Des Plaines man arrested in murder-for-hire plot

A Des Plaines man is being held without bond after being charged for allegedly trying to have six people killed in a murder-for-hire plot, officials said Friday.

Zenon Grzegorczyk, 49, of the 2400 block of Rita Street in Des Plaines, was arrested Thursday in a parking lot in the 6100 block of Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago after passing $3,000 in cash to undercover agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Cook County Sheriff's Police who were posing as “hitmen,” authorities said.

According to the criminal complaint, Grzegorczyk proposed to have six people attached to his estranged wife murdered just as all six were planning on heading to a wedding in June.

According to the complaint, Grzegorczyk met with undercover agents from the ATF to see if they would ship assorted firearms back to “his group” in Poland, when the conversation came up that he wanted his ex-wife and another person killed for breaking up the marriage.

In the complaint, Grzegorczyk blamed his wife and five others for the divorce, which resulted in his son being taken away.

Grzegorczyk also told undercover agents that he wanted all six people burned to death in order to cover up any evidence of the crime, the complaint continues.

Grzegorczyk met the undercover officers Wednesday at a Chicago McDonald's, where he handed over $3,000 in cash, showed them another $42,000 in cash in a duffle bag, and said that money would be paid after the murders were completed, the complaint states. The officers then arrested Grzegorczyk.

The case is being prosecuted in federal court, and Grzegorczyk was ordered held without bond until he appears in court on Monday.

A murder-for-hire charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, officials from the U.S. attorneys office in Chicago said.