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Speaker 1: Block Padian, you are now listening to True Murder, The
Speaker 1: most shocking killers in true crime History and the authors
Speaker 1: that have written about them, Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 1: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 1: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 1: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening, This
Speaker 1: is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder,
Speaker 1: The most shocking killers in true crime history and the
Speaker 1: authors that have written about them. It took almost ten
Speaker 1: years for investigators to arrest two men for the brutal
Speaker 1: murders of seven and workers at a fast food restaurant
Speaker 1: in suburban Chicago. The tragic events captured headlines throughout the
Speaker 1: nation for weeks. When arrests finally were made, the evidence
Speaker 1: against one of the.
Speaker 6: Alleged killers was virtually irrefutable. His DNA was on chicken
Speaker 6: bones recovered from a trash bin at Brown's Chicken and Pasta.
Speaker 6: Investigators contended that he ate pieces of chicken before shooting
Speaker 6: the victims the so called last meal. His partial palm
Speaker 6: print was on a soiled paper napkin inside a trash bin.
Speaker 6: He confessed on videotape. Describing how he got caught up
Speaker 6: in the moment as he slit the throat of one victim,
Speaker 6: and he bragged about his role in the crime to
Speaker 6: two young women. If ever, someone deserved a death sentence,
Speaker 6: the Browns Chicken Killer certainly would qualify. The Last Meal
Speaker 6: is the story of a horrific crime. It is also
Speaker 6: the riveting account of how a team of defense attorneys
Speaker 6: fought to show how their client did not commit the
Speaker 6: killings and what happened if that failed to save him
Speaker 6: from the death sentence. My book, the book this scevening
Speaker 6: that we're going to be talking about, is the Last
Speaker 6: Meal Defending an accused mass murder with my special guest,
Speaker 6: Dennis Sheher. Welcome to the program, and thank you to
Speaker 6: a Green dis interview.
Speaker 4: Dennis shere Dan, thank you so much. I appreciate the
Speaker 4: opportunity to talk about the Last Meal.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Now
Speaker 6: you start off with your book initially pretty well with
Speaker 6: a gentleman named Manny Castro. And but before we do that,
Speaker 6: let's first off set the let's get the setting for
Speaker 6: our story. Here. Where is Palantine, Illinois and what kind
Speaker 6: of community is it?
Speaker 4: Okay. Pillotine is a suburb of Chicago in the north
Speaker 4: northwest part of the community, guessing population forty to fifty.
Speaker 4: It's a a middle class suburb, a place where people
Speaker 4: who would be leave in Chicago for whatever reason might settle.
Speaker 4: Back in nineteen ninety three when this killing took place,
Speaker 4: the town would be experiencing some growing pains, and it
Speaker 4: had a police force. It was a fairly good sized
Speaker 4: police force, but had never dealt with anything quite like
Speaker 4: the Brown's Chicken and Pasta murders. So what happened was
Speaker 4: that Brown's Chicken and Pasta was a restaurant that people
Speaker 4: would go to for an inexpensive family meal basically chicken
Speaker 4: meal with French fries, coleslaw, other kinds of amenities. It
Speaker 4: would have soft drinks and coffee. And on January the eighth,
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety three, which is a Friday night, there were
Speaker 4: probably a few customers in at close to closing time,
Speaker 4: which would be nine pm, and after the restaurant closed,
Speaker 4: police said one or two men came in. Individuals came
Speaker 4: in ordered what I described in the book as the
Speaker 4: Last Meal, which also became the title for the book,
Speaker 4: and then after apparently eating a portion of it, carried
Speaker 4: out the crime, and all seven workers that included the
Speaker 4: two owners, Lynn and Richard Enenfeld, were murdered. Two of
Speaker 4: them were shot to death in a cooler, and five
Speaker 4: bodies were found in a freezer. They had all been
Speaker 4: shot in the head. In addition, two of the victims
Speaker 4: had stab wounds. Young man whose name was Michael Castro,
Speaker 4: was stabbed post mortem, the medical examiner said in the
Speaker 4: abdomen and Lynn Enenfeld, the wife of Richard, had her
Speaker 4: throat slit. But what killed her, the medical examiner said
Speaker 4: for sure, was the head wound. All this took place,
Speaker 4: the police estimated sometime after nine pm, and probably before ten.
Speaker 4: The bodies were not discovered until the next morning, at
Speaker 4: about three am. Rather, and at that point it became
Speaker 4: a huge, huge story in Chicago and elsewhere. Not only
Speaker 4: were the Palatine police involved, but you had FBI, you
Speaker 4: had police officers, you had officers from other communities surrounding
Speaker 4: a palatine, and a task force was formed to try
Speaker 4: to find the killers who massacred these seven people's back.
Speaker 4: Whether you want me to go at this point, I
Speaker 4: could tell you the score, but let's interrupt and go
Speaker 4: ahead and ask some questions.
Speaker 6: Okay, sorry, let's go back just a little bit, because
Speaker 6: the way you did start it was that you had
Speaker 6: a gentleman named Manny Castro. You spoke about one of
Speaker 6: the victims, Michael Castro, because this is how this terrible
Speaker 6: story was first or the terrible crime was first discovered.
Speaker 6: So talk about the family a little bit, because you
Speaker 6: did do some You did get a lot of information
Speaker 6: about Michael Castro, and you do set the stage that way.
Speaker 6: Go back and tell us about the horror of the
Speaker 6: actual victims family discovering this.
