A McHenry man who threatened to kill everyone at the McHenry County Courthouse and eat a judge’s face has been sentenced to probation, court records show.
Jonathon T. Larson, 25, was sentenced to 2 years of probation and ordered to continue with mental health treatment after pleading guilty to harassing a witness who was a family member on June 24.
He was also sentenced to 180 days in Lake County jail, but that time was considered served.
Charges of witness intimidation and communicating with a witness were dropped in exchange for the plea deal, court records show.
The criminal complaint filed in McHenry County Circuit Court alleges Larson harassed a witness by threatening them that he was going to go into the McHenry County Courthouse in Woodstock with a gun and kill everyone.
The complaint said Larson also threatened to kill McHenry County Judge Robert Zalud.
The woman who received the threat is a witness in a child custody dispute case, and Larson was attempting to stop her from continuing with the court proceedings, the complaint said.
A grand jury indicted Larson on the charges in March.
The indictment said Larson communicated the threat to the woman by text message and that he told her to stop seeking child support payments.
McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Miller said Larson additionally threatened to burn Judge Zalud alive and eat his face, the Northwest Herald reported.
“Just give me five minutes in a room alone with him. You will be like, ‘I didn’t know we had that much blood inside.’ […] He would be unrecognizable. I would eat his [expletive] face off,” Larson allegedly said in the message, according to Miller.
Zalud is the judge presiding over the child custody dispute case, court records show.
At the time of the offense, Larson was on pre-trial release in three other criminal cases in McHenry County, which included a domestic violence case and two major traffic cases that all occurred in McHenry.
DeKalb County Judge Philip G. Montgomery was ordered by the Illinois Supreme Court to oversee the cases against Larson to avoid a conflict of interest.
A special prosecutor was requested and appointed to handle the case because Zalud is the husband of McHenry County State’s Attorney Randi Freese.
Larson was ordered detained pending trial because of his violent criminal history and posing a threat to the female witness as well as court staff.
The judge also granted petitions to revoke Larson’s pre-trial release in his other pending cases.
In 2020, Larson was arrested after he claimed he had COVID-19 and then allegedly spat and breathed on officers during a traffic stop in McHenry. He pleaded guilty in that case.