Precisely one 12 months after 36-year-old Caitlin Tracey was discovered useless on the backside of her estranged husband’s South Loop condominium stairwell, officers on Monday issued an arrest warrant for him in connection along with her demise.
Prosecutors charged 47-year-old Adam Beckerink with one rely of homicide and issued the warrant only a week after the previous high-paid tax lawyer was sentenced to 93 days in jail in Michigan for a separate home battery case involving Tracey.
Tracey’s physique was found on the night of October 27, 2024, on the base of a stairwell inside 1201 South Prairie Avenue. A consultant for her household mentioned her physique was “pulverized” and that certainly one of her ft had been severed. She suffered a number of cranium and rib fractures.
The Cook dinner County Medical Examiner’s Workplace discovered that Tracey died from accidents in line with a “fall from peak,” however the workplace was unable to find out the style of her demise, ruling it “undetermined.” Method-of-death classifications embrace accident, suicide, murder, and pure causes. The dearth of a definitive discovering is predicted to be a key situation in Beckerink’s protection.
Though Tracey was residing in New Buffalo, Michigan, when she died, her household mentioned she had been staying at Beckerink’s South Loop apartment. They mentioned Beckerink reported her lacking on October 26, in the future earlier than her physique was discovered. Whereas making that report, Beckerink allegedly informed police he had not seen his spouse in a couple of month, however investigators later discovered surveillance video displaying the 2 collectively two days earlier.
Tracey’s demise got here two days earlier than a jury trial was set to start in Michigan, the place Beckerink confronted felony costs for allegedly interfering along with her makes an attempt to name 911 and violently resisting police throughout his arrest.
Court docket information present Tracey had filed a number of protecting orders and police stories describing escalating violence and harassment within the months earlier than her demise. In a 2023 petition filed in Cook dinner County, she alleged that Beckerink contacted her “roughly twenty instances a day” and commonly known as her “derogatory names like ‘liar,’ ‘cheater,’ ‘whore,’ and a ‘piece of s***.’”
She reported a number of incidents of bodily abuse, together with one in September 2023 on the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, the place she mentioned Beckerink entered her resort room whereas she was sleeping and commenced a verbal and bodily assault.
One other report described an August 2023 incident on the identical South Loop residential constructing the place she was later discovered useless. In that account, Tracey alleged Beckerink “slammed my head in opposition to a cupboard, slapped me, punched me, put my head in a headlock, and dragged me away from the door.”
In one more case, she accused him of placing her within the head with a pickle jar at her Michigan house in July 2023, then pouring vodka on her physique, which she mentioned “burned my wounds.” She claimed he took her to a hospital for therapy of an “open head wound” two days later.
The household and Beckerink went to court docket to win management of Tracey’s stays late final 12 months, with the household rising victorious in November.
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