COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — After working a 14-hour shift, a Bronzeville man came home Monday morning to find his wife laying dead in a pool of blood, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Linda Sanders, 60, had been brutally murdered, her face "battered almost beyond recognition," according to Assistant State's Attorney Sarah Karr. It was the couple's 24th wedding anniversary.
Prosecutors have charged Sanders' son, 40-year-old Dwight Brown, with first-degree murder and armed robbery in the attack.
Police said they found Brown in his Woodlawn apartment Monday morning wearing blood-soaked clothes. He had a bloody knife, his mom's house and car keys, and $160 that Sanders had allegedly been saving for her anniversary celebration, Karr said.
During a brief bond hearing Wednesday, Brown, of the 6200 block of South Dorchester Avenue, was ordered held in lieu of $250,000 bail.
Sanders' husband told authorities he saw Brown heading to the couple's house in the 400 block of East 48th Place as he left for work Sunday night, according to prosecutors.
During his overnight shift, Sanders' husband called his wife several times, Karr said. Sanders picked up the first two calls and relayed that her son was making her dinner. But calls placed late Sunday and early Monday went unanswered, Karr noted.
When Sanders' husband found her dead Monday morning, he told police Brown had been the last person to see his wife alive, prosecutors said.
CTA surveillance footage shows Brown boarding and exiting Green Line trains at times consistent with the murder, Karr said in court Wednesday.
Prosecutors didn't offer a possible motive for the crime.
Sanders was pronounced dead at 8:45 a.m., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office. Her cause of death was blunt force trauma and stab wounds to the head.
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