Cody Sales, 30, of Plattville (Photo provided by Kendall County Sheriff's Office)
Cody Sales, 30, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for beating his mother, Terri Sales, to death with a hammer inside their home in Plattville, an unincorporated community in Kendall County, Illinois. He was also convicted of aggravated cruelty to animals for killing the family dog during the same attack.
A Kendall County jury found Sales guilty but mentally ill on both counts following a trial that centered on whether his documented psychiatric history should reduce his criminal responsibility. Judge Stephen Krentz handed down the sentence in late January 2026 after hearing arguments from prosecutors and defense attorneys, according to Kendall County Now.
Under Illinois truth-in-sentencing law, first-degree murder requires the defendant to serve 100 percent of the sentence. Sales will not be eligible for release until he is approximately 60 years old.
What happened on Chicago Road
The killing took place at a home on the 6500 block of Chicago Road near Joliet, where Sales lived with his mother. Prosecutors told the jury that Sales struck Terri Sales multiple times with a hammer, killing her, and then used the same weapon on the family dog.
What followed was not a call for help. According to Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis, Sales lied to responding officers, denied them entry to the home, moved his mother’s body, and hid the hammer. Weis detailed those actions in a statement after the guilty verdict, which was reported by Patch.
“This included lying to the officers, denying them entry into the residence, moving the victim’s body, and hiding the murder weapon,” Weis said.
Those actions became the prosecution’s strongest evidence that Sales understood what he had done and tried to avoid consequences, a point that cut directly against the defense’s argument that mental illness drove the attack.
The ‘guilty but mentally ill’ verdict, explained
Illinois is one of several states that allows juries to return a “guilty but mentally ill” verdict. It is not the same as “not guilty by reason of insanity,” which would have resulted in commitment to a mental health facility rather than prison. A guilty but mentally ill finding means the jury accepted that Sales committed first-degree murder and that he suffered from a mental illness at the time, but that the illness did not prevent him from understanding the wrongfulness of his actions.
The practical effect: Sales serves his 30-year sentence in the Illinois Department of Corrections, just like any other person convicted of murder, but the state is required to provide psychiatric treatment during his incarceration.
Defense attorneys had raised Sales’s psychiatric history throughout the proceedings, and the court ordered mental health evaluations before trial. The specific diagnoses have not been made public in available reporting. Prosecutors acknowledged the mental illness finding but argued it did not diminish the deliberate nature of the crime, particularly the steps Sales took to conceal it afterward.
How the sentence was determined
First-degree murder in Illinois carries a sentencing range of 20 to 60 years in prison. In cases involving certain aggravating factors, the sentence can extend to natural life. The 30-year term Judge Krentz imposed falls at the lower-middle portion of that range, reflecting both the severity of the crime and the court’s consideration of Sales’s mental health.
Sales also received a sentence for aggravated animal cruelty for killing the dog, but the judge ordered that term to run concurrently, meaning it does not add time beyond the 30 years.
Prosecutors had pushed for a sentence that treated the case as one of the most serious domestic killings in recent Kendall County history. Fox 32 Chicago reported that prosecutors walked the judge through the sequence of the attack, the concealment effort, and the emotional toll on surviving family members.
Domestic violence and the link to animal cruelty
The fact that Sales killed both his mother and the family dog fits a pattern that researchers and victim advocates have documented for decades. Studies, including work published by the National Link Coalition, have found a strong correlation between animal abuse and domestic violence. Abusers frequently target pets as a means of control, and the presence of animal cruelty in a household is considered a significant risk marker for escalating violence against people.
The aggravated animal cruelty charge ensured that the dog’s death was formally recognized in the case, even though the concurrent sentence means it did not add prison time.
A small community absorbs the shock
Plattville is a rural, unincorporated area where violent crime is rare. Neighbors told Patch that the killing shattered assumptions about safety along Chicago Road. The home where Terri Sales died was one they had driven past routinely without a second thought.
State’s Attorney Weis said his office treats domestic homicides with the same resources and intensity as any other murder case, a point he reiterated publicly after sentencing.
What comes next for Cody Sales
Sales will be transferred to an Illinois Department of Corrections facility equipped to provide ongoing psychiatric care. Because of the guilty but mentally ill finding, the state has a legal obligation to evaluate and treat his mental health conditions throughout his incarceration. He will serve the full 30 years under Illinois truth-in-sentencing requirements, with no possibility of early release through good-conduct credit on the murder charge.
The case remains one of the most closely watched criminal matters in Kendall County in recent years, both for the violence itself and for the legal questions it forced the court to confront about culpability and mental illness.
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