Fingerprints of man accused in 2016 Wilson killings found in their Sycamore home, expert says

SYCAMORE – About a half hour into chatting cordially with two DeKalb County sheriff’s detectives outside his Cincinnati, Ohio, home on a gray Monday in February 2020, Jonathan D. Hurst asked the police why they were talking to him.

He’d already told detectives a lot about himself: He’d attended high school in Indiana. Went to college at Indiana University for fine arts and history. He was living in Chicago in August 2016 in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

He’d had jobs in Chicago at Barnes and Noble and at restaurants in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood, including Glunz Tavern, where he waited tables and tended bar. At the time of his arrest, he listed his current employment as Sacred Beast, a Cincinnati restaurant, authorities have said. He’d moved to Ohio to be closer to his aunt, he told detectives. His sister was visiting when police came.

Detectives John Holiday and Josh Duehning traveled more than 350 miles from Sycamore to interview Hurst about a double homicide that had sat unsolved since 2016. By that time, investigators believed they’d found enough to make an arrest in the Aug. 14, 2016, brutal killing of Patricia Wilson, 85, and her son Robert Wilson, 64, at their rural home at 16058 Old State Road in Sycamore. Family members found the Wilsons beaten to death the next day.

“I guess I’m wondering what it is that happened that you’re wondering about?” Hurst asked the plain-clothes-clad detectives, according to police video footage presented in court Tuesday.

The pair told Hurst the case they were working on had taken them all across the country. From Washington to Indiana, they’d interviewed many people. They didn’t tell Hurst he was a suspect in a double homicide.

“Do you need to see my home or anything?” Hurst asked minutes later, gesturing to the police. They declined and left, video shows.

Hours later, after obtaining an arrest warrant from a judge, Holiday and Duehning sat inside a room at the Cincinnati Police Department to speak again with Hurst.

“Well, question one: Are you charging me with murder?” Hurst asked right away as the detectives sat down, video shows.

In between police coming to his home and his arrest, Hurst read about the Wilson killings online, he told detectives.

“I just read a couple articles, it’s pretty crazy,” Hurst said in the video.

Footage of the police interview was shown to a jury of Hurst’s peers Tuesday as criminal proceedings entered their fourth day in the double murder trial. Hurst faces four counts of first-degree murder in the Wilson killings, and one count of home invasion. If convicted, he faces a life sentence.

He’s pleaded not guilty.

Investigators have said evidence points to Hurst as the culprit: His DNA is in the Wilson home, authorities alleged. Hurst’s cellphone records showed he was in the area the night the Wilsons were killed. And Patricia Wilson’s missing car was found within walking distance of Hurst’s Chicago home.

More forensic experts are expected to testify Wednesday as prosecutors begin arguments about the DNA investigative process. Hurst’s defense team is expected to begin their arguments Thursday.

It’s not known yet if Hurst will testify in his defense.

In the Feb. 24, 2020, video shown Tuesday, Hurst asked detectives what evidence they had on him.

“What do you think the evidence is?” Holiday asked in reply.

“I don’t know,” Hurst said in the video.

On his porch earlier that day, Hurst told police detectives his mother died on Aug. 9, 2015. Around the anniversary of her death in late summer 2016, he’d decided to go on a “walk across Illinois,” he said.

Living in Chicago, he told police he didn’t have a car, relying instead on public transportation. One weekend in August 2016, he started walking west on North Avenue. The road turns into Illinois Route 64 and leads into Sycamore, right behind the Wilson’s home. Hurst told police he didn’t make it that far, however. He showed them a receipt for an extended-stay hotel in Elmhurst. He said he got tired and returned home, footage shows.

Holiday replied that police still were looking for a key piece in the Wilson’s deaths. Why? Why did someone come into their home and violently attack them one hot August Sunday night?

Hurst has no known connection to the Wilson family, nor ties to Sycamore, authorities have said.

At one point during the interview, Holiday told Hurst he “doesn’t seem like a mean, malicious person,” but that police wanted the full story.

“The why is a big deal,” Holiday said in the video.

“...Was it mean-spirited? An accident?” Holiday asked Hurst. “Without that, somebody else is telling the story and it’s a cold, cold story.”

Matching fingerprints years later, expert testimony details

Though Hurst has denied ever being in Sycamore, a forensic expert testified Tuesday that Hurst’s fingerprints match those found on multiple items inside the Wilson home.

Hurst’s fingerprint was found on two Diet Coke cans police collected in the Wilsons' home, Edward Rottman said in testimony: One opened and on the upstairs kitchen counter. A second one unopened, sitting on the floor of a crawl space in the Wilsons' basement laundry room, Rottman said. Next to the soda can lay two knives, a blanket and a pillow.

Lying half out of that crawl space on the floor was Patricia Wilson, dead. Hours earlier on Aug. 14, 2016, she’d mowed the lawn, talked to her sister on the phone, and gone to church.

Rottman, now retired, worked as a forensic expert at the Illinois State Police’s Rockford laboratory in August 2016.

Investigators sent Rottman as many as 20 identification cards, some from the Wilsons, some from potential suspects over the years. Each had a set of fingerprints on them. Police had also sent the ISP lab fingerprints they’d lifted themselves from items inside the Wilson’s home.

Rottman was meant to use the fingerprint ID cards and crime scene fingerprints in an attempt to identify the Wilsons' killer.

It wasn’t until March 18, 2020, that Rottman found a match, he said in testimony.

When the investigation brought police to Hurst, he was arrested on Feb. 24, 2020, extradited to DeKalb County from Ohio days later, booked at the jail and appeared before a judge. And then he was fingerprinted.

Rottman now had Hurst’s fingerprints at the lab. And he had fingerprints from an unknown person on items in the Wilson home. He compared them.

“They were made by the same individual,” Rottman said in testimony Tuesday, over objections from Hurst’s lead defense lawyer, Chip Criswell.

Rottman said Hurst’s fingerprints also matched a fingerprint found on an empty Gatorade bottle left atop a John Deere riding lawn mower in the garage. Patricia had used the mower hours earlier.

Police collected two other fingerprints from the Wilson’s basement bathroom mirror: one belonged to Robert Wilson, Rottman said. The other was Hurst’s.