A 36-year-old Waukegan man was found dead inside a car in the north parking lot behind Marytown, the Catholic pilgrimage site and retreat center in Libertyville, right as parishioners were arriving for Sunday morning Mass. Libertyville Fire Department and Libertyville Police Department crews responded to the shrine around 10:10 a.m. Sunday after a report of cardiac arrest, and paramedics found the man dead inside the vehicle.
The discovery was first reported by the Lake and McHenry County Scanner, which cited a bystander who said a younger male's body was discovered in a car in the lot and that police quickly cleared people away from the scene. Lake County Chief Deputy Coroner Steve Newton confirmed paramedics located the man inside the vehicle and identified him as a 36-year-old man from Waukegan, a city about 12 miles northeast of Libertyville that serves as the Lake County seat, according to the Lake County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The Lake County Coroner's Office took possession of the man's body and believes he had been deceased in the car for over 24 hours before he was found. An autopsy was performed Monday, but officials have not yet determined a cause or manner of death, with the investigation now pending toxicology results, Newton said. That testing includes screening for carbon monoxide.
A Timeline Measured in Weeks, Not Days
Toxicology results in cases like this typically take three to six weeks to come back, a timeline Newton described in a separate case earlier this year involving a teenage girl struck by a freight train, according to the same outlet's report for Grayslake Patch. Once lab findings are in, Lake County's coroner conducts internal case conferences with investigating officers to settle on an official manner of death, according to Lake County, Illinois — a process that has largely replaced formal public inquests. State law gives the coroner's office broad authority to step in: under 55 ILCS 5/3-3013, county coroners are required to conduct preliminary investigations and take charge of a body whenever a death is sudden, unexplained, suspicious, or possibly linked to chemical exposure or substance use.
The man's identity has not been publicly released beyond his age and hometown, and the Libertyville Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the case, per the Lake and McHenry County Scanner. The incident remains under investigation by Libertyville police and the Lake County Coroner's Office. The Libertyville Fire Department was also investigating an activated fire alarm at Marytown at the time.
Why the Shrine's Lot Was Never Empty
Marytown's grounds help explain how a vehicle could sit undiscovered for more than a day. The 15-acre campus, which moved to its current Libertyville location in 1978 and was designated the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the Jubilee Year 2000, includes a chapel open to the public, a friary, a retreat and conference center, and a gift shop, and is run by the Conventual Franciscan Friars. Its Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel has kept continuous, 24-hour perpetual Eucharistic Adoration open to the public since June 1928, according to the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe, which keeps the campus accessible around the clock.
Marytown holds regular Sunday English Mass at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., which is why the parking lot was filling with worshippers between services when the man was found, per the shrine's own schedule. The shrine sits at 1600 West Park Avenue in Libertyville.
Broader Context on Overdose Monitoring in Lake County
Should toxicology point to substances rather than a medical event or carbon monoxide exposure, the case would fit into a broader public health picture county officials have been tracking closely. The Lake County Coroner's Office launched a public Data Hub in July 2024 that maps overdose, suicide, and homicide fatalities across county municipalities on a weekly basis, part of an effort to help local agencies target public safety resources. A December 2024 study in PubMed Central also flagged Lake County as a key pilot area for Illinois overdose harm reduction work, using the state's Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System to track fatality clusters at the block level.
Libertyville police also participate in Lake County's “A Way Out” initiative, a 24/7 diversion program launched in June 2016 that lets people seek addiction treatment at police stations without facing criminal charges, according to county officials. The program has connected more than 1,000 people to treatment across participating Lake County departments since it began.
This is the latest in a string of emergency responses in Libertyville this year, following a mother's drowning rescue attempt in the Des Plaines River last month and a search for a missing Evanston man earlier this summer. For now, the man's cause and manner of death remain undetermined, and Libertyville police and the coroner's office say the investigation is ongoing.
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