Speaker 1: This episode may contain content of a graphic nature, including
Speaker 1: descriptions of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Hi everyone, I'm Talia and I'm Tanya,
Speaker 1: and together we are Crimes and Consequences, a true crime podcast. Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: Welcome to this week's episode of Crimes and Consequences. I'm
Speaker 1: Talia and I'm Tanya, and together we are two friends,
Speaker 1: two lawyers that love true crime. And I want to
Speaker 1: welcome everybody and let you know we have our own
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. Now, yes, it's if you go to YouTube
Speaker 1: and you type in at crimes and Q and Consequences Consequences,
Speaker 1: you can find find us. And if you want to
Speaker 1: hit the subscribe like thumbs up, whatever button, please do.
Speaker 1: And with that, I'm gonna get started.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go.
Speaker 1: This one was suggested by a patron of ours. Her
Speaker 1: name is Leanne p So thank you, Leanne. And this
Speaker 1: story has a lot of twist and turns, and it
Speaker 1: is about a child, so fair warning, fair warning. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start. Okay, you ready, This is about Jeanine Nicarrol,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna give you a little background on Jeanine.
Speaker 1: She was born July seventh, nineteen seventy two, in Naperville,
Speaker 1: which is in due Page County, Illinois. Her parents were
Speaker 1: Thomas and Patricia, and her dad was a Chicago building
Speaker 1: engineer and Patricia was a school sucker terry at Jeanine's
Speaker 1: elementary school. Jeanine had two sisters, Chris and Kathy, and
Speaker 1: the family lived on Clover Court and it's a short
Speaker 1: street with a lot of large homes and they have
Speaker 1: large lots there. One of the neighbors had remarked that
Speaker 1: it's a really quiet neighborhood. Janine loved horses, and she
Speaker 1: was scheduled to attend horseback writing lessons the day after
Speaker 1: something very bad happened to her. She had won ribbons
Speaker 1: for her horse riding skills and she was one of
Speaker 1: the most popular ten year olds in her fifth grade
Speaker 1: class at Elmwood Elementary School in Neighborville she'd been in.
Speaker 1: She was about four foot four feet tall, weighed a
Speaker 1: little over four feet tall, so she's kind of short.
Speaker 1: Weighed sixty three pounds. She had prominent, deep dimples which
Speaker 1: you'll see in the pictures that we uploaded, brown hair,
Speaker 1: and big brown eyes. A neighbor described her as being
Speaker 1: a very lovely, darling, wonderful girl. Oh, the father of
Speaker 1: Jeanine Thomas, his best friend stated, when you know Janine's
Speaker 1: family and the love and joy they share, you know
Speaker 1: where Janine got her bounce and joy and why she
Speaker 1: brought so much joy to people in her life. Now,
Speaker 1: this story takes place on Friday, February twenty fifth, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, and Jeanine is ten. She stayed home that
Speaker 1: day from school because she had the flu, and she
Speaker 1: was home alone because both of her parents worked and
Speaker 1: her siblings were at school. Her mother, Patricia, came home
Speaker 1: to check on her during her lunch break and she
Speaker 1: made her a sandwich. She was there, Janine told her
Speaker 1: that a man from the gas company had come by
Speaker 1: and that Jeanine had opened the door for him.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Patricia warned Janine do not ever open the door for
Speaker 1: a stranger again. Then Patricia went back to work and
Speaker 1: around one thirty she called Jeanine checked on her see
Speaker 1: how she's doing. While she was at work getting ready
Speaker 1: to leave, Patricia got a phone call from her neighbor.
Speaker 1: Her neighbor had stated that Patricia's or I'm sorry Janine's sister,
Speaker 1: her name was Kathy, had come home and she found
Speaker 1: the front door was kicked in, Oh No, and there
Speaker 1: was a bootprint on it. Janine was no longer in
Speaker 1: her bed resting. She was no longer in the house.
Speaker 1: Sometime between one thirty and three, somebody had taken Jeanine.
Speaker 1: Jeanine at the time was wearing a short pink nightgown
Speaker 1: with the words I'm sleepy aw and a picture of
Speaker 1: the Seven Dwarfs que under the words. So the police
Speaker 1: get contacted and they are reaching out to all the
Speaker 1: neighbors to find out what happened to Janine. Neighbors reported
Speaker 1: seeing a strange man in the area around the time
Speaker 1: of the abduction. The man was described as being white,
Speaker 1: age between twenty five and thirty, and possibly wearing wire
Speaker 1: rimmed glasses and a brown cap. The man was seen
Speaker 1: driving a heavily rusted, light colored older model four door car.