Speaker 4: The Castros lived in Pelatine, and Michael, who was I
Speaker 4: think a junior in high school, was a part time
Speaker 4: worker at the Browns Chicken and Pasta restaurant, and he
Speaker 4: had said goodbye to his father over the phone on
Speaker 4: a Friday, told him to be home on time, which
Speaker 4: typically would be about ten PM. And Manny, who worked
Speaker 4: in a silk screen business and had been up early
Speaker 4: that morning, went to bed about ten ten thirty. His
Speaker 4: wife woke him up shortly after eleven and said Michael
Speaker 4: was not home. Many didn't make much of it at
Speaker 4: that point, but he decided because his way was concerned
Speaker 4: that he would drive up to the restaurant and see
Speaker 4: if he could find his son. He drove to the
Speaker 4: Brown's Chicken and Pasta restaurant and discovered that the building
Speaker 4: was pretty much shut down. His son's car was parked
Speaker 4: in the parking lot, along with a few other cars,
Speaker 4: but there was no activity. He got out of the car,
Speaker 4: looked around, went up to the doors, shook the doors
Speaker 4: to see if, by chance anything anyone might be in
Speaker 4: the building. He could not see any activity inside the building.
Speaker 4: Went back home said, couldn't find Michael. His wife became
Speaker 4: increasingly concerned, so they called the police and said, you know,
Speaker 4: we'd like to know where our son is. He was
Speaker 4: supposed to be home by now. He worked at this restaurant.
Speaker 4: We have no idea where he was or where he
Speaker 4: is rather and the police said, well, we don't take
Speaker 4: missing person reports for twenty four hours, but we'll get
Speaker 4: the word at Manny and his wife went back up
Speaker 4: to the restaurant again, looked around, still know Michael. Becoming
Speaker 4: increasingly concerned, they called the police again the officer an
Speaker 4: officer was dispatched to the scene. The castros saw him there.
Speaker 4: He looked around, he checked the doors. All the doors,
Speaker 4: two doors were customer doors, and then there were a
Speaker 4: couple of doors in the back of the building that
Speaker 4: employees might use. All of them were his, according to
Speaker 4: the officer.
Speaker 6: Locked.
Speaker 4: And the officer said to the Castros, don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: He's probably out. Michael's probably out with his friends, you
Speaker 4: know how a teenagers are. He'll be home. Everything will
Speaker 4: be fine. And the Castros went home, and of course
Speaker 4: there was no Michael. So now Manny was becoming very concerned,
Speaker 4: and he called the police again and said, look, I
Speaker 4: don't want people to tell me everything's okay. I've got
Speaker 4: problems here. I don't know where my son is. His
Speaker 4: Harris parked in the parking lot of the restaurant, and
Speaker 4: something's got to happen. So a Palatine police officer was
Speaker 4: dispatched to the Castro home. He took a police report
Speaker 4: that described Michael's appearance and what he did for a living,
Speaker 4: where he went to school, all those things. And as
Speaker 4: the officer was filling out this so called missing person's report,
Speaker 4: he could see that Manny and his wife were not
Speaker 4: taking that too lightly, and they were very much concerned.
Speaker 4: So he said, look, I'll take a run up. The
Speaker 4: officer said, I'll take a run up to the restaurant
Speaker 4: again and take a look around. And as he left,
Speaker 4: Manny said, I'm going with you, and his wife said
Speaker 4: I'm coming to They followed the cruiser police cruiser up
Speaker 4: to the restaurant and by the time they got there,
Speaker 4: the officer was out of the patrol car and was
Speaker 4: again walking around checking the doors. He checked the customer
Speaker 4: doors there they were locked. He checked one door that
Speaker 4: was used by the employees. It was locked. He went
Speaker 4: around to the other side of the building, pulled on
Speaker 4: another door and it was not locked. It came open.
Speaker 4: At that point, Manny was right behind the officer. The
Speaker 4: officer peered inside with his flashlight and could see something
Speaker 4: was a miss. Manny tried to follow him. It follow
Speaker 4: him in because he saw a coat on top of
Speaker 4: a metal cabinet and he said, that's my son's coat,
Speaker 4: and the officer said, you can't come in here. And
Speaker 4: the officer then walked into the inside the building with
Speaker 4: his flashlight discovered a door ajar in what looked like
Speaker 4: a hand and a foot outside of it. When he
Speaker 4: propped open that door, he saw five victims He couldn't
Speaker 4: tell how many there were. He couldn't tell if they
Speaker 4: were all dead, they were all mixed together, but there
Speaker 4: was blood all over the place, and he could tell
Speaker 4: that there had been some shooting. He then, of course,
Speaker 4: just called for backup. Other officers arrived, They went through
Speaker 4: the building, and the process discovered two more victims in
Speaker 4: a separate cooler. And that's how it all.
Speaker 6: Began right now. So now we've covered this, how they
Speaker 6: were discovered in this in this restaurant, in this freezer
Speaker 6: in the back. What was the initial idea of this,
Speaker 6: the initial idea of police thinking the motive for this crime,
Speaker 6: and what was the media speculation initially and the media's
Speaker 6: reaction initially when this story broke.
Speaker 4: Well, the story obviously it was a huge story here.
