Articles written by Susan Sarkauskas


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  • Man sentenced to life for brutal murder

    Susan Sarkauskas, Daily Herald|Updated Jul 1, 2020

    The man convicted of killing Andrea Urban in the kitchen of her Hinsdale home on May 4, 2017, was sentenced Tuesday to natural life in prison. In sentencing Dominic Sanders of University Park, DuPage County Circuit Court Judge Brian Telander agreed with the jury that the murder was exceptionally brutal and heinous and indicative of wanton cruelty, the legal standard for imposing natural life. A jury in January found Sanders guilty of first-degree murder, home invasion and residential burglary. Telander disagreed with the...

  • Guilty verdict in murder, home invasion in Hinsdale; jury rules it especially brutal

    Susan Sarkauskas, of the Daily Herald|Updated Jan 29, 2020

    A jury has found Dominic Sanders guilty of first-degree murder, home invasion and residential burglary in the slaying of Andrea Urban of Hinsdale in 2017, and it called the murder especially brutal or heinous. That means Sanders would be eligible for a natural life sentence. The jurors believed the prosecutors' argument, that Urban was killed in a vicious outburst of rage during a burglary of her home, and not the defense argument, that somebody else killed her later that day, after Sanders stole and sold two of Urban's...

  • Video shows murder suspect deny killing

    Susan Sarkauskas, of the Daily Herald|Updated Jan 22, 2020

    Hinsdale detective Thomas Krefft and murder suspect Dominic Sanders spent about six hours together May 25, 2017, in an interrogation room at the Burr Ridge Police Department. Over that time — which started at about 3:30 a.m. — Krefft picked at Sanders’ story about how and why he had sold two rings at a pawnshop in Melrose Park earlier that month. The rings are playing a key role in Sanders’ trial for the slaying of Andrea Urban on May 4, 2017, inside her Hinsdale home. Please click on the following link to continue reading...

  • Victim's 14-year-old daughter testifies at Hinsdale murder trial

    Susan Sarkauskas, Daily Herald|Updated Jan 20, 2020

    The daughter of a slain Hinsdale woman testified Thursday as the murder trial of suspect Dominic Sanders of Chicago entered its third day. The girl, now 14, testified that she had slept the night before the May 4, 2017, slaying in her mother’s bed, as she often did, because her own bed was covered in stuffed animals. She was familiar with where her mother, Andrea Urban, kept her jewelry — including two family-heirloom rings that authorities say Sanders pawned — in the back of a cabinet compartment in a bedroom dresser, behin...

  • Urban murder trial begins, her son is the first to testify for prosecution

    Susan Sarkauskas, Daily Herald|Updated Jan 16, 2020

    During the opening day of Dominic Sanders’ trial on charges he killed a Hinsdale woman in a 2017 home invasion, prosecutors and the defense agreed Wednesday on just two things: the defendant was in Hinsdale that day and he took two family-heirloom rings from the home. Sanders, 32, of University Park, faces charges of first-degree murder, home invasion, armed robbery and residential burglary stemming from the May 4, 2017, slaying of 50-year-old Andrea Urban. The charges allege Sanders stabbed Urban to death during a daytime b...