Jim Degorski and Juan Luna never strayed far, or very long, from their childhood homes in Palatine. They held odd jobs, committed minor crimes and made little impression on the people who met them. Their lives seemed as unremarkable this spring as a decade ago, when they were clowning around together in a vocational training program.
Perhaps that is why friends and relatives still have a hard time believing they did the “one big thing” authorities accuse them of–the January 1993 murder spree at Brown’s Chicken & Pasta in Palatine that left seven people dead and lingered as one of the area’s most notorious unsolved crimes.
At Fremd High School and beyond, Degorski was volatile, in ways that are all too common. He allegedly beat at least two girlfriends, according to court records, and friends say he tortured small animals. According to his father, “He has a mouth on him. He’s kind of like his dad: If he has an opinion he doesn’t care who he’s talking about. But I don’t think he’s going to kill anybody.”
Luna was the quiet one, friends say, and grew quieter still in recent years. Until his arrest last week, he worked six days a week installing dishwashers and refrigerators. His employers said Luna, 28, was looking for a second job so that he could buy his wife and their two children a house.
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Their lives continued to twine together with a series of girlfriends, ex-girlfriends and friends from the old days, most of whom never guessed that they could have had anything to do with the murders until last week.
One woman who dated and lived with Degorski off and on for several years in the 1990s said last week that Degorski could not possibly keep such a secret for nine years. “He would have cracked. . . . He’s genuine. He couldn’t lie.”
Imelda Luna married Juan Luna in Mexico in 1994, followed him to Carpentersville the next year, bore two children and said she had never heard her husband speak about Brown’s Chicken until police began to question Juan in recent weeks.
“He is a quiet guy. To me he is good,” Imelda Luna said Friday, speaking in Spanish, in the family’s one-bedroom apartment. “I can assure you my husband did not do this.”
But authorities are focusing their case on one woman in Degorski and Luna’s circle who they say knew about the Brown’s killings from the beginning.
And it was only when she could conquer her fear of Degorski’s anger that she told police all she knew about the two men and their alleged crime. Authorities will only refer to her in public as “Witness A,” the woman who gave police their breakthrough this spring.
A source close to the investigation confirmed that Witness A, Degorski’s girlfriend in 1993, is Anne Lockett.
Now 26, she is a student at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. Her mother, now living in Oregon, confirmed that Lockett is working with police in the Brown’s case. Reached by phone, Lockett declined to comment.
Lockett was another member of Fremd’s vocational program in the early 1990s.
According to court records, Degorski and Luna spilled their story to Lockett one night in 1993, sitting in Degorski’s bedroom. Authorities say the woman feared that Degorski would kill her if she told anybody.
She was not the first woman to feel his wrath.
Kristin Smith, who was 17-year-old Kristin Lennstrom when she dated Degorski in 1992, said he repeatedly beat her. She recalled that he had a bad temper, drank too much and was secretive.
Finally, her parents insisted that she file a complaint against Degorski. On July 1, 1992, Degorski pleaded guilty to battery. Court records say he hit Lennstrom in the face and neck four or five times, struck her leg with a car door and pushed her into a car.
Smith, too, had heard Degorski’s tales about “blowing up a cat” and other violent episodes. Still, until she heard Friday he was implicated in the Brown’s massacre, she said none of that added up to murder.
Marc Valentino, a friend of Degorski’s during high school, described Degorski and his family as typical, adding that Degorski never sought out trouble. Valentino saw Degorski as a kindred spirit.
“Fremd was a snotty, preppy school and we had hair down our backs and Metallica shirts,” Valentino said.
Valentino said Degorski “smoked a little pot,” but did not do hard drugs during high school. He enjoyed listening to music and punching a bag in the basement of his family’s home, Valentino said.
Marisa Hayes, a 1991 Fremd graduate who was in the same work-training program as Degorski, saw him in much the same terms.
“He was just a burnout,” she said. “He never did his homework. . . . He was always being told, `You’re not paying attention.'”
After high school, according to his father, Degorski had trouble getting a job because of his battery conviction and a mounting list of other brushes with the law, from a minor charge connected to a car theft to a marijuana possession charge in 1998.
Instead, he did some handyman work with his father, William Degorski.
Last year, Degorski wanted to move to Arizona to try to reconcile with a girlfriend.
The reconciliation failed, and Degorski moved to Indianapolis, where he lived with his brother. It was there that police arrested Degorski, 29, last week.
Juan Luna’s friends almost unanimously describe him as “quiet.” One man who identified himself as a current friend, David Johnson, 21, of Rockford, claimed that Luna had told him about beating people up, and bragged of owning a gun.
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In 1999, Luna was convicted of writing a bad check to an auto repair shop, paying fines and fees totaling $405.
But far more common was the kind of description Luna’s employers offered Friday.
“He’s about the nicest, gentlest guy we know. He doesn’t even swear,” said Greg Danielson, co-owner of Gulgren TV and Appliance in Crystal Lake, where Luna has worked for the last year and a half.
“He’s the guy I’d trust with anything. He’s no murderer,” added co-owner Mike Gulgren, who recently moved to a new house with Luna’s help.
“There’s no way in the world.”