Chicago police were investigating the apparent slayings of a mother and daughter who may have been dead for several days when they were found in their West Rogers Park home on Wednesday.
Police went to the home in the 2800 block of West Morse Avenue after a co-worker of the mother reported that no one had heard from her in about a week. When police subsequently forced their way into the home, they found the bodies of Mildred Wolf, 77, and her daughter, Maril De Toledo, 51, said Belmont Area Sgt. Frank Kajari.
Police released few details Wednesday, except to say the women appeared to be the victims of a double homicide. No suspect is in custody, Kajari said.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office said that autopsies will be conducted Thursday to determine the specific causes of their deaths.
Sheila Janek, who worked with Wolf at Dominick’s Finer Foods in Rogers Park, said another employee became worried about Wolf because no one had seen or heard from her since around Aug. 9. Wolf had worked for the last 18 months for Act Media, a firm that conducts demonstrations of food products at Dominick’s stores, Janek said.
Wolf was not scheduled to work during the last week, but she normally stopped by demonstrations being conducted by other employees to make sure everything was running smoothly. A co-worker called Janek after Wolf did not come by her demonstration on Monday.
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Janek sent another employee who lived nearby to stop at Wolf’s house to see if she was all right. That employee found mail backed up in the door, lights on and the air-conditioning running, but no one answered when she rang the bell, Janek said.
“She was a very nice lady, thoughtful and conscientious,” said Janek. “This shouldn’t have happened to her.”
The slayings occurred on a street lined with modest homes and well-kept lawns, and the news of violence on the block rattled some of the neighbors.
“We never have any trouble in this neighborhood,” said Shirley Bunag, who has lived on Morse for more than a decade. “We never see the police because there’s never any need to. We’re all friends here.”
But neighbors who gathered in front of Wolf’s home as police carried the bodies out said she did not seem to have close friends on the block. Of the dozen spectators gathered at the scene, only one knew Wolf’s first name and none of them had previously known her last name.
“She just minded her own business. No one knew anything about her,” said Bunag. “They were very secluded people.”
“We never knew what was going on in there because none of us were ever invited into the house,” said a 25-year resident of block who asked not to be named.
But some of the neighbors said Wolf would shout “hello” as she walked to and from her brown Pontiac, but rarely stopped for conversation.
They said Wolf’s daughter and a grandson who stayed with Wolf off and on for the last 15 years had also kept to themselves.
The grandson’s whereabouts were not known.