One of Aurora’s longest-running cold cases came to a conclusion on Friday in a Kane County courtroom when Judge Julia Yetter sentenced 53-year-old Prince Cunningham of Yorkville to 70 years in prison for the murder of Tyesha Bell, who was reported missing more than 23 years ago from her apartment on North Randall Road in Aurora.
“Although no sentence can undo the pain caused by this defendant, today’s outcome delivers the justice Tyesha deserves,” said Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser in a statement following the sentencing attended by many of Bell’s family members.
While Cunningham, the father of Bell’s young daughter, had long been suspected by police in connection with her disappearance in May of 2003, the breakthrough in the investigation came in December of 2020 when a surveyor working on land being developed in Montgomery discovered human remains that forensics eventually identified as Bell, 22 at the time of her disappearance, who had been shot once in the back of the head.
It was a major turn that brought both relief and renewed grief for her loved ones, especially her mother Lorna Smith, who for all those years was committed to keeping her daughter’s name in the public eye.
Cunningham was arrested in June of 2022 and found guilty of first-degree murder on May 27, 2026.
In her victim’s impact statement on Friday, Smith quietly described her middle of three daughters as a “beautiful woman inside and out” who was both intelligent and funny, and whose absence has “left a hole in my heart” that only Tyesha could heal.
“I just hope one day he finds Jesus,” Smith said, insisting she “had no bitterness toward” Cunningham, who had been in a relationship with her daughter even though he was married at the time.
Smith went on to share a statement from Tyesha Bell’s oldest daughter Tiniya, breaking down momentarily as she read a list of milestones the two would never share, including her master’s program involvement that would have made her mother so proud.
Bell’s youngest child, who is Cunningham’s daughter and was not yet 2 years old when Tyesha walked out to meet him that morning in 2003 and disappeared, also reflected on how much her mother was denied as she read her statement to the court.
“I’m 25, trying to figure out my life,” said Tiarra Bell, noting how her young mother never got a chance to experience the life that lay ahead of her.
“She should be here,” she said, never once looking at her father who became emotional during the short statement.
Later, Cunningham tried to speak directly to his daughter but the judge ordered him to address the court only.
In that statement he apologized to Tyesha Bell’s family for what they had been through but then staunchly declared his innocence.
Later, Smith acknowledged her disappointment in Cunningham’s continued refusal to admit his guilt.
“I wish he would have stopped with the ‘I am sorry,'” she said.
Still, Smith, who raised Tyesha’s daughters as her own, again insisted she has no ill feelings toward him, noting that she got rid of all her anger and resentment toward Cunningham early on, in large part because of her own deep faith that “helped me get through” so many years of “wondering what happened.”
That cruel wait was one of the reasons Mosser argued for the maximum 85-year sentence for Cunningham who, she told the court, not only killed the mother of his child “execution style” … with “no emotion, no care,” but then buried her so she would not be found.
“For 17 years, the family was left hoping and wondering whether Tyesha would come back in their lives safe and healthy,” Mosser continued.
In her statement following the judge’s ruling, Mosser praised the Aurora Police Department and the “relentless efforts of everyone who refused to let this case go unsolved, despite the defendant’s lies, attempts to distance himself from the crime and continued refusal even today to take accountability for his actions.”
Friday’s sentence, she stated, “justly represents the horrific choice that Prince Cunningham made when he chose to take the life of Tyesha Bell.
“He robbed Tyesha’s daughters of their mother and robbed her family of a sister and a daughter, and he did so purely out of his own selfishness.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
