Two witnesses in an ongoing Cook County homicide case were targeted in a murder-for-hire plot, federal officials revealed this week.
Christopher Yates, 39, was charged Thursday with murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, according to federal court records. Yates was arrested this week and made his first appearance in US District Court on Thursday.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for August 15.
The charges against Yates stem from a Sept. 13, 2020, shooting in the 200 block of North Pulaski Road that left a woman dead and a man seriously injured, records show.
Brandon Wilson, now 39, was arrested and charged in the shooting about six weeks later. Wilson faces murder and aggravated battery charges and remains in the Cook County Jail while the case proceeds.
Federal authorities now allege that Yates, a cousin of Wilson’s, tried to recruit another person to kill two witnesses to the shooting — the surviving victim and Wilson’s girlfriend.
“I want them both off the board,” Yates said last month during audio surveillance. “Both of them have to (expletive) go.”
Authorities allege that Yates told the fake assassin that the death of Wilson’s girlfriend needed to look like a botched robbery attempt, while the killing of the surviving victim could be attributed to random street violence.
“I know I can (knock) him like a lost victim and make it look like it was street kit, you know what I’m saying?” Yates allegedly told a federal co-worker last month. “So we get them both.”
An attorney for Yates did not immediately return calls for comment.
Originally published: