Bolingbrook Man Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail for His Part in Heroin Killing: State's Attorney

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow announced that a Bolingbrook drug dealer who provided the heroin that killed another man has been sentenced to nine years in prison.

Emerson D. Harris, 25, of 433 Mallview Lane, Bolingbrook, pleaded guilty to one count of drug induced homicide on Friday. He sold heroin to Chad Conley, whose body was found on the ground between a Wendy’s and a Shell Station in Bolingbrook on Sept. 19, 2012.  An autopsy revealed that the victim died from a heroin overdose.

Harris also pleaded guilty on Friday to four counts of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance in a separate case. He must serve 50 percent of a 13-1/2 year sentence for those charges. He will serve that sentence concurrently with the nine-year sentence for drug induced homicide. 

During a lengthy investigation, Bolingbrook police interviewed Conley’s friends, who noted that the victim had purchased the heroin from a dealer named Mo. Police later identified the dealer as Harris. Several months later, investigators were able to locate an individual who had been with Conley when he purchased the heroin from Harris, and the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office subsequently filed charges in March of this year.

“Emerson Harris is going to prison for a long time because he fed Chad Conley’s horrible addiction with a fatal dose of street poison,” said State’s Attorney Glasgow.  “The heroin dealers who have created an epidemic in the Chicago area had better the message: We’re going to investigate every heroin overdose death as a homicide, and we’re going to place the dealers behind bars.”

Glasgow credited his Narcotics Unit prosecutors, Mike Knick and Marie Griffin, for securing the guilty plea, as well as the Bolingbrook Police Department for its tenacious investigation in this case.