Looking to escape city life in Chicago during the pandemic, Caitlin Tracey moved to a charming lakeside town in her home state of Michigan, where she rode an electric scooter to the grocery store and loved to paddleboard in the lake.
Her new neighbor in New Buffalo, Joyce Lantz, said she immediately admired Tracey, who she saw as “such a shining star.” She was smart, successful and fashionable, with an “intelligence that’s (also) a humor,” Lantz said.
Her friends and family recall Tracey — nicknamed “CT” — as someone who loved travel, dancing, fine wine, fashion and hosting guests for meals. Her house, located just a few minutes’ walk from the lake, was “like something that you’d see in a design magazine,” Lantz said.
“As another woman, you just want to cheer her on, because she’s on her own, and built this amazing life,” Lantz said. “It’s just amazing to me how one person can come into your life and change the trajectory in such a major way. It’s deeply sad, right? That she’s not with us anymore.”
On Oct. 27, Tracey, 36, was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell in a luxury high-rise building in the Loop where her husband, Adam Beckerink, lives. Her death drew headlines when, in November, her parents successfully won custody of her remains after arguing in court both in Michigan and Cook County that Beckerink had a history of abusing her. The couple had been married for six months when she died.
On Thursday, police said her death is still under investigation.
Beckerink, who faces two pending charges of domestic violence against Tracey in Michigan, could not immediately be reached for comment through his attorneys.
Chicago defense attorney Todd Pugh, who is representing Beckerink, previously told the Tribune that there was “no link” between his client and Tracey’s death and that “Caitlin was the love of Adam’s life.”
Despite hardships Tracey may have faced, her friends and family recall a life filled with love.
“Taken from us far too soon, she was a force of nature – vibrant, bold, and always ready to make you laugh until your sides hurt,” Tracey’s family wrote in their obituary for her Nov. 23 funeral. “Her sassy attitude, infectious energy, and unapologetic joy for life touched everyone she met.”
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Born on May 29, 1988, Tracey grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and studied hospitality management at Michigan State University, finishing her degree in only three years, according to the family’s obituary.
After graduation, Tracey moved to Chicago with her older sister, where they lived next door to each other. She worked in data analytics before becoming a chief human resources officer, according to the obituary.
During the last years of her life, she worked remotely in New Buffalo and regularly traveled to Chicago to stay with her parents, or later, with Beckerink, her neighbors recounted to the Tribune.
Two women who lived doors away from Tracey in New Buffalo said they had fond memories of their “vibrant” and “loving” neighbor with a sentimental streak who kept photographs and keepsakes from her childhood home around the house.
Bunny Coyner first met Tracey in the fall of 2023, she said. The young woman was doing work around her house. Tracey was very handy, Coyner said, and told her that day: “I know my way around a drill and some drywall.”
Coyner remembered that when Tracey invited her in for a tour of her home, she mentioned she’d taken out a temporary restraining order against an ex-boyfriend. Tracey described his car and asked Coyner to alert her if she saw it.
“She was a beautiful, intelligent young woman and had a wonderful life ahead of her,” Coyner said. “I think she was looking forward to maybe getting out of this and searching out a new life, and I wished only the best for her, and she just couldn’t do it.”
According to court records, Tracey had begun dating Beckerink, a tax attorney at a prominent law firm, in October 2022. Beckerink had a unit in the same downtown high-rise in Chicago that Tracey had lived in with her ex-husband prior to the divorce.
But the relationship soon deteriorated. Just one year later, Tracey was granted an emergency protective order in Cook County against Beckerink, for which she submitted an affidavit detailing multiple occasions of physical and verbal abuse.
According to court records filed by Tracey’s parents in Michigan, Beckerink had “manipulated (Tracey) and purposefully isolated her from her family so that he could continue his campaign of abuse and terror unnoticed,” with the records saying that Tracey had told them in September 2023 that Beckerink had held her hostage and physically brutalized her to the point where she required medical attention.
But by November 2023, Tracey moved to vacate the order. Her parents allege in court filings it was due to Beckerink threatening to sue her for “defamation and libel.”
Despite the allegations of abuse, in April 2024, Tracey and Beckerink got married in a private ceremony, according to court records. No one seems to know for sure when the couple got back together.
