BITTER DIVORCE PRECEDED WOMAN’ S SUSPECTED MURDER
Hinsdale police said Friday that “progress is being made” in the suspected murder of a 51-year- oldwoman in her home Thursday.
Andrea Urban, a leukemia survivor and mother of two, was found dead in her home at 745 Town Place Thursday afternoon, apparently the victim of blunt- force trauma, according to the DuPage County coroner’s office.
Af inal ruling on the cause and manner of her death was pending further investigation.
Court records show that, in the years before her death, Urban’s relationship with her ex- husband deteriorated.
After their 2007 divorce, he moved to the Bronx, with Urban retaining sole custody of their son and daughter, though visits were allowed, court records show.
Urban and their son and daughter visited her ex- husband in New York City in 2015, though an episode in a restaurant prompted her to seek a protective order against him. He wasn’t allowed within 1,000 feet of her Hinsdale home or the children’s school.
The two were married for 17 years, records show.
“In the early years of our marriage, [ he] kicked me several times and knocked me to the floor when I stayed out late one night,” Urban told police in 2015. “After [ their daughter] was born, he shook her at 3- weeks- old when she was crying.”
Urban’s ex- husband did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Shortly after their divorce, Urban filed a petition for relocation, asking a judge to approve her moving her and the children to Michigan for work opportunities, court filings show.
Urban argued that, since the family would be moving closer to her ex- husband, who “does not regularly exercise his allotted visitation” with the children, that he “has no sound reason” to object to the petition. In his response, he did just that. Heargued that the schools in Michigan were “inferior” to those in Hinsdale, and it’d be more difficult for him to see the children, not easier.
Her ex- husband cited lodging expenses as another reason she and their children shouldn’t move.
When he visited his children in Hinsdale, Urban’s parents let him stay in their home.
During a visit in 2015, the four were out to dinner near his home after “he had been drinking alcohol during the day,” Urban told police at the time.
At the restaurant, he had two more double vodkas on the rocks.
“Then his calamari came and he was upset that it came with lime rather than lemon,” Urban said, according to a police report that was referred to in court filings. “He started to get loud and angry with the waiter.”
Their son, who was 15 at the time, asked his father “to lower his voice and let it go.”
The boy’s father “told him to f— off,” Urban said, according to the court records in the couple’s divorce case.
As other diners stared at the family, Urban’s ex- husband again “told both children to f— off,” adding: “I don’t want to see you, go home.”