Husband of Caitlin Tracey arrested, ordered held on Michigan assault warrant

The husband of Caitlin Tracey, who was found dead in a South Loop high-rise condo building in October, was arrested on a warrant out of Michigan Friday, according to court records.

Adam Beckerink, 46, was arrested on a warrant out of Berrien County, Michigan, for an Oct. 31, 2024, aggravated assault charge, according to court documents. It wasn't immediately clear if the arrest warrant was related to Tracey's death.

He was taken into custody Friday at his South Loop condo where Tracey’s body was found at 7:20 p.m. Oct. 27 in a stairwell outside his apartment.

Beckerink, a tax attorney, appeared in court Saturday where he donned a gray hoodie while his attorney, John Brayman, called the warrant “erroneous." He was ordered held and the case was passed so paperwork surrounding the warrant could be sorted.

Brayman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment after the ruling.

Tracey, a 36-year-old New Buffalo, Michigan, resident, had fallen 20 stories, police said. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office has still yet to determine Tracey’s cause of death.

Tracey had obtained an order of protection against Beckerink in Cook County in November 2023 after multiple domestic battery reports to Chicago police, and Beckerink has faced two other domestic violence charges in Michigan involving Tracey. Tracey’s parents allege she dropped the order of protection a month later because he had threatened to sue her for defamation, according to a petition filed by her parents during a weekslong custody battle for her remains.

He had been detained and questioned by police after lying on a missing persons report for Tracey hours before her death but was later released, and he hasn’t been criminally charged in her death, according to court documents.

Beckerink claimed in the report that he returned to Chicago on Oct. 25 after spending time in Michigan, and he had not seen Tracey in about a month. However, detectives found building surveillance video showing the two together on Oct. 24, according to a Chicago police report.

Her parents, Andrew and Monica Tracey, have alleged in court documents that Beckerink had patterns of being “verbally and physically abusive to Caitlin.”

After her death, a Michigan judge granted Tracey's parents' custody of her remains, which was later upheld by a Cook County judge. Another judge later blocked Beckerink's emergency motion to halt a funeral for Tracey.

A lawyer for the Tracey family didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.