Pastor Marisol Berrios would often help the man who did odd jobs on her West Garfield Park block, sharing donations and setting aside food delivered by a pantry.
Now he is charged with her murder, accused of breaking into her apartment last weekend and beating and stabbing her, then taking her purse and fleeing in her sister’s car.
“Everyone knows him for being helpful, not for being violent,” said the sister, Raquel Berrios. “A lot of people are in shock. He might have been in their home. It wasn’t something that you saw it coming in any way.”
Prosecutors say Marvin Wells, 59, admitted to killing Berrios early Saturday after learning she had just collected rent for the landlord of her three-flat in the 4200 block of West Adams Street. He found the keys to the sister’s car in the purse and drove off, according to prosecutors.
But he soon pulled over and apparently fell asleep, police say, and was slumped over in the driver’s seat when passing officers spotted him. He sped away but crashed. Blood was found on his jeans and shoes and a knife covered in blood was in the car, according to prosecutors.
Police called Berrios’ sister, who became worried when she couldn’t reach Marisol. She found her covered in a white sheet and lying on the floor next to the bed.
“I lifted up the sheet and I saw her,” Raquel Berrios said, quietly sobbing. “I started screaming, and I covered her back up. I touched her leg. She looked so pale and stiff. She was ice cold.”
Born in Puerto Rico, Marisol Berrios, 53, worked with many nonprofit organizations. During the pandemic, she started a church online and “preached the word of God through Zoom,” her sister said. “She tried to make people all over the world get together.”
Berrios had been living in Chicago for the last four years, but she loved traveling and had worked and lived in Mexico and California.
On the West Coast, “She had a halfway house. She would cook for them and pray for them,” Raquel Berrios said. “She helped immigrants, Hispanics, minorities and the homeless and ran a food pantry from a church parking lot.”
In Chicago, she stored food and dry goods in her home and donated them to those in need. “She never judged,” her sister said, “She would sit down with them and hold them and pray with them.”
Online, her podcast would reach people around the world, Raquel Berrios said. “She believed that God changed her and that she could do that for others. ... She thought she could get through to people, and she did.”
The sisters texted often, and it was not unusual for Marisol to be up early in the morning. On Saturday, Raquel got a call from police around 6 a.m. She said they asked if she had lent her car to anyone. “I said yes, to my sister Marisol.”
Raquel said she thought someone had taken the car for a joyride.
“I didn’t think the worst,’’ she said. But then the officer said her sister’s purse was inside the car.
She began calling her sister and got no answer.
“She always calls me back,” Raquel said.
So she rushed over to the apartment and broke through a locked door and found her older sister.
Police say Wells had learned from another resident that Marisol had collected rent for the landlord. Shortly afterward, Wells broke into the third-floor apartment of the three-flat, climbed onto the balcony and slipped through a window of Marisol’s apartment on the second floor.
Wells allegedly picked up a hammer he had left there and struck Marisol several times in the head. Then he grabbed a knife and stabbed her, prosecutors said.
A Ring doorbell alert show someone leaving in the sister’s car around 3:45 a.m., prosecutors said. Police spotted the car, with Wells asleep, around 5 a.m.
Wells was ordered held without bail.
