Kevin Reid, of State Park, was sentenced to life in prison today by Madison County Circuit Judge James Hackett.

Reid was convicted on March 20 in the killings of 19-year-old Anquiaette Parker, who was pregnant, and her 4-year-old cousin, Cermen “CJ” Toney Jr. The bodies were discovered in a cistern in 2008, only feet from a State Park home in which Reid used to live. Parker and CJ went missing on Nov. 6, 2005.

Illinois State Police led the investigation and determined that Parker and CJ were killed during an unsuccessful drug deal. After only six hours of deliberation on March 20, a jury convicted Reid on two counts of murder and one count of intentional homicide of an unborn child.

In a victim’s statement read at the sentencing Tuesday, CJ’s mother, LaToya Franklin, said she now lives in fear every day for her three children.

“And with my daughter…it hurts me every time I have to leave her. Sometimes I sit in my car and cry when I drop her off to go to work or anywhere because I’m so afraid someone will take her away from me,” Franklin said.

While CJ was missing, Franklin would have dreams that she found him and would run to him and grab him, saying “mommy got you,” only to wake up hugging a pillow or herself, she said. She felt guilty for not protecting him, even while asking how much more she could have done. Franklin left CJ with a great-grandparent on his father’s side, she said.

“I know my baby was so afraid and I know he called out for me and that hurts,” Franklin said. “I wasn’t there to save him.”

After CJ’s body was found, Franklin chose to have him cremated, rather than buried, because she could not bear to walk away from him again. “So now he is back at home with me,” Franklin said. “But not the way I wanted him back.”

She sometimes holds and rocks him at night, like she did when he was alive.

“I never want to leave him again,” Franklin said.