Former Heights Man Sentenced In 2012 Shooting Death of Girlfriend

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, IL — Nine years after 30-year-old Michele Peters was found in her Chicago Heights home with a gunshot wound to her face, her boyfriend was sentenced to six years in the Illinois Department of Corrections in connection with her death.

In February 2020, George Kleopa, 41, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter following a jury trial in Markham before Cook County Judge Patrick Coughlin. It took the jury 23 minutes to return a guilty verdict. The sentence was handed down May 27.

Chicago Heights police responded on the night of March 6, 2012, to the couple's house in the 100 block of West Hickory Street for a report of a person shot. A distraught Kleopa sat on the couch as paramedics tended to Peters, where a bullet had entered her right cheek and lodged in her brain, according to trial testimony. The mom of two young sons, formerly of Oak Lawn and Hometown, was pronounced dead at St. James Hospital.

Kleopa spent the next two days in the Chicago Heights police lockup. Four months later, he was arrested on his thirty-third birthday after local police received lab reports from the Illinois State Police Crime Lab. Originally charged with first degree murder, charges were eventually reduced to involuntary manslaughter, and Kleopa was released from Cook County Jail when a relative posted bond on $2 million bail.

During his trial, Kleopa took the witness stand. He told Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Nick D’Angelo that he asked Peters to bring him his gun, which he planned on selling, so he could clean it. Peters put the gun's magazine on the coffee table, but when she handed the gun to Kleopa, it discharged in his hand. Kleopa testified that his finger was not on the trigger.

D’Angelo challenged Kleopa on statements he made to Chicago Heights police in the days immediately after the shooting, but Kleopa denied telling police that he was passing the gun side to side with his finger on the trigger when the shot went off.

The case dragged through the legal system for more than nine years, delayed by attorney changes and motions to reduce the charges. Kleopa's bond was revoked following his conviction as he waited for sentencing, but he was released on electronic monitoring a short time later when COVID-19 began to spread through the Cook County Jail.

In the nine years since her daughter's death, Peters’ mother, Catherine Peters-Bird, suffered and recovered from a stroke. Nevertheless, she attended all of Kleopa’s court appearances since 2012 and read her victim’s impact statement at Kleopa’s sentencing, describing life without her daughter.

“George has been reckless and irresponsible his whole life and never been held accountable for his actions,” Peters-Bird said in her written statement. “I can only pray this time he will. It will never compare to the life sentence he gave us on March 6, 2012, when he put a loaded gun in his hand and ended Michele’s life.”

Kleopa’s supporters testified during the sentencing hearing that the couple had planned to marry. But Peters’ family and friends painted a different picture of a troubled relationship between the two, saying the young mother was planning to leave Kleopa and move back to Hometown.

At the end of her statement, Peters-Bird had a message for her daughter’s sons, who were 7 years old and 9 months old when they lost their mother. Peters-Bird has seen her grandchildren only a few times since her daughter's funeral — the children have been living in California with Kleopa’s sister.

“If Georgie and Alex are hearing this I want you to know I have loved you before you took breath, and I will love you and be here for you until I take my last breath.”

Judge Coughlin sentenced Kleopa to six years, minus 493 days for time served in Cook County Jail.