As 63-year-old George Levin finished up a Sunday dinner with his mother and sister, two men left a nearby apartment with duct tape, prosecutors said, and entered the Norwood Park home after reportedly arranging a meetup with Levin online.
But in the span of about half an hour, prosecutors allege, the men brutally attacked Levin, robbed him and left him tied up in his basement, where he remained until his sister found him dead a couple of hours later.
Calling the slaying shocking, a Cook County judge on Saturday ordered Geiderwuin Bello Morales, 21, and Jefferson Ubilla-Delgado, 29, detained while awaiting trial. The pair, who lived together in an apartment, are charged with murder and robbery.
“I can’t overlook the horrifying nature of the allegations here. To call this a crime of violence is quite the understatement,” Judge William Fahy said.
Ubilla-Delgado was wearing a Department of Homeland GPS monitoring device on his ankle at the time of the killing, prosecutors said in court in a detail not fully explained at the hearing. A police report listed Ecuador as Ubilla-Delgado’s place of birth.
During the hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, prosecutors made their case to the judge to keep the men behind bars, laying out gruesome details of the Jan. 26 attack in the home in the 7600 block of West Talcott Avenue.
A defense lawyer, though, argued that the death may have been an “unfortunate accident.” It is unclear how much of the encounter was consensual, the defense argued.
Fahy was unpersuaded.
“This is much more than mere tragic, and it’s certainly much more than an accident based on what’s been presented here today,” he said.
According to police and prosecutors, Levin, his sister and his mother ate dinner together that night around 7 p.m. before Levin went downstairs about an hour later.
Meanwhile, prosecutors said, Ubilla-Delgado and Bello Morales were spotted on surveillance video leaving an apartment building around 8:05 p.m., then arriving at Levin’s home a few minutes later in a white Lexus.
Around 8:30 p.m., Levin’s sister heard loud noises coming from the basement and walked downstairs to investigate, prosecutors said. She saw Bello Morales leaving her brother’s bedroom and asked him where her brother was, according to prosecutors. He assured her that her brother was OK and that he would have Levin call her later.
Surveillance footage captured the men walking away from Levin’s house about 10 minutes later, getting in their car and leaving. From 8:35 to 10:45 p.m., Levin’s sister tried to call her brother with no response, prosecutors said. She also texted him, receiving messages “brushing her off,” prosecutors said.
Levin’s keys, cell phone and wallet all were missing, according to a police report. Those text messages were sent after the men had left the home.
After sending Levin multiple text messages, she went downstairs around 10:45 p.m, prosecutors said. She found him with a sock stuffed in his mouth, partially undressed, with duct tape around his hands and face and a black power cord wrapped around his ankles.
Levin’s sister peeled away the duct tape and performed CPR while waiting for emergency responders to arrive, prosecutors said. He sustained a hemorrhage to the neck, a subdural hemorrhage to the head and rib fractures, according to the state. He also may have been suffocated.
Police tracked Bello Morales and Ubilla-Delgado using Levin’s phone and the ankle monitor that Ubilla-Delgado wore. The men used Levin’s phone to start online banking accounts and placed four orders on Amazon worth more than $4,000, prosecutors said.
The suspects also were captured on video going into a vape store on Lawrence Avenue, and the video also showed Ubilla-Delgado carrying Levin’s phone, according to prosecutors. Bello Morales then went to a gas station on Montrose Avenue, unsuccessfully trying to withdraw money from an ATM using Levin’s credit cards, prosecutors said.
Bello Morales was arrested Jan. 12 and accused of beckoning a 13-year-old girl over to a car on the Far Northwest Side, court records show. He was charged with simple assault, and charging documents say he “gestured towards (the girl) to come over to his vehicle.”
Caroline Kubzansky contributed reporting.
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