By FRANK MAIN, SAM CHARLES, STEFANO ESPOSITO, ASHLEE REZIN, ANDY GRIMM and MITCH DUDEK
Chicago Sun-Times
Members of the Martinez family who were slain in their Gage Park home. | Photo from family’s gofundme page
The victims — two men, two women and two boys ages 10 and 13, three generations of the same family — were found slain Thursday afternoon on the Southwest Side after police checked on the well-being of a man who didn’t show up to work for days, authorities said.
Family members and the medical examiner’s office have identified the victims as: 62-year-old Noe Martinez Sr. and his wife, 58-year-old Rosaura Martinez; their adult children, 38-year-old Noe Martinez Jr. and 32-year-old Maria Herminia Martinez; and Herminia’s sons, 10-year-old Alexis Cruz and 13-year-old Leonardo Cruz.
Autopsies found the boys suffered “sharp force” injuries, which a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office defined as either a stabbing or cutting wound, or both. The office did not speculate on what kind of weapon was used.
Chicago Police at the scene in Gage Park where six people were found dead Thursday afternoon. | Chicago Police
Herminia died of gunshot wounds. Noe Martinez Sr. died of “sharp force” wounds. And his wife and his son, Noe Jr., died of “multiple sharp and blunt force injuries,” autopsies showed.
Noe Martinez Jr. worked for United Service Companies since 2012 and was a window washer at O’Hare Airport, according to the company.
Officers were called to the brick bungalow in the 5700 block of South California just after 1 p.m. The victims were found “in different locations” in the home, police said Friday morning.
“This is a complex investigation, we are working meticulously,” Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy said at a morning press conference.
There were no signs that anyone forced their way into the house, nor was the house ransacked, Roy said. He declined to say whether the victims had been stabbed, but said there were no signs of gunfire in the home. Media reports said some of the victims had been beaten to death.
Roy said the victims, killed between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon, had not been tied up as some media initially reported.
A man who works at a Chicago maintenance company called 911 to check on the house because a co-worker who lived there had not come to work since Tuesday.
“He was just a really great guy,” the man who made the call told the Chicago Sun-Times.
One officer who arrived at the house told a 911 operator: “We have people passed out, don’t know if they’re dead or what.”
The officer said they would have to make a “forced entry,” according to a recording of the radio traffic.
“So far we can just see one, but the neighbors say there’s about six people living there,” the officer said.
Later, he added: “Send a sarge over here. This is a bloody mess.”
Escalante told reporters at the scene he did not think there was an immediate threat to the surrounding community, although additional patrols were sent to the neighborhood.
“It’s very probable this is all the same family inside,” he said.
Initial reports were that all of the victims were stabbed, but Escalante would not provide details on how the victims were killed.
“We are taking our time going through the residence,” he said. “We’ll have the street closed off for quite a while this evening.”
A police source said detectives were investigating whether the killings were the result of a domestic dispute.
A relative of the family said they seemed happy.
“They were a normal family. Everything was fine,” Noemi Martinez, 29, told AP from Dallas during a phone interview in Spanish. She said her husband was a nephew and cousin of the home’s residents.
Martinez said the father worked at a factory in Chicago and the mother was a housewife. They were originally from the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and had lived in Chicago for about a decade.
In a text message to the Chicago Sun-Times, Martinez said: “They were a very loving family that never had any problems with anyone.”
“They enjoyed going to Mexico every year in May,” she texted as she headed to Chicago from Texas on Thursday night. “They were always together for shopping or dinning out. Very close.”
“We are in disbelief that anyone could do something so despicable. We ask for prayer,” Martinez said.
The family has set up a gofundme page to help send the victims’ remains back to Mexico for burial.
Markita Williams, a neighbor, said the family had lived in the home for at least three years.
The family included a woman with two sons, who were grade school age, and her parents, Williams said. She said the woman was separated or divorced from her husband, who has since gone home to Mexico.
Williams said she was unaware of any problems and didn’t recall police being called there before.
At noon Wednesday, Williams said she knocked on her neighbors’ door because she noticed the grandfather’s van parked on the street and was worried it might be towed—because the city was due to do some street repairs.
“I didn’t get an answer,” Williams said. She noticed something else unusual—the curtains were all closed. “They keep their curtains open all the time,” Williams said.
She added that she had looked out her window about 5 p.m. Wednesday and noticed that the van still hadn’t been moved.
Another neighbor, David Lopez, has lived about two blocks north of the crime scene since 1997.
“It’s sad to see,” Lopez said. “It seems like instead of getting better, things around here are getting worse.”