More than 25 years after two Chicago teenagers were convicted of the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl, new DNA tests suggest the men may have been wrongly convicted.
Now, additional genetic tests are under way as lawyers seek to free the two men convicted in a child-abduction case that once grabbed headlines, but has been revived quietly after doubts were raised by a most unlikely source–one of the prosecutors who put the men behind bars.
Since then, an investigation by the Tribune has found that key testimony in the trial was altered. In separate interviews, the slain girl’s parents each said the mother changed her testimony to make it agree with an account given by the state’s star witness.
Michael Evans and Paul Terry were 17 years old when the body of Lisa Cabassa was found in a South Side alley in the early morning hours of Jan. 15, 1976.
No physical evidence linked them to the killing and only one witness linked them to the crime–and then only to the abduction. During the trial, the witness had to admit she repeatedly lied to police.
Nevertheless, Evans and Terry were convicted in 1977 and sentenced to 200 to 400 years in prison.
If Evans and Terry are freed, it would be among the oldest cases unraveled by DNA tests, according to Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project at New York’s Cardozo Law School.
What makes the case especially remarkable, particularly in light of Illinois’ struggles with wrongful convictions, is how it was given new life.
Thomas Breen, now one of the city’s top defense attorneys, was the lead prosecutor of Evans and Terry when he was a young Cook County assistant state’s attorney. Nearly two decades later, in 1994, Breen confided in a friend, Lawrence Marshall of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, that he had misgivings about the case.
In October 2001, Karen Daniel, a center attorney, and Jeffrey Urdangen, a defense lawyer, petitioned for DNA tests. The results of those tests show that semen found on the girl’s clothing did not come from Evans or Terry.
Cook County prosecutors have begun to reinvestigate the case, interviewing witnesses and comparing the DNA of three other men police once linked to Cabassa’s murder. None of the three produced a DNA match.
Further DNA tests are being conducted on hair found on the girl’s clothing. Prosecutors are leaving open the possibility of even more tests on other evidence.
“We are running down every direction that the evidence is leading us and re-examining everything as if it is a fresh case,” said John Gorman, spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
Both Terry and Evans have struggled during a quarter century behind bars, but the years have been most unkind to Terry. While Evans says a renewed faith in God has helped him fend off encroaching bitterness, Terry has deteriorated from a vital teenager to a man so debilitated by mental illness that he is virtually non-verbal.
In a recent interview with the Tribune, Terry barely managed single-word answers to questions.
“He was a very well-rounded and well-adjusted young man when he was arrested,” said Urdangen. “But now he’s clearly a very, very diminished man. He’s withdrawn and confused and not really able to carry on a conversation.”
How it began
On Jan. 14, 1976, Lisa Cabassa left her house in the 8600 block of South Saginaw Avenue with her 11-year-old brother, Ricky, and his friend. The three were walking east on 86th Street when Lisa turned back, complaining of a headache.
She never returned home.
After searching the neighborhood, the family called police. A youth officer filed a report saying Carmen Cabassa, Lisa’s mother, said the girl left home about 6:30 p.m.
The search for Lisa ended just before 3 a.m. the next day, when her body was found in an alley about 2 miles from her home. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.
Police immediately launched a massive search for Lisa’s killer. Joseph DiLeonardi, then the commander of all homicide units, took personal charge of the investigation and canceled all days off for detectives. A local organization offered a $5,000 reward for information that might solve the crime.
At the time, Lisa’s older sister, Annette, then 16, recalled how her sister had loved to dance, had been a “straight-A student” in her 3rd-grade class and had been a fashion model beginning at age 4.
For four days, police had no solid leads.
Then, Judith Januszewski called the group that was offering the reward and said she had information. A 32-year-old mother of two, Januszewski worked at a realty office on 87th Street near Saginaw Avenue.
She told detectives she was walking on Saginaw “at approximately 6:37 p.m.” when she heard voices, turned and saw two youths struggling with a young girl, according to police reports.
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“I saw each of them had her under the arms and were trying to force her to do something she didn’t want to do, because she was trying to fight them and I heard her say distinctly, `No.’ I didn’t hear any other words from anyone. Then I ran home,” her statement said.
During the interview, Detective William Mosher asked Januszewski if she could identify the men if she saw them again.
“I don’t want to answer that question,” Januszewski said.
“Are you afraid?” Mosher asked.
“Yes,” Januszewski said.
Police continued to pursue the case, without success.
More than a month later, Januszewski began calling police to say she was being harassed.
First, she said a man delivered a bag containing two bullets to her front door with a note that said: “Next time you talk to police you get the real thing.”
Januszewski reported two more incidents, including one where police recovered an empty wine bottle with a bullet taped to it.
That was when Januszewski “said she wished to clear the air,” according to the police reports.