Speaker 4: I think. I think what the police were believing was
Speaker 4: that this after looking at cash register receipts and cash
Speaker 4: drawers and some other things, they began to believe that
Speaker 4: this had been a robbery and that the browbery had
Speaker 4: gone bad. There was an investigator who was a fingerprint
Speaker 4: specialist who was inside the building with another investigator and
Speaker 4: they discovered in a trash receptacle what looked like the
Speaker 4: remains of chicken dinner all the other There were two
Speaker 4: receptacles in the building. One of them was clean, the
Speaker 4: other was not. It looked as though the employees had
Speaker 4: done some cleanup before this all took place, this killing
Speaker 4: took place, but there was this garbage in the bottom
Speaker 4: of this receptacle, and they waited a couple of days
Speaker 4: to deal with it. But when they pulled it out,
Speaker 4: they were able to see that it contained pieces of chicken,
Speaker 4: French fries, some coal, saw a soft drink container, a
Speaker 4: star stick, and it looked as though some of the
Speaker 4: chicken had been eaten. And they then pulled the cash
Speaker 4: register tapes and discovered that although the restaurant had closed
Speaker 4: at nine pm, about seven minutes later there was one
Speaker 4: more meal sold, the so called last meal, again the
Speaker 4: title of this book, And they didn't know exactly what
Speaker 4: that was going to produce, But the woman who found
Speaker 4: all this evidence was smart enough at least the prosecutors
Speaker 4: said to bag it and make sure it was protected,
Speaker 4: and eventually it was two of those pieces of chicken
Speaker 4: that yielded the DNA that then was ultimately used to
Speaker 4: accuse our client. One of the two men who went
Speaker 4: on trial for the murders of having committed the masker.
Speaker 6: Now, what was the difference in the state of DNA
Speaker 6: analysis in nineteen ninety three when these murders occurred, and
Speaker 6: you say that you talked about the officer having the
Speaker 6: foresight to bag this information. What was the in comparison
Speaker 6: to ten years later when they went to trial or
Speaker 6: more years later, What was the difference in just tell
Speaker 6: us the analysis itself. What was the limitations as opposed
Speaker 6: to ten years later.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm not a DNA expert, but basically the difference
Speaker 4: was that they had the procedure for extracting DNA had
Speaker 4: not been refined to the point that it could be
Speaker 4: lifted off of a piece of chicken or a chicken bone.
Speaker 4: There was an investor, There was a nationally known crime
Speaker 4: scene guy who came into Chicago some time after the
Speaker 4: killings took place to help look at all the evidence
Speaker 4: and see what was there, and he recommended that the
Speaker 4: Palatine police ship some chicken pieces and the plastic stir
Speaker 4: that was found in that garbage to an outfit on
Speaker 4: the West coast for analysis. Those pieces were sent there.
Speaker 4: An analysis was done for DNA, but unfortunately nothing of
Speaker 4: any significance could be yielded because the procedure wasn't good
Speaker 4: enough yet, and so the bone that they thought might
Speaker 4: most likely have the DNA on it was actually destroyed
Speaker 4: in the testing process as was a stir. Those pieces
Speaker 4: were gone. So what happened was that they had all
Speaker 4: those other chickens still fill in hand, and over the
Speaker 4: next five six seven years, the process for analyzing DNA
Speaker 4: was improved dramatically, and now they could go back and
Speaker 4: extract from another piece of chicken DNA that they thought
Speaker 4: might belong to the killer, and that's what they did. Now,
Speaker 4: this would have been in nineteen ninety eight, and immediately
Speaker 4: they started testing everybody they could think of, including people
Speaker 4: who were on the crime scene, cops who were there,
Speaker 4: any suspects they might have considered, to see if the
Speaker 4: DNA matched, and it did not. It did not match anyone.
Speaker 6: Now, how did the police proceed? You were we're talking
Speaker 6: about five years later, so obviously we're speaking about that
Speaker 6: the thing didn't get solved right away. But what were
Speaker 6: the was there no forensic evidence other than what you
Speaker 6: talked about the fingerprint fingerprinting that was done? What made
Speaker 6: this case take so long to get to this other point,
Speaker 6: And what did they do in the interim? What happened
Speaker 6: in the first couple?
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Speaker 4: For years.
Speaker 6: How did the police proceed with this?
Speaker 4: They they looked at everyone. They looked at any possible suspect.
Speaker 4: They looked nationally at other murders that might be similar
Speaker 4: to this one. They looked at all the employees who
Speaker 4: had worked at Brown's Chicken. They looked at other persons
Speaker 4: who had been involved in violent crimes in the Chicago
Speaker 4: area during that period of time. And they did extensive
Speaker 4: dossier's on a number of these people. But nothing, Nothing
Speaker 4: came out. The palm print that was discovered also was
Speaker 4: on a napkin in that trash receptacle, but it was
Speaker 4: almost like a smudge, and no one was sure at first.
Speaker 4: The fingerprint experts were not sure at first exactly what
Speaker 4: that was, and only through some enhancements that were done
Speaker 4: was it determined that it was a partial pomprint. So
Speaker 4: they had now by nineteen ninety eight, DNA that had
Speaker 4: been extracted that might match the killers and a partial,
Speaker 4: very small, partial pomprint that might also match the killer.
Speaker 4: But in that period from nineteen ninety three January of
Speaker 4: ninety three until that time, there had been substantial criticism
Speaker 4: of the effort to locate find these killers. There had
Speaker 4: been an independent group that had analyzed all the work
Speaker 4: that had been done by the police and had been
Speaker 4: very critical of it would have been done. So you
Speaker 4: had not only this unsolved crime, but you had some
Speaker 4: people taking potshots at the cops saying, look, you didn't
Speaker 4: do what you were supposed to do. You messed up
Speaker 4: some evidence inside the building, there were too many people
Speaker 4: in there. There were all kinds of questions raised. There
Speaker 4: was another group that came int defended the police effort.
Speaker 4: The Chief of police in Palatine hired a former FBI
Speaker 4: agent to come in and kind of reorganized the investigation,
Speaker 4: and he was responsible for the initial testing that was
Speaker 4: done on suspects and others for DNA. But for all
Speaker 4: intents and purposes, through the nineties late nineties, this crime
Speaker 4: was going no place. They had no suspects that made
Speaker 4: any sense, They had no one who's DNA match, They
Speaker 4: had no witnesses who really had seen what was going on.
