More than two decades after a 10-year-old Naperville Township girl was abducted from her home and murdered, an imprisoned killer who has been linked to the case since 1985 was indicted in the crime Tuesday.
A DuPage County grand jury charged Brian Dugan, 49, with the murder of Jeanine Nicarico, a crime DuPage County State’s Atty. Joseph Birkett called “one of the worst in the history of this county.”
“Today’s indictment is the result of a full and open-minded investigation of the facts and circumstances of this case,” Birkett said. “This investigation has been about one goal: pursuing justice for a horrendous, horrible crime. We do believe that we’ve taken a step toward the truth.”
Dugan, an Aurora man serving two life sentences and 155 years in prison for two sexual-assault murders and a series of other attacks in the early 1980s, is the fourth person to be prosecuted in the wrenching and bungled legal odyssey that began Feb. 25, 1983, when Jeanine Nicarico was home sick with the flu. Over the years, three other Aurora men were prosecuted and ultimately released, receiving a $3.5 million settlement over wrongful prosecutions.
The case also triggered unprecedented charges of malfeasance against investigators and prosecutors, all of whom later were acquitted. And the attention the Nicarico case garnered helped overhaul capital punishment in Illinois, which maintains a death penalty moratorium, although judges and juries still may order the sentence.
In an effort to avoid that most severe sentence, Dugan in 1985 agreed to plead guilty to the Nicarico killing if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. Prosecutors refused.
On Tuesday, Birkett repeated that he would pursue the death penalty against Dugan if convicted.
“This is the punishment that is available for the worst of the worst, and we’re saying this crime meets that standard,” Birkett said.
Already a costly endeavor, the latest effort to clear the crime may be a complicated prosecution, one that could require prosecutors to contradict the theory their predecessors put forth.
Dugan’s indictment does, however, present hope that after 22 years, someone finally could be held accountable for Jeanine Nicarico’s shocking death.
Patricia Nicarico, the girl’s mother, said Tuesday the family took little solace in Dugan’s indictment. The Nicaricos maintain that the three men originally charged with the crime were involved, although one has been acquitted and the other two released.
“With the indictment of only Brian Dugan, to me it doesn’t feel like this is an end,” she said in the driveway of her home Tuesday afternoon. Nicarico said the threat of a death sentence might compel Dugan to tell the whole truth about the crime, something she does not believe he has done.
“I think that’s the only punishment that should be for him,” Nicarico said.
Dugan surfaced as a suspect in the Nicarico case in November 1985, eight months after two other men were sentenced to death for the child’s kidnapping, rape and murder.
On Feb. 25, 1983, Patricia Nicarico came home for lunch, returned to work and phoned home about 1 p.m. to check on Jeanine, Birkett said Tuesday. But when Jeanine’s sister arrived home from school about 3:05 p.m., Jeanine was missing and the house showed signs of forced entry.
Her body was found Feb. 27 next to the Illinois Prairie Path between Naperville and Aurora.
The frenzied investigation that followed led authorities to three Aurora men: Rolando Cruz, Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley. The three were indicted two weeks before the heated 1984 primary race for DuPage County state’s attorney and were tried together.
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Based in part on a dubious statement in which Cruz allegedly implicated himself by reconstructing the crime through the retelling of a dream, Cruz and Hernandez were convicted and sentenced to death in early 1985. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on Buckley, and he was released in 1987.
Over the next decade, Cruz was tried two more times before an outraged judge acquitted him in November 1995. Hernandez also was tried twice more but was released when, after Cruz’s acquittal, prosecutors acknowledged that evidence against Hernandez was insufficient.
In addition, the case led to the indictments in 1996 of four DuPage County sheriff’s officers and three former Cruz prosecutors, who were charged with fabricating evidence against Cruz and concealing evidence that might have cleared him. The men, who became known as the DuPage Seven, were acquitted in the spring of 1999.
Dugan, a high school dropout who had served prison sentences for burglary and arson, never faded from the case. He has been called to testify a handful of times but refuses to speak about the crime.
And now, his indictment places prosecutors in a potentially precarious spot. Initially, prosecutors dismissed Dugan as a liar who was trying to become a “prison hero.”
