MENARD (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Scott Eby, the convicted killer of then 3-year-old Riley Fox, was found dead Thursday in downstate prison.
The 52-year-old Eby was serving a life sentence downstate at the Menard Correctional Center for the 2004 barbaric crime and murder of Fox.
His cause of death is unclear.
The murder, now about 20 years ago, involved finding Fox sexually assaulted, bound, gagged and dead in a creek not far from her home.
Kevin Fox, Riley’s father, was arrested shortly after his daughter’s death when investigators said he’d confessed to accidentally killing Riley and then trying to make it look like a kidnapping, authorities said at the time.
He spent more than eight months in jail before being freed by a federal appeals court after DNA evidence cleared him in the case. In 2007, a jury awarded Kevin and Melissa Fox $15.5 million in a civil suit charging false arrest and malicious prosecution. The award was later reduced on appeal to $8 million.
The case remained unsolved for five years until Scott Eby was charged and convicted.
Kevin Fox died early this year in an Arkansas car accident. He was 46.
Chicago Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.
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