Man charged in 2004 shooting death
By Todd Feurer
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CHICAGO (WBBM) — A man has been charged in the shooting death of a 40-year-old man more than 20 years ago inside his apartment on the Near North Side of Chicago.
David Barklow, 68, has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of 40-year-old Kent Projansky on Dec. 18, 2004.
Police said Projansky was shot and killed inside his apartment in the 1100 block of North Dearborn Street.
Days after his death, police found a duffel bag full of bloody clothes and a gun in a garbage can on the Northwest Side. The gun was later linked to ballistic evidence from the crime scene.
Detectives weren’t able to identify a suspect for more than a decade, until 2017, when a retired detective took a new look at the case, and resubmitted all latent evidence from the case to the Illinois State Police Crime Lab, which had recently modernized their latent examination technology, police said.
That evidence helped identify Barklow as a suspect, and detectives learned he lived across the street from Projansky at the time of the murder.
The U.S. Marshals Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested Barklow in October 2019, but he was released without charges as detectives waited for an examination of his fingerprints and a DNA sample.
Although the Illinois State Police Crime lab was later able to link Barklow to the gun and clothing found in the duffel bag, and a blood sample from the duffel bag matched Projansky, police said Barklow fled the country in December 2019, moving to Ecuador.
Police obtained an arrest warrant for Barklow, and in April 2025, detectives learned he had moved from Ecuador to Peru, and police were able to coordinate an arrest with INTERPOL, the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Embassy in Peru.
Barklow was extradited back to Chicago on Friday, and was due to make his first court appearance on Saturday at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse.
“This investigation highlights the relentless work of CPD’s homicide detectives. No matter how many years passed, detectives continued to work the case until this offender was in custody,” police said in a statement. “They were determined to pursue justice for Projansky and bring a small measure of closure to his family, who for more than two decades, grieved knowing the offender responsible for the murder of their loved one was living freely.”
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