Speaker 1: Police began a massive search Jeanine, but it the first
Speaker 1: two days they found they found nothing. However, it was
Speaker 1: two days later and this is from the court records,
Speaker 1: after her disappearance, a guy named Charles Bryant. He was
Speaker 1: from Aurora, Illinois and a friend of his were hiking
Speaker 1: through the woods on a biking trail near Naperville. After
Speaker 1: they'd smoked some weed. Brian saw something and at first
Speaker 1: he thought it was a white box stuffed under the brush,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. It was Jeanine's body. No, Brian thought
Speaker 1: he was hallucinating.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure, I would have thought that too, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean he must have smoked some strong he said. Quote,
Speaker 1: I've been smoking marijuana and I wasn't really sure what
Speaker 1: I saw and I didn't want to be made out
Speaker 1: to be a fool. But they didn't want to get
Speaker 1: any closer him and his friend, so Bryant and his
Speaker 1: friend went to Batavia, it's some city nearby to pick
Speaker 1: up another friend named Gary Anderson. They picked up Gary
Speaker 1: Anderson to show him what they found. When they found
Speaker 1: and he wasn't stoned.
Speaker 2: Oh He's like, so yeah, this is bad.
Speaker 1: So he confirmed, yes, this is a body, and the
Speaker 1: three men fled to the nearest farmhouse and then called
Speaker 1: the authorities to report the findings.
Speaker 2: That will sober you up really quick, right.
Speaker 1: Right, oh man, it's February twenty seven, so it's two
Speaker 1: days after she was taken. Authorities discovered her body in
Speaker 1: Northwest in the northwest part of Naperville. The police were
Speaker 1: more than fairly certain it was Janine's and they decided
Speaker 1: by the time they went there, it was dark, so
Speaker 1: they decided to leave the body where it was found,
Speaker 1: and they had a police like watch it until the
Speaker 1: following day. So what they discovered was shreds of what
Speaker 1: was presumed to be Jeanine's nightdown on her body. Her
Speaker 1: body had been bludgeoned, and the autopsy report claimed her
Speaker 1: death came as a result of quote massive blunt trauma
Speaker 1: to the hut and that she'd been struck several times
Speaker 1: with anything from a lead pipe to a baseball. Her
Speaker 1: nightgown was pulled up over her shoulders and she didn't
Speaker 1: have any defensive wounds on her. Also on her body
Speaker 1: was adhesive tape that blindfolded her eyes, so her eyes
Speaker 1: were covered with tape. They didn't know if that meant
Speaker 1: she was held captive in an unknown location before she
Speaker 1: was killed, but later on the corner stated that she didn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long after she was abducted that she she died.
Speaker 1: They found fresh tire tracks near her body. Her body
Speaker 1: was found midway between the top of a rise, in
Speaker 1: the bottom of a semi dry creak. She was face
Speaker 1: down in the underbrush, and they believed that she was
Speaker 1: wrapped in some sort of blanket and bed sheet. This
Speaker 1: is going to be their theory, and drug to a car,
Speaker 1: drive to a car where she was repeatedly sodomized and
Speaker 1: then beaten.
Speaker 2: It's poor child.
Speaker 1: It's time you see you guys can see the pictures
Speaker 1: of her. It's sad. In an effort to preserve the
Speaker 1: evidence of the scene, the officials decided not to drive
Speaker 1: a hearse onto the nature path where her body was,
Speaker 1: so six detectives carried the small white body bag across
Speaker 1: this frozen field to hers that was waiting at the
Speaker 1: opening of the path. Jeanine was buried. She was dressed
Speaker 1: in her black velvet riding jacket.
Speaker 2: Oh how cute.
Speaker 1: Writing pants. I don't know how to what they're called. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's official name for it.
Speaker 2: There is an official name. But yeah, I know what you.
Speaker 1: Mean, shut up hers or something something like that. Don't know, Sorry,
Speaker 1: don't know, and riding boots with a writing crap in
Speaker 1: her hand, a horseshy wreath of red roses and white
Speaker 1: carnations surrounded her casket. So a task force was assembled
Speaker 1: to find out who killed Jeanine, and they had a
Speaker 1: twenty four hour tip line and they urged anybody with
Speaker 1: any information to call it. And they even off five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which is the equivalent of fifteen four hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty two dollars for crime stoppers for any good
Speaker 1: tip that would help them find the killer. It took
Speaker 1: that took a few weeks to get that going though.
Speaker 1: Evidence that was found at the site was sent to
Speaker 1: the DuPage County Cram CRAM Crime Lab Analysis for analysis.
