A Chicago man pleaded guilty Tuesday to the murder of 16-year-old Desiree Robinson, who had been trafficked by another man to engage in sex acts with customers and whose body was found in a Markham garage Dec. 24, 2016.
Antonio Rosales, 37, was sentenced to 39 years in prison under a plea agreement accepted by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Coughlin at the Markham courthouse.
Rosales had met Robinson at a home in the 16200 block of South Hamlin Avenue and the two argued after the girl refused to perform a sex act for free, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Kelly Grekstas said at the plea hearing.
Rosales struck the girl several times, strangled her and “ultimately cut her throat with a sharp object,” Grekstas said.
The girl’s mother, Yvonne Ambrose, asked that Rosales be kept “incarcerated for the rest of his life.”
Speaking before the sentence being handed down, she turned toward Rosales and told him “you decided her life didn’t matter.”
“I won’t be able to see her grow up, get married, have children,” Ambrose said. “You took the life of my oldest child, my only daughter, you took her away from me.”
Ambrose said her daughter “had the brightest smile that lit up any room she entered,” and had aspirations to join the Air Force after high school and pursue a career in medicine.
The girl’s aunt, Tiffany Robinson, said her niece “was full of energy and sass with a bubbly attitude.”
“Her whole family adored her,” she told the court.
Robinson said the manner and details of the girl’s death are “heartbreaking and unimaginable for us.”
“Our family is forced to live with the pain and brokenness of losing Desiree,” she said.
The girl’s grandfather, Russell Robinson, said that on several occasions he has had nightmares where he is at the scene of his granddaughter’s death, and also urged natural life in prison for Rosales.
“You are a menace to every woman in society,” Robinson told him. “People like you should not walk free ever again.”
Rosales has been in custody since his arrest Dec. 27, 2016, and could have faced a maximum term of 60 years.
He did not say anything to the judge before sentencing and his attorney did not call on anyone to speak on behalf of Rosales.
In early June 2019, Joseph Hazley was sentenced to 32 years in federal prison after a jury earlier in the year had convicted him of sex trafficking charges.
Hazley had posted Desiree’s information in sexually explicit online advertisements and arranged multiple meetings for her to engage in sex acts, according to federal prosecutors.
He drove the girl to several sessions with customers in the Chicago area during December 2016, including to the location in Markham where she met with Rosales, according to prosecutors.
Robinson had been living with her paternal grandparents when she ran away from their home in late November 2016. The girl reached out to her family a couple of times but would not tell them where she was staying, and stopped contacting them shortly before Christmas.
“I am relieved that that individual who took her life will now pay for what he did to my beautiful daughter and to our family, although no amount of justice in the court system will begin to offset our loss, and her loss of what I know would have been a beautiful life,” Ambrose said in a statement released later Tuesday by the family’s attorneys, Romanucci & Blandin.
Desiree’s family, in May 2017, filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit against Backpage.com, the classified website where sex ads featuring the teen were allegedly posted. The site was shut down by the federal government in April 2018.
The lawsuit has been on hold while a federal case against company executives proceeds in Arizona, although the judge last September declared a mistrial.
The lawsuit by Ambrose alleges Backpage.com created an online marketplace for child sex traffickers and that the website facilitated child sex trafficking by assisting traffickers in the wording of their advertisements to avoid detection by law enforcement.
Rosales’ guilty plea and sentence “certainly brings a measure of satisfaction to those who loved Desiree Robinson, knowing he will be behind bars for decades to come,” Bhavani Raveendran, a partner in the firm, said in Tuesday’s statement.
The attorney noted that Ambrose “will continue her quest to finally hold accountable those who made it possible to advertise Desiree on-line, to send a message to every community that those who endanger and traffic other human beings will need to answer for their actions.”
mnolan@tribpub.com
