Two men accused in the killing of a Norwood Park man they met on a dating app tried to use the 63-year-old man’s cards and phone to make thousands of dollars in purchases and withdraw money after they beat him and left him for dead in his basement apartment, prosecutors said.
Judge William Fahy ordered them held Saturday.
“I can’t overlook the horrifying nature of this crime,” Fahy said during the hearing. “To call this a violent crime is an understatement.”
Jefferson Javier Ubilla-Delgado, 29, and Geiderwuin Bello Morales, 21, are charged with murder and aggravated robbery of someone over 60 years old, according to Chicago police.
Bello Morales had been wearing a Department of Homeland Security ankle monitor at the time of the killing after he was arrested on Jan. 12 and charged with a misdemeanor count of assault for allegedly “gesturing toward” a 12-year-old girl to lure her to come over to his car, according to court documents. He’s due back in court Feb. 25 in that case.
The two spoke through an interpreter in court Saturday and nodded in response to Fahy’s questions, only speaking among themselves briefly before their attorney and Fahy intervened.
The victim, 63-year-old George Levin, had arranged to meet with the men through the dating app Grindr, prosecutors said.
Ubilla-Delgado was arrested Wednesday and said Bello Morales had beaten Levin and took his phone and cards.
The dating app on Levin’s iPad, which police recovered at the scene, had its message history cleared to four days before the killing, prosecutors said.
Surveillance video captured the two suspects leaving their apartment in the 6100 block of North Northwest Highway around 8 p.m. Jan. 26, with Bello Morales holding a roll of duct tape, prosecutors said. Fifteen minutes later, they were at Levin’s home, and shortly after, Levin’s 65-year-old sister heard loud noises from his downstairs apartment.
When she went to check on her brother, she ran into Bello Morales on an inside stairwell and asked him: “Is my brother OK?”
“Yes, I am with your brother. I will have him call you,” Bello Morales responded, according to a police report.
At 8:35 p.m., she tried to call and text her brother and responses from his phone came back “brushing her off,” prosecutors said. Two hours later, she went to check on him and found both doors to his home and bedroom were locked.
She then broke in and found him partially clothed, his hands bound with duct tape, his legs tied with a black electrical cord and a sock lodged in his mouth held closed by duct tape, prosecutors said. She told investigators he was “cold to the touch,” and police said his phone and wallet were missing.
She later identified the two men in a lineup and in the surveillance video, prosecutors said.
Surveillance video later captured Bello Morales and Ubilla-Delgado stopping at a vape shop and later a gas station, where they allegedly tried to use Levin’s cards and phone to make purchases or withdraw money, prosecutors said. Four Amazon orders made on Levin’s phone after video captured the two leaving Levin’s home totaled more than $4,000; Levin’s Bank of America account was locked after multiple requests to access it from his phone.
Data from Levin’s phone and surveillance video tracked the two in their car back to their apartment, prosecutors said.
Bello Morales, who came to the U.S. from Ecuador a year ago, and Ubilla-Delgado, who came to the U.S. from Venezuela about a year and a half ago, are due back in court Thursday.
A police source told the Sun-Times the two were undocumented immigrants, though their immigration status was unrelated to the charges they face in the killing or in the earlier assault Bello Morales is also accused of.
Undocumented immigrants have drawn scrutiny in recent years amid President Donald Trump’s misleading or false claims of ties between crime and immigrants. A National Institute of Justice-funded study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes.