Ricky Fulton, 44, was found strangled and beaten in an apartment in the 1400 block of South Saint Louis Avenue in North Lawndale on the city's West Side early on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. The Chicago Police Department investigated, and the medical examiner's office said he lived on the same block where he was found.
He was found unresponsive about 12:30 a.m., Chicago police said. An autopsy by the Cook County medical examiner's office determined that he died of strangulation and blunt force trauma, and his death was ruled a homicide. Police did not say who found him, who lived in the apartment, or how long he had been there before he was discovered. "Detectives were conducting a homicide investigation," the Sun-Times reported, adding that no one was in custody.
No suspect description, no motive and no persons of interest were made public, and no arrest was reported.
Strangulation is a close-range killing, which often means the victim and the attacker were face to face, and sometimes that they knew each other, but police have not said anything about who might have been with Fulton that night. No reward tied to his case could be found.
Little about Ricky Fulton's life has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. His name is shared by many other people, including an airtanker pilot who died fighting a fire in Idaho in 2020, a former legislative candidate in Omaha and several men in obituary notices, and none of them is the man who died in Chicago. That crowd of namesakes may help explain why his story has been so hard to follow.
North Lawndale is a West Side community with deep roots in Chicago's Black history; the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived there in 1966 during the Chicago Freedom Movement. Its blocks of greystones and two-flats are close together, and because Fulton lived on the same block where he died, his neighbors are likely to have known him and may have noticed who visited him.
Ricky Fulton was one of about 800 people killed in Chicago in 2021, the deadliest year in the city in a quarter century. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of the city's homicides in those years, and that figure counts cases closed without anyone being charged. With so many killings to investigate, cases with few public details often faded from the news within days.
Cases like this can still be solved. In July 2021, Chicago police charged two people in the October 2020 stabbing of Sebastian Bobak in Humboldt Park, and a man in the November 2020 stabbing of Malcolm Mullins in Chatham, months after the first news reports had faded.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Ricky Fulton could be found in news archives or public records. More than 5 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on South Saint Louis Avenue, saw him on the evening of April 13, 2021, or knew who he spent time with may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Chicago Police Department's anonymous tip line at (833) 408-0069 or submit a tip online at CPDTIP.com, or contact Cook County Crime Stoppers at (800) 535-STOP (7867).
