Chicago police have announced charges against a man they say fled to South America during an investigation into a 2004 Gold Coast slaying.
David Barklow was extradited to Chicago from Peru on Friday and faces a first-degree murder charge in the shooting death of Kent Projansky, police said in a news release. The 68-year-old was ordered detained Saturday during a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Court records for the hearing weren’t immediately available.
“My office will never stop working to seek justice for victims and their families, no matter how much time has passed,” State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said in a news release.
Projansky, 40, was found dead in December 2004 inside his 30th-floor apartment in the Elm Street Plaza building in the Gold Coast.
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He died of multiple gunshot wounds, the Cook County medical examiner’s office said at the time. There were no signs of forced entry, authorities said.
Days after the death, police responded to a report of a duffel bag found inside a garbage can on the Northwest Side that contained bloody clothes and a gun, which was later linked to ballistic evidence recovered from the crime scene, police said.
The case went cold, but in 2017, a detective resubmitted evidence from the crime scene and the duffel bag to the State Police Crime Lab, which had newer latent examination technology.
That investigation identified Barklow, who lived across the street from Projansky at the time of the slaying, as a suspect.
Barklow was arrested in October 2019 by the U.S. Marshals Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force. His DNA samples and fingerprints were taken and he was released without charge as detectives waited for confirmation of a forensic link between him and the 2004 evidence.
In December 2019, police said Barklow fled the country. In early 2022, police learned Barklow had moved to Ecuador.
An arrest warrant was then issued for Barklow on charges of murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, police said.
In April, detectives learned from Interpol that Barklow had traveled to Peru. Chicago police said they teamed up with the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. State Department, the Regional Security Office at the U.S Embassy in Lima, Peru, and Peruvian police to detain Barklow.
In addition to the murder charge, Barklow also faces a warrant charge.