Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
As a jury began deliberating Monday, the family of Frances Walker said it hopes a verdict will help them heal more than two years after the 69-year-old landlord was found dead and dismembered in her Northwest Side home.
“Since this awful tragedy, the Walker family, we haven’t healed,” Walker’s sister-in-law Maggie Walker told reporters at the Criminal Courthouse. “Maybe after the verdict, we can start healing. We miss Fran a lot.”
Jurors got the case against Sandra Kolalou, 37, around the middle of the day following a week of graphic images and testimony about the October 2022 murder.
Before they retreated into the deliberating room, they heard Kolalou insist from the stand that she had been framed for Walker’s death.
Kolalou was arrested shortly after police discovered Walker’s severed head, arms and legs inside a kitchen freezer in the home. Her torso was never found.
Kolalou testified that she and Walker were close friends, stating Monday that “I would do anything for Fran.”
Her attorneys followed with closing arguments that pointed the finger at other tenants and Walker’s husband, Hristo Mantchev.
“As we sit here today, the murderer is not in this courtroom,” Kolalou’s attorney, Sean Brown, told the jury. “There are no murderers in this courtroom right now … Hristo Mantchev is the only person capable of doing this heinous crime.”
Friends and family of Walker became visibly distraught during the defense’s arguments.
“These people were Frances’ angels and they were trying to help her, and then to have those people being … accused … it is difficult,” her younger brother Arnold Walker told reporters. “I think that the desperation and the improbability of what was proposed by the defense indicates the weakness of their case and the strength of the prosecution’s case.”
