Officer may have gotten away with murdering cop husband after she wasn’t tested for gunfire residue

Two cops have been suspended for bungling an investigation that may have allowed a fellow officer to escape prosecution for the murder of her husband.

The officers have been taken off duty for five days for the improper management of the crime scene and failing to interview witnesses afterwards.

Chicago Police Officer Dina Markham claimed she found her husband, Sergeant Donald Markham, shot in the head when she returned home in September 2015.

A new report blames Detective Brian Spain and Sgt. Shauntai Gracia for not testing the wife for gunfire residue at the time.

The detectives were directed by Lieutenant Denis P. Walsh, who retired in 2016 as he faced being fired for helping to keep ex-Mayor Daley’s nephew from being charged in another killing.

Dina Markham died from a Xanax and alcohol overdose in May 2017, and on Wednesday the City of Chicago’s Inspector General noted several instances that may have messed up a fair investigation of the case.  

New report noted that people at a funeral home had heard ‘comments suggesting [Dina Markham] was in the room when [her husband] was shot’. However she had claimed she was outside the house in Old Norwood Park on the Northwest Side, and she nor their children heard a gunshot

The Chicago Sun Times reported that none of the officers were named in the Inspector General’s write-up but they identified the subjects. 

He said Walsh ordered the removal of his blood-soaked mattress ‘without authorization’ from a medical examiner. 

Ferguson criticized Walsh for the ultimate ruling that Donald’s death suicide without ‘any investigative avenues which might have led to different conclusions’.

His wife Officer Dina Markham said she found him dead in bed but she wasn’t tested for gunfire residue at the time. She died from an overdose in 2017

He said cops failed to follow ‘appropriate leads’. 

‘The lieutenant, sergeant and detective violated CPD rules by conducting an incompetent and incomplete investigation . . . neither competent nor complete,’ Ferguson determined.  

Police reports from the time of the 51-year-old’s death showed the narcotics officer had shot himself in the head after drunkenly arguing with his wife at a bar and later at their home. 

Dina had told police she was initially locked out of the house and found her husband dead in their bed when one of their children let her into the home.

Police reports indicate Dina then called 911.

The pair had earlier been out drinking with Detective Rob Voight and Voight’s wife. Voight later told the FBI he started an affair with Dina after Donald’s death. 

Gracia – who worked with Dina in the Area North Division – assigned Donald’s case to Spain and the cops drove together to the family home after the incident. 

The new report states there was no evidence Officers Spain and Gracia ‘probed the questionable assertion’ that none of the three sons question in front of their mother heard Donald’s .380-caliber, Glock semi-automatic pistol being fired. 

Donald’s siblings have claimed that Dina has in the past threatened to kill her husband and make it look like suicide. The siblings were not interviewed by investigators, Ferguson said.

 The new report mentioned that Dina’s cell phone found in her dead husband’s pocket at Cook County morgue was returned to her after she refused to allow others access to the contents which ‘may have had evidentiary value’

In 2017 the FBI and Cook County Police released audio tapes of the wife’s 911 call as it was claimed Dina could have murdered her husband. But the FBI had dropped the probe after Dina was found dead in her bathtub

Ferguson wrote that neighbors who heard the couple arguing in the driveway before the shooting were not interviewed. He added that a responding firefighter had claimed the gun that supposedly killed Donald was not the one he witnessed at the crime scene.

‘The investigative team neither challenged nor attempted to verify the account given by [Markham’s] spouse, also a CPD member . . . despite their marriage having been marked by credit card debt, allegations of infidelity and volatile arguments.

‘Because of the bare, uncorroborated, assertion of the spouse to have not been in the house when [Markham] was shot, the investigative team did not test the spouse for gunshot residue and may have even given the spouse express permission to wash [her] hands.’

The new report mentioned that Dina’s cell phone found in her dead husband’s pocket at Cook County morgue was returned to her after she refused to allow others access to the contents which ‘may have had evidentiary value’. 

Ferguson noted in his report that people at a funeral home had heard ‘comments suggesting [she] was in the room when [her husband] was shot’.

In 2017 the FBI and Cook County Police released audio tapes of the wife’s 911 call as it was claimed Dina could have murdered her husband. But the FBI had dropped the probe after Dina was found dead in her bathtub.

A police spokesperson noted that at the time of the FBI’s probe the agency had not filed charges or enforced sanctions against the detectives who were suspended this week for five days, ‘based on case law from other similar rule violations’.

Those officers had been under the direction of Walsh, who had earlier pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors as he faced a criminal sexual misconduct charge in Michigan and was ultimately promoted to lieutenant.

Walsh left in February 2016 as he faced firing when accused of falsifying evidence in the  2004 case of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Richard J. ‘R.J.’ Vanecko charged with killing David Koschman. 

The detective who led the investigation left in February 2016 as he faced firing when accused of falsifying evidence in the 2004 case of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Richard J. ‘R.J.’ Vanecko (right) charged with killing David Koschman (left)