Investigators of the massacre at the Brown’s Chicken & Pasta in Palatine are examining whether a recent series of armed robberies at suburban stores and restaurants might reveal a clue to the Palatine killings, sources said Tuesday.
The Palatine Police Department also defended its officers in the face of complaints from the families of two of the victims that they responded slowly the night of the killings, delaying the investigation and making it impossible to save any of the seven shooting victims.
Palatine Deputy Chief Walt Gasior said the officers “handled the situations properly” but that the department was reviewing “discrepancies” between the police and the relatives’ accounts.
The robberies are just one aspect of the widened investigation, which also includes a psychological profile of the killer or killers being developed by the FBI and reports of an idling car in the Brown’s lot at closing time.
In the series of robberies being examined, no one was injured, but in one case, three masked gunmen robbed a Taco Bell in Des Plaines after herding three workers into a cooler after closing on Dec. 19, police said.
The gunmen first accosted an employee outside the Taco Bell, 1175 E. Oakton St., and forced him back inside, said Des Plaines Police Cmdr. Al Freitag. They left after the store manager opened a floor safe for them, Freitag said.
At Brown’s, the victims were found in two coolers in the rear of the restaurant. While police have said nothing about whether robbery was a motive, the Brown’s outlet contains a floor safe, and the attack apparently occurred after the store closed at 9 p.m. Friday.
Freitag said Palatine police had been given information on the Taco Bell robbery, which police say involved four robbers linked to a group also suspected of hitting groceries in Mundelein, Arlington Heights and Morton Grove.
Two suspects from Des Plaines have been charged with armed robbery in some of the northwest suburban holdups.
Police said Ruben Loyola, 20, of 9032 Washington St. has been linked to robberies in Des Plaines, Mundelein and Arlington Heights, while Richard Farberger, 21, of 9036 Church St. was linked to robberies in the last two towns. Both men, who are in Cook County Jail awaiting trial, are believed to be part of a larger group of offenders, and Des Plaines police have issued arrest warrants for three additional suspects.
Mundelein Sgt. Keith Kalodimos said his department has talked with Palatine police about a possible link.
“It’s something that should be looked at,” Kalodimos said, although he noted that there were numerous differences between the Mundelein incident and the Brown’s killings, which sources say involved a .38-caliber weapon. He said a different type of gun was used when the Super Mexico grocery was robbed Dec. 7.
Arlington Heights police also said the robbery of Castillo’s Groceries on Dec. 22 did not identically match the Brown’s crime.
Gasior said the Chicago Police Department had been brought into the case, and a Chicago police spokesman said the department is providing two homicide investigators.
The FBI, Gasior said, had been called in Saturday, two days earlier than he had said previously. The FBI, he said, will create a psychological profile of the killer or killers.
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Sources said the agency also is checking its computer files for similar cases to help investigators. On Monday, police freed a fired Brown’s employee after two days of questioning.
Because the size of the operation has expanded, the investigators are in the process of moving out of the Palatine Police Department to an undisclosed location, Gasior said.
He said his department has received more than 600 phone calls offering information.
“We have a large number of leads that our investigators are following up as we speak,” he said. “Obviously we are receiving calls from other police departments in the Chicago metropolitan area and other parts of the country.”
One call came from the Alsip Police Department, which is investigating a series of south suburban robberies of food stores and gas stations. But Alsip Lt. David Snooks said that a phone call made to Palatine police had not yet been returned.
Also Tuesday, sources said Palatine police received a report Friday night of a man with a gun in the vicinity of the Brown’s outlet.
Two motorists said that between 10 and 11 p.m. Friday they narrowly avoided hitting a man who ran in front of their cars on Smith Street, not far from the restaurant. At least one of the two motorists reported the incident to police soon afterward because the man appeared to be carrying a handgun, sources said.
And the owner of a store in the strip mall behind Brown’s said Tuesday that one of his employees saw a car idling by the restaurant shortly after closing time. That information was passed on to police Saturday, the owner said, but police did not return to the mall to follow up until Monday.
While police remained tight-lipped about the investigation, Gasior was quick to defend his officers, deflecting charges made by relatives of two of the victims in interviews with the baiduhai.
The department’s version of the events preceding the discovery of the murder victims contradicts the accounts of family members, who said their early calls for help were not urgently pursued.
Gasior acknowledged the inconsistencies in the stories and expressed concern, saying an investigation was continuing to clear up the differences. The first steps included obtaining tape recordings of police calls made that night, as well as transcripts of calls from citizens.
He also said victims’ families had possibly been confused in the aftermath of the tragedy, leading to the discrepancies in accounts.
The victims’ families questioned whether possible delays by police could have been influenced by race. The families are immigrants from Mexico and the Philippines.
Emmanuel Castro, the father of slain employee Michael Castro and a Filipino immigrant, said he believes his complaints were not taken seriously “because of our accent, because of our look.”
He questioned whether the delay had hampered the investigation and, perhaps, cost the life of one or more of the victims.
Gasior would not discuss the possibility that there was a delay afforded the killer or killers, saying police would not disclose the time of death. He also dismissed the accusations that police responded in a lax manner because the complainants were minorities.
“We are very conscious of how we deal with minorities and people of other races,” Gasior said. “In this case, I don’t think there was any attempt to (treat) these people any differently based on their ethnic or racial status.”
He said his officers had followed “proper police procedure.” That included “rattling the doors” and shining flashlights into the darkened restaurant. Gasior said the officers checked only one of the building’s four doors, but would not say which of the four doors it was.
A side door was found unlocked about 2:30 a.m. when police entered the building and discovered the bodies, after Castro’s family filed a missing person report.
Conflicting aspects of accounts by the families and the police include:
– Emmanuel Castro, father of 16-year-old Michael, said he first notified police his son was missing between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m. Fri-day. Police said they have no record of such a call and that their first contact with the Castro family was a phone call at 1:02 a.m. Saturday.
– Pedro Maldonado, the brother of slain cook Guadalupe Maldonado, has said that he encountered police between 1:30 and 1:40 a.m. while peering through the restaurant’s windows. Police say that incident took place at 12:21 a.m. and that Maldonado was inside his car.
– The Castro family has said they filed a missing person report with police at their home around 2 a.m. Police have said the report was filed at the Palatine police station.
Emmanuel Castro, on Monday, charged that the officer who first met him and his wife, Epifania, at the restaurant never left his unmarked cruiser.
On Tuesday, however, Castro conceded that it was possible that the officer left his car, checked the building and returned to his vehicle before the Castros arrived-as police contend.
But that did not stem his criticism of the officer’s search. “What I think now is he just didn’t do his job real good,” Castro said.
He also remained steadfast in his contention that he had called police at 11:45 p.m. Friday. Castro said he looked at his watch and the clock on his VCR constantly throughout the evening as he worried about his son.
Similarly, members of the Maldonado family said they also were positive of the hour at which Pedro Maldonado went to inquire about his brother at the fast-food restaurant.
“It was 1:30 a.m. I’m sure,” said Juana Maldonado, Pedro’s wife.
“My husband normally gets home about 1:20 a.m. He didn’t see Lupe’s car and asked where he was.”
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By the time Pedro got to the Brown’s, she said, “it was maybe 1:35 a.m. or at the latest 1:40 a.m.”
Gasior said Palatine police would try to meet Wednesday with both families in an attempt to straighten out the discrepancies.
“We’re just trying to get to the bottom of these things,” he said. “We need to talk to them. We know our procedures. We’re not saying they’re wrong about this. We’re just trying to figure out where the misunderstanding came in.”