Victim’s Skull Crushed By Baseball Bat: Joliet Murder Trial Starts

JOLIET, IL —On Jan. 7, 2016, the girlfriend of 62-year-old Joliet Township resident Bob Bielec was inside their small ranch house when she heard a loud thump shortly before 11 p.m. About 15 minutes later, she went outside, curious why Bielec hadn’t come inside.

She found Bielec, who was 5-foot-6, 147 lbs, wedged between the open door of his car and his house. He was not moving, even as he gripped his car keys.

Panicked, she called 911 needing an East Joliet Fire Department ambulance to get there fast.

“He’s laying in a pool of blood around his head,” Will County’s emergency dispatcher heard. “I tried to wake him up. I was so scared. I saw blood.”

Moments later, Bielec’s girlfriend became hysterical after being asked during the 911 call to check whether Bielec was still alive.

“Oh my God, I’m so scared,” she screamed. “I’m shaking. Oh God, please. Bob! Bob!”

The woman began crying.

“I can’t, I can’t do it. Oh God, blood’s everywhere. I can’t do it. I’m too scared.”

Wednesday marked the start of the first-degree murder bench trial for one of the longest serving Will County Jail inmates in recent history — Joliet’s Blaique Morgan, now 26 years old.

Morgan sat at the defense table with his pair of Will County Public Defenders, Shenonda Tisdale and Gabriel Guzman.

Morgan has resided in the Will County Jail for six full years plus nearly 10 months.

For his trial, Morgan got to dress in gray pants and a gray buttoned-shirt and his handcuffs and leg shackles are removed by the Will County Sheriff’s courtroom deputies while his trial takes place.

During the afternoon testimony, Morgan listened as the Will County prosecutors played the disturbing 911 call of his next door neighbor’s gruesome murder.

On Wednesday morning, Morgan waived his right to a jury trial. He preferred to have his first-degree murder case decided by Will County Judge Vincent Cornelius. Younger brother Amari Morgan, now 24, will have his own Will County murder trial take place later, perhaps in 2023.

As prosecutor Mike Fitzgerald played the 911 call during the trial, the audiotapes showed Bielec’s girlfriend becoming impatient toward the emergency dispatcher.

“Will someone get here quick?” she exclaimed.

As the ambulance remained on its way, she yelled, “He’s not breathing.”

“Do you see the ambulance?” the 911 dispatcher asked.

“No, I don’t,” she replied. “He’s got the keys in his hands.

“Bob? This is so bad.”

Bielec’s girlfriend told 911 she would not be able to move him.

“I don’t want to move him with his head like that. Oh, God!” she screamed again.

When the ambulance approached Houston Avenue, she yelled, “Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus.”

But East Joliet’s ambulance, it turned out, missed her address under the cover of darkness.

“They passed the house. They passed it,” she exclaimed. “I’m standing outside in the driveway. I’m at the end of the driveway.”

About 25 minutes had passed since she first heard the loud noise.

“I heard a thump,” she told 911.

On the night of Jan. 7, 2016, Will County Sheriff’s road patrol Sgt. Greg Whited was assigned to the CSI unit. He responded to the overnight crime scene in Bielec’s driveway.

“He had multiple fractures to his skull,” Whited testified.

Afterward, former Will County Chief Deputy Coroner Kevin Stevenson testified he went to Houston Avenue to pronounce Bielec dead.

“I observed the decedent laying in the driveway,” Stevenson told the courtroom.

Prosecutors displayed a number of gory crime scene photos as part of their evidence, including large puddles of the victim’s blood, blood spatter on his house door, and the victim’s lifeless body stretched across his driveway near his car.

Later, a member of Will County’s Victim & Witness Services approached the homicide victim’s family seated in Courtroom 404. In a soft-spoken manner, she told them “there shouldn’t be any more photos like that.”

Morgan’s trial will resume in front of Judge Cornelius around 10:30 a.m. Thursday.

During opening statements, Tisdale told the judge there would not be any physical evidence connecting her client to Bielec’s killing.

Tisdale said she will be asking Cornelius to find Blaique Morgan not guilty of murder at the conclusion of the trial.

Besides Fitzgerald, the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office bench trial is being handled by assistant state’s attorneys Alyson Wozniak and Aristotelis Theodorou.

During her opening statement, Wozniak told the judge that Blaique Morgan’s house sustained multiple bullet holes about nine days prior to the murder and the defendant “believed Robert could have shot” at his house.

On Jan. 7, 2016, the Morgan brothers ambushed Bielec and bashed in his skull, causing him to die from head trauma due to an assault, Wozniak argued.

The Morgan brothers stood 6-foot-2 and 6-foot-4 and both weighed 200 lbs, while Bielec was 62 years old, 5-foot-6 and 147 lbs.

At the conclusion of Wednesday morning’s pretrial arguments by the lawyers, the bailiff for Courtroom 404 approached Tisdale. The public defender learned was told that Blaique Morgan is not to have direct communications with anyone seated in the courtroom gallery.

“He’s smiling, waiving and blowing kisses at them,” the bailiff told Tisdale.

During his afternoon murder trial, Morgan behaved and caused no disruptions that caught the bailiff’s attention.

Prior Joliet Patch Coverage:

‘Sexual’ Remark to Teen Girl Led Brother to Bash in Neighbor’s Skull: Prosecutor