Speaker 4: No one was coming forward. It was dead now.
Speaker 6: In early nineteen ninety eight, Jim Bell, who was fired
Speaker 6: the former FBI agent that he spoke about, began focusing
Speaker 6: on a teenage girl who had worked at the restaurant
Speaker 6: at the time of the murders. Her name was Casey Sanders.
Speaker 6: Why did Bell focus on her? What did she help
Speaker 6: to shape to Bell?
Speaker 4: Actually, Bell talked to all went back and basically redid
Speaker 4: the investigation and the interviews that had been done. Within
Speaker 4: months after the killings, he talked to all the former employees,
Speaker 4: including our client, and one of those was this Casey Sander,
Speaker 4: and Sander began to tell a story about her boyfriend,
Speaker 4: whose name was Todd Wakefield, being involved in the Browns
Speaker 4: Chicken case, Casey worked for the restaurant. She was not
Speaker 4: on duty, of course, that night, but she did go
Speaker 4: into the restaurant, excuse me, earlier in the day and
Speaker 4: picked up a check. And so she's telling Bell and
Speaker 4: his people that her boyfriend was involved in this case. Well,
Speaker 4: they started concentrating on him, and he was I think
Speaker 4: it was pretty clever because basically what he was doing
Speaker 4: was both giving them information that kind of tantalized them
Speaker 4: and then denying it. As he was talking about all this,
Speaker 4: he then focused. He then caused them to focus another
Speaker 4: young man whose name was John and I'm forgetting his
Speaker 4: last name at this point, but anyway, they interviewed the
Speaker 4: second young man and he started telling a story that
Speaker 4: was somewhat dream oriented and somewhat factual, and after four
Speaker 4: or five interviews, he finally told the story of what
Speaker 4: he said transpired in the restaurant. What he told was
Speaker 4: very close to the actual facts of the case as
Speaker 4: the police understood them. And so Bell became very interested
Speaker 4: in going after this man, and he actually went to
Speaker 4: the prosecutors and said, we should arrest both these guys
Speaker 4: filed in his buddy. But the prosecutor said, we've tested
Speaker 4: both of them for DNA. Their DNA does not match.
Speaker 4: They did not test for the pombred because they didn't
Speaker 4: think that was nearly as important. So there was no
Speaker 4: physical evidence connecting either of these guys to the crime.
Speaker 4: So at that point the prosecutor said, we're not going
Speaker 4: anywhere with this. The main suspect they had at that
Speaker 4: point was released and they were back to ground zero.
Speaker 4: And that's the way it remained for the next three
Speaker 4: years until two thousand and two.
Speaker 6: Now, there was another gentleman named William King. He was
Speaker 6: a cop on the original task force. And something happens
Speaker 6: in March two thousand and two with a woman named
Speaker 6: Melissa Oberly tell us about that exchange with police.
Speaker 4: Melissa was, I'm guessing now in her late twenties. She
Speaker 4: had grown up in Palatine. She had a friend, Anne Lockett,
Speaker 4: who she hadn't talked with for some time. But and
Speaker 4: in March of two thousand and two called Melissa and said,
Speaker 4: I've got some information I need to give to somebody.
Speaker 4: Do you know anyone in the Pelatine police department? And
Speaker 4: she described for Melita what she knew, and what she
Speaker 4: knew she claimed was who had actually committed the Browns
Speaker 4: Chicken in Pasta murders, and she gave a couple of names.
Speaker 4: Melissa called a friend of hers who was on the
Speaker 4: police force. He in turn talked with Bill King, who
Speaker 4: was still one of two officers assigned to the Brown's
Speaker 4: Chicken in Pasta case. King had been there on the
Speaker 4: night that the murders took place. He had helped take
Speaker 4: the bodies out of the and put them on blankets
Speaker 4: that they could be used could be used to transport
Speaker 4: them to the corner's office. He was intimately involved in
Speaker 4: this from the very get go. When he heard this
Speaker 4: information that was passed on to him, he placed a
Speaker 4: call to Ann Lockett and in the car and it
Speaker 4: arranged to see her, went out with one of one
Speaker 4: of his other officers and they interviewed Anne, and in
Speaker 4: the process of her telling what she knew, she disclosed
Speaker 4: the piece of information that had never been disclosed publicly
Speaker 4: by the police, and that was that one of the victims,
Speaker 4: whose name was Rico sawas a young seventeen year old worker,
Speaker 4: had vomited French fries and remains of those French fries
Speaker 4: were on the front of his t shirt, and that
Speaker 4: was in fact information that only the killers could have
Speaker 4: passed on to anyone, And they apparently told Anne in
Speaker 4: the process of what they'd done, that this had occurred.
Speaker 4: So at that point King became very interested in trying
Speaker 4: to trying to pursue the information that Ann Lockett gave
Speaker 4: to him.
Speaker 6: Now, how did the police proceed and what was then
Speaker 6: in Lockett's involvement? Now what did they try to do?
Speaker 4: Well, what they tried to do was tracked down the
Speaker 4: two individuals that she claimed had told her and another
Speaker 4: woman what had happened at Brown's Chicken and the last meal.
