As bridal shop owners walked out of the Maxwell Street police station Tuesday clutching gowns recovered from a cracked burglary ring, the alleged burglars-Alexander Nikolic and Grazyna Fiszer-were walking out of Lake County Jail, free on bond.
It was a snafu that led to red faces and pointing fingers, as each agency involved tried to explain how Nikolic, a thrice-convicted felon currently on federal probation, was released. Police were unable to find the couple Wednesday, and a source close to Nikolic said he believes the Serbian national is already headed back to the Balkans.
The judge who set the $50,000 bond said he was never informed of Nikolic’s criminal history. The Lake County state’s attorney’s office said Nikolic’s past was brought up in court, but Lake County authorities were never notified of pending charges in Cook County. And Cook County officials said they were nowhere near filing charges in the burglaries that police claim the couple committed.
Meanwhile, court records show the federal government had been trying to send Nikolic back to prison for months, claiming he had violated the terms of his probation by lying about his work, residence and family. The motions were never granted, and Nikolic remained in a work-release program that police said allowed him to pull off a string of heists.
“Unfortunately, it’s just the legal system we’ve got. There was no screwup,” said Chicago organized crime Detective Jeff Kumorek, who had been investigating the couple for months. “(At least) they didn’t kill anybody.”
On Sunday night, Kumorek and colleagues followed Nikolic and Fiszer to Waukegan, then arrested them as the two were allegedly stealing power tools from a hardware store.
After being booked by Waukegan police and taken to Lake County Jail, the two suspects appeared before Judge Harry Hartel Jr., who said he was unaware of Nikolic’s prior convictions and current probation when he set bond.
“All it was when it was before me was a simple case of burglary,” Hartel said, adding that he would have set a higher bond had he known of Nikolic’s criminal history.
But John Dixon, the Lake County assistant state’s attorney who attended the hearing, said Nikolic’s past was brought up in court. The state’s attorney’s office, however, did not ask that bond be set higher than $50,000.
“It was told to the judge that he was on probation,” Dixon said.
Dixon and Hartel also said it would have been easier to hold Nikolic and Fiszer had Cook County authorities presented them with warrants for the burglaries in which the two are suspects.
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But a Cook County state’s attorney’s spokeswoman said the office was never asked to file charges. And police investigating the burglaries said their cases could not be closed until they had a chance to notify victims and talk to the couple.
“The case has changed in terms of knowing who’s responsible, and some of the evidence has been recovered,” said Crystal Lake Police Chief Keith Nygren, whose department was investigating a bridal shop burglary that occurred less than two weeks ago.
“But in terms of filing charges, we want to sit down with the case reports and Chicago police, and we want to sit down with our state’s attorney” before any action is taken.
The case is further complicated because victims are from as far away as Wisconsin and Indiana.
Fiszer will not be considered missing unless she skips her next Lake County court date, scheduled for Sept. 12. Nikolic, meanwhile, was ordered to appear in federal court Thursday on a motion to revoke his probation.
The Thursday hearing will not be the first time federal authorities have moved to send Nikolic to prison for violating probation. Twice sentenced to probation for burglary convictions, Nikolic pleaded guilty last year to smuggling arms to Serbia and received five years probation plus 10 1/2 months in a Salvation Army work-release program.
But according to court documents, his probation officer believed Nikolic had lied to him about his job and said Nikolic did not inform him when he moved out of his estranged wife’s house and into Fiszer’s residence.
In addition, the officer said Nikolic did not tell him that he was arrested with Fiszer earlier this year, although no charges were filed against Nikolic in the incident. The officer recommended that Nikolic be jailed for “fraudulent misrepresentation of his work situation, family situation and his failure to report recent arrest.”
Nikolic’s attorney, Julius Echeles, said the motions were denied because many of the allegations came from Nikolic’s estranged wife, who has an order of protection against him, and the allegations were found to be false.
One request filed in court was granted, though: In February, Nikolic was allowed to begin spending every other weekend away from the work-release program. Nikolic also asked that his required fees to the Salvation Army be eliminated, since his take-home pay of $230 a week and his child-support payments left him “with insufficient monies . . . for his necessary expenses.”