A man exonerated in a killing for which he spent 15 years in prison has reached a $9 million settlement with investigators in northern Illinois.
Libertyville Village Administrator Chris Clark told the town's board on Tuesday that its insurance cooperative agreed to the settlement with Jason Strong.
Strong was convicted in 2000 of killing Carpentersville resident Mary Kate Sunderlin. Her badly beaten body was found in a forest preserve near North Chicago in 1999. Lake County prosecutors dropped charges in 2015, citing evidence contradicting trial testimony.
Strong now lives in Tennessee. He'll get $6 million from the city of Waukegan, a suburb of Chicago, while the remaining $3 million will be come from nine agencies that were part of the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, which investigated the killing.
