The surprise disclosure last week that convicted killer Brian Dugan claimed he murdered a 10-year-old Naperville girl has raised questions about the way Du Page County authorities obtained convictions of two men who have been sentenced to death in the case.
While county prosecutors and state investigators were trying to corroborate Dugan`s statement, two former Du Page County investigators said they resigned from their posts over the case.
The former head of the Du Page crime laboratory, which reviewed much of the physical evidence in the Feb. 25, 1983, slaying of Jeanine Nicarico, said Saturday he was forced to resign because he didn`t ”go along” with authorities` theories about the killing.
”I was essentially forced to leave,” said Philip Gilman, director of the Du Page County Crime Laboratory for five years, who now is a chemist for Commonwealth Edison Co.`s nuclear power division. ”I was told to resign or I would be fired because of the Nicarico case.”
On Friday, a former Du Page County sheriff`s detective, John J. Sam, who helped investigate the crime, said he believes there is great doubt about the guilt of the three men who were charged in the killing.
Sam said he also resigned from the force and even offered to testify as a defense witness in the trial of the three men.
Gilman, who quit Oct. 26, 1984, said he was forced to resign by a Du Page County sheriff`s official after a series of disputes with investigators and prosecutors over scientific evidence.
Gilman said Saturday that there was no physical evidence linking the two men convicted of the murder and now sitting on Death Row in Menard
Correctional Center. The girl was bludgeoned to death and found in an unincorporated area between Naperville and Aurora. Her skull was crushed.
Former detective Sam said he knew that if he testified for the defense, he would ”blow” the prosecution`s largely circumstantial case against Alex Hernandez, 22, of Aurora; Rolando Cruz, 25, of Wheaton; and Stephen Buckley, 23, of Aurora. Hernandez and Cruz were convicted in February and sentenced to death. In Buckley`s case, the same jurors could not reach a verdict, and he is awaiting a retrial set for January.
The men had been suspects for nearly a year when they were indicted less than two weeks before a primary election in which then State`s Atty. J. Michael Fitzsimmons faced a strong challenge.
Some investigators had complained that there was little additional evidence than what had been gathered within the first few weeks after the crime. Fitzsimmons lost the GOP primary to James Ryan, now the Du Page state`s attorney.
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Though he was a convicted burglar with a criminal record in Du Page and Kane Counties dating back to 1974, Dugan`s name never came up in the Nicarico investigation.
But Dugan`s name has become widely known since June, when he was arrested for the sex slaying of Melissa Ackerman, 7, of Somonauk.
In plea-bargaining negotiations last month, to avoid a possible death sentence in the Ackerman case, Dugan confessed to killing Donna Schnorr, 27, a nurse from Geneva, on June 15, 1984.
He also volunteered that he was Nicarico`s killer, law-enforcement sources disclosed last week. Dugan has submitted to a lie-detector test, the results of which indicate that his admissions of guilt in the Nicarico killing are truthful. He pleaded guilty to murder last month and received two life prison terms for the slayings of Ackerman and Schnorr.
As authorities try to determine whether Dugan is telling the truth, the two former Du Page investigators have joined defense attorneys in describing their doubts about the convictions in the Nicarico case.
Sam, the former detective, said he had made his doubts known to his superiors. ”But nobody wanted to listen to me,” said Sam, who resigned from the sheriff`s department in December, 1984, after 11 years, 7 of them as a detective.
”That`s why I quit; that way I could say anything I want and not worry,” Sam said in an interview at the West Chicago car dealership where he works as a salesman. ”I told the sheriff of my doubts. He said: `We did everything we could. We are shaking every tree in the forest.`
” `Yeah,` ” I said. ” `but I don`t think we are in the right forest.`
”
Attempts to reach Du Page Sheriff Richard Doria were unsuccessful and an official with the Du Page County state`s attorney`s office declined comment.
Gilman said his reservations center on the county crime lab`s analysis of a bootprint found on the front door of the Nicarico home and of a single hair recovered from the girl`s body, Gilman said.
Prosecutors charged that the bootprint was evidence that Buckley, the man awaiting retrial, was part of an attempt with the two other defendants to burglarize the home.
The burglars, they said, discovered the child, who was abducted, raped and later murdered.
Gilman said a lab technician concluded after tests that the bootprint, found on the door of the Nicarico home, did not match a boot given to authorities by Buckley.
Gilman said the county lab`s findings, contrary to official policy, never were reduced to writing because the technician was ordered, after a meeting with sheriff`s officials, not to write the report.
