In May 2012, Melissa Woods was due in court to testify at a hearing in a federal drug case targeting Marquelle Palmer, his brother and more than a dozen others involved in trafficking cocaine out of a Bloomington car dealership. Palmer gamely offered to bring Woods from their hometown of downstate Bloomington to Chicago to wait until her court date had passed.
But after a few days of partying on Chicago’s South and West sides, Palmer learned from his lawyer that Woods had been talking to police on the drug task force investigating him and his brother.
Two weeks after Woods missed her court date, her body was found in the basement of a boarded-up greystone in North Lawndale. Palmer, who was indicted along with 15 others in a federal case in Peoria months after Woods’ body was discovered, this week stands trial in Cook County for Woods’ murder.
Court records show Palmer in 2014 entered a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Peoria, though terms of the deal remain sealed five years later. In 2014, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Woods, a Bloomington native who for years had struggled with drug addiction, had become an informant for a local law enforcement task force, and recruited a friend from a Bloomington “flop house” to come with her, Kim McCracken, who also had friends in Chicago. The trio spent several days together, staying with McCracken’s family, at a cheap hotel and at Palmer’s mother’s house, McCracken testified. Palmer had offered McCracken $500 to “take care of the white girl.”
But after several days of partying, Palmer got word while they were visiting the lakefront on that sweltering afternoon: Woods still was talking to police back in Bloomington.
“He said she was still going to testify against his brother, even while she’s staying at his mother’s house, taking his drugs,” McCracken testified. “He said ‘what am I supposed to do? Just set up and let my brother do 20 years?'”
On cross examination, McCracken admitted she hadn’t told Woods about the threats even after Palmer confronted Woods as they drove from the lakefront. McCracken returned home to Bloomington after getting a ride to Union Station from Palmer and Woods.
Tuesday, Bloomington Police Sgt. Todd McCluskey testified that he called her several times to try to cajole Woods to come back to testify. Woods said she was “stranded” in Chicago, but didn’t seem afraid, and said would show up for the next hearing, but McCluskey told her that a judge would issue a warrant to arrest her for ignoring her subpoena. He never heard from her again, despite sending officers to look for her at her home and in Chicago.
