'Hickory Street Killer' gets 2nd life-sentence for killing cellmate imprisoned for non-violent crime

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The family of a man who was strangled in prison nearly a year ago received some accountability Monday when an already convicted heinous murderer was given another life sentence.

Joshua Miner was given a life-sentence after pleading guilty to first-degree murder charges for strangling his Western Illinois Correctional Center cellmate, Andrew Ortega, on Aug. 26, 2024.

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When Ortega's mother first contacted the ABC 7 I-Team last fall, she demanded justice after no one had been charged for her son's murder.

All evidence pointed to her son's cellmate, Miner, as the killer. Miner was already serving time for another heinous crime in the Chicago suburbs, the I-Team found.

Pixilated prison surveillance video from the early morning hours of August 26 show the very moments Ortega was being strangled behind the locked door of his downstate jail cell.
Now, nearly a year to the day, Brown County Judge Jerry Hooker handed down his sentence.

"The sentence, Mr. Miner, for the first-degree murder of Andrew Ortega is natural life without the possibility of parole," Hooker said.

Ortega's upbringing in Chicago was peppered with substance abuse and non-violent criminal convictions.

A guilty plea for a 2019 felony burglary charge, failed drug tests and probation violations landed him behind bars at Western Illinois Correctional Center last year where his family says he was housed with a monster.

"They placed him in a cell with who they call the Hickory Street murderer from Joliet," Andrew's mother Janet Ortega told the I-Team last December.

Miner is the convicted mastermind of the 2013 crime known as the 'Nightmare on Hickory Street' when he and three others lured two men into a Joliet home, where they were robbed and strangled.

Miner was given a life sentence, ineligible for parole.

When Ortega learned he was housed with his violent cellmate, he told his family he had asked for a cell transfer, but prison officials previously told the I-Team there was no evidence of this request.

State experts told the I-Team there are no known state policies preventing violent offenders from being housed with non-violent offenders, like this in case.

On the morning of August 26, investigation records obtained by the I-Team state that prison guards discovered Ortega's body in his cell after missing breakfast.

Looking in his cell, guards may have been thrown off by shoes, pants and a shirt stuffed with pillows to appear like Ortega was in his top bunk sleeping.

Investigators believed Miner staged the cell bunk to throw the guards off during their cell checks.

It took nearly five months for first-degree murder charges to be filed against Miner, based on investigators with the Illinois Department of Corrections not forwarding a case to the Brown County State's Attorney for some time.

That was despite Miner admitting to killing Ortega the day his body was discovered, according to interview transcripts reviewed by the I-Team.

At Monday's sentencing hearing, Janet Ortega told Miner her son "was never given a death sentence," and that she "hopes he rots in hell."

"I wish we had the death penalty," Ortega said after court, wiping away tears. "My tears aren't for him. My tears are for my family, my son."