Speaker 1: The evidence included the adhesive tape or that was, the
Speaker 1: blindfold cast of footprints made by a hiking boot, and
Speaker 1: the tire tracks found near the body. A witness reported
Speaker 1: seeing a dark green Mercury Monarch or Marquee. I don't
Speaker 1: know I know a Marquee, but I know with its
Speaker 1: left front hubcap missing near the location where Janine's body
Speaker 1: was discovered. The main clue early in the investigation into
Speaker 1: the abdoc and murder of Jeanine was this terry cloth towel.
Speaker 1: The towels brightly colored, possibly made in like an art
Speaker 1: class at school or a craft class, and that was
Speaker 1: also used to blindfold Jeanine. It was discovered along her
Speaker 1: body in a wooded area, so it wasn't actually honor.
Speaker 1: They were just assuming that they maybe used it to
Speaker 1: blindfold her. The towel was of high quality. It had
Speaker 1: been washed several times before the color design was applied
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: The portion of the towel they found had a small
Speaker 1: figure with two legs, one arm, and part of the
Speaker 1: face was drawn in bright red, green and blue. They
Speaker 1: appealed to the public, you know, hey, have you see
Speaker 1: anybody seen a towel like this, because it's pretty descriptive,
Speaker 1: like how many people have towels like that? Had a
Speaker 1: matching towel and brought it to police. That toll had
Speaker 1: been purchased in the late nineteen sixties and they said
Speaker 1: it was in the Chicago area and there were only
Speaker 1: two stores that sold it, and the caricature was of
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliette. It didn't belong to the Nacario's family,
Speaker 1: so soon belonged to the Camillary. Schools in the area
Speaker 1: launched a campaign to inform the children now of the
Speaker 1: dangers of meeting strangers, and they started having a latch
Speaker 1: key program, and they started fingerprinting kiss oh yeah, to
Speaker 1: retain records. So there were possible leads in this investigation.
Speaker 1: Police began to believe that perhaps Junine's abduction was the
Speaker 1: result of a burglary gone wrong, like a burglar came in,
Speaker 1: didn't know she was there, and more than one burglar,
Speaker 1: they assumed, and they panicked when they saw her. That
Speaker 1: was their theory. They then received a tip from a
Speaker 1: man who ended up being a put I'm sorry. They
Speaker 1: received a tip and this tip told the investigators the
Speaker 1: name of a man named Alejandro Alexandre Fernandas sorry, I apologize.
Speaker 1: He was nineteen years old, he lived in Aurora, which
Speaker 1: is a Chicago suburb, and he was in part of
Speaker 1: a gang. So that's the tip they got. He went
Speaker 1: by Alex. Alex was interviewed and stated on the day
Speaker 1: that he was that day he was out with some friends.
Speaker 1: One of the guys was named Stephen Buckley. So there's
Speaker 1: going to be a few players in this. You got
Speaker 1: to remember this. So we have Alex, and we have
Speaker 1: Stephen Buckley, and the other guy he knew is an
Speaker 1: acquaintance named Ricky. According to Alex, Ricky admitted to killing Jeanine.
Speaker 2: Oh really.
Speaker 1: Police then interviewed Stephen Buckley and during the interview, he
Speaker 1: denied having anything to do with the murder of Janine,
Speaker 1: but he said he did have boots that were similar
Speaker 1: to what was described by the officers based on the
Speaker 1: treading of the boots, and he handed them over to
Speaker 1: the police. The first person that analyzed the boots said,
Speaker 1: this isn't a match, so they had it analyzed again.
Speaker 1: Second time it said could be a match. They had
Speaker 1: an analystk third time.
Speaker 2: Seriously, it's a match. That's very reliable information.
Speaker 1: Police ended up figuring out who Ricky was. His name
Speaker 1: was Rolando Cruz and both Alex and Stephen and Ricky
Speaker 1: were all in a gag. Now this is where it
Speaker 1: gets it starts getting strange. One of Alex Fernandez's friends
Speaker 1: got arrested for robbery. Now keep in mind there's this
Speaker 1: reward for any information leading up to Salad tips. Alex,
Speaker 1: his friend gets arrested forbery, burlary, robbery, one of those
Speaker 1: and he tells the police, I know who did it.
Speaker 1: It was. It was it was Alex and the police
Speaker 1: at this time had Alex in custody, so the police
Speaker 1: gave his friend who I don't know the name of
Speaker 1: a box with ten thousand dollar in it and put
Speaker 1: a wire at him. And at the the jail or
Speaker 1: the police department, both of them were put in a
Speaker 1: room together.
Speaker 2: Oh, the friend in Alex.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the friend tells Alex, listen, say this money
Speaker 1: right here. I'm getting that money and they're dropping the
Speaker 1: charges against me, and you will get the same amount
Speaker 1: of money if you tell them what happened to Janine.