Speaker 4: The book describes the fact that then King and another
Speaker 4: officer arranged to meet our client, whose name was one Luna,
Speaker 4: at his apartment in Carpentersville, which is close by to Palatine,
Speaker 4: and interview him. And so they went out to see Luna,
Speaker 4: and Luna was with his young son, and they talked
Speaker 4: for about a half hour, according to King, And in
Speaker 4: the process of the conversation in which Luna basically repeated
Speaker 4: information that he had given to, among others, other officers
Speaker 4: about where he was on the night of the killing,
Speaker 4: and the fact that he had been with a friend
Speaker 4: named Jim Degorski and another woman whose name was Eileen Pakawa,
Speaker 4: and they had just been together on the night of
Speaker 4: the killings and didn't realize anything had occurred until the
Speaker 4: next morning. At the end of the conversation that King
Speaker 4: had with Luna, King said, well, you know, would you
Speaker 4: be willing to give us a swab from the inside
Speaker 4: of your mouth that we could send in for testing.
Speaker 4: We've been doing this with everyone Who've been asking anyone
Speaker 4: that we think might have any information to give us
Speaker 4: swabs and we can check for and I think they
Speaker 4: described as DNA. They said cooperated helped them take the swab.
Speaker 4: King took this tip, stuck it into an envelope, sealed it,
Speaker 4: and sent it off to the Illinois crime Lab. Two
Speaker 4: months later or now, actually not quite two months later,
Speaker 4: it was less than that. King one afternoon gets a
Speaker 4: phone call from somebody at the lab and this person says,
Speaker 4: you know that's swab you sent us, And King says
Speaker 4: which one. The guy says, the one that was marked
Speaker 4: one Luna, and King said, yes, his DNA matches. Well,
Speaker 4: it's like rockets going off, right, And at that point
Speaker 4: everyone started to concentrate on Luna and on the on
Speaker 4: the other young man, Jim de Gorski, and from that
Speaker 4: point the investigation quickly zeroed on him in on those
Speaker 4: two men.
Speaker 6: Did did police ask and Lockett for her cooperation in
Speaker 6: helping with this investigation?
Speaker 4: They they did in this respect. They asked Lockett if
Speaker 4: she would agree to call the Gorsky, who was her
Speaker 4: former boyfriend and somebody she feared, and see if she
Speaker 4: could get him to talk on the phone on the
Speaker 4: telephone about what had transpired. And so the conversation went
Speaker 4: something along this lines, and I can't remember exactly how
Speaker 4: it want you know what the the back and forth
Speaker 4: was was something like this. Lockett said, you know they've
Speaker 4: been the police have been talking to me. They want
Speaker 4: me to tell them what I know about Brown's Chicken.
Speaker 4: What should I tell them? The Gorsky? I don't know
Speaker 4: what do you want to tell him? You know, tell
Speaker 4: him whatever you think you have to tell him. Lockett, well,
Speaker 4: you know that's that's going to be very difficult because
Speaker 4: you know it's going to involve you. And the Gorcy says,
Speaker 4: you know, how's it going to involve me? At any rate.
Speaker 4: This conversation went on for several minutes, and it became
Speaker 4: a parent that Gorski was not going to bite and
Speaker 4: he was not going to say anything, and so at
Speaker 4: that point then they put that aside. The police put
Speaker 4: that aside and just continue to work on building a
Speaker 4: case against these two guys. They then interviewed this Eileen Bacalla,
Speaker 4: took her in front of the grand jury along with Lockett.
Speaker 4: They testified in front of the grand jury, and at
Speaker 4: that point prosecutors were ready to move and in mid
Speaker 4: May of two thousand and two, both One Luna and
Speaker 4: Jim de Gorski were arrested and charged with the murders
Speaker 4: of seven persons at the Browns Chicken and Pasta restaurant.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us first about these two accused. First start
Speaker 6: with the one you probably know much more about. One Luna.
Speaker 6: Tell us about his family because obviously became involved with
Speaker 6: the family as well. Tell us about the family, his upbringing,
Speaker 6: and who was really What was one Luna really liked?
Speaker 4: Well, one was when the murders took place. One was
Speaker 4: eighteen years old, had finished high school. He had worked
Speaker 4: at the Browns, Chicken and Foster restaurant during high school,
Speaker 4: so he knew something about it. He had his family
Speaker 4: with Mexican. His parents did not speak much English. He
Speaker 4: had a brother and sister, both younger than he was.
Speaker 4: It was a good family. There was no parent issues
Speaker 4: within the family. Luna did not have any kind of
Speaker 4: a background. Any kind of a criminal background is either
Speaker 4: a teenager or for that matter, as an adult. For
Speaker 4: the next period of time, from nineteen ninety three until
Speaker 4: his arrest, he held a number of jobs. At one
Speaker 4: point in nineteen ninety four, he returned to Mexico, briefly
Speaker 4: met a young woman who would become his wife, brought
Speaker 4: her back to the States and to settle in Chicago.
Speaker 4: They had a son who was, to use a cliche,
Speaker 4: the apple of Luna's eye. One was working for an
Speaker 4: appliance dealer as a delivery man, and he was pretty
Speaker 4: much an ordinary citizen. He had one minor brush with
Speaker 4: the law when he wrote a check that bounced, but
Speaker 4: when he was confronted with it, he immediately paid off
Speaker 4: the amount and whatever charges there might have been were dropped.
Speaker 4: So Luna's background was very uneventful. Degorski had a little
Speaker 4: bit more of a problem. He was probably a year
Speaker 4: and a half to two years older than Luna. Both
Speaker 4: Luna and de Goroski were in special education classes at
Speaker 4: the high school in Palatine. They hung a round together.
Speaker 4: They were good friends. They their their crowd included Ann
Speaker 4: Lockett and Eileen Bacara and some others, But neither one
Speaker 4: of them would have been the kind of person you
Speaker 4: would say was building up to some horrendous crime. When
Speaker 4: they were teenagers, there was nothing. There were some issues
Speaker 4: of h of drug abuse, but but nothing that drew
Speaker 4: the attention of the police.
