CHICAGO (MCT) — A man who once faced the death penalty for his conviction for setting a 1984 house fire that killed a woman and her five children on Chicago’s South Side will be released from a downstate prison after Cook County prosecutors on Wednesday unexpectedly dropped the case against him.

James Kluppelberg, 46, who worked for a company that boarded up burned out and abandoned buildings, was convicted of setting the March 1984 fire that killed 28-year-old Elva Lupercio and her five children, ages 3 to 10, at their home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.