Crime & Safety
Ex-Husband: Mokena Woman Who Killed Mother Was ‘Good Daughter’
Gaye Wern's ex-husband, Mike Wern, talks about the devastation of mental illness and how it has affected his family.
Mike Wern sits as closely as possible to his ex-wife Gaye—the first row of spectators in the dimly lit fourth floor of a Will County courthouse.
Minutes later, Gaye Wern was sentenced to 10 years in prison for stabbing her 89-year-old mother to death.
Wern last week pleaded guilty by reason of mental illness, to the second-degree murder of her 89-year-old mother Tresa McCauley. The Dept. of Corrections will evaluate her placement and determine her eligibility to serve her time in the DOC's Dept. of Human Services. With day-for-day credit, she could be released from prison in five years.
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Despite the fact that the couple divorced in 2009, her ex-husband, Mike Wern, 61, readily admits he still loves Gaye. Since the couple divorced in 2009, he continued to lend financial support to both Gaye and her elderly mother. Gaye was an only child. She was adopted, he said.
When Tresa broke her leg in July 2009, Gaye refused to leave the hospital for six weeks. She slept there; alone, she served as caregiver.
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"Taking care of her mother was a drain on her," he said. The couple's children were unsuccessful in their attempts to convince Gaye to put her mother in a nursing home.
Wern was in shock when, on the afternoon of Feb. 15, 2010, Gaye walked into the Mokena Police Department and confessed to killing her mother.
"I couldn't believe it. What do you do? The kids heard it on TV. My kids were in shock,” he said.
"She was a good mother to the kids, and she was a good daughter to her mother."
The couple's three adult children have been supportive throughout, said Wern. Two of the three—Erin Reardon, 30, of St. Louis, and Dean Wern, 23, of New Lenox, gathered at their father's home after Gaye was sentenced today. The third, 28-year-old John Wern, lives in California.
It's been hard on the Mike's 6-year-old granddaughter, he said.
"She keeps asking 'Where's grandma?' We tell her she's in the hospital.”
Wern posted Gaye's bond when she was initially arrested and charged with first-degree murder. On July 30 he also paid the $20,738 fine that accompanied her prison sentence.
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