Man accused of killing boy, stabbing mom admitted he had shown up at home but was not kept in prison

More than a month before a convicted felon allegedly killed an 11-year-old boy and repeatedly stabbed his pregnant mother last week, the parolee was sent back to prison when he admitted that he showed up at the woman’s home.

The woman had been alerted when Crosetti Brand, 37, was released on parole in October because she was the victim in previous domestic violence cases against him, including repeated violations of protection orders, prosecutors said in court Friday.

When Brand arrived at her North Side home on Feb. 1, she quickly reported that he “was presently at her door stalking her,” according to a parole violation report obtained through a public records request.

A parole official then followed up, and she told him that Brand “was at her address ringing the door bell and pulling on the door handle,” the report states. Brand initially told the official that he was merely looking for an apartment.

He turned himself in that day, and he was sent to the Stateville Correctional Center and cited for a series of alleged parole violations, including coming into contact with the woman.

But within weeks, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board decided to release him again when Brand changed his story and denied going to her home.

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During a Feb. 26 hearing before the board, Brand and his attorney said there was no evidence that he traveled to the woman’s home, records show. Brand, who was on electronic monitoring at the time, insisted that “GPS would have picked up on it and it didn’t” — an account that was apparently backed up by data from a parolee tracking system.

The board determined there wasn’t enough evidence to corroborate the woman’s claims, even though she wasn’t called to testify, records show.

Days earlier, she had appeared before a Cook County judge and asked for an emergency order of protection, saying Brand had threatened her in text messages and had come to her home, according to a transcript of the Feb. 21 hearing.

She told Judge Thomas Nowinski that Brand sent the text messages on Jan. 30 and came to her apartment on Feb. 1. She said police wouldn’t take a report and instead directed her to get an order of protection. While officials have said the woman had an active order of protection, she told Nowinski that she didn’t.

Because Brand was locked up, Nowinski ruled that the woman’s case didn’t amount to an emergency and set a hearing for March 13 — the morning of the attack. On Friday, Judge Maryam Ahmad ordered Brand detained on murder, attempted murder, home invasion, armed robbery and other charges.

Before he was paroled in the fall, Brand was serving eight years of a 16-year sentence for attacking another ex-partner and pointing a gun at her son in 2015. He also has a long record of convictions for violating orders of protections.

In December, he was accused of calling a person he wasn’t supposed to contact. He denied the allegation but was warned that “another complaint will result in movement restrictions,” records show. He was cited for five separate violations involving the woman who was stabbed.

Chicago police officials and Cook County prosecutors have struggled to explain what protections were in place for the woman.

During a news conference announcing the charges, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told reporters the woman had a “lifetime” order protecting her against Brand. But officials in Foxx’s office later walked back that statement, claiming the order “had no expiration date” and saying they were “still investigating” whether an order stemming from a 2009 conviction was still active.

A source familiar with the case said state officials had told the state’s attorney’s office that the order of protection in that case had no expiration date. State officials have been unable to say why, if that were the case, Brand wasn’t charged with violating the protection order after the Feb. 1 incident.

Both Foxx and Police Supt. Larry Snelling repeatedly questioned why Brand was released a day before he allegedly stabbed the woman and killed her son, Jayden Perkins.

“There are questions,” Foxx said at the news conference at police headquarters. “And they’re questions that need to be examined and truthfully answered so that we can prevent something like this from happening in the future.”