A man suspected of fatally stabbing his wife Tuesday in Portage Park already had been facing charges for allegedly choking and attempting to kidnap her last month, but was released on GPS monitoring, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
Hours after the Tuesday stabbing, the suspect, 57-year-old Constantin Beldie was found dead inside a car a block away.
Beldie and his wife, Lacramioara Beldie, 54, were formally identified Wednesday by the Cook County medical examiner's office.
An off-duty detective witnessed the stabbing about 2:25 p.m. in the 5600 block of West Leland Avenue and suffered a gunshot wound while trying to intervene, according to a preliminary statement from Chicago police.
The Area 4 detective fired shots in the suspect’s direction and suffered a graze wound while trying to stop him, police said. Lacramioara Beldie died at the scene.
The detective was being treated at Lutheran General Hospital for injuries that weren’t thought to be life-threatening, according to the police statement and sources.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates police shootings, said it responded to the scene and opened a probe.
Beldie was previously charged in a separate attack against his wife Oct. 9 — the same day he was served with an emergency order of protection she had sought, court records show.
Prosecutors filed a petition that day to have him held in Cook County Jail pending trial, but it was denied by Judge Thomas E. Nowinski. The judge instead released the suspect on GPS monitoring, ordered him to refrain from possessing weapons, and forbade him from visiting his wife’s home, work or school.
According to Lacramioara Beldie's petition for the protective order, the second she had sought against her husband this year, she said he grabbed her as she was walking to a bus, tried to cover her mouth to stop her from screaming and attempted to knock her unconscious.
"Someone heard me and began to call police," she wrote in the petition. "He got in the car and drove off. As he was driving off he threatened me saying '[I’ll] do it, you don’t believe that I will do it' as he was pointing a black object."
Constantin Beldie pleaded not guilty Monday to felony counts of aggravated domestic battery involving choking, aggravated battery, attempted kidnapping and unlawful restraint, court records show.
Lacramioara Beldie previously filed another petition for a protective order against him Jan. 8, saying they had been separated since September 2023 and had three adult children together.
Lacramioara Beldie alleged that the suspect was drinking at his home and asked her to leave during an argument, then grabbed her and dragged her into a bathroom. He then allegedly punched, slapped and kicked her while berating her.
"I can kill you now and put you in a bag and take you to the lake," she recalled him saying, according to the petition. "I can get a gun and kill all of you and you don’t know. I don’t care if the police take me because you left me."
The physical and verbal abuse continued for eight hours, the woman wrote. When she finally escaped, he chased her, but she was able to get away.
Lacramioara Beldie alleged that he had "been physically and emotionally" abusive throughout their long relationship and would send menacing messages. "You know how easy it is to kill someone?" she recalled him asking.
"I took this as a threat from the [suspect] because my grandfather killed my grandmother and then killed himself," she wrote.
An emergency order of protection was granted the same day as her petition, which noted that she had filed a police report for domestic battery. Her husband apparently wasn’t charged, and a previous battery case filed in 2002 was dropped.
The emergency order was vacated March 25, when the woman and her husband agreed to a so-called no contact order. Among other things, the suspect agreed not to "harass, intimidate, physically abuse, stalk, or interfere with the personal liberty" of his wife.
Nowinski, who allowed the husband to remain free while awaiting trial, previously declined to authorize an emergency order of protection against Crosetti Brand earlier this year. The convicted felon had allegedly sent threatening text messages to an ex-girlfriend and came to her apartment after he was released from prison.
Because Brand had been taken back into custody, Nowinski ruled that the woman’s case didn’t amount to an emergency and set a later hearing for March 13.
Brand showed up at the home again that morning and allegedly stabbed the pregnant woman and killed her 11-year-old son.
