Fearful of what her husband might do as their marriage crumbled, Jennifer Gustafson-Ferrigan got a protective order Monday, three days after he was arrested on charges of beating her, according to friends and court records.



But Jeffrey Ferrigan came up with a $300 bond and was released Wednesday. On Thursday, police making a wellness check at the family's Hanover Park home found Gustafson-Ferrigan's body in the couple's bedroom, authorities said. She had been beaten in the head, law enforcement officials said.



Later Thursday, Jeffrey Ferrigan, 50, was shot three times after he threatened officers with a knife when they approached him in a wooded area in Lockport, according to a DuPage County prosecutor and a news release from the Lockport Police Department.



Ferrigan, who has not been charged, was described in the release as a "person of interest" in the slaying. He was in Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet on Friday with serious injuries.



As investigators try to sort out the details that led to Gustafson-Ferrigan's death, her friends and relatives are left to agonize over the grim turn of events.



"She knew this was going to happen in the next couple of weeks," said Sandra Cavanaugh, the spouse of Gustafson-Ferrigan's cousin. "It's the classic story that nobody listened until this. It's not any one person's fault. It's the whole system."



Cavanaugh said there were "many different calls to many different authorities" to try to figure out how to get Ferrigan back in jail. She said Gustafson-Ferrigan had contacted Hanover Park police about her concerns. Officials with the police department did not return calls on Friday.



Cavanaugh and neighbors said the couple had a volatile marriage, but their relationship deteriorated even more after Ferrigan was released on April 30 from DuPage County Jail, where he had been awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges, records show.



Gustafson-Ferrigan had persuaded Cavanaugh to come up with the $15,000 cash bond for her husband's release, Cavanaugh said. Gustafson-Ferrigan thought his return home would stabilize the family, especially the lives of their two teenage children, Cavanaugh recalled.



Gustafson-Ferrigan, 40, a bartender at a Mount Prospect restaurant, was optimistic her husband would find work, friends said. He was an unemployed road construction worker.



But Ferrigan didn't land a job and instead suffered from "extreme mental illness" since being released from jail, Cavanaugh said. He was "paralyzed with fear about going back to prison," she said, adding that Ferrigan also suffered from "severe depression" since his release.



The couple had criminal histories. DuPage court records show that both were arrested on Feb. 5: he for unlawful cannabis trafficking, she for unlawful possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia. Gustafson-Ferrigan pleaded guilty July 28 and received probation, community service and a $1,335 fine, DuPage Court records state.



Lake County court records show that Ferrigan was sentenced to four years in prison for reckless homicide in the 1987 death of anAntioch woman. At the time of the crash, he was driving on a revoked license after being convicted of drunken driving in 1985, Illinois secretary of state records show.



On Aug. 19, Gustafson-Ferrigan called police to have her husband arrested, records show. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery, according to court records.



Three days later, she obtained an order of protection barring him from their home, her workplace and the school the couple's two teenage children attend in Roselle, according to court records.



The Ferrigans, who have lived in the beige California-style raised ranch home on Barr Court for about 13 years, were a friendly family, neighbors said. Court records state the couple was married Feb. 18, 1994, at the DuPage County Courthouse in Wheaton.



During the big snowstorm on Feb. 1, Ferrigan insisted on snowblowing the entire block for neighbors, said Mary Summers, who lives one house away from the Ferrigans.



But Summers also said she regularly heard shouting matches between the couple. In the last month, she said she noticed police had visited the house a few times.



"I'm totally and absolutely stunned," Summers said Friday on her front porch. "They used to love to argue, but who doesn't?"



A man who worked with Gustafson-Ferrigan at the Retro Bistro restaurant where she tended bar said co-workers called police Thursday morning after she did not respond to well-being checks by her friends.



Joe Melody, 41, said the couple's marriage had grown more and more troubled after Ferrigan was arrested on the marijuana charge. He said Gustafson-Ferrigan recently told friends and restaurant staff that her husband had grown increasingly depressed and had threatened to harm her.



The threats so alarmed her friends that she agreed to call or text one of them every morning to assure them that she was OK, Melody said.



Melody said he was still shaken by the news that his friend had been killed.



Gustafson-Ferrigan "was just the nicest person, he said. "Everybody who came in loved her. She was just a great mom, a great bartender, a great co-worker. She didn't do anything wrong; she didn't deserve this."



Tribune reporters Christy Gutowski and Serena Maria Daniels and freelance reporters Ruth Fuller and Clifford Ward contributed.



mwalberg@tribune.com

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