The mysterious case of a woman who was found dead at the bottom of a South Loop condo building stairwell may remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has now confirmed that Caitlin Tracey, 36, died from injuries suffered from a “fall from height,” but investigators were unable to decide on the manner of death, records show. Manners of death include accident, suicide, homicide, and natural causes.
Tracey was found at the bottom of an interior stairwell at 1201 South Prairie around 7:25 p.m. on October 27.
While Tracey lived in New Buffalo, Michigan, at the time of her death, she had been staying at her husband’s South Loop condo when she died, her family said. A spokesperson for the family said the husband, Adam Beckerink, reported his wife missing on October 26, the day before she was found.
While filing that report, Beckerink told investigators that he hadn’t seen his wife in about a month, but investigators found video of them together two days earlier, the Sun-Times reported.
The spokesperson said Tracey was found dead two days before a jury trial was scheduled to begin in Michigan, where Beckerink faced felony allegations of interfering with Tracey’s attempts to call 911 and then “violently resisted” arresting officers. A second domestic violence case, also filed in 2024, was also pending in Michigan, the spokesperson said.
Beckerink has not been accused or charged with any wrongdoing in connection with Tracey’s death. He has never been charged with any crime in Cook County, according to court records.
Tracey filed for a protective order in Cook County in 2023, claiming Beckerink “contacts me approximately twenty times a day” and calls her “derogatory names like ‘liar,’ cheater,’ ‘whore,’ and a ‘piece of sh*t.’”
She also claimed that she filed a police report for domestic battery in September 2023 after, she said, Beckerink came into a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton while she was sleeping and launched into verbal and physical abuse.
Tracey said she filed a second police report because, she claimed, Beckerink became physically and verbally abusive at the South Loop residential building in August 2023, “slamming my head against a cabinet, slapping me, punching me, putting my head in a headlock, and dragging me away from the door.”
In a third allegation, she claimed that Beckerink struck her in the head with a pickle jar at her Michigan home in July 2023. She alleged that she fled the residence after he “poured vodka on my body, which burned my wounds.” He took the woman to a hospital for treatment of her “open head wound” two days later, Tracey alleged.
The family and Beckerink went to court to win control of Tracey’s remains, with the family emerging victorious in November.
