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Charges filed in Harvey case
Wife, mother, son slain; police say suspect confessed
By Rick Jervis and Jo Napolitano
Tribune staff reporters
Published December 2, 2004, 10:59 AM CST
Update: A Cook County judge this morning ordered Martin Kracht held without bond in the killings of three family members.
Martin Kracht--an out-of-work security guard who struggled between piety as a Jehovah's Witness and drunkenness and accusations of domestic abuse--was charged with three counts of first-degree murder Wednesday in the deaths of his wife, infant son and mother.
Vinese Bell-Kracht, 21, his wife, and Barbara Baker-Kracht, 52, his mother, were strangled, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office, which ruled the deaths homicides. A spokesman said further investigation was needed to determine the cause of death for 11-month-old Emery Kracht.
At a Wednesday night news conference, Harvey Police Cmdr. Merritt Gentry said Kracht killed his mother Saturday and his wife and son Sunday. Police found Baker-Kracht's body on the first floor of the two-story brick bungalow. Bell-Kracht and the baby were discovered upstairs.
Kracht used a scarf to strangle his mother, Gentry said, and the belt from a bathrobe on his wife. Emery was killed using a "chair and a belt," Gentry said, but he would not elaborate.
The three bodies were discovered Monday night in Baker-Kracht's Marshfield Avenue home in Harvey by police, who were checking up on her. She had just moved into the home last month.
Kracht, 24, was found Tuesday morning at a relative's home nearby. Police said he confessed to the killings and "showed remorse."
Kracht's motive is under investigation, Gentry said, but a recent separation from his wife and son likely played a big role. Bell-Kracht had reported several instances of domestic battery and separated from her husband to move into an apartment in Steger. She planned on moving out of the state and taking Emery, Gentry said.
"The big issue was his separation with his wife," the officer said.
After the deaths, Kracht stayed at the Marshfield Avenue home and ate some rat poison in an attempt to kill himself, Gentry said. Police found him in a garage with a running car, inhaling the car's exhaust fumes, he said.
Kracht was treated and released from Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, and is on suicide watch, Gentry said.
Friends of Kracht struggled to figure out what might have led him to take the lives of his closest family members.
Kracht--known as "Peanut" --was a popular, outgoing guy at Thornton Township High School, said Robert Newbern, 23, a classmate and a close friend. Kracht liked going to nightclubs and parties with friends, and after high school graduation, he and Newbern wandered between dance clubs in Chicago and pool halls in Harvey, his friend said.
"He always thought he was a player," Newbern said.
But as he partied with friends, Kracht's home life was unstable. His mother lived with the patients she cared for as a nurse, and Kracht wandered from one friend's home to another, friends said. Between 1999 and 2004, he lived at six addresses in Chicago and the south suburbs, including the Markham home of an ex-girlfriend, according to Cook County documents and friends.
"He was always bouncing from place to place," said Luther Rose, a high school friend whose family gave Kracht a home. "He never had a certain place to stay. And he was partying hard."
Kracht had difficulty keeping a job, floating among security posts at electronics stores, factories and other businesses, Rose said.
In 2000, when Kracht was 20, he was caught driving a car in Markham with an open liquor container and his license was suspended, said Ruth Riley, spokeswoman for the Illinois secretary of state. After two other infractions, Kracht's license was suspended through 2006.
His partying and joblessness were weighing on Kracht when he ran into high school friend Shaun Winston in 2002, Winston said. He was "sullen and depressed," as Winston introduced him to his Jehovah's Witnesses church in Chicago, a move that changed his life, friends said.
Kracht met Bell-Kracht, Winston's sister, at the church and they married four months later, in January 2003, in a quiet civil ceremony. Kracht attended church regularly, studied the Bible and spread his spiritual teachings to friends, Newbern said.
Kracht moved into Bell-Kracht's family home in Richton Park and seemed in love with his wife, friends said. But soon Kracht started drinking again and became increasingly jealous of his spouse, accusing her of having men call her on her cell phone, Newbern and Rose said.
Bell-Kracht's family kicked him out last year after he shoved her and, last month, Kracht was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic battery when he hit Bell-Kracht, according to court records. The arrest came a week after Kracht was caught driving with a suspended license, leading to an extra year's suspension, records show.
Last month, Kracht moved into his mother's new home. But the legal problems, paired with Kracht's lack of income and loss of wife and son, were taking their toll, Newbern and Rose said. This month, as the three friends lounged outside of Rose's home, Kracht sipped brandy from a bottle and tried to be his smiling, jovial self, Newbern said. But something was different.
"You could tell he was going through something," Newbern said. "He would just stare off into the sky, like he wasn't really there."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune