It has been more than a decade since a horrific criminal case known as the “Nightmare on Hickory Street” terrorized a Chicago suburb and resulted in two vicious murders.
Now, the ABC7 I-Team has learned that that the person responsible for that first deadly nightmare long ago is allegedly behind a new one, this time in an Illinois state prison, leaving his cellmate dead and questions about how the two of them ended up in the same lockup.
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The latest dead man is a Chicagoan man sent to prison after violating the terms of his work-release program by failing a drug test. His nightmare started when he was housed with a convicted murderer.
That deadly pairing is now the focus of state and county investigations and the victim’s family has turned to the I-Team in their search for answers.
Andrew Ortega, 44, was discovered in his Western Illinois Correctional Center cell on the morning of Aug. 26, 2024.
Brown County sheriff and coroner Justin Oliver would later determine Ortega had been strangled overnight, with an “undershirt/tank top arm strap tightly around [his] neck as a ligature.”