DeKALB, Ill. (WTVO) — He said he was 17. He said he was a college student. He said he worked part-time and had lost both parents. But none of it was true.

Timothy Doll, now 31, posed as a teenager to date 15-year-old Gracie Sasso-Cleveland, a deception that ended in tragedy when he killed her in May 2023.

Doll was sentenced on Aug. 14 to 52 years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder.

Gracie’s mother, Ericka Sasso, says she was stunned to learn the person she believed was her daughter’s boyfriend was actually a convicted sex offender nearly twice her age.

“I had met him," Sasso said. "He seemed harmless, immature. He told me his parents had died. He rented a room on the campus and said he worked at Ryder. I didn’t have a reason to not believe him—or my daughter.”

Eric

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