Crestwood man on trial for murder of Lockport mom, daughter won’t testify

A Crestwood man has chosen not to testify in a trial in which he’s charged with killing a Lockport woman and their 14-month-old daughter in 2020.

On Wednesday, Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak asked Anthony Maggio, 30, if he planned to testify after prosecutors finished their case against him and his own attorneys decided to call only three witnesses to the stand.

“I will not testify,” Maggio told Bertani-Tomczak.

Maggio made his decision known to the judge outside the presence of the jury. Afterward, the jury was called back into the courtroom and then dismissed. The jury plans to return Thursday to the Will County Courthouse in Joliet to hear closing arguments in Maggio’s case.

Maggio is charged with the first-degree murder of Ashtin Eaton, 32, of Lockport and their 14-month-old daughter, Hazel Bryant. The two were found dead inside Eaton’s apartment on the morning of Oct. 2, 2020, in Lockport.

The second-to-last witness called by the defense Wednesday was Marcelina Baliczek, 28, whom Maggio’s attorney, Michael Clancy, identified in court filings as Maggio’s wife.

Baliczek, the mother of Maggio’s two daughters, said she was engaged to Maggio in 2019 when she discovered that he had an affair with Eaton that resulted in Hazel’s birth.

Baliczek testified that she and Maggio went to bed together on the night of Oct. 1, 2020, at their Crestwood residence, and she saw Maggio when she woke up the next morning.

Clancy asked Baliczek whether Maggio had left the Crestwood residence during the night.

“Not to my knowledge,” Baliczek said.

Yet Baliczek acknowledged to Will County Assistant State’s Attorney Chris Koch that she didn’t know that Maggio had left their residence on the night of Sept. 20, 2020, to visit Eaton in Lockport. And investigators found no location data for Lockport on Maggio’s phone on that day.

“At the time, you did not know he had snuck out?” Koch asked.

“I did not,” Baliczek said.

Over the course of seven days, prosecutors called 20 witnesses to testify in their case. Maggio’s attorneys called three witnesses: a forensic expert, Baliczek and Maggio’s father.

Prosecutors have presented video of Maggio’s police interview. The video showed detectives expressing suspicion with Maggio’s quiet reaction to the news of Hazel’s death, his lack of curiosity about what happened, and him not showing up to a memorial for Hazel.

Prosecutors also presented Maggio’s text messages with Eaton and Baliczek to bolster their case that Maggio was concerned about having to pay child support for Hazel and alleging that he was motivated to commit the murders because of it.

Investigators obtained financial records showing that Maggio was close to $10,000 in credit card debt, according to last week’s trial testimony.

In one of Baliczek’s texts, she told Maggio that he would pay more money to Eaton than to her for child support and that money should be for “my kids, us or the house that we dreamed of building.”

Prosecutors also presented photos of the crime scene and testimony from forensic experts on the DNA evidence obtained in the case.

Likely the key evidence for prosecutors is the presence of Maggio’s DNA underneath Eaton’s fingernails, on the neckline of her T-shirt and on the handle of a box-cutter knife found next to Eaton’s body.

None of the forensic experts who testified could definitively explain when and how Maggio’s DNA got on those items. But prosecutors contend that Maggio’s DNA ended up on those items when he strangled Eaton to death and cut her left forearm with the knife to make it seem as if she died by suicide.

Prosecutors did not present any eyewitnesses to the homicides or any witnesses who saw Maggio in Lockport at the time of the incident. They also did not present videos showing Maggio or his vehicle traveling in and out of Lockport at the time.

After prosecutors finished their case Wednesday, Clancy motioned for Bertani-Tomczak to dismiss all charges against Maggio, but especially those charges pertaining to Hazel. He argued that there was no DNA evidence tying Maggio to Hazel’s death.

Koch argued that based on the “totality of the circumstances” from the state’s evidence, the person who killed Eaton would’ve also killed Hazel.

Bertani-Tomczak denied Clancy’s motion.

The second-to-last witness called by prosecutors Wednesday was Donnie Crittle, who worked with Maggio at an Amazon facility four years ago in Joliet. Maggio had met Eaton at the facility, where she worked.

Crittle said he was on a smoke break with Maggio and several others. He said Maggio told Crittle that he would pay him $10,000 if he would make Eaton “disappear.”

“I took it as a joke,” Crittle said.