Jilted Man Guilty in Vicious Murder of Girlfriend's Entire Family in Morgan Park

Denzel Pittman told a jailhouse snitch “I loved her to death, and now she knows” — a remorseless boast as the south suburban man described to a cellmate why he stabbed his 17-year-old girlfriend to death in her Morgan Park home.

Pittman also turned the knife on Jade Hannah’s mother, 43-year-old Stacy Cochran-Hill. Then, to get rid of the surviving witness, he plunged the blade into little 11-year-old Joi Cochran.

Now Pittman knows he’ll likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

On Monday, a Cook County judge found the 22-year-old from south suburban Park Forest guilty in the three murders, crimes so horrific and brutal the police officer who found the mutilated bodies broke down and cried on the witness stand during trial.

Why did Pittman attack Jade Hannah and her family so viciously in November 2010? He saw her at the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s with another boy.

After the verdict was read, Pittman turned to his family and incredulously said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to get out.”

Judge Timothy Joyce, however, said the evidence was overwhelming, from the blood of all three victims that covered his pants and eyewitnesses who saw him run from the apartment to the testimony of a cellmate who shared Pittman’s jailhouse confessions with the court.

Pittman had hurt Jade before. In March 2010, he beat Jade at his Park Forest home. He was charged with domestic batter. In June of that year, Park Forest police shot him in the hip when he refused to drop a gun he was carrying when officers confronted him at the Park Forest Aqua Center.

Pittman went to the family’s apartment on Nov. 29, 2010, and tried to get Jade to leave with him. Neighbors saw them talking on the stairs. When she refused to go, Pittman went into a rage and stabbed Jade, whose body was found in a stairwell, and then her mother — who was on crutches — in the doorway, repeatedly punching and plunging a pocket knife into her body.

Then he went after the child.

Neighbors in the six-flat building could hear their screams, particularly the terrified screams of the little girl.

“Momma, momma, oh my God — get away from me!”

He stabbed her in the chest and head.

After the attack, Pittman shut the apartment door and walked down the stairs, his clothes dripping with the blood of the slain. He told neighbors to call 911 — no one had seen him perpetrate the crime — and said he would chase the attacker. He walked right past a neighbor, a registered nurse, who was down on her knees in her nightgown trying to revive Jade.

Outside, he ran. He knocked on a door three blocks away. A man sitting down to watch a movie answered, and Pittman asked to use his phone.

According to the witness, Pittman’s hands were shaking as he called his own mom and asked her to come pick him up at 111th and Western.

Pittman hid in the bushes and waited.

Police squad cars sped by on their way to the apartment where the neighbors were in shock and still trying to resuscitate Jade.

There was just so much blood. On the floor. On the walls.

Then police kicked in the door to the apartment, and even they were overwhelmed by what they found.

“He didn’t just murder them, judge, he butchered them,” Assistant State’s Attorney Mercedes Luque-Rosales told the court at the start of Pittman’s trial.

Chicago Police found Pittman hiding in the bushes. During questioning, he pointed to a scratch on his finger and described how he had defended himself against the “mystery attacker” who’d just mutilated an entire family.

About two weeks after the murders, Pittman met his new cellmate Thomas Johnson, a drug addict, accused thief and carjacker. As they spent time together in the lockup, the two would stage “mock trials” with Johnson acting as prosecutor, to help Pittman hone his testimony.

During their jailhouse chats, Pittman told Johnson why he killed his girlfriend, saying he “lost it” when he learned she was cheating on him.

“I always told her I loved her to death. I guess now she knows it’s true,” Pittman explained, according to Johnson, who testified against Pittman at trial, because “if he couldn’t have her, no one could.”

He killed her mother because she never liked him anyway.

And the child, well, she was a witness. Johnson said Pittman felt bad about needing to kill her.

The cellmate also told Pittman he should consider copping an insanity plea.

At trial, many family and friends of Cochran-Hill family gathered to hear the testimony, at times as brutal as the crime itself. They wore buttons reading “Always in Our Hearts,” with a photo of the mom and her daughters, all three smiling.

After Monday’s verdict, Stacy Cochran-Hill’s mother spoke with a Chicago Tribune reporter.

“I feel good — justice has been served,” Sharon Raney said. “ I don’t ever want him to touch that concrete out there again.”

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