A 65-year-old Roseland man is behind bars after being accused of fatally shooting and setting a woman on fire and kidnapping and sexually assaulting another woman at gunpoint last week on the South Side, Chicago police said.
Gregory W. Hudson was arrested Thursday evening and charged with first-degree murder, concealment of a homicidal death, arson, aggravated armed kidnapping and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault with a firearm. Police say the attacks occurred last week “across multiple locations.”
Officers and firefighters responding to a garage fire about 12:30 a.m. Thursday in the 6500 block of South Damen Avenue found Antoinette Congo, 36, unresponsive on the alley apron outside of the garage after extinguishing the blaze, according to Chicago police reports obtained by the Sun-Times and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Congo was friends with Hudson and had known him for about a year, prosecutors said in a court hearing for Hudson. Two days before his arrest, Hudson brought Congo and one of her friends, a 27-year-old woman, to his apartment and told them he wanted to show them something in the basement. He told Congo’s friend to turn around and she did, and then heard gunshots, according to prosecutors. The woman turned back around to see Hudson with a gun pointed at Congo, who lay on the floor with gunshot wounds.
She tried to run up the stairs and Hudson grabbed her leg and threatened to shoot her if she ran away, prosecutors said. Hudson told her to come into his bedroom because he wanted to have sex, and she complied because she feared for her life, prosecutors said. They had intercourse against her will and he gave her food and drinks that caused her to feel dizzy and go in and out of consciousness.
The next day, Hudson’s cargo van was seen on video near the 6400 block of South Damen Avenue. A man called 911 to report a fire in a garage near 65th and Damen, and Congo’s body was found in the garage, prosecutors said.
A witness told detectives that a white work van with lettering on its side and a ladder on its roof was parked in the alley next to the garage. “Multiple people were outside the van and appeared to be pouring something at the base of the garage just prior to the fire,” the police report said.
Congo’s death was ruled a homicide. She suffered three gunshot wounds to her left side, one to the back of her head and one to her back, according to prosecutors, citing the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The Office of Fire Investigations determined an accelerant was used to start the fire with the point of origin being the woman’s body, the report said.
Court documents state that Hudson, armed with a gun, allegedly took the 27-year-old woman from the 11200 block of South Union Avenue to a Mobil gas station in the 11500 block of South Halsted Street and returned to the Union Avenue address, “placing the victim in fear of great bodily harm.”
Hudson was ordered to remain in custody.
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