Speaker 6: What what did? Why did According to Ann Lockett, why
Speaker 6: did Luna and the Gorsky pick Brown's Chicken and Pasta
Speaker 6: restaurants specifically even though he had worked there before? What what
Speaker 6: else about the restaurant is why did they pick that restaurant?
Speaker 4: Well, again, because one worked there, he he would have
Speaker 4: known that there was hardly any security. There were no
Speaker 4: TV cameras, for example, that monitor activity. There was no guard.
Speaker 4: The suspicion of the police was that both that Luna's
Speaker 4: particularly thought that there wouldn't be hardly anybody on duty
Speaker 4: on a Friday night late and that they would be
Speaker 4: able to go in and rob the place. And that
Speaker 4: was I think what what originally was supposed to transpire
Speaker 4: at least that's what I think, you know, we would
Speaker 4: have argued that there was no intent to kill anyone
Speaker 4: if if our guy was involved, that it was it
Speaker 4: was a robbery. And even in some of the other
Speaker 4: information we had, there was never anything mentioned to anyone
Speaker 4: about this being something other than the robbery. So that's
Speaker 4: how it began, how it how it unfolded from that point,
Speaker 4: No one, really.
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Speaker 4: He knows we as his defense attorneys, we could not
Speaker 4: be certain exactly what transpired inside that restaurant, even though
Speaker 4: we had a crime scene expert do an analysis of
Speaker 4: everything that was supposedly transpiring at that point and trying
Speaker 4: to reconstruct the crime as it occurred, and what he
Speaker 4: was coming up with was different than what for example,
Speaker 4: Luna was telling the police, and of course he was
Speaker 4: telling the police.
Speaker 6: Now, how did you get involved with this case? And
Speaker 6: when and how did you become involved with this case?
Speaker 6: And as well when did you at what point did
Speaker 6: you decide to write a book about your experience in
Speaker 6: this particular trial in case.
Speaker 4: Well, I am a journalist by background. I spent over
Speaker 4: twenty years in the newspaper business. But in the year
Speaker 4: two thousand, I decided to go to law school. It
Speaker 4: was something I had intended to do many many years before,
Speaker 4: but couldn't because of a change of jobs. So at
Speaker 4: the age of almost sixty in the year two thousand,
Speaker 4: I entered law school in Chicago, and I didn't know
Speaker 4: what I was going to do with a law degree,
Speaker 4: assuming I passed the Bar Association a bar exam rather
Speaker 4: in Illinois, but I decided after I passed that for
Speaker 4: a number of reasons, criminal offense intrigued me, and I
Speaker 4: managed to sign on for a year with an outfit
Speaker 4: called the Death Penalty Trial Assistance Division, which was part
Speaker 4: of the State of Pellot Defender's Office for Illinois, and
Speaker 4: it just so happened that at that point in two
Speaker 4: thousand and four, Luna had been arrested along with the
Speaker 4: Gorski and they now had attorneys representing them, and the
Speaker 4: attorneys representing Luna included a team from this death penalty unit.
Speaker 4: I became very involved in helping to analyze all the
Speaker 4: three hundred thousand pages of discovery that had been turned
Speaker 4: over to the defense of Luna's defense team that included
Speaker 4: reasons why they were sure Luna and de Gorski had
Speaker 4: committed the crime. And we spent a tremendous amount of
Speaker 4: time just trying to get through all that stuff and
Speaker 4: understand it and look at everything they had done. And
Speaker 4: at that point we were also beginning to focus on
Speaker 4: what our strategy might be. So I worked for about
Speaker 4: a year on the case before I left to become
Speaker 4: an assistant public defender in a county outside of Chicago,
Speaker 4: and I did that for two years, and then Luna's
Speaker 4: trial was in the offing in early two thousand and
Speaker 4: seven and I was asked if I wanted to come
Speaker 4: back on and help the team work during the trial
Speaker 4: on Luna's defense. So I signed back on. So that's
Speaker 4: how it came to that point. My intention when I
Speaker 4: did that was not to write a book. I was
Speaker 4: not going to write the last Meal defending the Q's
Speaker 4: mass murderer. That was not my intention. I really wanted
Speaker 4: to continue working on death penalty cases in Illinois, but
Speaker 4: some things happened that were outside my control that made
Speaker 4: it very difficult, And at that point I realized that
Speaker 4: there might be a book in the Browns Chicken case
Speaker 4: from the perspective of the defense team. Most crime books,
Speaker 4: as you know, are written from the perspective of the
Speaker 4: prosecutors and the good guys. I was trying to explain
Speaker 4: all the challenges that defense attorney's face when they have
Speaker 4: to defend someone who, if he is he or she
Speaker 4: is convicted, at least in a state like Illinois, could
Speaker 4: be sentenced to death and put on death row, and
Speaker 4: how you do that and what you try to accomplish
Speaker 4: to keep that from happening.
Speaker 6: You also go you also go out of your way,
Speaker 6: basically for lack of a better expression, to sort of
Speaker 6: demystify or explain the typical criticisms you might get from
Speaker 6: people that really aren't so aware but are very very
Speaker 6: emotional at certain times and so you experience this and
Speaker 6: have heard this before, and see you address some of
Speaker 6: these things like how can you defend some of these
Speaker 6: people and even though you know they're guilty. So maybe
Speaker 6: tell our audience some of the just the principles of
Speaker 6: what you try to explain and demystify regarding this, some
Speaker 6: of the things that I just mentioned.
