Man gets 35-year term in murder

Dumped wife's body in suitcase
A man was sentenced to 35 years in prison today for killing his wife, stuffing her body in a suitcase and dumping her in a Chicago trash bin.

Jeff A. McCree, 36, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder charges for the April 28, 2004, strangulation death of his wife, Vida, in her Woodridge apartment just five days after he was freed from prison for residential burglary.

The couple married in May 2001 but began living apart a couple months later when police arrested him that July for attempted residential burglary. He served nearly three years of a 78-month prison sentence before being released April 23, 2004.

Afterward, he stayed off and on with his mother in Chicago and his wife in her Windsor Lakes apartment on the 7200 block of Woodward Avenue in Woodridge. The morning of the murder, prosecutors said, McCree attacked his wife shortly after she awoke.

“They had been arguing,” prosecutor Joseph Ruggiero said. “He was angry with her for not putting him as the beneficiary on her life insurance policy.”

Her roommate reported the 41-year-old woman missing one day after the slaying. Later that day, a waste hauler collecting trash in an alley on the 4600 block of West Ohio Street in Chicago found Vida McCree’s 180-pound body stuffed in the suitcase. Police also found her abandoned car in Chicago several blocks from the apartment of McCree’s mother.

Vida McCree was a native of Ghana who worked at Sony Music in Bolingbrook. She also held down a part-time job as a certified nursing assistant in Naperville. Jeff McCree is an ex-convict who had 27 prior arrests, most of which involved burglary and drug offenses. He had served three prison stints for his crimes.

He apologized today for killing his wife, spoke of God and thanked prosecutors for seeking justice for his wife’s murder.

McCree must serve 100 percent of the term before being eligible for parole. DuPage Circuit Judge Robert Anderson presided over the plea deal, which was reached one day before his trial was scheduled to begin.