CHICAGO _ A man with an apparent vendetta against the condo association seeking to evict him went on a deadly rampage in his building, killing four people in a neighboring apartment as they sat down for dinner before hunting down another neighbor and shooting her in the back of the head as she fled, Cook County prosecutors alleged Monday.
Police later found two chilling notes written in Polish in Krysztof Marek's apartment on Chicago's Northwest Side.
"Tomorrow!! No Mercy
Without any stupid hesitation!!!" prosecutors said one read in part.
After prosecutors laid out the dramatic details Monday in the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Judge John Fitzgerald Lyke Jr. ordered Marek, 66, held without bail on five counts of first-degree murder.
"What I just heard is evil on steroids," the judge said.
Kostadinova Tsvetanka and her husband, Ivaylo Popov, both 43, were seated in their kitchen in Apartment 2D with Popov's mother and her boyfriend about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, waiting for a fifth family member to arrive before they ate, Assistant State's Attorney James Murphy said Monday in court.
Apparently without warning, Marek came through the apartment's front door and fired "numerous shots" with a .40 caliber gun, striking all four family members. Police found all four collapsed on the floor around the dining table, their food untouched.
In a post on social media, Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the Police Department, said the incident stemmed from a dispute between Marek and his neighbors.
"What he's being accused of is nothing short of savagery," Guglielmi wrote.
Marek was arrested about five minutes after police received reports of multiple people being shot, according to police.
Natalia Derevyanny of the Cook County medical examiner's office identified two of the victims as Jolanta Topolska, 53, and Tsvetanka Kostadinova, said to be in her early to mid-30s, both of whom lived in the same building where the shooting happened. Relatives identified a third victim as David Hanik, 61, of Arlington Heights. A 65-year-old woman and a man in his early to mid-40s were also killed but have not yet been publicly identified.
Autopsies performed on Sunday determined that all five victims died from at least one gunshot each, according to Derevyanny. All are considered homicides.
The police report says officers encountered Marek outside the condiminum building with his arms raised. He then directed officers to a handgun on his living room coffee table, the report said.
Topolska was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge and died there on Sunday.
Neighbors of the condominium building said Marek had lived at the building for years and previously served as the condo association president but that problems with him had been growing. Some neighbors said he mostly kept to himself.
Marek has had some financial issues, according to bankruptcy and county records.
He filed for bankruptcy in September 2017 and reported he owed $24,000 to the Internal Revenue Service and more than $60,000 to creditors. His income had plummeted in recent years, from about $49,000 in 2015 to just under $12,500 in 2017, according to the petition. Two months after he filed for bankruptcy, Marek faced a foreclosure notice on his condo, according to county records.
Hanik's brothers, Ron and Rich, identified him as among the four people shot while eating dinner.
In a Sunday night phone call with a Chicago Tribune reporter, the brothers said Hanik and his wife had gone to the building at the invitation of her adult son from a previous relationship and the son's wife.
The medical examiner's office has not released the names of Hanik _ or that of his wife or her son, both of whom were born in Bulgaria, the Haniks said. The son's wife is believed to be Kostadinova, but it took the Haniks several hours to piece together that Kostadinova was David Hanik's daughter-in-law because the family has only known her by her first, shortened nickname and her married surname.
The brothers heard Marek had argued with building residents in the past, but they could not fathom a reason the family would have been targeted.
"Why he chose them, except for convenience _ that they were there _ I don't know," Rich Hanik said. "They all were obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time."
It was hard to square the inexplicable act of violence with David Hanik's peaceful nature, they said.
"If there was anybody that was more like a saint, it was David. He was kind and humble and thoughtful. That's the hardest part," Rich Hanik said. "How evil can find someone almost pure in my eyes. How does that happen? How do they find each other?"
Rich Hanik, who lives in a northwest suburb, first received a call from his sister, Diane Rokoze, about 4 a.m. Sunday. The local police department in her small Wisconsin town contacted her to say police detectives from Chicago were trying to reach her, but she had not yet spoken with them when she first called Rich.
"Five to 10 minutes later, she called back in tears and she said it's Dave and (his wife)," Rich Hanik said.
Ron Hanik, who lives in San Francisco, said his brother, who worked as his own boss repairing ID card printers, was endlessly generous with his time. David Hanik had left Chicago in the 1970s and lived in San Francisco for about 20 years. But when their mother fell ill and their sister was having a difficult time caring for her, David moved back to the Midwest.
"That's the kind of person he was _ he did the right thing always," Ron Hanik said. "He would uproot his life and move back there and recreate his life again, just to help."
When he met his vibrant and outgoing wife about 10 years ago at a nightclub, the pair began dancing and had been doing so almost every Friday night ever since, Ron Hanik said.
"She loved to dance. And David, to accommodate her, learned to love it because he loved her," he said. "She converted him. She brought him out of the shell he was in."
The couple would have celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary Dec. 28.
"He said, 'I've found the woman of my dreams and I'm just happy as I can be,'" said Rich Hanik, recalling when his brother first told him of the woman he'd marry some six years later.
It took the brothers a few hours to piece together what happened Saturday night. Rich Hanik said once he saw the address where his brother was killed, he recognized it from a wedding card he'd sent the younger couple and gathered that David Hanik and his wife were visiting her adult son and his wife. When they read a newspaper article that listed the ages of the deceased, the brothers suddenly understood that four members of their extended family had been shot to death.
One of David Hanik's passions was using a smoker to treat meats, a hobby of his for about 15 years, and his wife loved to cook, as well. For a recent birthday party, the brothers said they expected to pick up a few pizzas, but David's wife instead brought over a seven- or eight-course meal.
David also enjoyed finding unique gifts, his brothers said. He loved electronics and computers and put a lot of thought into what gadgets would most benefit his friends and family. He once bought Rich an electronic soap dispenser that Rich still buys for his friends as housewarming gifts because it was such a hit.
David's met his two lifelong best friends in elementary school, one of whom grew up across the alley from their family, the Haniks said. David loved going to White Sox games any time he could.
"He loved sports, he loved food. Like a real Chicagoan, except he wasn't really a big drinker at all," Rich Hanik said with a soft chuckle.
More than a decade ago, the three brothers started working out together on the internet. They used Skype when they first got started and more recently, FaceTime, to join together three nights a week to follow a workout plan, the men said.
"I swear because of him I added five years to my life," Rich Hanik said.
"I'm really going to miss that," Ron Hanik said. "The buddy system works. With three of us, even if one couldn't do it one night, you still have someone to work out with, holding you accountable. Now Rich and I have an excuse. If he says he can't do it, I'll say, 'OK, I won't do it either."
The men said when they started working out, David Hanik lost 30 pounds and quit smoking right before he met his wife.
David's wife worked as a caregiver, and a family once gave her a car as thanks for her hard work.
"That would be an indication of the level of her thoughtfulness," Rich Hanik said. "She was just one of these people who, if you served her dinner, she was the first one clearing plates and washing dishes."
The Haniks said police told them they reached out to a representative of the Bulgarian Consulate to try to notify her family overseas.