Speaker 1: What you know, and Alex sold his friend, Oh, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I know where the murder occurred. It was at a
Speaker 1: barn by a farmhouse, and he knew that because he
Speaker 1: held Janine down.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Police searched the local farmhouses because Alex couldn't give them
Speaker 1: an exact one local barns, and they could find anything
Speaker 1: that connected her in the murder to any barn. And
Speaker 1: there wasn't any evidence, I don't know, like hey or
Speaker 1: anything that would lead them to believe that she was
Speaker 1: in a barn. But they searched anyway, and eventually they
Speaker 1: started thinking, I don't know if what Alex is saying
Speaker 1: is true. It took a year with hardly any evidence,
Speaker 1: but Stephen Rolando and Alex were eventually indicted by grand
Speaker 1: jury on March eighth, nineteen eighty four. It's Rolando Cruz
Speaker 1: and he was also offered reward money, so he gave
Speaker 1: some statements too, but the police couldn't verify any of
Speaker 1: these statements he gave. So these kids little weird and
Speaker 1: I'll just tell you a little bit about Rolando Cruz.
Speaker 1: Twenty he was described as being too high on paint.
Speaker 2: Too high on paint.
Speaker 1: I think he snuffed a lot of paint, okay, And
Speaker 1: he told the grand jurie some story that didn't really
Speaker 1: make sense, and eventually they charged him with perjury, which
Speaker 1: is kind of strange, but they didn't believe and I
Speaker 1: think they were thinking that if they charged him with perjury,
Speaker 1: maybe he'll come forward and tell the truth. He had
Speaker 1: been sentenced for burglary that was committed before, so all
Speaker 1: of these three guys have all had burglary charges, which
Speaker 1: goes with the prosecution's theory that this was a burglary
Speaker 1: gone wrong. Eventually, Cruz was charged with murder, rape, deviant
Speaker 1: sexual assault, and aggravated liberties with a child, aggravated kidnapping,
Speaker 1: home invasion, and residential burglary. His bond was set at
Speaker 1: three million Wow. Alex Hernandez. He was arrested. He was
Speaker 1: found at a homeless shelter run by a church in Aurora.
Speaker 1: Because this is a year later and it's March ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, he was charged with murder rape. He
Speaker 1: was charged with the same thing, three million dollar bond.
Speaker 1: He was later it was determined that he had the
Speaker 1: IQ of seventy six and he had to wear really
Speaker 1: thick glasses because he was very cross eyed. Okay, he
Speaker 1: was described well, his nickname was crazy Alex.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, crazy Alex.
Speaker 1: That's what they called them on the streets because of
Speaker 1: his eyes.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, Stephen Buckley, he was twenty one. He dropped out
Speaker 1: of high school. He went to East, a rural high
Speaker 1: He had a history of burglary and thraft and theft.
Speaker 1: He was described as being very creepy, very scary, with
Speaker 1: very scary eyes. His eyes always looked drugged out and crazed.
Speaker 1: They arrested him at his parents' house on March ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, and he was charged with the same
Speaker 1: exact things. Now, there was an investigator named John Sam.
Speaker 1: John Sam he worked for DuPage County Sheriff's office. He
Speaker 1: resigned from his job before the trial of these three
Speaker 1: men occurred, and he was so adamant these men didn't
Speaker 1: do it that he offered to testify for the defense
Speaker 1: really in the trial of all three of them, but prosecution,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor was able to make it so he couldn't
Speaker 1: because he worked on the case.
Speaker 2: Maybe a conflict of interest or something.
Speaker 1: Sam stated he'd always been unsettled because they're about their
Speaker 1: arrest because there's there's really no evidence except for that
Speaker 1: boot prince true and for the fact that Alex told
Speaker 1: nine different versions of how he was participating in the
Speaker 1: murder of Janine, nine different versions. So there's this, you know,
Speaker 1: the state's attorney and he wants to charge them with
Speaker 1: a death penalty and also multiple felonies. The defense attorneys
Speaker 1: tried to get it moved out of DuPage County because
Speaker 1: obviously the publicity there was all over, and he didn't
Speaker 1: they didn't think that they could get a fair defense.
Speaker 1: So the judge said, no, we're staying here, and this
Speaker 1: is all important. There's a point to why I'm going
Speaker 1: through about the trial. The trial of all three defendants
Speaker 1: began on Monday, January seventh, nineteen eighty five, in a
Speaker 1: courtroom in Wheaton, Illinois.
Speaker 2: Were they all tried together or they all had separate trials.