And so, 41 days after Lisa’s body was found, Januszewski told police that she had known all along that Evans, whom she knew from the neighborhood, was one of the men she saw struggling with the girl.
She told police that Evans had come to her realty office to ask why she was talking to police. She also said she received other threatening phone calls and recognized the voice as Evans’, according to the police reports.
The following day, Evans was arrested as he walked to a neighborhood grocery store.
Jones arrested
Months later, detectives picked up Evans’ friend, Keith Jones, then 16. Seven hours later, he gave a court-reported statement implicating Evans and another man, James Davis, in the murder.
Januszewski had previously identified Davis as the man who delivered the bullets.
In the statement, Jones said he and two friends were smoking marijuana at a friend’s house when Evans and Davis came in. Evans led them all to his garage and then brought Lisa’s body out to the alley, he claimed.
Jones said Evans asked one of the men, “Do you want a turn?”
Police showed Jones composite drawings that were based on a description given by Januszewski. He said one of the drawings resembled his next-door neighbor, Paul Terry.
Within hours, police arrested Terry. The teenager had been ironing his jeans in preparation for a job interview the next day.
Terry was put in a lineup,
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where Januszewski identified him as the youth who was holding onto Lisa with Evans. She said Davis was standing nearby as the girl was dragged away.
On Nov. 19, 1976, Terry and Davis were charged with murder, while Jones’ two friends were charged with concealing Lisa’s homicide. A month later, Jones recanted the statement, saying he had been coerced by detectives. In a recent interview with the Tribune from a Michigan prison, where he is serving time for a drug charge, Jones said that he lied to the police.
“I was 16. I was scared,” he said. “They threw the pictures of that dead girl down on the table and told me that I would be charged with the murder.
“They came up with a story, and I signed it,” Jones said.
Although police denied any coercion, prosecutors dropped the charges against Davis and Jones’ friends. Jones was never charged.
By the time the case against Evans and Terry came to trial in April 1977, accounts of what happened had changed. Januszewski originally told police she saw the abduction at 6:37 p.m. She changed that to 8 p.m., however, after checking her timecard at work.
(end of added text)
The day Lisa disappeared, her mother told police the girl left home at 6:30 p.m.
On the witness stand at the trial, however, Carmen Cabassa said Lisa left home at about 8 p.m., agreeing with Januszewski’s account.
In separate telephone interviews, Lisa’s parents each acknowledged that the time was changed.
“The time was made later because that’s what the eyewitness said,” said Ricardo Cabassa, Lisa’s father, who now lives in Puerto Rico. “When she said it was later, then it was later. . . . But it really was about 7 o’clock, maybe a little earlier.”
“The timing was changed,” said Carmen Cabassa, who now lives in West New York, N.J. “The time was wrong. That’s all I will say.”
Seven days after the trial began, the jury convicted Terry and Evans.
“If Lisa Cabassa had been murdered just a year later, after the reinstatement of the Illinois death penalty in 1977, these two men probably would be dead today,” said Daniel, the Northwestern attorney.
Additional questions
Interviews raise additional questions about Januszewski’s account.
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Rich Dabney, a broker in the realty office, told the Tribune Evans did come into the office, but to meet with him. He mentored the youth.
“He was probably one of the meekest kids in the neighborhood. Low-key,” said Dabney. “Probably one of the nicest kids in the neighborhood.”
Januszewski told the Tribune that she did not point detectives to Evans, but instead relented when they kept pressing her to identify him. “They kept saying, `We know you know it was Michael Evans,'” said Januszewski. “I finally said, `OK.'”
Nevertheless, Januszewski stands by her account, saying she vividly remembers what she saw on that night.
“I saw what I saw and I will never forget it until the day I die,” she said. “I will never waver from it.”
Also, the youth officer who took the first report from Lisa’s mother–the one in which she said Lisa left home around 6:30 p.m.–insists the report is accurate.
“In my experience as a youth officer, a mother knows the time she last sees her child,” said Philip Centracchio, who is now retired. “If my report says 6:30, that’s what she told me.”
Breen said he now is convinced that the convictions he obtained with prosecutors Terry Ekl and Greg Ginex can no longer be defended.
Ginex, now an associate judge in Cook County Circuit Court, said: “If something comes up and the DNA shows these guys didn’t do it, then it’s a whole new ballgame.”
Ekl, now a private attorney, could not be reached for comment.
The two lead detectives in the case, Fred Hill and Anthony Katalinic, both of whom now work for the state’s attorney’s office, declined comment.
“I’m accepting complete responsibility for this case,” Breen, sipping coffee and smoking the first of a long line of cigarettes, said in a recent interview in his office in the Monadnock Building downtown.
“I am not going to pass the buck on this case.”