Judge Mulls Mistrial in Allan Kustok Murder Case

Prosecutors rested their case against accused wife-killer Allan Kustok Thursday and the Orland Park man's attorneys called for a mistrial.

Cook County Judge John Joseph Hynes said he was reserving judgment on the matter until he had a chance to review case law.

Kustok attorney Rick Beuke based his argument for a mistrial on the decision by prosecutors to neither play a video of Kustok's interrogation by an Orland Park police detective nor call the detective to testify.

Beuke said Assistant State's Attorney Lorna Amado-Chevlin told the jury during her opening statement that the video would be used as evidence against Kustok but that she and her fellow prosecutors failed to follow through.

Parts of the video, which shows Detective Joe Czarnowski questioning Kustok, were played while the jury was out of the courtroom.

Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer Gonzalez said the evidence Amada-Chevlin was referring to was elicited from other witnesses.

The last prosecution witness, crime scene reconstructionist Rod Englert, finished three days of testimony Thursday. Englert told jurors that blood stains on Kustok's T-shirt, shorts and eyeglasses proved he shot his wife, Jeanie Kustok, in the face as she lay in their bed.

The first defense witness called to testify, blood stain pattern specialist Paul Kish, said the blood on Allan Kustok's T-shirt proved no such thing. According to Kish, the stains were "blood transfer."

Jeanie Kustok died in September 2010. Allan Kustok, 63, reportedly said he bought his wife the gun that killed her as an anniversary gift because she was afraid of prowlers.

On the morning of the shooting, Allan Kustok said he woke to a gunshot and discovered his dead wife in bed next to him. He said he picked up the gun and fired the remaining bullets into an armoire, then held his wife for about 45 minutes before wrapping her in bedding and driving her to Palos Community Hospital.

Allan Kustok said he considered killing himself after he realized his wife was dead.

Kish said he last testified as an expert in Illinois during the 2012 Christopher Vaughn murder trial in Joliet. In that case, Kish was called by prosecutors and told the jury Vaughn's wife, Kimberly Vaughn, must have been killed before Christopher Vaughn bled on her.

Christopher Vaughn had claimed his wife shot him in the leg and gunned down their three children before taking her own life.

Kish was so adamant in his assessment of the blood evidence that he prompted defense attorney George Lenard to demand a mistrial.

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