Jealous, Jilted and Jailed: Ex-Lover Claims She Didn't Attack First in Tinley Knife Fight

When Tinley Park police showed up to an early Saturday morning fight in a 71st Court apartment, they found a man pinning Jamie Katro to the ground with his knee on her chest.

They carted Katro off to jail on charges she attacked both the man and his wife—Katro's former lover—with a knife.

But Katro, 32, tells Patch she is the victim here, that she was on the wrong end of the knife after the wife came at her in a fit of jealous rage.

"She thought that she would always have me," Katro said of her former girlfriend, Stacy Bouquet, claiming Bouquet married a Saudi Arabian immigrant to help him stay in the country.

"She said that she would leave (her husband) in a minute and (he) knows that," said Katro, who faces charges of battery, domestic battery and aggravated assault in connection with the at Bouquet's Tinley Park apartment.

Bouquet, however, sums up Katro's tale in just two words: "That's crazy."

Police said Katro woke the woman and her husband, stood over their bed while brandishing a steak knife and told someone on a cell phone she soon would be going to jail for murder.

When Bouquet joined her husband in bed, Katro was infuriated, Bouquet explained.

"She said, 'You're not going to sleep next to him, are you?' I woke up with a steak knife to my neck."

In Tinley to Buy a Car

Katro said the only reason she was in the Tinley Park apartment was so she could buy a 1994 Toyota Celica from the husband. She paid $550 cash and a post-dated check for $650 for the car, and she and the couple spent Friday futiley attempting to transfer the registration to her name. Failing to accomplish this, Katro said, the couple invited her to spend the night so they could get an early start at the secretary of state's office on Saturday.

The husband turned in for the night, Katro said, and she and Bouquet stayed up talking. The wife grew belligerent, Katro said, and the husband was roused from sleep by all the noise.

"He wakes up, comes out into the living room," Katro said. "(The wife) smacked me, I pushed her back. Next thing I know, I see a knife."

Katro said she does not know who pulled the knife on her, but her palms were sliced open when she grabbed the blade to defend herself.

"It seemed like it was a struggle to stay alive, like seriously," she said. 

Katro said she shouted to a neighbor to call the police, and when they showed up about 10 minutes later, her shirt was spattered with her own blood and she was pinned under the husband.

"The cops wouldn't even take my statement," she said.

Tinley Park police Cmdr. Steven Vaccaro disputed that and said his officers would have taken any statement Katro offered.

"She'll have her day in court," Vaccaro said.

The police did take Katro to the hospital, she said, where she underwent a CAT scan and learned she suffered a bruised sternum. Then she went to a cell at the Tinley Park Police Department, where she remained until her court appearance Monday morning, March 14.

Katro was released from custody after posting a $2,000 cash bond. Katro said the police gave her property — including her wallet, $200 cash and the keys to her house — to Bouquet, who dumped the stuff in her mother's front yard. Katro said the house keys and nearly all of the cash are missing, and she has since changed the locks on her home.

The Accused's Colorful Past

Katro made news in April 2009 when the State Police visited her while she was locked up in Dwight Correctional Center. Investigators thought Katro might have some information on the whereabouts of missing Bolingbrook mom Stacy Peterson but she did not.

Katro said the detectives zeroed in on her when her friendship with Anthony "Bindy" Rock, a convicted cop killer with ties to organized crime, came to light. Rock and Stacy Peterson's husband, disgraced Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson, were entangled in a scandal in the mid-1980s.

While locked up in Dwight, Katro said, her ex-girlfriend took up with the man who's now her husband. Katro herself found love in Dwight and is living with a woman she met there.

But Katro is the jealous one, Bouquet said, not her.

"Jamie was wanting me back because we were together for 14 years," she said, adding that she hoped their friendship could overcome the hard feelings.

"Me and her were friends," she said. "She had moved on, and I got married."