Police discovered bloody rags along the lakefront and human remains in a freezer inside a boarding house in Arcadia Terrace as they searched for the building’s owner Monday evening, turning a missing person case into a homicide investigation.
The owner — a 55-year-old woman who hasn’t formally been identified — is believed to be the victim, Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan told reporters Tuesday. She was found around 7 p.m. Monday in the 5900 block of North Washtenaw Avenue, police said.
Deenihan said a suspect who lived in the boarding house — and frightened other residents — was taken into custody after pulling a knife on a tow truck driver he allegedly hired to transport a “large plastic bag” to Foster Beach, where bloody rags were found inside a garbage can.
A resident of the boarding house had reported the owner missing Monday, Deenihan said. She hadn’t been seen for roughly a day, though detectives confirmed she’d been seen “walking around the neighborhood on Sunday.”
Deenihan said the resident who made the report pointed investigators to a neighbor “the other tenants were afraid of.” They said the person “had recently called a tow truck” to haul off “a heavy bag.”
“We learned that this individual dumped a large plastic bag in a garbage can at Foster Beach,” Deenihan said. “And detectives were able to go to that garbage can and see that there were some bloody towels in that garbage can.”
The can and its contents were then taken to the Cook County medical examiner’s office for further investigation, Deenihan said.
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Detectives began searching the home and “discovered human remains in a freezer,” Deenihan said. The investigators then left and obtained a search warrant “to go back in and retrieve all of [the] evidence properly.”
Around the same time, the tow truck driver reported to police that the suspect had pulled a knife on him, Deenihan said. The suspect was taken into custody but has declined to speak to detectives about the slaying.
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“We have a long way to go, but obviously we believe that the missing person is … unfortunately the individual we discovered,” Deenihan said.
