Autopsies Inconclusive On Family Found In Chatham
UPDATE: 3:17 p.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A horrifying discovery in a Chatham neighborhood home left family and friends grieving, and in disbelief, after a woman and her three sons were found dead, deaths being investigated as homicides.
Neighbors, friends, and relatives of 28-year-old Latoya Jackson and her three boys gathered to remember the victims on Sunday. Signs, candles, and flowers covered the front porch of their home in the 8300 block of South Drexel Avenue, where authorities found the four bodies Saturday night.
Friends said it wasn't uncommon for Jackson to go several days, or even weeks, without speaking to them.
"Be weird, but Latoya sometimes didn't want to be bothered. She would turn her phone off, or get it cut off; you know, just stay to herself sometime, so it wasn't really out of the ordinary," April Bussell said.
Eventually, someone close to the family did find it odd they hadn't heard from Jackson, and called police to check on her. Around 8:30 p.m. Saturday, authorities discovered the decomposing bodies of Jackson and her three sons – Andrew Simms Jr., 11; Cameron Jackson, 9; and 5-year-old Cantrell, whose last name is not yet known – inside their home.
The uncanny smell from the home had neighbors cupping their faces long after the bodies were removed. Neighbors said they had noticed the smell before, but assumed it was a dead animal.
One neighbor said he heard Jackson arguing with her boyfriend a couple times in the months since she moved in, and called police when he noticed he hadn't seen her or her sons in a while, and noticed the stench around the home getting stronger.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's office conducted autopsies on all four victims, but the manners of death are pending further investigation. Their family said they have been told all four were murdered.
"I think this is an act of domestic violence. I do not think no one walked off the street and hurt her and these kids. This is personal. Someone she trusted with her life and these kids did this to her," Bussell said.
Leon Ervin's phone wouldn't stop ringing after his daughter-in-law and three grandchildren were found dead.
"I don't know how they died. All I know is all four of them is dead," he said. "I'm granddaddy. All of them called me granddad."
Ervin said his son, Andrew Simms Sr., was murdered a decade ago, a crime still unsolved to this day.
"I'm devastated, man. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say," he said.
Jackson's friends cried as they talked about her, calling her a good mother, who was always fun and outgoing. They said she grew up in nearby Avalon Park with her grandparents, and moved to the Chatham home with her sons a few months ago.
A fire official said there was evidence of a fire inside the home, but no fire damage was visible from outside.