The family of a woman found dead last year in a lower West Side alley gathered Monday evening near the intersection where her body was found to mark what would have been her 23rd birthday and call on police to renew their attention to the case.
Rosa Chacon’s body was found bound and wrapped in sheets in a laundry cart in an alley on the 2300 block of West 24th Place in March 2023. Chacon, 21, had been missing for about two months and was last seen getting into a ride-share outside her home in Little Village.
Chicago police have not arrested a suspect in the case, a department representative confirmed Monday.
In the year since Chacon’s death, her family said they had been leaning on prayer and support from one another. But they’ve been struggling, they said.
“I’m hurting still,” said Chacon’s mother, also named Rosa Chacon. “I want everybody to know that. I try to be strong, but I’m not.”
Standing with a prayer candle and balloon on the sidewalk near the alley where her daughter’s body was found, Rosa Chacon said she wondered how the person who killed her daughter was sleeping at night and called for her killer to turn themselves into authorities.
Chacon’s family hired a private investigator soon after she disappeared and called Monday for the FBI to take up her case alongside CPD detectives. Activist Raul Montes Jr. also announced he would add $5,000 of his own money to the reward the family was offering for people with information leading to an arrest for Chacon’s death, bringing the total on offer to $25,000.
Gregory Chacon said he missed his sister’s voice: “Her laughing, her loudness, everything.” She cared for others and would never miss a loved one’s birthday, he added.
“When she missed my dad’s birthday, I knew something was up,” he said. “She would never miss it.”
Jose Lucio Jr., Chacon’s brother, said his parents don’t have many years left to get answers about Chacon’s death and called on law enforcement to step up their work on the case.
“I grew up in a family of six,” he said. “Now we’re a family of five. We want closure.”
A Chicago Police Department representative said the case remains open and assigned to Area Four detectives.