As scientific testing became more refined and pointed toward Dugan, prosecutors revised that theory to say that Dugan participated in the crime with the others. Attorneys later showed that Dugan and Cruz were neighbors in Aurora about the time of Jeanine Nicarico’s murder.
Now, the evidence indicates with “scientific certainty,” according to Birkett, that Dugan participated. DNA evidence previously eliminated Cruz as a rape suspect.
Birkett explained the discrepancies as logical shifts that developed “with the benefit of hindsight and tremendous advances in forensic technology,” in particular DNA. He would not rule out the involvement of others, including Cruz, Hernandez or Buckley.
“Past investigations and prosecutions of this case were done in good faith by honest and ethical professionals,” he said.
Dugan’s attorney, Thomas McCulloch, conceded that prosecutors possess persuasive scientific evidence, but added, “Will it hold up? I don’t know.”
“The only legitimate thing I or another attorney can do is to tell him to plead not guilty and let a judge decide what happens,” McCulloch added.
Dugan first linked himself to the Nicarico crime on Nov. 19, 1985, while negotiating his guilty pleas to the kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman of Somonauk, and the rape and murder of 27-year-old nurse Donna Schnorr of Geneva. But he made those statements hypothetically through his attorney.
Investigators from DuPage County and Illinois State Police conducted a five-month investigation that included five meetings with Dugan, riding through the crime areas with him, having him hypnotized and given a polygraph test–all of which was shielded from prosecution by waivers or other indirect communication.
In 1986, Jeanine’s body was exhumed to determine whether Dugan had correctly described her toenail polish. He had not.
That discrepancy, among other complications, led DuPage prosecutors and the state police to draw different conclusions about Dugan.
State Police Cmdr. Edward Cisowski believed Dugan’s criminal history and the details he provided about the Nicarico crime strongly suggested he acted alone. Prosecutors said Dugan’s story had too many inconsistencies and kept changing.
As early as 1989, scientific testing began supporting Cisowski’s theory, ruling out Cruz and Hernandez and pointing at Dugan. By 1995 DNA testing showed Cruz had been excluded from the girl’s rape and that Dugan’s DNA was a virtual match. In November 1995, during Cruz’s third trial, DuPage County Judge Ronald Mehling acquitted Cruz, castigating the investigation and prosecution so strongly that a special prosecutor was appointed to examine the handling of the case.
That investigation led to the indictments of the DuPage Seven.
Over the years, the case has spilled into other arenas. Political opponents have, with mixed success, used the Nicarico case against Jim Ryan, former DuPage County state’s attorney and Illinois attorney general who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002, and Birkett, who ran unsuccessfully for Illinois attorney general in 2002 and ditched a 2006 campaign for governor in part to devote time to the Dugan case.
In 2000, former lead prosecutor Thomas Knight filed a lawsuit against the baiduhai alleging an investigative story focusing on the case libeled him. A jury found for the Tribune in May of this year, noting that while the story contained a statement of attribution that was “false in a material way,” it was not defamatory nor was it published with actual malice.
Now that the indictment has been filed, a Dugan conviction may be little more than symbolic. Regardless of the outcome of a trial and sentencing in the Nicarico case, Dugan will die in prison. His conviction may expedite that fate, but even that is uncertain.
Although state courts still may condemn a defendant to death, the wait between ordering the sentence and its imposition can range from 12 to 17 years.
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The first 3 suspects
Rolando Cruz, Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley were indicted in 1984 for the 1983 kidnapping, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. The three were first tried together in 1985.
THE 1ST TRIAL
1985: Cruz and Hernandez are convicted, but the jury deadlocks on Buckley, who is later released.
1988: Illinois Supreme Court overturns the convictions, saying the defendants should have been tried separately.
CRUZ TRIALS
1990: Cruz again is convicted and sentenced to death.
1994: Illinois Supreme Court overturns the conviction, saying the jurors should have heard genetic testing evidence implicating Dugan.
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1995: Cruz is acquitted in his third trial.
HERNANDEZ TRIALS
1990: Second trial ends in a hung jury.
1991: Hernandez is convicted in his third trial.
1995: Illinois Appellate Court reverses the conviction. Prosecutors later released Hernandez, citing insufficient evidence.
Source: Official documents, Tribune reports