"Tragic end": Ailing mom who killed disabled daughter dies in apparent suicide
SCHAUMBURG, Ill. -- Authorities say a suburban Chicago mother who was scheduled to return to prison for killing her severely disabled adult daughter in 2015 has been found dead of an apparent suicide.
The Cook County medical examiner's office says Bonnie Liltz was pronounced dead Saturday. A county judge had ordered the 57-year-old to return to prison Monday.
"It's a tragic, tragic end," her attorney, Tom Glasgow, told the Chicago Tribune on Sunday. "She just didn't want to die in prison."
Schaumburg Police Sgt. Christy Lindhurst says authorities haven't found any evidence of foul play and believe it's a suicide. Lindhurst told CBS Chicago officers responded to her apartment after a 911 call from a family member.
Liltz was sentenced in 2016 after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of her 28-year-old daughter Courtney, who the Chicago Tribune reports couldn't walk or feed herself and required constant care. Liltz had cancer and said she feared for her daughter's future as her own health declined.
Liltz reportedly fed her daughter an overdose of medication through her feeding tube on May 27, 2015 and then tried unsuccessfully to kill herself.
Despite a recommendation from prosecutors for Liltz to serve probation, the Chicago Tribune reports Cook County Judge Joel Greenblatt sentenced her to serve four years in prison, saying, "the choice you made that morning was not an act of love. It was a crime."
Liltz was released on bond while appealing to the Illinois Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
"She's at peace now, in heaven with her daughter," her mother Gladys Liltz told the Chicago Tribune. "That's all she ever wanted, was to be with Courtney."