Speaker 1: I think they all had they were tried together. They were,
Speaker 1: but there's more than one trial, and there's some twists
Speaker 1: to this story. Okay, Prashcustin's case, Really, the only thing
Speaker 1: was the height of the bootprint on the front door
Speaker 1: of the carrio home, the size of the shoe prints
Speaker 1: on the door and in the tire tracks, which I
Speaker 1: don't even believe matched any of the vehicles that the men,
Speaker 1: but they tried to link the bootprint to Buckley and
Speaker 1: that was the one on the front door. So the
Speaker 1: prosecutor's case against Cruz was through a detailed vision of
Speaker 1: the crime that Cruz told the police came to him
Speaker 1: about two months after the murder.
Speaker 2: A vision.
Speaker 1: So these guys are making confessions, confessions sort of about
Speaker 1: what happened. So the prosecutor's case against Hernandez hitched on
Speaker 1: the fact that he told nine different accounts of his
Speaker 1: knowledge or involvement in the crime. All. Of course, the
Speaker 1: defendant's attorneys objected because they were eighty one photos of
Speaker 1: Janine's body that the prosecutor wanted the jury to see,
Speaker 1: and they were horrific photos. Only twenty one of them
Speaker 1: got in. Three witnesses testified that Hernandez and Cruz admitted
Speaker 1: in conversations that they were involved in Janine's abduction and murder. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they were blab in their mouth yea, that
Speaker 1: they were part of it. And they were all either
Speaker 1: friends or relatives of the men. The defense said they
Speaker 1: were all drug drug users and high school dropouts, and
Speaker 1: they had long criminal histories. So they talk about the
Speaker 1: bootprints and comparing it. And some other people testified that
Speaker 1: they saw Buckley driving a car matching the suspects description
Speaker 1: in that same time as Janine was abducted. Two as
Speaker 1: a brother and a family friend of Hernandez testified against him. Well.
Speaker 1: The verdict came in Febuer twenty second, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: after twenty seven days of testimony from ninety witnesses, two
Speaker 1: days of closing arguments, and thirteen and a half hours deliberation,
Speaker 1: the jury found Cruise and Hernandez guilty of murder, rate
Speaker 1: and all the other charges. I explained that was they
Speaker 1: were found guilty three days before the second anniversary of
Speaker 1: Janine's death. But when it came to Stephen Buckley, the
Speaker 1: jury was hopelessly dead locked. Then prosecutor said, we're gonna
Speaker 1: try to again.
Speaker 3: But he was the one with the bootprint, right, hopelessly
Speaker 3: dead locked. It's kind of crazy, like if that's really
Speaker 3: like one of the big pieces of evidence and their deadlocked.
Speaker 3: But the other two guys did it, Okay.
Speaker 1: He following because it gets seems.
Speaker 2: A little odd, very interesting, I'm with you.
Speaker 1: So Buckley was released on bond, and it gets even
Speaker 1: more complicated, and two of his journeys ended up getting arrested.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to go into all of that.
Speaker 1: In the long short of it, he was acquitted or
Speaker 1: yeah he was acquitted. Yeah he was acquitted, or he
Speaker 1: wasn't tried again. I should say that he wasn't tried again.
Speaker 1: Cruise and Hernandez weigh the rights to a jury trial,
Speaker 1: and they were sentenced to death. Cruz claimed that he
Speaker 1: grabbed her by the throat and threw down the stairs.
Speaker 1: That was one of the things that he had confessed to.
Speaker 1: They were sentenced to Menard Correctional Center, where they would
Speaker 1: be executed. Cruz was sentenced to an additional two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty five years in prison, including two six year
Speaker 1: terms for rape and all these other things. So he
Speaker 1: got the worst of it. You know, death sentences are
Speaker 1: automatically appealed by the Supreme Court, and everybody did all
Speaker 1: the appeals they could, and they all got denied. But
Speaker 1: things changed. There was a twist, And I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you about Brian Dugan, Okay. Brian James Dugan was born
Speaker 1: in September twenty fifth, on September twenty third, nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Speaker 2: Nisha, maybe Yessa, what's.
Speaker 1: Got of ah? I don't know. He was born in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. He showed signs of being a psychopath at
Speaker 1: a very early age. And there's a point to me
Speaker 1: talking to you about Brian. Let me tell you a
Speaker 1: little bit about Brian. Right. He burned down his garage
Speaker 1: at the age of eight. Oh damn, so he's starting fires.
Speaker 1: At the age of thirteen, he poured gasoline on a
Speaker 1: cat and lit the cat on a fire.
Speaker 2: Animal cruelty, fucker.
Speaker 1: So yet we got arson, we got animal cruelty. At
Speaker 1: the age of fourteen, he got caught burglarizing a home
Speaker 1: and he was sent to the youth detention center, the Juvy.
