Elizabeth Guillen didn’t bother to bring any tissues. She had convinced herself she wasn’t going to cry.
But about halfway through her testimony Monday at the sentencing of her father’s murderer, she suddenly gasped for air and wept.
The judge offered her a box of tissues.
A few weeks ago, Guillen hadn’t even known Roberto Hernandez was on trial in Chicago for the murder. More than 30 years had passed since her dad was gunned down in a Chicago tavern. Guillen was only 8 months old at the time.
It was nearly a miracle that detectives had found Guillen, now 31 and raising three children of her own in Texas. A frayed holy card tucked away in a wallet all these years had helped lead them to her.
On Monday, at the Cook County courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue, Guillen was the lone family member to face Hernandez.
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Before Guillen took the witness stand, Detective Bob Rodriguez, one of several detectives who investigated the cold case, told her to take her time and be strong.
She wasn’t nervous.
“Who is Bernardo Guillen?” Assistant State’s Attorney Steve Krueger asked.
“He is my father,” she said.
In 1979, Guillen’s father worked in a furniture factory near Chicago and Ashland avenues to support his family. He was married with three children — two boys and a baby girl.
He was a regular at La Campana Tavern, a popular nightspot on Fridays and Saturdays in the 2100 block of West Chicago Avenue owned by his close friend, Alfonso Nunez. Live music drew large crowds, recalled Nunez, now 75.
On the last night Bernardo Guillen came to La Campana, Dec. 19, 1979, Nunez asked him to watch the bar while he left to run an errand.
When Nunez returned, police lights blinked in the early morning hours. His friend had been shot.
Eyewitnesses led detectives to Hernandez, who had come to the bar with at least two others that night. Witnesses said that after one of them made remarks about Nunez, Bernardo Guillen came to his defense. Hernandez pulled out a gun and shot Bernardo Guillen, police said.
Hernandez quickly disappeared from Chicago, eventually moving to California and working on farms there and in Mexico. He stayed out of trouble, authorities said.
Then in March 2007, Chicago police learned from the FBI that someone believed to be Hernandez, using his own Social Security number, had applied for benefits in California.
Agents wanted to know if an old Cook County arrest warrant was still active.
The typewritten warrant, issued two days after the murder, was still valid and called for Hernandez’s arrest. He was extradited to Cook County to face first-degree murder charges.
When the trial started last month, Detective Rodriguez had been unable to find any of Bernardo Guillen’s relatives.
After her father was shot, Guillen’s family moved west, and the aged court file left little trace of them. Prosecutors didn’t even have a photo of Bernardo Guillen to show the jury. This didn’t sit right with Rodriguez.
More than 1,500 miles away, in El Paso, Texas, Elizabeth Guillen was busy raising three of her children, working and finishing classes for her medical assistant’s certificate. She had no idea justice was about to be delivered for her father, a man she barely remembered.
For two days, Rodriguez asked Nunez about the whereabouts of the family. Finally, Nunez pulled out a small card and handed it to the detective.
For 30 years, the card had rested inside a wallet Nunez used to carry. It read:
Bernardo Guillen
Passed Away Dec. 19, 1979
Laid to Rest December 22, 1979
Interment
St. Boniface Cemetery
Lot 8 Bl. 1X Sec. A Gr. 3
“I was like ‘finally,”’ Rodriguez said. “Now I’ve got something to work off.”
He tracked down the funeral home, which had kept a record of who arranged for Guillen’s burial — his wife.
She seemed to be in shock when Rodriguez reached her in El Paso. She declined to come to Chicago but told Rodriguez she and her husband had three children.
Another computer query quickly led to another El Paso woman, and Rodriguez left a hopeful message for an Elizabeth Guillen.
At first, she ignored his calls. With the trial winding down and time running out, Rodriguez turned to El Paso police for a favor — could they go to her house and ask her to call?
Unsure what the detective from Chicago wanted, she still turned over her cell phone number to El Paso police, who passed it along to Rodriguez. A day later, with the jury deliberating Hernandez’s fate, Rodriguez called again and left a message that began: “I don’t know if this is the right Elizabeth Guillen. If you’re the Elizabeth Guillen whose father was Bernardo …”
Guillen immediately called back.
A short time later, the jury convicted Hernandez, 67, of her father’s murder.
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Before flying to Chicago on Sunday, Guillen struggled for much of a week to put into writing her feelings about a life without a father before she finally completed the statement she read in court Monday.
“As years have passed, I have never forgotten about my father,” she said as she read from her statement. “He is always in my mind and my heart, and he will always be.”
Growing up, she had written school essays about him and watched longingly as her friends’ dads showered affection on them. She wondered, and still does, whether he might have helped her when her relationship with her mother strained in her teens and she moved in with her aunt.
On Monday, Guillen stood before Judge Jorge Luis Alonso and explained how she spent the first half of her life believing her father had died in a car accident. When her grandmother finally told her the truth, she wrestled with hurt and confusion. Even then, she would let herself imagine how her dad would come find her and happiness would follow.
“I had thoughts,” Guillen said. “I used to say to myself, ‘Maybe he’ll come back.'”
Her chest heaved up and down as the judge referred to the “coldblooded murder of a defenseless man.” That was her father, and all she knew of him were her grandmother’s stories. The first thing Bernardo Guillen would do when he came home from work was scoop up his baby girl — whom he called his “munequita” or doll — in his arms, her grandmother told Guillen.
For Guillen, leaving her children to participate in the sentencing helped close the decades-long story of her father’s murder, but it was the longest time she said she had ever spent away from them. Throughout the process, she was largely alone, save for Rodriguez and Evelyn Velez, the courtroom specialist who booked her accommodations, sat next to her at the hearing and brought her a turkey sandwich and Diet Pepsi after the judge sentenced Hernandez to 25 years.
The two accompanied Guillen to St. Boniface Cemetery, the first time she had ever visited her father’s grave. The groundskeeper spent a few minutes finding the plot because it didn’t have a headstone.
“It’s sad because there’s nothing,” said Guillen, who vowed to buy her dad a proper headstone.
But more than anything, she felt relief.
“I’m glad it’s over with, and I’m glad I was here,” she said.
When the groundskeeper finally found the unmarked grave, Elizabeth Guillen froze for a moment.
She stepped up, marked the sign of the cross and cried once more. Under the bright spring sun, she laid pink and yellow alstroemerias.
Tribune reporter Carlos Sadovi contributed to this report.