Speaker 4: Well, it's interesting. Last night I did a speaking engagement
Speaker 4: at a public library in my area and the topic goes,
Speaker 4: how can you represent someone like that? And basically it
Speaker 4: comes down to, from my perspective, that anyone who was
Speaker 4: accused of a crime, particularly a horrible crime, who says
Speaker 4: I'm innocent, A is presumed innocent until found guilty, and
Speaker 4: B deserves his day in court, her day in court
Speaker 4: and a full defense. That's what our constitution demands. You
Speaker 4: aren't guilty, and you're proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 4: And even though there was all this evidence against someone
Speaker 4: like Juan Luna, Luna said I did not do it.
Speaker 4: I'm innocent, and at that point he was entitled to
Speaker 4: fight for his acquittal and if he couldn't win his acquittal,
Speaker 4: to fight for his life. And when I say fight
Speaker 4: for it, that doesn't necessarily mean that his defense team
Speaker 4: was going to put on a vigorous defense in his behalf,
Speaker 4: because the responsibility for convicting someone beyond a reasonable doubt
Speaker 4: is solely the prosecutor prosecutors, it's not the defense team.
Speaker 4: The defense team does not have to prove a negative
Speaker 4: that our man did not do something. It is up
Speaker 4: to the prosecutors to say this guy is guilty and
Speaker 4: here's why, and for a judge or jury to look
Speaker 4: at that evidence, including testimony from witnesses, and either can
Speaker 4: conclude either the defendant is guilty or he's not. No,
Speaker 4: it's a very simple process, but people seem to get
Speaker 4: hung on out it and believe that defense attorneys are
Speaker 4: either scumbags or using all kinds of loopholes in this
Speaker 4: country to get criminals off. That's not it at all.
Speaker 4: What we're trying to do is give a person who
Speaker 4: says I am innocent the right to try to prove that.
Speaker 6: Now, you talk about the death penalty itself, and I
Speaker 6: found it interesting your own stance or your own position.
Speaker 6: Maybe you could tell us, if you don't mind, what
Speaker 6: your actual position is on the death penalty, and what
Speaker 6: about if you can answer the question about someone that
Speaker 6: might say, well, geez, you guys are fervently against the
Speaker 6: death penalty, so obviously you know when there is an
Speaker 6: incredible amount of evidence against the client, your client, you really,
Speaker 6: in practical terms, are trying to save his life more
Speaker 6: so than anything else. You're preparing for that inevitable conclusion.
Speaker 4: Well, that's true. I came to a different active on
Speaker 4: the death penalty when I was in law school at
Speaker 4: the DePaul University College of Law, and I worked in
Speaker 4: a death penalty clinic for two semesters and on a
Speaker 4: case involving a guy who was charged with having killed
Speaker 4: his wife, young son, and five others in a Narson fire,
Speaker 4: and he was sentenced to death and spent sixteen years
Speaker 4: on death row in Illinois. He insisted from the very
Speaker 4: beginning that he was innocent, and as the process after
Speaker 4: conviction played out, it became apparent that there was a
Speaker 4: police unit in Chicago that was virtually torturing people into
Speaker 4: confessing that they thought were guilty, doing all kinds of
Speaker 4: crazy things to get confessions, and this particular young man,
Speaker 4: Madison Hobbley, was one of the people that they tried
Speaker 4: to suffocate. They tore men at him and they got
Speaker 4: him to confess. And so because of that, it became
Speaker 4: apparent to me that one of the problems with the
Speaker 4: death penalty is that you unless you were absolutely sure
Speaker 4: that somebody did something, there is always the possibility that
Speaker 4: there's going to be a hobby type situation or there's
Speaker 4: something that's going to come up that will show that
Speaker 4: this individual really doesn't deserve the ultimate penalty. And furthermore,
Speaker 4: the way the death penalty works it is to a
Speaker 4: large degree capricious and arbitrary, because it depends upon a
Speaker 4: whether the prosecutor wants to try to get the death
Speaker 4: penalty for your defendant, your client, and b whether a
Speaker 4: jury is going to buy into that, and some juries
Speaker 4: will and some won't. And there was a case here
Speaker 4: in Chicago recently where a guy was tried two different
Speaker 4: times for the same crime. The first time he was
Speaker 4: sentenced to death, but the sentence was overturned and he
Speaker 4: was given a new trial because of some information that
Speaker 4: was imparted in the trial that turned out to be wrong.
Speaker 4: The second time, he was convicted again, but the jury
Speaker 4: wouldn't even find that he was eligible for the death penalty,
Speaker 4: much less sentenced him. To death. That tells me that
Speaker 4: there's some serious problems with the way death penalties jurisprudence
Speaker 4: is conducted. And in Illinois right now, our governor is
Speaker 4: giving serious consideration to signing legislation that would outlaw the
Speaker 4: death penalty in Illinois, making Illinois the sixteenth state in
Speaker 4: the Union that does not have a death penalty.
Speaker 6: And what is the alternative to death penalty in Illinois.
Speaker 4: It's at least in our case, there was only one alternative,
Speaker 4: and that was life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
Speaker 6: And does it look like the general public is swinging
Speaker 6: toward that alternative.
Speaker 4: There is still, as I read it and understand it,
Speaker 4: a majority of people who believe in the death penalty,
Speaker 4: but it's a shrinking majority. And when you have a
Speaker 4: situation like we had in Illinois where there were at
Speaker 4: least thirteen death row inmates who were there because of
Speaker 4: this unit, this police unit's malfeasance, then we've got some
Speaker 4: serious issues to do with And that's why that and
Speaker 4: the fact that it's extremely expensive in a state like
Speaker 4: Illinois to carry out a capital case and all the
Speaker 4: appeals that follow it before someone is sitting on death
Speaker 4: row waiting for some day to be executed. And in
Speaker 4: Illinois there's even a moratorium now and has been a
Speaker 4: moratorium for at least ten years against any execution. So
Speaker 4: we had at one point in two thousand and three
Speaker 4: over one hundred and eighty men sitting on death row
Speaker 4: in Illinois, none of whom were scheduled for execution, and
Speaker 4: the governor that at that point not only pardoned our
Speaker 4: our our client in the definitely clinic, whose name was Hobby,
Speaker 4: but pardoned three others. In other words, they were made
Speaker 4: they were set free, but he commuted all the sentences
Speaker 4: of everyone everyone else on death row to life imprisonment
Speaker 4: without role. And that's where they sit today.
