The investigation into the mass murder at a Palatine restaurant appeared to be floundering Monday after police released without restrictions a man they had held for two days.
“We are not here to reassure the community,” Cook County State’s Atty. Jack O’Malley said. “This crime has not been solved, and, yes, there is a murderer or murderers on the loose. I can’t deny that.”
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“Businesses,” he added, “ought to take extra precautions.”
O’Malley, in the most forthright official discussion yet of the case, said that police had no suspects in the slaying Friday night or Saturday morning of the two owners and five workers at Brown’s Chicken & Pasta.
And, O’Malley indicated, there were few good leads.
Meanwhile, relatives of the victims said that they had raised fears about their missing family members to police two times before authorities attempted to enter the restaurant.
One call spurred a police visit to the business more than 2 hours before police actually entered it early Saturday, said Emmanuel Castro, the father of 16-year-old victim Michael C. Castro.
In other developments Monday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office revealed that two of the victims had died of single gunshot wounds and five of multiple gunshot wounds. One of the victims, co-owner Lynn W. Ehlenfeldt, also had been cut in the neck, according to the autopsy.
Police sources said that all the shots had come from a .38 caliber weapon or weapons.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation entered the case Monday at the request of Palatine police to provide, at the least, laboratory and technical assistance, according to sources.
And at a Palatine Village Board meeting Monday night, trustees made an emergency allocation of $50,000 from village cash reserves to cover police expenses for the investigation, including $44,000 for overtime pay.
Emmanuel Castro said that after the family’s initial, worried call, a patrol car met him and his wife at the restaurant at about 11:45 p.m., almost three hours after the restaurant’s 9 p.m. closing.
The officer looked at the restaurant without attempting to enter, said everything appeared normal and drove away, Castro said.
“If someone was still living, gasping for breath, we might have saved his life,” Castro said Monday.
At 1:30 a.m., a brother of slain cook Guadalupe Maldonado was peering into a window of the restaurant, searching for his brother, when an officer in a passing patrol car told him all appeared fine and he should return home, Maldonado’s relatives said.
During both of those visits, four cars, including at least two employees’ vehicles, were in the parking lot.
At 2 a.m., the Castros called in a missing persons report and returned to meet police at the restaurant. Police this time discovered an unlocked back door, entered, and told the Castros it was a “crime scene” and they should go home, said Castro.
Police on Monday said they had no record of talking to Pedro Maldonado and were checking into any contact with the Castro family.
In his 5 p.m. news conference at Palatine police headquarters, O’Malley repeatedly declined to discuss where the investigation was headed after the release of Martin Blake, a 23-year-old Elgin resident who recently was fired from his job at the restaurant.
Blake had been brought in Saturday for questioning and held for 48 hours before being released at about 3 p.m. Monday.
O’Malley acknowledged that investigators had focused “a fair amount of attention” on Blake, his connection to the restaurant and his whereabouts on the night of the murders.
“Those questions had been answered,” he said.
O’Malley said that “no one has been eliminated as a suspect,” but he said Blake was freed without conditions.
O’Malley’s statements renewed even the most basic questions about why the seven were slain, whether robbery was a motive and if it could happen again. O’Malley did nothing to allay community fears.
“If I could tell the community we know the motive and it was specifically targeted at these people in this restaurant . . . I would. But I cannot and the police cannot,” O’Malley said.
In fact, sources close to the investigation said that frustrated authorities are now considering the possibility that the victims might have been shot to death in a robbery attempt.
Law enforcement sources working the case said that two pieces of evidence suggested such a scenario: the knife wound to the neck of Lynn Ehlenfeldt and the existence of a time-lock safe sealed until Monday.
One investigator offered this theory: A robber, infuriated to find the safe would not open, threatened and cut Lynn Ehlenfeldt with a knife, hoping to pressure her co-owner husband, Richard E. Ehlenfeldt, into opening the safe.
When that failed, the investigator said, the robber might have threatened to start shooting workers one by one until the safe was opened.
Money was found on the victims and in their belongings, sources said, which might indicate that the flurry of violence sidetracked the robbery or that robbery wasn’t even a motive.
The police have said they discovered the seven bodies about 2:30 a.m. Saturday after the parents of an employee had called them, concerned that their son hadn’t returned home after the restaurant closed at 9 p.m.
The Castro family’s account puts the time of discovery at about 2 a.m.
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The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office revealed for the first time Monday the cause of death for the victims. Lynn Ehlenfeldt, 49, and Marcus Nellsen, 31, each died of a “gunshot wound to the head,” according to a medical examainer’s report.
Lynn Ehlenfeldt also was cut with a “sharp-edged instrument,” said Dr. Edmund R. Donoghue Jr., assistant chief medical examiner of Cook County.
Richard Ehlenfeldt, 50; Palatine High School students Castro and Rico L. Solis, 17; and Palatine residents Thomas Mennes, 32, and Maldonado, 46, all died from multiple gunshot wounds, Donoghue said. But he declined to provide further details at, he said, the request of Palatine police.
Sources said the Ehlenfeldts were not found together, only that five victims were found in a cooler and two were discovered elsewhere in the restaurant, 168 W. Northwest Hwy.
O’Malley assured the public that Palatine police and other investigators were working diligently on the case and that a lack of detailed information was partly meant to not jeopardize the investigation.
Still, he said he did not want to offer false assurances and added that residents and business owners “ought to take extra precautions.”
Blake was released two days after police first took him into custody and after his attorneys complained that police had kept their client for an excessive period of time. O’Malley said the release was not related to the lawyers’ complaints.
One of his lawyers, James Kissel, said he was prohibited from seeing Blake when he went to the Palatine police station on Sunday.
“I waited and waited and waited, and then I finally left when I was given the impression by police and the prosecutor that I would not be allowed to see him,” Kissel said.
Dennis Born, Kissel’s partner in a Northbrook firm hired by Blake’s father, was able to meet with Blake on Monday morning. “Mr. Blake has expressed his regret and his remorse” about the deaths of his former co-workers, Born said. “He is relieved to be home.”
Born said authorities have indicated they will not file charges against Blake.
O’Malley, though, said, “We also couldn’t go far enough to tell anyone that we know 100 percent for sure if he didn’t do it-any more, unfortunately, than we can say about a lot of people.”
As the police investigation moved on, offers of help for the victims’ families also continued.
Frank Portillo, the president of Brown’s Chicken, said that a Palatine Cares Memorial Fund would be started. Rand Hill Park Cemetery in Palatine offered free burial space for the victims.
Palatine Village President Rita Mullins said she had received a call from the area’s congressman, U.S. Rep. Phil Crane (R-Ill.), offering assistance to have Maldonado’s body returned to Mexico for burial.
At Palatine High School, students returned to classes for the first time since the murder of their two classmates, Castro and Solis, and spent time with counselors piecing together the tragic event as a way to overcome grief and fear.
“We’d really like to know if the assailant is still at large,” said Matt Petricca, 17, the senior class president.
For Merle Slaninka of Arlington Heights, a neighbor of the Ehlenfeldt family, Monday was the toughest day to bear.
With her voice shaking, she said: “You hear about this and read about it and tears don’t come. But they came today when I read the obituary.”