The last time Nadine Lenarczyk saw Dean Fawcett, she said he was scared and anxious. Fawcett allegedly told his friend he was involved in a phony check-writing scheme, and wanted out.
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“He said he was going to California, and if he got in trouble, he’d tell the police everything,” Lenarczyk testified Thursday.
But as Lenarczyk and Fawcett were leaving the Broadview motel where he was staying, two men arrived and insisted that he go for a ride with them, she testified.
Lenarczyk never saw Fawcett again, and it wasn’t until weeks later that she learned that his frozen, dismembered body was discovered in a Barrington field.
The two men who allegedly took Fawcett for the ride-Robert Faraci, 27, of Schiller Park, and Paul Modrowski, 20, of Mokena-are now on trial in connection with his murder.
The pair are accused of killing Fawcett to conceal their role in the check-writing scheme, and then trying to cover their crime by severing his head, left arm and right hand to hide the victim’s identity.
Prosecutors put Lenarczyk, 33, on the witness stand Thursday in the second day of the trial in an attempt to establish a relationship between the victim and the accused, and to suggest a motive.
Testifying in Cook County Circuit Court in Rolling Meadows, Lenarczyk said she met Fawcett, 23, shortly before his disappearance on Dec. 28, 1992.
She remembered getting a telephone call from Fawcett that morning, with him explaining that he was out of money and without a wallet, and that he wanted to leave the motel where he was staying and return to his mother’s home in La Grange Park.
“He told me his wallet, his ID, his checks and his money had been taken from him, and it was checkout time. He asked me to come and get him and he wanted to go home,” Lenzarczyk said under questioning by Assistant State’s Atty. James P. McKay Jr.
In the motel room, Fawcett tried to contact friends by phone, and then prepared to leave, she said.
“Dean and I were in my car ready to leave when (Faraci and Modrowski) showed up” in Faraci’s car, she testified.
“Paul (Modrowski) got out, came around the passenger side of my car, opened the door and told Dean to get out. . . . (The three men) were arguing about (Fawcett’s) wallet. He said they had taken it, and Paul said, `Don’t you remember? You lost it last night.’
“Dean ended up getting into Bob (Faraci’s) car. . . . They were going to take him home,” she said in response to McKay’s questions.
“Paul put his hand on the back of Dean’s shoulder and slightly pushed him into the back seat,” she said.
“He was scared. He did not want to go with them.”
Police alleged that Faraci and Modrowski shot Fawcett, dismembered his body and left him in a wooded field near railroad tracks in Barrington.
Fawcett’s torso was discovered Jan. 18, 1993, by two people taking a walk. After investigators identified the victim by his shirt and written items in his pants pocket, Faraci and Modrowski were charged with murder in April 1993.
Lenarczyk testified to prosecutors that she was along on two evenings of shopping when Fawcett allegedly bought merchandise with phony checks, including one occasion on Dec. 27, 1992, that reportedly included Faraci and Modrowski.
“They would go into stores, find merchandise they wanted, then come out and demand that Dean write a check for them,” Lenarczyk testified. “If Dean didn’t want to write a check, Paul would walk up and say `Do it, now,’ in a very threatening way,” she said.
Lenarczyk also testified that she pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1993 in connection with an insurance scam, but avoided a prison term because she worked as a federal informant in that case, she said.
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And Lenarczyk admitted to defense attorneys that she was using cocaine before and after the time of the murder and that she was hospitalized twice early in 1993 for a pysychiatric condition related to a head injury she suffered age 11. She said she hasn’t used drugs in about two years.