No charges from state’s attorney in mysterious Chicago cop death

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office has closed its investigation without charging anyone in the mysterious off-duty death of Chicago Police Sgt. Donald Markham, a law enforcement source told the Chicago Sun-Times.

The state’s attorney’s office was one of three agencies reinvestigating the circumstances of Markham’s September 2015 death, which police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said was a suicide. Markham, 51, was found dead at his Far Northwest Side home from a gunshot wound to the head.

Spurred by a tip in December 2016, the FBI enlisted an outside pathologist to reexamine Markham’s autopsy and other evidence. In a report concluded last February but not made public until earlier this month, Dr. J. Scott Denton concluded that Markham likely was murdered and that the scene in his bedroom appeared to have been staged to make it look like he killed himself.

The FBI also has stopped investigating after working on the case with the state’s attorney and failing last month to persuade the medical examiner to change its suicide determination.

Neither the FBI nor the state’s attorney’s office would comment.

Markham and his wife, Chicago Police Officer Dina Markham, had argued before he was shot, she told police investigators, reports say. She found his body in their bed, the police reports say.

In May 2017, a year and a half after her husband’s death, Dina Markham was found drowned in her bathtub in what the medical examiner ruled was an accident.

The state’s attorney’s decision to close the books on the case leaves only City Hall Inspector General Joseph Ferguson looking into the case. Ferguson wouldn’t comment. But sources said his office is focusing on whether other Chicago cops botched or rigged the investigation of Donald Markham’s death.

The police investigation of Donald Markham’s death was overseen by then-Lt. Denis P. Walsh, who resigned five months after the death to avoid being fired over allegations of misconduct in the investigation of the death of Mount Prospect resident David Koschman at the hands of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko.

Walsh previously has confirmed he was interviewed by the FBI about the Donald Markham case, which the Sun-Times has reported was marked by several irregularities:

• Dina Markham wasn’t tested for gunshot residue to see whether she’d fired a gun or been in close proximity to a gunshot on Sept. 2, 2015, when her husband died.

• Donald Markham’s body was removed from the home by police before the medical examiner’s office was notified, records show, and the body was moved in a police wagon rather than by the city contractors who normally transport bodies.

• The bloody mattress on which Donald Markham was found was removed by police and disposed of within hours of his death — before the police investigation and autopsy were completed.

Before Donald Markham’s body was removed from the house, phone records show, Walsh texted his boss, Area North Detective Cmdr. Kevin Duffin,

About nine months after her husband’s death was ruled a suicide by Duffin’s detectives, Dina Markham went to work for Duffin’s division.

Duffin and Dina Markham had been exchanging text messages on their private phones for months prior to May 28, 2017, the day she was found dead, the Sun-Times has reported.

Duffin, who has declined interview requests, was later transferred to a police job in the city’s 911 center. Officials have said the move had nothing to do with the Markham cases.

PAST COVERAGE:

• FBI report: Mysterious Chicago cop death ‘is best certified as a homicide,’ Jan. 12, 2017

• Medical examiner rebuffs FBI findings in mysterious Chicago cop death, Dec. 20, 2017

• New text messages emerge in mysterious Chicago cop deaths, Nov. 12, 2017

• Garbage man told: Dump bloody mattress ASAP in mysterious cop death, Oct. 8, 2017

• Chicago police threw out bloody mattress in mysterious cop death, Aug. 27, 2017

• Cop drank, drowned in bathtub amid FBI probe of cop husband’s death, July 18, 2017

• Another mystery in case of Chicago cop couple’s mysterious deaths, June 18, 2017

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