June 15, 2022
Chicago – The father led police on a chase across the Chicago area, crashing in Joliet and confessing to the murders to officers who pulled him from his wrecked vehicle, police said.
An estranged father drowned his three young children in a bathtub while they visited his Round Lake Beach home over the weekend, then left a note for his wife that said, “If I can’t have them neither can you,” Lake County prosecutors said in court Wednesday.
Jason Karels —charged with murdering his three children, ages 2, 3 and 5 —then tried to kill himself before leading police on a chase across the Chicago area Monday, prosecutors said.
He crashed into a wooded area in Joliet and confessed to drowning the children one-by-one after their mother had dropped them off for the weekend, prosecutors said.
A Lake County judge ordered Karels held on $10 million bail Wednesday.
Earlier Monday afternoon, the mother came to pick up the children for a doctor’s appointment but no one answered, Police Chief Gilbert Rivera told reporters Tuesday.
The children — Bryant Karels, 5, Cassidy Karels, 3, and Gideon Karels, 2 —died from drowning, according to preliminary autopsy results.
Police had never been called before to the Karels home before, Rivera said.
“I don’t know if anything could have stopped this or if there were any early indications of it,” Rivera said.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Service had no previous contact with the family, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.
After killing his children, Jason Karels tried to kill himself several times inside the home but was unsuccessful, Rivera said. His blood was allegedly found inside the home.
Karels was briefly hospitalized, then charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
Rivera said the murders were an isolated incident that appeared to be “motivated by a domestic situation.”
Rivera was unable to detail any possible ongoing custody battle, or the state of the parents’ relationship besides that they were “estranged.”
