CHICAGO – A man has been given a 12-year prison sentence for posing as a cop and committing an armed home invasion just months after he was arrested. acquitted of a murder conviction for which he received a 60-year prison sentence in 1997.
Earlier this year, while the home invasion case was pending, Ricardo Rodriguez, 51, said won a $5.5 million settlement from the city as compensation for the 22 years he spent in prison on the now-vacated and dismissed murder conviction.
‘I was wrongly convicted’
Even in Cook County Bond Court, where freshly arrested defendants freely offered bold and unlikely apologies, Rodriguezs had a doozy when he was arraigned on the home invasion charge in September 2020.
After a prosecutor made detailed allegations about the home invasion and kidnapping against Rodriguez, they noted that Rodriguez was a convicted murderer who received a 60-year prison sentence in 1997.
“It was cleared,” Rodriguez interjected firmly. “I was wrongly convicted. It was evacuated.”
The prosecutor knew nothing about the wrongful conviction, but Rodriguez’s claim was absolutely true.
“We concluded that the totality of the evidence was insufficient to support the claim [murder conviction]”, a spokesperson for State Attorney Kim Foxx said at the time. “On March 27, 2018, we asked the court to vacate the conviction, and the motion was granted by order of the court and the case was dismissed.”
Almost immediately after being fired, Rodriguez walked out of prison directly in the hands of agents of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The FBI was preparing to deport him to Mexico because his status as a permanent U.S. resident was revoked when he was convicted of murder. A year later, in March 2019, a federal immigration judge ended the deportation hearings after concluding that Rodriguez was not deportable. University of Michigan National Registry of Exemptions.
Finally, Rodriguez was finally a free man.
Home invasion
About four months later, at 2:25 a.m. on August 3, 2020, a 55-year-old Belmont Cragin man and his wife heard a knock on their front door. The man peeked outside and saw four or five men and a woman dressed as police officers on his porch.
“Police,” shouted one of the strangers, all wearing body armor with the word “POLICE.” One wore a police star on a chain around his neck. Someone on the porch shouted the man’s full name. Thinking something terrible had happened, the man opened his door.
The entire group of strangers rushed in. An intruder in a police vest held a gun to the man’s chest and pushed him all the way into the dining room, where the victim was tied to a chair.
When the man’s 33-year-old wife saw what was happening, she got out of bed and was quickly stopped by some intruders, while other perpetrators ransacked the couple’s home and demanded $1 million or a huge amount of cocaine from someone who they thought it would do it. be there.
But that third person was not home and the crew took the woman hostage, pushed her into an SUV and drove away. Later, prosecutors would allege that Ricardo Rodriguez, newly acquitted, owned the SUV. The kidnappers took the woman to a house. They then took her to a second location.
Meanwhile, the man the intruders were looking for when they broke into the couple’s home received phone calls demanding $1 million in cash for the hostage’s safe return. The calls came from several phone numbers, including one he recognized as coming from a woman named Teresa Rodriguez, prosecutors alleged. The man is said to have recognized Teresa’s voice during some calls.
When the man recognized Teresa’s voice, he remembered that she had a brother who had recently been released from prison: Ricardo. So the man found images of Ricardo Rodriguez on Google and showed them to the man whose wife had been kidnapped. The man thought Ricardo looked like one of the intruders, but he wasn’t sure. Prosecutors claimed his wife would later confirm Ricardo was involved.
The day after the home invasion, police raided a Portage Park home believed to be associated with the Rodriguez family. Police found three bulletproof “cop” vests in a closet, more vests in a closet, a police badge hanging from a chain and 10 firearms that shoot only blanks, prosecutors said.
That same day, the kidnappers dumped the kidnapped woman on a street corner in Hermosa. The next day, police returned to the Portage Park home when they learned that the people living in the raided apartment were moving out.
Police arrested 38-year-old Juan Rodriguez at the scene. Prosecutors charged him with multiple counts of residential burglary, aggravated kidnapping for ransom and unlawful restraint. He pleaded guilty to home invasion and other crimes in August 2023. Judge Aleksandra Gillespie sentenced him to 10½ years.
Police also arrested Christina Rodriguez, 41, after the kidnapped woman identified her as someone at one of the hideouts. She was placed on probation by Judge Gillespie last year after pleading guilty to aggravated kidnapping for ransom.
Teresa Rodriguez, who was extradited from San Diego to face charges, was given a six-year prison sentence by Judge William Gamboney in August 2024 for aggravated kidnapping for ransom.
And then there is Ricardo. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to home invasion armed with a dangerous weapon, falsely impersonating a peace officer during the commission of a felony and aggravated unlawful restraint, court records show. Judge Gamboney sentenced him to twelve years. He will receive credit for the 1,535 days he spent on electronic monitoring while the case was pending.
