The man in the next bed at a Chicago halfway house allegedly heard Wesley Gritmacker, 38, talking on a phone he was not supposed to have, whispering things to a girl in Oklahoma he called “sexy” and his “love,” and at one point saying something to the effect of “when you turn 16.” The roommate took notes on what he was hearing and later handed them over to investigators.
His account, along with the contents of a phone parole officers discovered during a routine compliance check, forms the backbone of a case that has landed Gritmacker back in custody, facing charges of communication with a child on the internet by a sex offender and violating the sex offender registration act. Judge Antara Rivera detained him pending trial.
At the time of the conversations, Gritmacker was on parole from a Ford County conviction for indecent solicitation of a child, a case for which he received a five-year prison sentence and was released in December 2023. As a condition of that release, he is required to register as a sex offender for 10 years and not possess a phone with apps, Assistant State’s Attorney Mike Pekara said.
But, according to Pekara used an unauthorized device to meet a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl through a social media chat app in December and continued communicating with her until February, when the girl’s mother discovered their conversations and put a stop to them.
In February, a parole team conducting a routine check at Gritmacker’s halfway house in the 11500 block of South Perry Avenue in Chicago confiscated the phone. After securing a search warrant, they opened the phone and found what Pekara described as “numerous” chats between Gritmacker and the girl.
The content of those chats, prosecutors allege, was explicit. The girl sent Gritmacker a picture of herself in a bra. He allegedly asked her to take the phone into the bathroom with her, referred to her as sexy, told her he loved her, and discussed their age gap with her. The girl sent him photos of herself from her seventh-grade yearbook. Gritmacker allegedly saved her phone number in his contacts under her name, with the letters “GF” beside it.
Gritmacker’s halfway house roommate’s account allegedly corroborated much of what investigators found on the phone. According to Pekara, the roommate told investigators he saw Gritmacker use the phone to communicate with the girl and heard him speak to her sexually and explicitly, referring to her as “sexy” and his “love.” The roommate had been writing it all down.
After discovering the chats, investigators contacted Oklahoma authorities and asked them to reach out to the girl’s family and conduct their own investigation. The girl later participated in a forensic interview, in which she disclosed that Gritmacker had told her he was 19 years old, Pekara said. She confirmed sending him pictures and, according to Pekara, acknowledged that Gritmacker admitted that he knew it was wrong to be talking with her.
Pekara said Gritmacker’s Ford County conviction stemmed from an incident in which he texted someone he believed to be a 15-year-old girl and asked for explicit pictures. The girl turned out to be an undercover officer. He received a five-year sentence.
His criminal record stretches back further. Champaign County court records show he received a seven-year sentence for arson in 2016, a three-year sentence for theft in 2009, and a four-and-a-half-year sentence for burglary in 2008.
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