Nathaniel Maloney, in the jail jumpsuit, is led out of the Tazewell County Courthouse after he pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. (WMBD)
A 20-year-old man and his 17-year-old girlfriend will spend the next six decades behind bars after they formulated a plan to kill her parents, court records show.
The couple, Dahlia Bolin and Nathaniel Maloney, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder, at the Tazewell County courthouse near Peoria, Illinois.
According to a probable cause arrest affidavit reviewed by Law&Crime, the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department responded around 9:15 p.m. on Oct. 22, 2021, to a home in Mackinaw for a shots fired call. When deputies arrived Bolin met them outside and told them someone shot her parents. Deputies went inside and found Rebecca and Douglas Bolin shot. First responders pronounced Rebecca Bolin dead while they rushed her husband to the hospital. Douglas Bolin told deputies an unknown person shot him five times. He survived.
Dahlia Bolin, then 15, told detectives she was in the basement when she heard footsteps followed by several gunshots. But after further questioning she admitted she set the whole thing up. She said she hatched a scheme with Maloney and their pals Sage Raeuber and Andre Street to murder her parents, the affidavit said. Dahlia Bolin gave Maloney and Street her father’s guns before the shooting. Raeuber allegedly drove Maloney and Street to the Bolin house. They went inside and shot the husband and wife who were sitting on the couch.
Prosecutors said at Tuesday’s sentencing hearing that the initial plan was just to kill Douglas Bolin and beat up his daughter to make it look like a botched robbery, local CBS affiliate WMBD reported. The four planned the whole thing out in a group text message thread, which authorities recovered, and FaceTime chats, prosecutors said. The younger Bolin had offered them $100,000 out of her parents’ life insurance policy if they carried out the killings. She and her father had been having problems which made her want him dead.
Maloney and Street entered through the basement of the house where they saw Dahlia Bolin. Prosecutors reportedly said the other suspects described her as “giddy, and almost jolly like on Christmas Day.”
Instead of following the plan, Maloney and Street wounded Douglas Bolin and killed Rebecca Bolin and ran away before they could make it look like a robbery, according to prosecutors. Raeuber served as the getaway driver. The quartet were in custody by the next day.
A judge sentenced Maloney to 66 years in prison. Dahlia Bolin and Street, now 19, were juveniles at the time of the murder but were charged as adults. The judge sentenced Dahlia Bolin to 60 years in prison and Street to 55 years behind bars. Raeuber, 21, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
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