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UPDATE: LITH Women Guilty of Involuntary Servitude of Minor

Closing arguments were heard Thursday morning for two former Lake in the Hills women accused of being involved in the pimping scheme.

UPDATE: 4:00 P.M.: The jury found two former Lake in the Hills women guilty of involuntary servitude of a minor but not guilty of an additional pimping charge.

Antwanette Atikins and Kari Knox now face between six and 30 years in prison on the involuntary servitude charge.

Check back to Lake in the Hills Patch for a full article. 

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UPDATE 2:30 P.M.: The jury had two questions for the judge, one of which involved whether the two defendants in the case had a legal obligation to ask the victim her age. Judge Joseph Condon said, "no." 

UPDATE 12 P.M.: The jury has the case and has begun deliberations. Check back to Lake in the Hills Patch for updates. 

Find out what's happening in Algonquin-Lake In The Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

UPDATE 8:00 A.M.: Closing arguments are expected in the case this morning.

For more updates, check back to Lake in the Hills Patch or follow us on Facebook. 

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The 16-year-old victim in a pimping scheme that took place in Lake in the Hills told a jury Wednesday how she secretly kept some of the money she made. 

Antwanette Atikins and Kari Knox, both formerly of Lake in the Hills, are on trial this week for soliciting the alleged victim who was 14 at the time. 

Atkins and Knox are on trial this week for charges stemming from the pimping scheme. 

The girl Wednesday told of the time she spent in the home shared by the two women and Donald Jones, who is charged in a separate case, on Sonoma Circle in Lake in the Hills. 

Jones is accused of meeting the girl on the Internet and driving to Kansas to pick her up, before bringing her back to his Lake in the Hills home on Dec. 31, 2009.

The girl told the courtroom Wednesday that after completing a sexual act on New Year's Eve 2009, she secretly kept some of the money.

Calling Atkins by her alias name "Peaches" and Knox by her alias "Slim" the girl also described the drive back to Illinois with Jones. She told the jury she and Jones spent the night in a hotel in Kansas before driving to Illinois and that they smoked marijuana on the way.

When she got to the Lake in the Hills home, she allegedly was given provocative clothing to wear, given the alias name of Crystal and posed for pictures used on a website that solicits prostitution, and which billed her as a 23-year-old woman. 

Before returning to Wichita on a Greyhound bus, the teen performed sexual acts with two men for money, which she gave to Jones. She admitted keeping $100 of the $300 for herself from a Chicago man who paid her for sex.

"So you were deceiving Antwanette and Kari? You were pulling a little scam?" defense attorney Kim Messer, who represents Atkins, asked her Wednesday, to which the girl replied, "yes."

When Messer asked her if there was any doubt about who was in charge in the Lake in the Hills house during her short stay, the teen said Jones, who went by "Don Juan," was clearly in charge.

"Don became angry with you on Jan. 1, 2009," Assistant State’s Attorney Ryan Blackney said, with the teen admitting during testimony that she locked the door to her bedroom that night.

"He said there were no secrets kept in this house," she said.

After the jury was excused for the day, Judge Joseph Condon dropped the six child-pornography charges against the women, leaving them still accused of juvenile pimping and juvenile servitude.

"I’m just not willing to say these photos are lewd beyond a reasonable doubt," Condon said after studying photos of the girl.

Messer had argued that her client had "no ownership whatsoever" of the provocative photos of the teen.

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