While
Christmas in Akron, Ohio involved a potentially justifiable chest-stabbing to
defend home-apple fritter making (see story on this blog earlier today), things
in Chicago got a lot more macabre. The Chicago Tribune reports that
Alex Valdez, an 18 year-old who was asked to move out of the Northwest Side
apartment he shared with his aunt and her boyfriend killed the older man with a
hammer and then cut off the man’s head, ears and nose and then left them on his
aunt’s bed as a “present.” Not a merry
Christmas in that household. Police
arrested Valdez after he got tired from all the murdering and dismembering and
called 911 to report there was a dead body in the apartment (and apparently
didn’t think the police would put two and two together and link up his
blood-covered clothes and the report and arrest him). Or maybe not.
The Tribune reports that When
the 911 dispatcher asked Valdez if he had performed CPR, the young man laughed
and said Diaz-Hernandez had been decapitated, [Assistant DA] Sawyers said.
Valdez
had moved in with the understanding that he would help pay bills while he went
to school and worked. He did work but
didn’t pay bills, which led to “ongoing tension.”
The
Tribune article gives the full blow-by-blow, but it comes down to this: Valdez had been drinking. He and the aunt’s boyfriend went for beer on
Christmas eve while the aunt was at a party.
No beer was to be found. When the
two guys got home, Valdez attacked the aunt’s boyfriend and started in with a
hammer attack and the butchery. After
calling police, he waited patiently on the porch for them to arrive, confessed
and broke his Ipad.
He’s
being held without bail, which isn’t shocking.
He’s likely going for a psych evaluation because beer-addled drunkenness
doesn’t cause this kind of abject homicidal butchery.
Chicago
has been getting an awfully bad rap this year for its murder rate and seemingly
rampant hooliganism, caused, many believe, by ongoing cuts to the police budget
that has left the force understaffed by years of attrition and hiring freezes.
On pure, one-off mayhem like this and like John Wayne Gacy, though, Chicago
continues in a league of its own, which can’t be explained by police force
cuts. Alex Valdez has stepped into
Chicago’s infamous criminal folklore with this crime and its shocking
depravity. At least he’s locked up. Whatever your beliefs on Illinois ceasing the
death penalty, this kid will likely get a de-facto death penalty of life in
prison because the cold-blooded nature of his post-murder actions speak to
senseless depravity which has no place in society.
Full
story and video statement from DA: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-police-teen-in-custody-after-man-found-decapitated-in-northwest-side-apartment-20131225,0,5049990.story
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