The world is an evil place.

Judge Thomas Fecarotta Jr. didn't know if he could believe the teen standing in his courtroom anymore.

He'd given Mathew Nellessen, who was back in court because of a probation violation, chance after chance, and the judge's frustration seemed to be bubbling to the top.

"The public is going to say what is with this crazy judge, he got a kid that he gave a break to," the Cook County Circuit Court judge said at a hearing in March, according to transcripts.

Even Nellessen's public defender and the prosecutor had agreed to four years in prison. But Fecarotta opted to give Nellessen one last chance: He credited the 19-year-old Arlington Heights man with time served, released him from custody and recommitted him to probation.

Less than a month after his release, prosecutors say Nellessen murdered his father.

The haunting turn of events highlights the dilemma that judges face daily.

"It's the worst part of the job," said Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Kari Johnson. "They're trying to read the future."

Daniel Naranjo, Nellessen's public defender, said he wasn't surprised when Fecarotta decided on probation. Nellessen, who had no violent offenses on his record, was in for a minor violation stemming from a burglary.

"This is a very, very touchy issue because everyone, of course, is going to be saying, 'What if?' What if the judge did not show the compassion he had, which was a well-founded compassion?'" he said. "We don't know."

It's not like Fecarotta didn't warn Nellessen.

"I am not your father. I am not a social worker. I am not your friend, nothing. I am the judge," Fecarotta said during the March 25 hearing. "I have already stuck my neck out on the line once for you. … If you take another swing, trust me, you are going to go for a very long time."

Nellessen promised he'd do better. "It is finally time for me to grow up. … I have been in jail. … The only way you make the future is to leave the past."

Nellessen had been in and out of Fecarotta's courtroom since 2009, when he appeared on a residential burglary charge. He could have been sentenced to 4 to 15 years for the class 1 felony, but Fecarotta chose Cook County boot camp, a program for nonviolent offenders.

But according to court documents, Nellessen was ineligible because he was taking Ativan and Zoloft. He was being treated for social anxiety disorder and was prescribed those medicines, records show. Back in Fecarotta's courtroom, Fecarotta sentenced him to two years' drug probation.

Nellessen violated that probation when he was arrested in late 2009 for possession of drugs, and later when he failed to appear in court, records show. Separately, he was also arrested for various misdemeanors, according to court documents.

Naranjo, the public defender, said he never had a problem with Nellessen, whom he described as soft-spoken, courteous and polite. When he heard about the ghastly slaying, he was shocked.

The allegations "don't correlate with or correspond to the person I know and represent," Naranjo said.

Prosecutors allege that on April 12, Nellessen and others waited for his father, George Nellessen, 55, to come home from work so they could rob him. They allegedly duct-taped him to a chair and demanded his banking information. Gaining access to the account, Nellessen wrote a $100,000 check to himself, then freed his father's hand to sign it, authorities said.

After George Nellessen told his son he was going to call police, the teen allegedly struck him repeatedly with a baseball bat. He then allegedly took a steak knife from the kitchen and stabbed his father in the neck.

His body was found two days later. Nellessen and three others charged in the slaying are due back in court on May 9.

Criminal sentencing is an agonizing task for judges, who must balance the needs of the public, the justice system and the offender, said retired Cook County Judge Sam Amirante. Jail time is useful for taking people off the street, but people shouldn't underestimate the damage it can do to inmates, many of whom use the time to learn to "be better criminals," Amirante said.

The factors that judges often take into account — if the person has a violent past, age and family support — worked in Nellessen's favor, legal experts said. Nellessen lived with his father, who had appeared in court with his son and even posted his bail.

Neighbor Dolores Seibert said she had thought the son was a decent young man who "fell in with the wrong crowd" after his mother died in 2004.

George Nellessen "knew that it was all going wrong," she said.

Fecarotta said he couldn't comment on an ongoing case.

But in his 2010 judicial retention questionnaire, Fecarotta said he works hard to keep a promise he made to himself when he became a judge, which includes to "follow the law, yet be compassionate without prejudice to everyone and to do so with honesty and integrity."

In the transcripts, Fecarotta appeared to want to believe Nellessen could change.

"I mean, do you realize the history you and I have had with this case? Do you know how much of an embarrassment — it is not about me," Fecarotta said during the March hearing.

As a condition of his probation, he ordered Nellessen to report to him once a month. The first of those appearances had been scheduled for Friday.