A central Illinois man has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to killing a 14-year-old boy and dumping his body in a roadside ditch.
A judge sentenced Daryl Vandyke, 57, on Wednesday after the Champaign man admitted that he used an ax or other sharp-edged garden tool to kill Steven Butler III, 14, in July 2021.
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Vandyke pleaded guilty to a single count of first-degree murder, WCCU-TV reported. In exchange, several other first-degree murder counts and other charges were dismissed.
Vandyke's plea agreement spared him a possible sentence of life in prison without parole. But he must serve the entire 40-year sentence, meaning he won’t be eligible for parole until age 95, The (Champaign) News-Gazette reported.
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Butler’s father reported him missing to police on the night of July 29, 2021, hours after he left the family home, purportedly to mow a lawn. His body was found by two cyclists the next day in a roadside ditch near Urbana.
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Troy Lozar, Champaign County's First Assistant State’s Attorney, said that after killing the teen, Vandyke cleaned him up and took his body east of Urbana, where he dumped it along a road to make his death look like a traffic fatality.