Lantz said she didn’t know about the alleged abuse or the restraining order. However, Lantz said she had begun to notice her neighbor’s abrupt disappearances and “cryptic” texts over the last year.
Then, she said, she came home on Aug. 19 to see “five or six” police cars outside Tracey’s house. That night, Beckerink was arrested by New Buffalo police for domestic violence, interfering with a 911 call and resisting and assaulting police officers, according to the arrest report obtained by the Tribune.
Beckerink currently faces multiple felony charges in addition to a domestic violence charge for the events of Aug. 19, according to a warrant prepared by the Berrien County prosecutor’s office. A jury trial will begin in January.
Lantz said that after she saw Beckerink being taken away from Tracey’s house in handcuffs, she texted Tracey to ask if she should come over.
“She said yes, which surprised me, honestly, because you know, I felt like she was a pretty independent woman that just handled things on her own,” Lantz said. “And when I got down there, I walked up the steps to her home, to her front door, I went to hug her … she felt so small and tiny, and honestly, frail. Almost like a shell of what she used to be.”
Both Lantz and Coyner went over to Tracey’s house that night and sat with her for hours as she opened up about her relationship, they said.
“We told her she had to get out of it, this was the time to get out of it. You’re better than this, you’re a wonderful woman, you’re beautiful,’” Coyner said.
In the days that followed, Tracey expressed to Lantz and Coyner that she wanted to “start her life over again here in Michigan” and “turn that corner,” Lantz said. She recalled how Tracey had begun to ask her for recommendations for where to get her hair and nails done in New Buffalo, and also requested the name of a Michigan divorce attorney.
“I thought she was getting to a point finally where she was going to get back on track, and that makes me feel incredibly sad,” Lantz said. “I felt like she was hopeful.”
When Tracey went to Chicago for a hair appointment a few days later, Lantz said that she’d assumed it was only to “tie up loose ends.”
Lantz only saw Tracey again one other time before she was found dead in October. Tracey had returned to Michigan with Beckerink near the end of August, dressed “very nice,” and said that she was there because of Beckerink’s court date for his Michigan charges, according to Lantz.
Around that time, Lantz said she and Tracey exchanged a few text messages, in which Tracey “talked about getting her summer back, that she just didn’t have much of a summer, so she wanted to get out on her paddle board.”
Coyner saw Tracey one more time in late September — again dressed formally, again with Beckerink, she said. According to court records, Beckerink had a case conference in Michigan scheduled for Sept. 23.
Since that day, the two women said, the lights have remained on in Tracey’s house.
Tracey was laid to rest on Nov. 23 after a Catholic funeral mass at Old St. Patrick’s Church in the West Loop, which was led by the church’s pastor, the Rev. Tom Hurley. Earlier that week, Tracey’s parents had successfully defeated in court an attempt by Beckerink to halt the funeral and potentially confiscate their daughter’s remains.
As Coyner watched the livestream of Tracey’s funeral from her house in New Buffalo, she said she saw a red-tailed hawk land on a fence outside the window, which she thought of as a sign from “CT.”
At the start of the funeral mass, Hurley told the crowd that Andrew and Monica Tracey had set some “ground rules” for him and the attending mourners, saying that “we need to check our anger at the door for now.”
“One of the things that Monica and Andy said to me is that their daughter’s life is not going to be defined by anger and violence,” Hurley said.
Guests were encouraged to wear green, the school color of Tracey’s beloved alma mater, Michigan State University.
In his homily, Hurley discussed how Tracey’s life consisted of “stories of energy and hospitality and dancing and family and love and joy and laughter and fine wine and wonderful food.” She played softball, loved dancing and had “a beautiful gift of making people enjoy life and laugh,” he said.
Once, she had traveled to France to try and learn more about the shoe business due to her love for fashionable footwear, Hurley said, telling the mourners, “I hope you all have beautiful shoes on here today.”
“When I first got to your home … you were kind of like ‘how are we going to do this, how are we going to get through this?’” Hurley said to Tracey’s parents in the audience. “And then all of a sudden, just automatically, we just started talking about Caitlin. And Monica and Andy, when we started talking about Caitlin, your eyes lit up and you started smiling.”
