CHICAGO — The man responsible for making a threat that forced officials to close the Leighton Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California last month was on pretrial release for making threats and identifying himself as various public officials in 2021 and 2023, according to court records. In fact, arrest warrants were out in three cases because he stopped showing up for court over a year ago.
In the latest incident, Presiding Judge Erica Reddick asked her colleagues at the court complex to end business early and leave the building on January 23. While officials did not release many details, they said the decision to close the courthouse was based on an “unintelligible” letter. But court records shed more light on the matter.
Earlier this month, prosecutors charged 48-year-old Eugene Brown with impersonation of a public officer and making a false report in connection with the incident, saying he sent a threatening email to Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans’ office, prompting the January shutdown.
Brown claimed to be the governor of Illinois and included an attachment reporting a threat to the courthouse, according to criminal complaints filed by prosecutors.
Records show Brown has three other cases pending in which he is accused of similar behavior.
In April 2023, one investigative report said that Brown claimed to be the Cook County sheriff in a signed document on letterhead that included the sheriff’s office logo and header. The letter, allegedly written by Brown, claimed that Brown was unable to investigate a terrorist plot because Sheriff Tom Dart had “unauthorized controls of the sheriff’s police department.”
That same month, a lawyer went to the sheriff’s office to report receiving several emails from Brown in which Brown said he notified Jesse Jackson, Sr., of a terrorist plot and explosive devices at the Jackson Park Golf Course and the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, the court records show.
Brown filed a motion two months later in which he claimed Lori Lightfoot planted an explosive device in the park where he lives on behalf of the Illuminati and at the direction of former Clerk of the Circuit Court Dorothy Brown and a Sun-Times columnist “at the behest of the Associated Press news agency.”
Until his recent arrest, a warrant had been out for Brown in that case since December 2023 because he failed to appear in court in September and November of that year, court records show.
Brown also has cases pending from 2021. In one of those, he allegedly sent a “memorandum” to Chicago Police Supt. David Brown on official-looking letterhead in which he claimed to be the Illinois Attorney General.
The next day, Brown sent a letter to Lightfoot, where he again identified himself as the attorney general, according to the allegations. One day later, he allegedly generated another letter claiming he was the city’s police superintendent.
Failure to appear warrants were also active for Brown in those two cases because he stopped appearing in late 2023.
