PEORIA COUNTY — According to the autopsy results released by the Peoria County Coroner’s Office, a 34-year-old male from Peoria, Illinois, who had gone missing for three years before his body was found on Saturday, was fatally shot in the head. Peoria County Coroner Jamie Harwood has ruled Gabriel Cook’s death a homicide, nearly one year after another man from Peoria was convicted in what the state’s prosecutors called the first-ever “bodyless” prosecution.
Allen Schimmelpfennig, a 31-year-old resident of Peoria, was found guilty of first-degree murder and concealment of a homicide by a jury in June of 2015. The jury found Schimmelpfennig guilty and sentenced him to 80 years in jail even though Cook’s body had not been found. A large pool of dried blood, thought to have belonged to Cook, was found in the container that Schimmelpfennig owned, according to a statement released by state’s attorney Jodi Hoos shortly after the trial ended.
A man walking on his property in the 5600 block of Pottstown Road on Saturday found what were later determined to be Cook’s skeletal remains. Sheriff Chris Watkins supplied this data. The method used to positively identify Cook is discussed by Jamie Harwood, the coroner for Peoria County. Consider Mr. Cook as an illustration. He was a passenger in a vehicle. They were inserting screws and plates into his shoulder. As Harwood detailed his discoveries, we were able to decipher the serial numbers on the plates and screws and compare them with the surgical records.
Harwood claims that the autopsy and the body’s discovery give Cook’s relatives the crucial piece of information they were lacking. I feel like that was a really touching moment for us both. We do not, in any way, take our predicament lightly. “These are people who have lost the life of a loved one, and we took that into consideration in a compassionate manner,” said Harwood.
