A 58-year-old man is being questioned by detectives Friday after his tenant reported he sexually assaulted her at gunpoint and may have strangled another woman whose body was on a couch nearby on the South Side, according to city police reports.
Police received a 911 call about 9:20 a.m. Thursday from a friend of a 28-year-old woman who reported being sexually assaulted at gunpoint by her landlord at an apartment in the 8100 block of South Ellis Avenue, according to reports from the Chicago police and the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication.
The 28-year-old woman said while the attack happened, she noticed another woman who “may be dead,” on a couch, according to the reports. The 28-year-old was taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital for medical attention, where a sexual assault kit was collected.
Around the same time, the landlord, 58, walked into the Grand Crossing District police station and “admitted to killing victim by strangulation,” according to the police report.
When police conducted a well-being check at the Ellis Avenue address, they reported finding the door locked, and no one answering. Fire department crews opened the door and found the unresponsive victim, an unidentified 36-year-old woman, unclothed and covered in a sheet, on a couch in the living room, according to the report.
She was pronounced dead on the scene by the University of Chicago Medical Center according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy is scheduled for Friday.
No charges have been announced against the 58-year-old man, who police have called a “person of interest.”
The person of interest has been charged in dozens of criminal cases in Cook County that date back to at least 1985, court records show. Some of the cases have centered on allegations of sexual violence and domestic battery.
In 1988, the person of interest pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual and was sentenced to six years in state prison, records show. He was charged in that case in 1987, just two weeks after he pleaded guilty to criminal sexual abuse and was placed on probation.
He was later sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1992 after pleading guilty to armed robbery, according to the court records. That same day, he pleaded guilty to another violent felony and got two years in prison.
Since then, he’s been sent to prison in separate arson, illegal gun possession and aggravated battery cases, records show. In the latter case he was also charged with counts of attempted first-degree murder.
The person of interest was most recently placed on probation for two years after pleading guilty to burglary in 2019, records show.
Area 2 detectives are investigating.
Tom Schuba contributed.