Motivated by outrage over the 1998 murder of a Batavia woman, a state representative on Tuesday proposed creating a public database of convicted murderers.
Rep. Dennis Reboletti, R-Elmhurst, filed a bill known as “Andrea’s Law,” which calls for the Illinois State Police to create a murderer registry database on the Internet of individuals convicted of first-degree murder before truth-in-sentencing requirements were imposed.
The bill is named for Andrea Will, 18, who was strangled by her ex-boyfriend, Justin Boulay, while they were students at Eastern Illinois University.
Boulay was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Under sentencing laws at the time, he had one day removed from his punishment for every day he served without disciplinary problems. Boulay, now 33, was released in November and moved to Hawaii to live with a woman he married while incarcerated.
The proposed murderer registry “is a natural extension to the state’s current sex offender and child murderer registry,” Reboletti said in a prepared statement.
The law would apply to convicted murderers who committed the crime before June 19, 1998. It would require them to be registered for 10 years after their parole, a Reboletti spokeswoman said.
— Ted Gregory
