Prosecutors played two recorded phone calls in court of calls Donol Clark made to his brother in 2012 while a suspect in the 2012 killing of Gena Chiodo in Calumet City.

Clark was charged with murder and is on trial this week at the Markham courthouse, 13 years after charges were first announced. The case was cited in the Chicago Tribune’s stalled justice series on delayed court cases.

In the phone call from the Calumet City Police Department, Clark asked his brother for help getting a lawyer.

“I woke up with her covered in blood,” Clark said in one of the calls.

Chiodo disappeared in October 2012. Her manager testified Wednesday she called the police after Chiodo failed to show up for work multiple days. Police conducted a well-being check and found what appeared to be blood throughout the house while searching for her, officers testified.

Clark, who was home when police arrived, was brought to the Police Department to file a missing persons report. Clark claimed that he and Chiodo got drunk and started arguing a few days before over accusations of infidelity, and she had left the house, according to testimony from the officer who took the report.

However, her car was still in the driveway and no one had seen her.

Chiodo’s body was found in a wooded area in Lowell, Indiana, in early December 2012, a month and a half after her disappearance.

Donna Wuchter holds a picture of her friend Gena Chiodo Dec. 19, 2023, at her home in Munster, Indiana. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

Lake County sheriff’s Sgt. Kiel Sopko, who was a detective and evidence technician at the time of Chiodo’s death, was one of the officers who responded to Lowell when a hunter found her body in a stand of trees in a remote area, off a private road marked with a do not trespass sign.

“There’s really nothing out there,” Sopko said.

Prosecutors showed photos of Chiodo’s badly decomposed body in court. The body was found naked and wrapped in a white blanket, and had apparently been damaged by animals.

Evidence preserved from the scene included the blanket the body was wrapped in and pieces of rope recovered from around Chiodo’s feet and under her body.1

Clark’s lawyers repeatedly questioned police officers Wednesday about whether Clark was free to leave the department prior to being formally placed under arrest, as he was escorted by police officers to the station to file a missing persons report but had not been read his rights.

Clark’s lawyers argued Thursday, through an objection, that evidence obtained from searches of the house conducted before the police had obtained a search warrant for the property, including photos of apparent blood on the walls and bed, should not be introduced at the trial.

Cook County Judge Carl Boyd is hearing the case, with testimony expected to continue into next week.

elewis@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/03/05/donol-clark-murder-trial-calumet-city/