Murder of Amber Creek

Amber Gail "Aimee" Creek was born on July 2, 1982, in Park Ridge, Illinois, and raised in Palatine, Illinois. After being sexually abused as a young child, she was removed from her mother's care and placed with her father, Robert Creek. Friends and family described her as a normal child until mid-1996, when her behavior changed following her graduation from junior high school; she began experiencing depression, using drugs and alcohol, and running away from home. She became a ward of the state in late 1996 and ran away from a North Side juvenile residential center in Chicago for the final time on January 23, 1997. She was reported missing and was last seen alive in February 1997 at a hotel party in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, attended by a group of men.

On February 9, 1997, hunters discovered Creek's frozen body in Karcher Springs State Natural Area near Burlington, Wisconsin. She had been killed by asphyxiation with a plastic garbage bag placed over her head, and had suffered extensive physical abuse, including beating, sexual assault, facial slashing, and a bite to the neck. The word "hi" was written on her raised palm, and a bookstore price tag was found on her arm. Some of her clothing and belongings, including her jacket and backpack, were missing from the scene and were never recovered. She was buried, unidentified, as a "Jane Doe" in a ceremony attended by about one hundred local residents; she was later reburied under her own name once identified.

Creek's body was not positively identified until June 26, 1998, following extensive comparison of DNA, dental records, and fingerprints. Her father contacted police after seeing her case featured on America's Most Wanted in December 1998. Because Creek had a history of running away, she was not reported missing for five weeks after she disappeared, an issue that later prompted changes to state law.

In October 2013, an Oklahoma crime lab began re-examining fingerprints from unsolved murder cases, and in February 2014 Creek's case was reopened. Examiners matched a thumbprint on the garbage bag used in the killing to James Paul Eaton, who was 19 at the time of the murder and lived in Palatine. Eaton's fingerprints had only been recorded in 2000 after an unrelated drug paraphernalia arrest. Investigators located Eaton in Chicago and collected discarded cigarette butts in March 2014 to match his DNA to evidence from the crime scene. He was arrested in early April 2014.

Eaton was originally charged with first-degree murder and concealing a body and pleaded not guilty at his October 2014 arraignment. Pretrial proceedings were delayed multiple times, partly due to defense efforts to examine bite-mark and DNA evidence. A judge ruled that some statements Eaton made during interrogation after requesting a lawyer were inadmissible. On October 25, 2016, Eaton pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of first-degree reckless homicide and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, with parole eligibility after ten years. Another unnamed man remained under investigation for suspected involvement in the murder.