Year-old slaying of Irma Rodriguez of Oak Forest leaves survivors with nothing but memories and anger
By Kristen Schorsch
Tribune staff reporter
June 9, 2010
Gabriel Rodriguez, who just finished his freshman year at Plainfield South High School, keeps his mother's photo taped to the back of his school assignment book and tells her, "This is for you," after every test he takes.
His sister, Monica Medina, 18, wears a silver bracelet with a heart her mom bought her and keeps a giant photo of her mother next to her bed and in her car."It's like where I go, she's always with me," said Medina, who graduated from Oak Forest High School last month and will attend Saint Xavier University in the fall.
The mementos help Irma Rodriguez's youngest children cope with her death.
Rodriguez, 44, of Oak Forest, was found June 1, 2009, in the trunk of her white 2002 Pontiac Grand Am, shot multiple times in the back.
The Cook County medical examiner's office ruled her death a homicide. No one has been charged, a frustration that Rodriguez's family continues to shoulder as they face another year without her.
Public records show Irma and her husband, Norberto Rodriguez, had a volatile relationship and were going through a divorce after 13 years of marriage when she was killed. They were due in court the day after her body was found.
Norberto Rodriguez, 50, a former Chicago police officer, could not be reached for comment.
Oak Forest police have been tight-lipped since Rodriguez's death and refuse to release details of their investigation.
"I don't want to comment on anything at this point," said Oak Forest Police Lt. Mark Jensen. "I don't want to jeopardize this investigation. It's too important to us."
Oak Forest Police Chief Greg Anderson said no one has been excluded as a person of interest, but he would not elaborate, nor would he say if a weapon has been found.
Jensen said he and three other detectives work the case every day, along with an investigator from the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force.
Nearly a dozen of Rodriguez's relatives and friends met with Cook County prosecutors last week to get an update on the case, but relatives said they learned few new details.
Prosecutors said they don't have enough evidence to file charges. They said they need something more solid - - a witness, a weapon or a confession.
"It just didn't seem very promising," said Rodriguez's sister, Norma Tirado, 40, of Plainfield. "I'll be honest. We're all very devastated and disappointed."
Prosecutors told the family the slaying likely took place in Rodriguez's garage and that Rodriguez was shot with a revolver, said her brother, Jose Arroyo, 47, of River Grove.
Court records reveal a rocky relationship between Irma and Norberto Rodriguez. In 1997, Norberto Rodriguez, then a Chicago police officer, was charged with trying to kill his wife. He allegedly shot her in the hand over an argument about flowers he received from another woman for his birthday, according to Chicago Police Review Board records.
A 911 phone call just before the shot was fired recorded Norberto Rodriguez saying, "You're dead," records show. He was acquitted, but the incident cost him his job. Irma Rodriguez supported her husband at the police review board hearing and said the shooting was an accident.
Irma Rodriguez stayed away from the couple's home in Chicago's Marquette Park neighborhood for a month and obtained an order of protection against her husband. But a month later, they reconciled, records show.
In 2001, Irma Rodriguez obtained another order of protection against her husband. She claimed Norberto Rodriguez threatened to "shoot me again" and dragged her out of the house and down the stairs by her legs, according to her petition for a protection order. The order lasted three weeks.
Relatives said Irma Rodriguez visited her husband and brought him home in 2007 from federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Norberto Rodriguez spent nearly three years behind bars after being convicted of transporting four kilograms of heroin from Los Angeles to Chicago, court and Federal Bureau of Prisons records show.
The year Norberto Rodriguez came home, Irma Rodriguez filed for a divorce, citing mental cruelty and irreconcilable differences, records show.
After Rodriguez's death, Tirado and her husband, Joel, gained custody of Gabriel, 15, the only child Irma and Norberto Rodriguez had together. The Tirados have an order of protection against Norberto Rodriguez through 2011, Will County court records show.
"Gabriel ... is fearful because he believes that his father brutally murdered his mother," according to the petition for a protection order.
On May 31, 2009, the night Rodriguez went missing, Gabriel and his sister said they knew something was wrong. They both came home around 8:30 p.m. after hanging out with friends.
Gabriel opened the garage and saw his mother's sandals and purse, but no car.
"That's when we started to say, 'Where's Mom?' " Medina said.
They searched the house and called her cell phone and Palos Community Hospital in Palos Heights, where their mother worked the overnight shift as a secretary.
When the children got downstairs, Gabriel noticed everything that he had stuffed into the trunk of his mother's car after cleaning out his locker at Jack Hille Middle School -- his backpack, books and a locker rack -- was at the bottom of the stairs.
"My mind was racing," Gabriel said.
The next day, a Riverdale police officer spotted Irma Rodriguez's car on a quiet street in neighboring Midlothian. Her body was in the trunk.
Arroyo said he knows it might take a while for police to solve his sister's case.
"I just hope and pray that something comes up," he said. "A miracle or an act of God."
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klschorsch@tribune.com
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