Speaker 1: His brother thinks that he was molested there. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he was, But when Brian returned home, eventually
Speaker 1: he attempted to molest his younger brother, Stephen. Brian was bedwetter.
Speaker 2: There are the three, there we go, there's the triad.
Speaker 1: Even as an adult. Wow, yeah, he probably still what's
Speaker 1: his bed? Did I? Yeah? In nineteen seventy four, he
Speaker 1: attempted to kidnap a ten year old girl at a
Speaker 1: plea at a train station. He was arrested, but the
Speaker 1: charges ended up getting dropped. Now, Brian had an older
Speaker 1: sister and her name was Hillary, and in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five he threatened to kill her and chop up her
Speaker 1: young son.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, he.
Speaker 1: Vandalized her car. I don't know all the crimes he did,
Speaker 1: but he did a lot of crimes. He served timed
Speaker 1: at Menard Correctional Center from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, where it was believed he was raped multiple
Speaker 1: times by inmates. Now, he ended up getting out in
Speaker 1: eighty two. And who knows what Brian did from eighty
Speaker 1: two to eighty four. But I don't think it was good.
Speaker 1: But I can tell you what he did in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, what he spotted a nurse named Donna Sean
Speaker 1: I think it Shanner. She was twenty seven and she
Speaker 1: was at her car in her car at a stoplet.
Speaker 1: He ended up following her and driving her off the road.
Speaker 1: He dragged her from the car, he beat and raped her,
Speaker 1: and then he drowned her in a quarry. Wow on
Speaker 1: June second of nineteen eighty five, and this is really sad.
Speaker 1: Seven year old Melissa Ackerman and her friend Opel Horton.
Speaker 1: They were playing outside and they were in the city
Speaker 1: about thirty miles from Naperville. Brian spotted them and he
Speaker 1: grabbed Opal. Melissa started to run, and Brian, while he's
Speaker 1: still holding on to Opal, chased after Melissa. Opal managed
Speaker 1: to get free, but he ended up getting Melissa. Oh
Speaker 1: she's just seven, I know. He dragged her into his
Speaker 1: car and Opel ran for help. Opal was eight to
Speaker 1: provide the police with a description of Brian and his car,
Speaker 1: and ironically, an officer recognized the description of Brian in
Speaker 1: his car because he had pulled Brian over and ticketed him.
Speaker 1: The day before because he had expired text So they
Speaker 1: look up the ticket, they see who it belongs to.
Speaker 1: It belongs to twenty eight year old Brian, and Brian
Speaker 1: was working as a machine operator at a hydraulics factory,
Speaker 1: so they arrest him at work. Two weeks later, Melissa's
Speaker 1: body was found in a drainage ditch. An autopsy showed
Speaker 1: that she'd been raped and drowned. There was evidence of
Speaker 1: hair and some other evidence besides the fact that Opal
Speaker 1: identified him that linked him to Melissa, and Brian knew
Speaker 1: his his goose was cooked.
Speaker 2: Brian, his goose is cooked.
Speaker 1: So in order to spare himself the death penalty, Brian said,
Speaker 1: you know what if I tell you about some other crimes,
Speaker 1: will you take the death penalty off the table? And
Speaker 1: at first the prosecutor was like now, and then he's
Speaker 1: basically saying, well, I got like five no, I not
Speaker 1: tell you about So the prosecutor agreed. So Brian begins
Speaker 1: talking about some serious crimes he committed on May sixth
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty five, he spotted a woman with car
Speaker 1: problems and he's just being nice and pulls over. He
Speaker 1: has a knife with him and he kidnaps her at
Speaker 1: knife point, and he drives her to a desolated area
Speaker 1: where he rapes her, but he later lets her go.
Speaker 1: And this is a crime tree that lasted about a month.
Speaker 1: Two days later, he tried to ki and kidnap another woman,
Speaker 1: but she managed to get away. The day after that,
Speaker 1: he spotted a sixteen year old girl walking home and
Speaker 1: he yielded a tire iron and forced her into his car.
Speaker 1: He in the car, tied, He took her to a
Speaker 1: desolate place, tied a belt around her neck, where he
Speaker 1: raped her and tortured her for a while, and then
Speaker 1: he drove her home. Really, yeah, he drove her.
Speaker 2: It's pretty brazen.
Speaker 1: Hmm, Like, what the fuck I know. In late November
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty five, Brian provided state investigators with a
Speaker 1: statement about Jeanine. He said he abducted her alone. Really,
Speaker 1: He claimed that he skipped work that day and he
Speaker 1: was smoking some doobi. He's smoking some wheed and he
Speaker 1: was driving through Aurora. A neighbor Belle when he was
Speaker 1: driving around and he could see a young girl inside house.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if he was the guy that knocked
Speaker 1: on the door and pretended to work for the I
Speaker 1: don't know that if that's.
