In 2013 police interview, McHenry man denies knowing the whereabouts of Jacqueline Schaefer

WOODSTOCK – A former McHenry man’s trial on murder allegations continued Thursday with a video of his police interrogation in Las Vegas in which he denied knowing what happened to his ex-girlfriend and former tenant — whose remains were found in a sealed bedroom in his home.

"I don't know what happened to her… She had a lot of enemies," William J. Ross told Sheriff's Detective Thomas Jonites in Las Vegas on Nov. 9, 2013.

On the third day of testimony, jurors were shown a nearly one-and-a-half hour recorded interview between Ross, Detective Ed Maldonado and Jonites. In the video, Ross was brought to the room in a wheelchair, his gray hair long and unkempt.

Ross said he would frequently leave McHenry for business trips and one time he returned home she was already gone. The last time he told detectives he saw Jacqueline Schaefer was between October and December 2011.

Jonites asked Ross if Schaefer told him where she was headed and he said she was planning on moving back to Missouri, but he could not confirm if she had done so.

He said he never tried to talk Schaefer into staying, but he did not want her to leave McHenry.

"How do you know she didn't go floatin' down the river," Ross said to detectives during questioning, adding that she could have been suicidal.

Ross, 64, is accused of shooting his girlfriend in the left temporal lobe and spine sometime in 2011, sealing her bedroom shut with caulk, trim, paint, screws and nails, and then abandoning the home at 518 Country Club Drive in McHenry.

Forensic pathologist Larry Blum previously testified Wednesday, finding to a "reasonable degree of scientific medical certainty" that was Schaefer's cause of death.

Schaefer’s remains were found in the home November 2013, nearly two years after her alleged murder.

Ross faces 20 to 60 years on the murder charge and if prosecutors are able to prove the crime was committed with a firearm, he could be sentenced to an additional 25 years to life.

During the interview, Ross said Schaefer didn't have a lot of friends and she wasn't very close with her family. The two met when she started renting a room in his residence and they would occasionally spend time together, Ross said.

Jonites asked Ross when he left McHenry and he said it was sometime in the summer of 2012 because he wanted to travel around the country and visit friends. Ross had since retired and was living on social security, but he said he also invested in the stock market and had money saved.

Ross told detectives that Schaefer and his friend and ex-girlfriend, Renee Bitton, "hated each others guts" and so they would hardly speak. He said he eventually lost touch with Schaefer, but did keep in touch with Bitton and asked her to keep an eye on both of his McHenry properties while he was away.

Bitton and her then-boyfriend, Jerome Mikos, found the remains that were later identified as Schaefer when Bitton said she was retrieving a space heater from the residence, even though Ross told Bitton never to enter the home.

Jonites asked Ross why he sealed up the home before he left and he said he didn't want Bitton breaking into his home, rearranging furniture or taking his records.

He also wanted to keep his "valuables" protected because he said, "people steal stuff."

Maldonado said in the video he believed Ross hated Schaefer and in a rage "took her out" and sealed the bedroom.

Defense Attorney Stephen Richards said despite the techniques detectives used when speaking with Ross in 2013, which included providing false information and exxagerations, he did not confess to murdering Schaefer.

"Sometimes well educated murderers don't confess no matter what you do, do they," Assistant State's Attorney asked Maldonado.

"That is true," Maldonado said.

McHenry County Judge Sharon Prather is presiding over the trial. Prosecutors rested their case Thursday afternoon.