Arlington Hts. man charged with killing estranged wife in Wisconsin

An Arlington Heights man is being held in a Wisconsin jail on $1 million bail facing charges he murdered his estranged wife with a hatchet Wednesday after she had fled home to hide from him, authorities said.

The 36-year-old woman, whose identification is being withheld pending notification of family, died Wednesday night at a Milwaukee hospital, where she was taken after police found her badly injured at a Racine-area motel.

Her 38-year-old husband was arrested without incident at the motel and charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mayhem and kidnapping, according to Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin police.

Police did not identify him, but county jail records indicate that a person named Cristian Loga-Negru, 38, was brought into custody Thursday on identical charges.

Arlington Heights police said they had visited Loga-Negru's residence several times in the past several months for domestic cases and had helped the woman obtain a temporary restraining order earlier this month.

Arlington Heights police Sgt. Rich Sperando said the couple were due to appear at the Cook County courthouse in Rolling Meadows on Monday for a hearing that could have made that temporary restraining order permanent.

The couple had been married less than a year and had recently had some "domestic trouble," according to Sperando. The woman, he said, was trying to get out of the relationship.

The Racine County medical examiner said an autopsy had already been performed, but officials were not releasing the victim's cause of death or name on Thursday afternoon.

Mount Pleasant police initially were called at 8:23 p.m. Wednesday on a report of a domestic-related assault at a local residence. A witness heard someone screaming and saw a body being dragged across the home's front lawn to a vehicle, which then drove off, authorities said.

Officers arrived on the scene and immediately began searching for the suspect's vehicle and talking with witnesses, police said.

Police said investigators learned that the woman had been struck with a hatchet after she pulled a vehicle into the home's driveway. Authorities said she had been at the Mount Pleasant home of a friend in order to hide from her husband.

About four minutes after the initial call, the Racine County Communications Center received a second call from a person at a Super 8 Motel reporting that a woman there was bleeding from the head. Patrol officers and the South Shore Fire Department responded, finding the couple there, according to police.

The woman, police said, was taken by a helicopter to Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, where she died from her injuries at 10 p.m.

The case is being investigated by the Mount Pleasant Police Department and the Racine County medical examiner's office. Sperando said Arlington Heights police were assisting Wisconsin authorities with the investigation.

Loga-Negru served in the U.S. Army from 2007 to 2010, according to his personnel record released by the National Archives under the Freedom of Information Act. He was listed as a human resources specialist and received several commendations for his service, including the Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal and the Overseas Service Ribbon.

His service included time at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, Fort Bliss in Texas, and a deployment to Yongsan, South Korea.

The Rev. Sergiu Cornea, pastor of Ss. Peter & Paul Romanian Catholic Mission on Fullerton Avenue in Chicago, rented a room to Loga-Negru above the church until he left for South Korea in 2007. A Romanian immigrant, Loga-Negru lived there for several years with other tenants, sharing a common bathroom and kitchen, Cornea said.

"He was a really established guy. He was studying here in university," Cornea said. "I never saw a violent being from him. I never saw that."

Loga-Negru's LinkedIn profile says he received a law degree in Romania, a master of laws degree from the John Marshall Law School and was pursuing a master's in business administration degree from Dominican University. He was working as a commodity trading adviser, the profile states.

ABC 7 Chicago is reporting that Loga-Negru is scheduled to appear in court Friday afternoon in Racine.

• Daily Herald staff writer Jake Griffin contributed to this report.