Speaker 2: Well, you're checking it out to see like if her
Speaker 2: parents were right.
Speaker 1: So he knocks on the door and he goes in
Speaker 1: and borrow gets a screwdriver because she didn't answer the door.
Speaker 1: Remember she was told not to answer the door. He
Speaker 1: kicks in the door, he grabs her, and he drives
Speaker 1: her to a deserted trail where he raped sod of
Speaker 1: mindes murdered her. And as I said, this statement came
Speaker 1: as a result of a plea agreement, he'd already gotten
Speaker 1: two life sentences for the murder of Melissa Ackerman and
Speaker 1: Donna Shanner, and he was already in the pantia in
Speaker 1: a correctional facility. So investigators don't know what to think,
Speaker 1: like is he telling the truth because they already.
Speaker 2: Have right they've convicted two people, two.
Speaker 1: People on death row. So they asked him to take
Speaker 1: a polygraph test and they asked him questions, did you
Speaker 1: murder her? Did you do this? And he passed the test,
Speaker 1: which means yes he did. Then there were fingerprints around
Speaker 1: the scene and they compared those to Brian's around Janine scene,
Speaker 1: and they were a match. There were seven sets of
Speaker 1: fingerprints that were tested and all came back to show
Speaker 1: that there was a match, but there were other fingerprints
Speaker 1: that weren't a match. But he says he acted alone,
Speaker 1: so he agreed. So now they're like, okay, yeah, what
Speaker 1: do we do now there are other people involved? What
Speaker 1: is going on? So he agrees to take the truth serum.
Speaker 2: Really mm hmm? Was it sodium, yes, pentathal or something?
Speaker 1: An undergo hypnosis really to prove he was the only
Speaker 1: one that killed Cane and that cruise Fernandez, which Cruz
Speaker 1: was already you know, not facing charges for it, but
Speaker 1: Hernianda's and oh wait, I'm sorry, Buckley wasn't facing charges.
Speaker 1: Crews and Hernandez were sentenced to death. You've seen they're innocent.
Speaker 1: In January nineteen eighty six, a judge in due Paige
Speaker 1: County issued a gag order because they did not want
Speaker 1: all this information going out, and on December fifth, Brian
Speaker 1: signed a consent to undergo hypnosis. He was hypnotized and
Speaker 1: he was able to commence authorities that he alone was
Speaker 1: responsible for Janine's death. Under hypnosis, no, he was. I mean,
Speaker 1: there could be fingerprints. I don't know, but I do
Speaker 1: think it was probably him because he acted alone. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know he did it, and he acted alone for
Speaker 1: everything else.
Speaker 2: That's true all of his other crimes, right, And.
Speaker 1: I don't think he hit a lot of friends. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I wouldn't be his friend. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: court could use the statements of him being hypnotized against him.
Speaker 1: But he did inform investigators it wasn't a bat or
Speaker 1: a lead pipe that killed Janine. It was a tire
Speaker 1: iron and he gave that tire iron to a friend
Speaker 1: and that was under a hypnosis that he recalled that,
Speaker 1: but they never found it. Yeah. He described in detail
Speaker 1: why under a hypnosis in the manner in which he
Speaker 1: blindfolded Janine, and specific details about the adhesive tape that
Speaker 1: was used to secure the towel. So he had the
Speaker 1: towel and then he had the adhesive tape, but at
Speaker 1: some point the towel was beside her, and none of
Speaker 1: that information had ever been released to the public. He
Speaker 1: drew a map that showed where exactly he disposed of
Speaker 1: the boots that he was wearing during the murder, and
Speaker 1: they found shredded pieces of leather boots in a plowed
Speaker 1: field where he had directed them and a farmer recalled
Speaker 1: seeing the boots there while preparing his ground in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. Now, the Illinois State Police believed there was
Speaker 1: not a single shred of evidence found in the case
Speaker 1: that could really they still didn't want to believe Brian
Speaker 1: for a long time. They were still doubtful of his
Speaker 1: conflicting his statements. And even though they found all of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and the prosecutor ended up wanting to retry
Speaker 1: Stephen Buckley, really yeah, because they just didn't feel even
Speaker 1: though they were fingerprints.
Speaker 2: I know, I just I'm not understanding.
Speaker 3: Why would you waste the court's time on this if
Speaker 3: some guy is saying he did it.
