New DNA test results exclude Rolando Cruz from the 1983 rape of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico and point directly to Brian Dugan as the most likely suspect, Cruz’s defense attorneys said Friday.
The prosecution’s DNA expert, Dr. Edward Blake, of Forensic Science Associates in Richmond, Calif., confirmed that “Rolando Cruz is absolutely excluded as the source” of sperm found on Jeanine’s body.
“The tests further show that Brian Dugan’s DNA matches the DNA of the sperm,” Blake said. “The characteristics found in that sperm and in Dugan’s DNA are shared by only 0.03 percent of the male Caucasian population,” or 3 men in 10,000.
In one of the most controversial homicide cases in Illinois history, Cruz is facing a third trial in the slaying-rape of the Naperville girl, after two jury trials and convictions were overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court. Cruz has continued to maintain his innocence, while Dugan, who is serving two life sentences for two other murders, has implicated himself in Jeanine’s slaying but has not been charged.
“To me the story is simple,” said Blake, one of the nation’s leading DNA experts. “Cruz is out, Dugan’s in. I know this is a sensitive case, but we just have to be hopeful that everybody takes the high road and does the right thing.”
Cruz and his attorneys said the findings exonerate him of the abduction, rape and killing of the girl, who was kidnapped while home ill from school on Feb. 25, 1983.
“This is as good as it gets,” Cruz’s lead attorney, Thomas Breen, said Friday. “The only thing that would be better is if we get a videotape of Brian Dugan committing the crime.”
However, DuPage County State’s Atty. Anthony Peccarelli contended the DNA results do not alter prosecutors’ theory about the brutal crime. Cruz is to stand trial for the third time, on Oct. 24 in DuPage County Circuit Court in Wheaton.
Peccarelli contended that, “Since 1983, the DuPage County state’s attorneys have taken the position that multiple offenders were involved in the crime committed against Jeanine Nicarico. Nothing in these test results is inconsistent with that position.
“As the record demonstrates, my office requested these additional DNA tests. Beyond that, we as prosecutors are forbidden by the Rules of Professional Conduct from commenting further.”
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Cruz, however, was quick to respond.
“Now it’s time for everybody else to finally know that I really didn’t do it,” he said from his DuPage County Jail cell.
Blake performed DNA testing, known as PCR, in 1989 on blood samples from Cruz, Dugan and two other suspects, Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley.
Results from those tests excluded Hernandez and Buckley but were inconclusive on Cruz and Dugan.
Charges against Buckley were dropped after a jury could not reach a verdict, and Hernandez is awaiting a retrial after the state high court overturned his conviction.
Improvements in DNA testing have enabled Blake to test for a number of genes, instead of just the one gene tested for in 1989.
Blake said that allowed him to be more precise in eliminating segments of the population.
He added that the new results were aided dramatically by prosecutors’ recent discovery of DNA samples from the victim that had been placed on glass slides by a criminalist in 1983 and stored in DuPage County for several years.
In court documents filed Friday, Cruz’s attorneys, Breen and Lawrence C. Marshall, asked DuPage County Judge Ronald Mehling to order prosecutors to state exactly how Cruz participated in the crime.
A hearing is set for Wednesday in DuPage County Circuit Court.
Dugan, serving two life sentences for raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl and a 27-year-old woman, informally pleaded guilty in Jeanine’s case in 1985 through his attorney.
But he has refused to testify unless granted immunity from the death penalty, a request prosecutors have denied.
Prosecutors have gone back and forth in incriminating Dugan in the girl’s death.
During a 1986 hearing for another defendant, prosecutors contended Dugan had nothing to do with it. At Cruz’s second trial, however, they suggested Dugan might have participated.
But that has been disputed by independent investigator Ed Cisowski, an Illinois State Police lieutenant with the Department of Criminal Investigations. Cisowski entered the case at the request of DuPage County to investigate Dugan’s statements.
On Friday, Cisowski said that investigators checked all the police reports involving Cruz, Hernandez, Buckley and Dugan and that they questioned 100 people listed in Dugan’s address book.
“We contacted all of them and asked specifically if they could make a connection between Dugan and any of the defendants,” Cisowski said. “The answer was always no. No one had ever seen them together.”
Cruz was convicted of the crimes and sentenced to death in 1985. After the Illinois Supreme Court ordered a new trial, he was convicted again in 1990. However, state high court justices overturned the second conviction, saying that jurors should have been allowed to hear more testimony about Dugan’s confession and criminal background.
With a lack of other physical evidence in the case, DNA typing has come to assume paramount importance. It is the first homicide case in Illinois that involved DNA testing.
The basic techniques were developed in research and medical laboratories over 30 years, spawned the genetics revolution and the biotech industry, and resulted in dozens of Nobel Prizes for the pioneers.
Forensic science discovered the technique in 1986 and has used it for identification in more than 50,000 criminal investigations. DNA evidence most often is left behind in sexual assaults, with semen specimens composing about 75 percent of the samples examined by the FBI and other labs in 10,000 cases each year.
In the Cruz case, Blake informed both sides of his results on Thursday. Prosecutors and defense attorneys have spoken since then but have declined to elaborate on those discussions.
Dugan’s attorney, Thomas McCulloch, said that he consistently has maintained that his client was solely responsible for the crime.
“It’s always been my position that there’s only been one straight shooter in this case,” McCulloch said of Dugan. “To have DuPage continue to prosecute Cruz is very offensive.”
Breen and Marshall met with Cruz at DuPage County Jail for nearly two hours Thursday night.
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When asked if he had a message for the Nicarico family, Cruz replied, “I hope this brings them some peace-to see the truth.”