Weeks before a man allegedly fatally stabbed his estranged wife in a Portage Park attack that also injured a police officer, he appeared before a Cook County judge on accusations that he threw her to the ground and held her in his car, records show.
During a detention hearing, Cook County prosecutors argued for detention as the public defender for Constantin Beldie, 57, hit back against the state’s evidence.
Judge Thomas Nowinski ordered him released on electronic monitoring, finding that prosecutors did not meet their burden for detention. He criticized the case work, calling it “a little sloppy,” according to a court transcript of the Oct. 9 proceeding.
The judge’s decision to release Beldie just six weeks before he is suspected to have killed Lacramioara Beldie, 54, set off an outcry on Wednesday from domestic violence advocates asking for Nowinski to be reassigned, noting that he also denied an emergency protective order for the mother of 11-year-old Jayden Perkins against Crosetti Brand, who is accused of stabbing Jayden to death in an attack on his mother.
In a news release, Chicago police said a detective, who works in the Harrison Area on the West Side, saw Beldie being stabbed in the 5600 block of West Leland Avenue around 2:20 p.m. Tuesday. Constantin Beldie was later found dead in a vehicle nearby, authorities said.
As outrage over the handling of the matter grew, a source familiar with the proceedings and the judge’s decision said the risk assessment metrics presented to the court were low, and that the prosecutor’s petition for detention did not include details that met the bar for detention.
Neither the chief judge’s office nor the state’s attorney’s office responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.
According to court records, including an order of protection, Constantin Beldie had a history of accusations by his wife that he attacked and threatened her.
Lacramioara Beldie filed for an order of protection against her husband in January 2024, a few months after the two separated. They were married in 1992 and had two children, both now in their 20s, according to court records.
In that petition, she said she was at her estranged husband’s home on Jan. 6 where Constantin was drinking and the two were arguing. He asked her to leave, and after she picked up her purse to go, Constantin then “grabbed my arm and dragged me into the bathroom.”
It was then, she said, that Constantin attacked her and threatened to kill her. She said the abuse lasted for eight hours before she was able to escape.
“He then punched me, slapped me, and kicked me,” Lacramioara Beldie wrote. “He called me a ‘slut,’ ‘stupid,’ and ‘bitch.’ He then said ‘I can kill you now and put you in a bag and take you to the lake’ and ‘I can get a gun and kill all of you and you don’t know’ and ‘I don’t care if the police take me because you left me.’”
In her affidavit, Lacramioara said her husband verbally abused her 10 times during their relationship. On one occasion, Constantin Beldie said, “I am going to be like your grandfather.”
“I took this as a threat from (him) because my grandfather killed my grandmother and then himself,” Lacramioara Beldie said in the filing.
Judge Torrie Corbin granted an emergency order of protection on Jan. 8, records show. The order granted Lacramioara Beldie exclusive possession of her Northwest Side home. It also ordered Constantin Beldie to surrender his guns, firearm owner’s identification card and concealed carry license to the Chicago Police Department.
The order was extended twice before the two reached an agreement on a no-contact order in late March, records show.
On Oct. 7, Lacramioara Beldie filed a new petition for an order of protection. In her petition, she said she was walking to the bus stop and looking at her phone when Constantin Beldie got out, grabbed her and tried to drag her into his car, covering her mouth to stop her from screaming. Lacramioara Beldie said he tried to throw her to the ground and knock her unconscious but ended up driving away.
“As he was driving off, he threatened me saying ‘I’ll do it, you don’t believe that I will do it’ as he was pointing a black object,” the petition read.
The attack left Lacramioara Beldie with several injuries, including cuts that required stitches, according to the petition. Judge Hilda Bahena granted the order of protection the next day, records show.
On Oct. 9, prosecutors asked Nowinski to order Constantin Beldie held pending trial, alleging that he’d driven up to Lacramioara Beldie and one of their children in an alleyway, accused her of poisoning him and attacked her. Prosecutors alleged Constantin Beldie threw Lacramioara Beldie to the ground using her backpack and pulled her into the back seat of the car, though she was able to get out after about 10 seconds.
Nowinski denied the petition and ordered Constantin Beldie released on electronic monitoring the same day, records show.
In a transcript of the Oct. 9 hearing, an assistant state’s attorney, in relaying Beldie’s background, told the judge that Beldie had one year of supervision for a 2006 driving offense.
“That’s all by way of publishable background,” she said.
The transcript did contain references to the January incident and past order of protection, though it did not go into detail.
Nowinski criticized the case work after a back-and-forth between prosecutors and Beldie’s public defender over what the evidence showed and what had been turned over.
“Seems like there was some pretty sloppy work by either the police or felony review, but go on,” he said.
In delivering his decision ordering Beldie to electronic monitoring, Nowinski said there is “no history of domestic violence.”
“I do not believe the state’s met their burden that there’s no condition or combination of conditions that can mitigate the threat this defendant poses,” he said, according to the transcript. “So the state’s petition is denied.”
A grand jury accused him of aggravated domestic battery and strangulation, attempted kidnapping and unlawful restraint, court records show. Constantin Beldie pleaded not guilty to all charges the day before the alleged stabbing.
Lacramioara Beldie worked as a nanny a few blocks from where she was killed, court records show. Carson Mumma said she’d been a stay-at-home mom for her two young daughters until they met Beldie, whom they called Mirela, and felt that they were in good hands.
“Our girls adored her,” she said. “She was the reason I felt comfortable going back to work at all.”
Mumma, 37, described Beldie as “so playful, and so kind, and so gentle and calm” and a huge part of her family’s life. Beldie took Mumma’s daughters all over the neighborhood. They’d go to playgrounds or the library or to Park District classes, she said.
“I felt so good having my kids with her,” she said. “Not just like they’re safe, but like they’re safe, they’re well cared for, they’re growing, they’re nurtured.”
Mumma often came home from work finding Beldie and her oldest daughter immersed in an art project. Sometimes it was finger painting, but others, “she would take our paper towel tubes and make little flowers or caterpillars or things out of them.”
Mumma later said in a text message that she did not know that Beldie had begun to fear for her safety in recent months.
“We had no idea about any of it,” she said. “It was a complete shock.”
Advocates against domestic violence on Wednesday called on Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans to reassign Nowinski, saying his decisions had “resulted in two tragic, preventable murders.”
Amanda Pyron, the president and CEO of The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence, said Nowinski “has repeatedly shown he does not have the judgment necessary to keep survivors safe” and called on the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to review its domestic violence screening policies.
State Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, a Chicago Democrat whose district covers the site of the fatal stabbing on the Northwest Side, said the killing highlighted gaps in the court system, adding that a criminal justice reform law in 2021 that eliminated cash bail was supposed to give judges more information than before in weighing detention for people arrested for violent felonies, such as domestic battery.
“The Portage Park community and the far Northwest Side is rocked by having this event and I’m hurting for the family, for the victim. She’s got adult children,” said LaPointe. “These are very important decisions that need to be given time and judges should be looking at much better data.”
“So the system is supposed to result in better decisions, and clearly that did not happen in this instance.”
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.
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