Illinois teen says he killed sister to “save her”
Read Time:3 Minute, 4 Second
Shortly after murdering his 4-year-old sister in his Mokena bedroom, Keith Randulich sat in a police interrogation room, apparently staring at his blood-stained pants as he explained to detectives why he did it.
A video recording of Randulich’s interview with police, which came shortly after he brutally cut the neck of his half-sister Sabrina Clement in 2009, was played in court by prosecutors during a sentencing hearing Tuesday. Randulich, 19, pleaded guilty to murder charges last month.
In the video, Randulich, then an 18-year-old senior earning mostly A’s at Lincoln-Way East High School, explained that he decided to kill his sister to protect her from a relative he believed was sexually abusing the girl.
“I had a future,” he explained. “I didn’t do this for no reason.”
Randulich said he made the decision that day after his mother “wouldn’t let me use any of my money” to buy a gun he secretly planned to use to kill the relative.
Mokena police Sgt. Jason Louthan testified Tuesday that investigators found no evidence of “physical abuse” to Clement. Randulich received a mental-health evaluation after the murder but the results were never shared with prosecutors, a state’s attorney spokesman has said.
After his parents and brother left for an event on May 22, Randulich told police he washed some dishes in the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife, which he tucked into his hoodie’s front pocket.
Then he and Clement, dressed in blue and pink pajamas, her wavy brown hair tied in a ponytail, went into Randulich’s basement bedroom to watch “SpongeBob SquarePants” while another brother played a video game upstairs.
When Clement told Randulich she wanted to paint with him, her brother said he would, but asked her to lie on the floor first. He then knelt down, apparently straddling her.
“I just said I loved her and I took out the knife and she smiled at me,” Randulich told the detectives. “I made just a little cut in her neck and she screamed and said, ‘Stop!'”
“I knew right then that I had to kill my little sister,” he said later in the recording. “There was no going back at that point … me and her were best friends.”
“I just started doing it again,” he said. “She grabbed her neck, but I just kept going.”
Randulich told police he thought this would be the fastest way to kill his sister, but it wasn’t and she “was in an extreme amount of pain.”
“She was screaming and fighting,” Randulich said. “(She asked), ‘Why are you killing me?'”
Afterward, Randulich said he went upstairs and called 911. “I — come over here quick,” he says in a recording of the call played in court Tuesday.
Then he returned to the basement, where Clement lay dead.
“I kissed her and said, ‘I’m sorry I had to do that,'” Randulich said. “I really loved my sister.”
The detectives repeatedly pressed Randulich to explain why he thought he was protecting Clement by killing her. “How could you harm something so beautiful?” one of the two questioning detectives asked.
“I’m not proud of that,” Randulich said. “There’s no excuse for it.
“She was the person I loved the most in the family. She was my best friend.”
Randulich said if he could go back in time he would perhaps get a job so he could afford a gun to kill the relative.
“It was a waste of life,” he said.
Randulich is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 2.
“I just want to get this over with, whatever my punishment is, it is,” Randulich says in the video recording.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
100 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
My ex bf was cell mates with this sick kid when he first got arrested, he called me and asked me to google him cuz he wouldnt tell anyone what he was there for. i told him and he told all the other guys in the jail. this kid is sick. there was no sign of abuse and i strongly believe that he was thinking of abusing her and thought this was his only way of not doing it. hes sick and i hope he sits in jail the rest of his life. what a waste of life he is. hell probably get killed in prison before he dies from old age. im surprised hes lasted this long in there with everyone knowing his charges. go rot now u sick twisted loser !!
[…] Illinois teen says he killed sister to save her Then he and Clement, dressed in blue and pink pajamas her wavy brown hair tied in a ponytail, went into Randulich's basement bedroom to watch “SpongeBob SquarePants” while another brother played a video game upstairs. […]
For me, this boy was possibly mentally ill, and going untreated. Is there a link to the original story? Was there any investigation into the possibility that he was an untreated bi-polar?
I can’t help but feel that the “relative” sexually abusing the girl in this scenario is more to blame than the desperate (and crazy) brother. Hope a jury feels the same way.
My take is that he was either sexually abusing her, or tempted to abuse her. The murder was either to keep her from telling, or to “save her from himself” (in a twisted sense).
If the part about him being unable to secure a gun is true, the only reason I can figure that he would kill the victim–the little girl–instead of the alleged abuser would be if the gun was actually intended for a suicide.
If the above is true, there’s a chance that the boy had been abused in his past as well. Of course, this is all speculation, but from what I’ve seen of cable news lately, speculation practically passes for news in itself. I might as well join the circus with my own psychoanalyzing BS. 😀
I agree that this boy is probably the “abuser.” He killed the girl to keep her quiet.