Crime & Safety

Frankfort Cop's Ex-Girlfriend Spends Hours on Stand Talking About 'Toxic' Relationship

A Frankfort police officer charged with beating his girlfriend watched her recount the attack and their time together.

A Mokena woman allegedly beaten by her Frankfort cop lover during their "friends with benefits" affair spent hours on the witness stand Thursday talking about their "toxic" relationship, a "bar fight" she was involved in, how she violated a court order during her divorce and the night of the alleged attack.

"It was just an awful, awful relationship," Jillian Fredericks, 33, said of her time with 30-year-old Frankfort Police Officer Donald Walsh. She repeatedly called their relationship toxic and said several times that they "would break up and get together three times in a day."

"We were like a yo-yo," Fredericks said. "We were on again, off again more than you shower in a day."

While the couple was serious about their relationship for the first few weeks, Fredericks said, the didn't last.

"I guess some people would consider it friends with benefits," she said.

Special prosecutor Dave Neal introduced text messages exchanged by Walsh and Fredericks hours before the alleged July 2012 attack. Walsh was at a Tinley Park bar and wanted to visit Frederick's house. She apparently didn't want him to drop by unless he made it before midnight.

Walsh texted about his hurt feelings and his love for Fredericks, which he seemed to feel was not adequately returned. After Fredericks stopped responding to his messages, Walsh pretended in a series of texts to have been pulled over by the police, taken to the county jail and in need of someone to bail him out. He then went to her home.

Defense attorney Steven Haney later countered with even more electronic communications, producing email sent between the couple weeks before the alleged attack. In the messages, Fredericks told Walsh, "I love you so much" that it makes her suicidal. When she sent a 1:26 a.m. email telling Walsh she was coming to his house, he responded that she was not welcome and he would not open his door for her.

A message sent from Fredericks less than an hour later said, "Baby let me show you. Come home please. I love you."

Haney peppered Fredericks with questions about what she meant by asking Walsh to "come home." He said it proved she violated a court order forbidding Walsh to be around her two children during her divorce.

Fredericks claimed Walsh did not live in her house and was not around her children—except for the night he allegedly beat her in front of her daughter. Fredericks admitted she "willfully" violated the court order and said she "was wrong."

Haney also questioned Fredericks about a February 2012 altercation at a Tinley Park bar involving Fredericks, Walsh and another woman. Fredericks explained she was unhappy with Walsh when he broke their dinner plans and grew more so when he told her not to come to the bar because she would "not like" what she saw.

"Stupid me. I needed to see," Fredericks said.

When she got to the bar she saw Walsh "straddling" another woman, Fredericks said. She said she pushed Walsh once in the shoulder and one of her friends called the police.

The same woman who called the police that night was with Fredericks and another woman hours before Walsh appeared at Fredericks' bedside and allegedly attacked her in July. Fredericks said she cooked her friends dinner and since she is an aesthetician, she "waxed them."

After her friends left and Walsh arrived, he butted her in the temple with his head, dragged her by her hair, kicked her several times and choked her and punched her in the head for as long as a half hour, she said.

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