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It must have seemed like a good deal when it was offered but now it's nearly 10 years down the road and Julio Alex Montenegro has been living all that time with the blemish of a weapon-related misdemeanor conviction on his record.
Back in 2008, when he pleaded to the misdemeanor, it got him out of a felony. And considering what the police said they found in his GMC Yukon – a Beretta, a box of bullets, handcuffs, a baton and brass knuckles, not to mention a business card bearing the logo of the Black Pistons motorcycle gang – Montenegro, now 47, looks more than a little lucky to have gotten off with just the misdemeanor.
After all, a pistol, a baton and brass knuckles are more than a couple weapons, but Montenegro slipped through with just misdemeanor unlawful use of a single weapon. And when you take into account the reason the police were poking around in his Yukon in the first place, it appears practically miraculous.
The police said they found Montenegro's cache of weapons – and his Black Pistons business card – after his girlfriend, Donna Ledin, called and claimed he shot out a window of her minivan while she was driving on Interstate 55.
Just like Montenegro, Ledin may have been pretty lucky too. At least luckier than a Montenegro girlfriend who came before her. That girlfriend, Melissa Mitchell, was found stabbed to death in the Lockport Prairie Nature Preserve after leaving a Joliet bar on the back of Montenegro's motorcycle in July 2005.
Shortly after Mitchell's body was found, the police named Montenegro a suspect in her murder. They still say he is a suspect and they haven't come up with any others in the 13 years since.
Montenegro has never been charged with harming Mitchell. The only thing tarnishing his record is that misdemeanor conviction, and on Thursday morning, a lawyer went to court to try to clear that away.
The charge Montenegro pleaded to in 2008 has since been declared unconstitutional, his attorney, Cosmo Tedone, explained. Tedone was confident he will succeed in withdrawing Montenegro's guilty plea and vacating the conviction. Montenegro, on the other hand, said this was all a big surprise, as he had not spoken to his lawyer in quite some time and had no idea his case was up in court.
“I don't know,” Montenegro said. “I don't know what to tell you.”
Tedone found Montenegro's lack of awareness unlikely.
“I wouldn't file a motion unless I was requested to by the client,” said Tedone, who added, “Maybe he's confused.”
Tedone then suggested, “Maybe he didn't want to talk to you because I don't think you're his favorite person.”
A police source said that Montenegro might be looking to get rid of this 10-year-old conviction because he's supposedly had trouble obtaining a concealed carry permit, which is understandable when you look at his arrest on a felony weapon charge and his guilty plea to a misdemeanor weapon charge, not to mention that he is the lone suspect in Mitchell's murder and the police have said he is affiliated with both the Black Pistons and the Outlaws. If he wasn't having trouble you would have to wonder if they hand a conceal carry out to anyone who asks for one.
None of which is to say a gun might not prove useful to Montenegro, especially when it comes to protecting his garage, as there's been some trouble there over the years.
Two days after Mitchell's body was discovered, the garage was consumed in a fire. Unfortunately for Montenegro, his motorcycle, the same motorcycle he and Mitchell were riding around on when anyone can say they last saw her alive, was inside it and that was burned up too.
The fire was unfortunate for the police, too, as they had hoped to search the garage for clues to Mitchell's murder, a detective said at the time. But then it burned down and they lost their chance.
Then, just last year, while Montenegro was embroiled in a dispute with a former friend over a 9-foot-long wooden replica motorcycle he was keeping in his replacement garage, somebody broke in and smashed the thing to pieces.
Montenegro said someone pried open the door to his garage and then bashed apart the wooden motorcycle.
Montenegro ended up losing in court and was ordered to pay his former friend, Ruben Franchini, $38,000.
So carrying a handgun might help deter those wishing to do harm to his garage and the motorcycles – both real and wooden – inside it. If that's what he's really looking to do. His lawyer said it's probably not.
“I think he's just trying to clean up his record,” Tedone said.
Can you blame him?
• Joe Hosey is the editor of The Herald-News. You can reach him at 815-280-4094, at jhosey@shawmedia.com or on Twitter @JoeHosey.