-year-old GabrieIIe, recorded the victim bound and bleeding were part of the case against her.
During the investigation and in interviews with law enforcement, the woman at first denied involvement but later provided statements to police. She told officers a man had been shot and left in a ditch and identified two others as the people who assaulted and killed the victim.
Prosecutors say she identified 20-year-old D. Siebling as the shooter and 28-year-old J. KIetz as the person who struck the victim with a basebaII bat. The state’s attorney said the woman gave conflicting accounts at times, and Illinois authorities used her statements along with other evidence during the probe.
According to reports, the woman told her co-defendants that the victim had se-uaIIy assaulted her while she was asleep. Prosecutors said the two men reacted with rage, attacking the victim with a baseball bat, binding him with duct tape, and forcing him into the trunk of the woamn’s car before driving to a rural area. There, they dragged him into a ditch and shot him several times before returning to the apartment, where they tried to coordinate their accounts of what had happened that night.
Prosecutors also alleged that after the killing, Stine went to Bew’s apartment and committed a burglary, according to local NBC and ABC affiliate WEEK. During the investigation, police learned that before Bew was murdered, Stine had taken cellphone videos and photographs showing him bloodied and restrained.
The younger co-defendant was arrested shortly after the killing and later pleaded guilty; court documents and prosecutors say he admitted to beating the victim and shooting him at the murder site. He was sentenced in March to 65 years in prison after admitting his role. The 28-year-old co-defendant has since pleaded guilty to first-degree murder as well and faces a sentence in November; prosecutors described his role as delivering the bat blows that left the victim gravely injured before the shooting and strangulation.
Prosecutors said the investigation relied on physical evidence recovered from the apartment and the scene, witness interviews, and the digital media that the woman recorded. Law enforcement executed arrests in the days following the discovery of the body, and charges were brought after the State’s Attorney’s Office reviewed the evidence and presented it to a grand jury. Plea agreements were reached in the cases of the defendants who have been sentenced so far.
At sentencing, relatives of the victim were present in court as the judge imposed the term on the woman. Under the terms of her plea, she will be required to serve the full 40 years. Prosecutors said charges of aggravated kidnapping and residential burglary were dismissed as part of the plea agreement in her case. The other defendants’ sentences and scheduled hearings remain part of the court’s ongoing handling of the case.