An 80-year-old woman and two of her adult children were discovered beaten to death Saturday afternoon in their South Side home, and a battered teenage relative was found clinging to life.
Police said they have no motive, suspect or murder weapon in the “blunt force trauma” homicides of Elnora White, her son, Curtis, 56, and his younger sister, Elnoria Countee, 54, whose bodies were scattered throughout the first floor of the family’s home on the 8100 block of South Green Street in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.
By Saturday evening police were interviewing a man in the case, said Monique Bond, a police spokeswoman.
Elnoria Countee’s daughter, Veronica Giles, who is 14 or 15 and a freshman at Bogan Computer Technical High School, was found on the floor by the front door, alive but critically injured.
“She was mumbling, but you couldn’t make out what she said,” said Linda Kelly, a family friend who along with another daughter of Elnora White entered the locked house about 2 p.m. because they had both been unable to reach anyone inside the two-story building where the family had lived for years.
Kelly said she had last talked to Elnora White on the telephone about 8 a.m. Saturday, which Police Supt. Phil Cline said was the last known communication with anyone inside the home.
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“[Elnora] wanted me to go with her to pick up her car,” Kelly said. “She then said, `Hold on, I’m going to call you right back.'”
She never did, and it wasn’t until six hours later that Kelly and the other White daughter entered the home through a window and saw a bloody scene that Kelly called horrifying.
There they saw Curtis White, who was physically disabled, beaten to death in the bed where he often watched television and chatted with neighbors who visited. Countee was found on her bedroom floor. Kelly said Elnora White was on the floor in the dining room.
“They were all just laid out,” said Kelly, who called police from the house.
Paramedics took Giles to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where police said she was in critical condition Saturday evening. Family members were gathered in the emergency room but declined to comment.
The three slain relatives were pronounced dead at the scene, said a spokeswoman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Autopsies were planned for the three on Sunday.
Kelly and neighbors said Elnora White and her late husband, Norman, had lived in the house for several decades, raising five children and numerous grandchildren in the building. Tony Jackson, who has lived next door to the White family for about 10 years, said he would greet his neighbors but didn’t know them well.
“We’re all shaken up here, this happening so close to home,” Jackson said.
Neighbors said the house was a busy place, with family and friends coming and going, and Elnora White was often seen sitting on her porch with visitors. Curtis White was disabled his entire life and rarely left the house, neighbors said.
“They were a good family. Mrs. White was a nice lady,” said Phillip Moore, 13, who lived across the street from the Whites and once attended Morgan Elementary with Veronica.
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