A slain South Side community activist’s daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend carried out a long-discussed plot to kill the activist in pursuit of her estate after the woman ordered the young couple from her home when she learned her daughter was pregnant, officials said Friday.
Mattie Battiste, 72, was “a modern-day hero” who organized block clubs and confronted neighborhood toughs involved in gangs, guns and drugs, said Vance Henry, director of the Chicago Police Department’s Community Alternative Policing Strategy program. But the slaying was not the result of her anti-crime activism, he said.
Battiste learned Monday that her daughter was pregnant, said Lt. Dennis Keane of the Calumet District homicide detective division. She told Katrina Battiste, 20, and Seith Williams, 21, who in recent weeks was living at the home in the 6900 block of South Prairie Avenue, to leave, Keane said.
“For some time, they had discussed killing the victim to get her inheritance,” said Cook County Assistant State’s Atty. LuAnn Snow. When Battiste ordered them out, “they put their plan into action,” Snow said.
Williams offered $1,000 to Hernandez Holeman, 20, of the 7400 block of South Kingston Avenue, to help kill Battiste, Snow said at a bail hearing before Cook County Circuit Judge Mary Margaret Brosnahan, who denied bail for all three. Each faces one count of first-degree murder and will be eligible for the death penalty if convicted.
Snow said Katrina Battiste gave her house keys to the two men, who police described as gang members with relatively minor arrest records.
Early Monday night, they found Battiste on the telephone in her bedroom. Williams approached her from behind, put a belt “around her neck and pulled,” Snow said. A struggle ensued, during which Holeman hit Battiste on the head with a hammer, she said.
Holeman went to the kitchen, got a knife, rags and ammonia, returned to the bedroom, stuffed ammonia-soaked rags in Battiste’s mouth and used duct tape to cover her mouth and bind her hands and feet, Snow said. Williams stabbed her, she added.
Keane said the two ransacked the home, taking Battiste’s purse and wallet.
Police obtained a written confession from the daughter, who is three months’ pregnant, and videotaped confessions from the men, authorities said. Police recovered bloody clothing and shoes, a hammer and a knife that might have been used in the crime, they said.