Anthony Joseph "Tony" Hackett, an 18-year-old male from Joliet, Illinois, was tragically murdered on July 17, 1983. Hackett was shot four times while he slept in a car parked along Interstate 55 near Wilmington. He and his girlfriend were returning from Great America amusement park in Gurnee, Illinois. The woman was sexually brutalized, bound and gagged, then stabbed and dumped by a road south of Joliet, where she was found, near death, by a passing motorist.
She survived and testified against Johnson at the trial.
Milton Johnson, a paroled rapist, was convicted of Hackett's murder. Johnson's killing spree in the summer of 1983 terrorized the Joliet area. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Hackett and four women in a Joliet ceramics shop on August 20, 1983. Johnson was considered a prime suspect in the slayings of nine other people who were killed in three rampages that bloody summer, including the shootings of five people on July 16 in Homer Township, less than 24 hours before Hackett was killed.
Johnson's method of operation and ballistics evidence linked him to the other slayings, but it was not enough to develop a strong case against him. Johnson was paroled from prison in February 1983 after serving 13 years of a 25- to 35-year sentence for the rape of a Joliet woman. At the time, Johnson lived with his mother and stepfather, Sam Myers. Shortly after the July 16, 1983, slayings of five people, including two auxiliary police officers, Johnson’s stepfather was questioned by the Will County Sheriff’s Department because a receipt for repair of a fishing reel that carried his name and address was found under the body of one of the victims.
Johnson's killing rampage began with the deaths of two older women on the outskirts of Joliet. Some have dubbed Johnson "The Weekend Murderer." A Joliet native, Johnson turned 68 years old in May. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection in the 1980s, but his sentence was changed to life in prison after then-Illinois Governor George Ryan abolished the death penalty.