Speaker 1: And under Maybe I don't know, Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the good news is the Innocence Project took on
Speaker 1: Cruise and Hernandez's case, and both of their death sentences
Speaker 1: were overturned.
Speaker 2: Oh good.
Speaker 1: And as I said, Buckley, the prosecutors like, now I'm
Speaker 1: not going to let's see where else. They had appeal
Speaker 1: after appeal after appeal. It took a really long time.
Speaker 1: Just so you know, when you're on death row, it's
Speaker 1: not that easy to get out. No, even when somebody
Speaker 1: else confesses and they they have. Yeah, it's crezed some evidence.
Speaker 1: It takes forever to get out. Eventually, the everybody was
Speaker 1: acquitted of all charges that couldn't be charged again, and
Speaker 1: they filed simpil suits, all of them did, and they
Speaker 1: were rewarded three point five million dollars and they got pardoned.
Speaker 1: But I don't really know. It's like meeting. They got pardoned,
Speaker 1: but they were like acquitted anyway. An execution date was
Speaker 1: set for Brian. Brian, Yeah, I remember he's in Illinois. Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: do you remember what happened in Illinois with death row? No,
Speaker 1: you don't remember. M h. The death penalty was abolished
Speaker 1: in Illinois twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: It was Yeah, I might have remembered that.
Speaker 1: You might have remembered that. It doesn't even make any sense.
Speaker 1: I might have remembered that.
Speaker 2: I remembered that.
Speaker 1: So it was commuted to Yeah, don't you remember? It
Speaker 1: got all that, they stopped it. They abolished it, and
Speaker 1: they all got commuted to life in prison. So he
Speaker 1: is at the Pontiac Correctional Center for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life.
Speaker 3: Wow, I thought though he made that plead deal where
Speaker 3: he wasn't going to be sentenced to death. I guess
Speaker 3: they sentenced him anyway. I guess, even though he confessed
Speaker 3: to a whole bunch of shit.
Speaker 1: Remember I told you the prosecutor said no at first.
Speaker 1: Maybe he changed his mind. I don't know, because I
Speaker 1: wrote this up and I chopped it all together, and
Speaker 1: I remember that the prosecutor said no, and I guess
Speaker 1: I just assumed that he changed his mind because he
Speaker 1: confessed to all that. Yeah, right, but he must have
Speaker 1: gotten the death penalty. He must have, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It's got very confusing for me because there's like three
Speaker 1: people that were arrest did and then two were silenced
Speaker 1: to dad convicted and yeah, two were wrongly convicted, and
Speaker 1: one was released. And then the prosecutor wasn't going to
Speaker 1: charge him and then decided to charge him again and
Speaker 1: have a new trial. And then out comes Brian who
Speaker 1: says he did all these crimes, and I'm just like, what, okay, what?
Speaker 2: So at least they know for sure who did it.
Speaker 1: I guess he did it, right, and he's a serial color.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, in a serial rapist.
Speaker 1: And a serial rapist. There were other crimes that he
Speaker 1: did confess to that were considered less serious, But I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows what he didn't confess to, right, but the
Speaker 1: majority of this took place in thirty days span.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's crazy. Thanks to Leah. You're welcome for that one.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys all for taking the time to listen. Again,
Speaker 1: I apologize if it was confusing because it was confusing
Speaker 1: for me too. Again, check us out. You can see
Speaker 1: our video if you go to YouTube at crime. It's
Speaker 1: at Crimes and Consequences, and you can also become a
Speaker 1: Patreon or a patron. Go to patreon dot com and
Speaker 1: then the letters T and T crimes and you can
Speaker 1: join and get one hour every week or not one hour,
Speaker 1: but one episode every week at free.
Speaker 2: And they're not released to the public.
Speaker 1: And it's even more raw than this because we have
Speaker 1: to follow YouTube standards, yes, which is hard for us.
Speaker 1: We didn't say that many off bombs this time.
Speaker 2: No, we didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't. It's a very sad story, by the way,
Speaker 1: I mean, don't take our our smiles and laughter as
Speaker 1: it's a terrible story. It's a terrible story. This is
Speaker 1: just how Tanya and I get through it. You also,
Speaker 1: if you go and become uh a Patreon, then you
Speaker 1: can get this story released early ad free. You can
Speaker 1: also do the same thing if you are on Apple Podcast,
Speaker 1: you can subscribe through Apple Podcast and get the same info.
Speaker 1: We have our website, Climb to the Consequences dot com
Speaker 1: that has our merchandise, and that's it.
Speaker 2: That's pretty much.
Speaker 1: It was a little rough for me. I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: followed you did I did because I lost myself a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: I followed it.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, thank you again, and until our next episode.
Speaker 1: Don't kill each other.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.