Trial testimony this year confirmed that no report was written, but prosecutors defended its absence, saying that the county lab`s examination was preliminary.
A separate examination of the boot and bootprint by a state crime lab supervisor, Ed German, prompted testimony in the trial from German that the print probably was made by Buckley. Defense attorneys argued, however, that German, in an earlier written report, had said there was insufficient evidence to link the bootprint to Buckley.
A University of North Carolina forensic anthropologist called by prosecutors testified that the print definitely belonged to Buckley, but based on that and other evidence, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on Buckley. ”There was great pressure put on me,” Gilman said, saying he repeatedly was asked by investigators and prosecutors if a single hair, found on the girl`s body, could be linked to Cruz or Hernandez. He had concluded the hair probably belonged to a pathologist who performed the autopsy on the girl.
”They kept asking, `Is there any other way you might come to this conclusion?` ” he said. Investigators asked if he could ”say this sort of looks like” it belonged to the two defendants, Gilman said.
”The hair issue came up over and over again,” said Gilman, a chemist and lawyer, a teacher at the Massachusetts Police Academy before coming to Du Page County.
State investigators Monday plan to obtain a set of seven fingerprints, which have been stored in Springfield and were taken from the Nicarico home after the slaying. The prints do not match those of any Nicarico family members, or any defendants in the case. Investigators plan to compare them with Dugan`s prints.
Even if Dugan, 29, of Aurora, is not charged or convicted in the Nicarico slaying, his statements are likely to be an element in appeals by Hernandez and Cruz, as well as a defense by Buckley in his retrial.
The self-incriminating conversations that Hernandez and Cruz allegedly had with friends and relatives supplied prosecutors with the material on which they based their case.
Jurors elected to believe testimony about those statements and rejected alibis offered by relatives of the two men.
The only juror who thought Buckley not guilty of the charges, said Saturday that he still thought there was enough evidence to convict the other two defendants.
But he added: ”Half the jurors made up their mind the first day of the trial. In at least six minds, the trial was a formality. I ended up with 200 pages of notes. One guy there took no notes the entire time. What does that tell you.”
Another juror, who said he thought Buckley was guilty, said, ”We would have all liked to have seen hard evidence. But what was presented was conclusive, say beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The prosecution built its case on evidence that included testimony of a
”vision” by Cruz that he supposedly described to detectives in May, 1983, more than two months after the murder occurred. In the vision, which Cruz later denied, he allegedly relayed details about the weapon and location of the girl`s death.
But the ”vision” was not taped by the detectives and not brought into the investigation until after a Christmas party shortly before the trial, when one of the detectives reminded a prosecutor about it, according to trial testimony.
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In the case against Buckley, a neighbor of the Nicaricos, Joanne Johannville, testified that she saw Buckley driving the day of the murder through the neighborhood.
Based on her description, the FBI produced a composite sketch of the suspect. In testimony, she identified Buckley in court as the man she had seen driving the car that day, but defense attorneys closely questioned her identification.
Sam was one of about 50 investigators from the FBI, the Du Page County sheriff`s police and state`s attorney`s office and the Naperville and Aurora police in what was called the biggest investigative effort in Du Page County history.
Sheriff Doria this week has confirmed that Cruz, Hernandez, Buckley and Dugan were all in custody in Du Page County Jail for a brief period of time.
He said there was no indication that the three men charged with the Nicarico slaying had contact with Dugan, although authorities who are skeptical about Dugan`s involvement in the Nicarico slaying contend that he could have learned details of it through a cellblock conversation.
While the investigation dragged on for months, court records and trial testimony show that the three defendants were considered suspects from the beginning.
”When the indictments came down I was part of the group assigned to arrest them,” Sam said. ”Knight said whoever spoke first would get a plea bargain.
Buckley was cooperative, Sam said, and never wavered from his story. Buckley claimed to have been home sleeping, Cruz said he`d been baby-sitting for a sister, and Hernandez claimed to have been spreading gravel in a relative`s backyard.
Hernandez, who defense attorneys said has an extremely low IQ, was described by Sam as having been emotional, crying a lot but willing to help. At one point, he said, Hernandez gave a statement in which he said he held the girl down on a floor in a house.
”But he never said those three words I was waiting for him to say–`I killed her`–and he was never able to take us to the house where he said the girl was killed,” Sam said. ”I think he decided at some point to try and help the police to get the reward money. But Alex is dumb. I don`t think he knew what he was saying.”