I-Team: Mother discusses calls from alleged killer Robert Serritella

Bond was denied Thursday for Robert Serritella, the man charged with murdering a Skokie teenager 22 years ago.

In an exclusive interview with ABC7's I-Team, the victim's mother talks about phone calls she got from the suspected killer.

According to the evidence, Serritella's big mouth eventually did him in. Investigators say from the phone call he made to police four days after 15-year-old David Chereck was found, to the interview with the I-Team, to conversations with friends, Serritella spun so many versions of what he knew that he wound himself into a knot.

The murder charge against Serritella is based largely on his own words, in one case to the victim's mother herself.

READ: Robert Serritella bond proffer document

"It was a little unnerving to see him. I didn't sleep well last night," said Esther Chereck, the victim's mother.

Esther Chereck has had a lot of bad nights since January 1, 1993, when her only child never returned home from a night with friends.

She waited and wondered why authorities didn't charge the prime suspect, Serritella, for 22 years. And she watched when the I-Team interviewed Serritella in 1998, and when he looked into the lens and spoke to her.

"I don't know for sure who killed your son, I think I might have the answer..." he said in the interview.

Last summer Serritella even called Esther Chereck to discuss the murder of her son, providing details that only the killer would seem to know.

According to the first degree murder charge paperwork, four days after the murder Serritella called police and offered himself as an eyewitness. Forest preserve detectives learned that Serritella had numerous previous approaches on boys that seemed aimed at sexual encounters.

There was the March 1998 I-Team interview, then a June 1998 police interview in which Serritella said victim David Chereck and the offender had smoked marijuana, then "things got out of hand."

Finally a more recent witness said Serritella called the homicide investigation like a hang nail in his life, and that Serritella spoke in first person while describing the interview.

"I did not kill this boy. I did not kill this boy. I did not kill this boy. Everything is circumstantial," he said in the interview.

Serritella was brought from California to Chicago Wednesday to stand trial, where he had a more defiant tone.

When David Chereck's mother sat in court Thursday, the decades weighed on her.

"Normally, I think about David every day and I only think about good things or I remember the funny things. Today I thought about the bad things," she said.

A grand jury will hear the case in the next few weeks, and prosecutors will ask for an indictment.