Speaker 6: Okay, Now, how how did the attorney Birch and your
Speaker 6: team prepare to defend Juan Luna? What was the what
Speaker 6: were the main bits of evidence that you would have
Speaker 6: to address, and how did you first strategize on how
Speaker 6: to go about dealing with that evidence?
Speaker 4: Well, the state had basically had a five prong case.
Speaker 4: It had uh the the DNA evidence, which is the
Speaker 4: gold standard evidence against Luna, claiming that only only his
Speaker 4: uh DNA match the d on that chicken. It had
Speaker 4: a partial pompprint, which pomprint experts contented was Luna's. It
Speaker 4: had the testimony of two women, An Lockett and Eileen Bacalla,
Speaker 4: both of whom were telling what they were told by
Speaker 4: one Luna and Jim de Gorsi about the crime. And
Speaker 4: then finally you had a forty four plus minute videotaped
Speaker 4: statement slash confession that Luna gave after he was arrested,
Speaker 4: in which he described what he and de Gorski did,
Speaker 4: and in that confession was one really toxic statement. Luna
Speaker 4: said that at one point in the shootings and killings,
Speaker 4: he got quote caught up in the moment and slit
Speaker 4: the throat of the woman owner. And we had to
Speaker 4: deal with all that. Soasically took it apart, piece by piece,
Speaker 4: and we had our own experts testifying as to what
Speaker 4: the DNA might or might not mean. We had our
Speaker 4: own expert testifying about how hard it would be to
Speaker 4: determine that that palm print was Luna's. And furthermore, when
Speaker 4: people use napkins to wipe off what apparently was Greece
Speaker 4: on that napkin with their hands, they don't dab their hands,
Speaker 4: they rub their hands. We took the testimony of both
Speaker 4: the women and basically tried to show that they had
Speaker 4: alterior motives in essence were lying. And then finally we
Speaker 4: attacked Luna's confession. And one of the ways we tried
Speaker 4: to attack Luna's confession was by bringing up the confession
Speaker 4: of the earlier suspect in nineteen ninety nine, who had
Speaker 4: better information than Luna had in his statement and show
Speaker 4: that this guy was not charged. And furthermore, we asked
Speaker 4: a police officer on the stand whether it was possible
Speaker 4: if someone who was perfectly innocent, who had not been
Speaker 4: coerced or harassed, and would that person testify that he
Speaker 4: did something they hadn't done, And this officer said basically yes.
Speaker 4: So we were trying to show that false confessions are
Speaker 4: not that unusual. They happen for whatever reason. People confess
Speaker 4: the things they don't do when they're under pressure or
Speaker 4: they feel their under pressure, or for whatever reason. And
Speaker 4: we tried to show that Luna's confession had holes in
Speaker 4: it and was not an accurate representation of what transpired
Speaker 4: in that restaurant in January of nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 6: Now, how does he maybe I'm not understanding this completely,
Speaker 6: Why Is he not an accessory committing a robbery and
Speaker 6: then a felony occurs? Isn't he going to be involved
Speaker 6: with the murder in that way?
Speaker 4: But are you?
Speaker 6: Is it more so what you're trying to lay out
Speaker 6: is a death penalty mitigating circumstances to again try to
Speaker 6: save his life. Is it more so that, because aren't
Speaker 6: the rules actually saying that if he's an accessory and
Speaker 6: a felony, then he would have these not capital charge
Speaker 6: but murder charges.
Speaker 4: Certainly, Well, keep in mind that both Luna and de
Speaker 4: Groski were saying that the other one was primarily response,
Speaker 4: primarily responsible for the killings. Sure, it wasn't a question
Speaker 4: of being an accessory. One said here's what I did,
Speaker 4: and here's what he did. The other said, here's what
Speaker 4: I did, here's what he did. And they were diametrically opposed.
Speaker 4: So you had that issue for one thing, and for
Speaker 4: a second and more important, they were both indicted for
Speaker 4: having actually committed seven murders. So what we were faced
Speaker 4: what we tried to do first, and Clarence Bert's, the
Speaker 4: lead attorney, worked on this very hard. He was hoping
Speaker 4: that at least one juror would would see that there
Speaker 4: was reasonable doubt that Luna had not committed the murder
Speaker 4: the murders, and he was hoping that the prosecutions evidence,
Speaker 4: as strong as it appeared to be, could be shown
Speaker 4: to have enough question marks in it that at least
Speaker 4: one juror and maybe more would say, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: you can't rush the judgment. Judgment here. Well, as it
Speaker 4: turned out, the injury, the jury unanimously said that Juan
Speaker 4: was guilty of having committed the seven murders, and then
Speaker 4: it became the issue of how are you going to
Speaker 4: save his life? And in Illinois there are a capital
Speaker 4: murder trial is really three trials. The first stage is
Speaker 4: the guilt innocent stage. The second is whether the defendant
Speaker 4: who is now guilty is eligible for the death penalty,
Speaker 4: and that's the terminology. And in order to be eligible
Speaker 4: under our state law, you have to fit into twenty
Speaker 4: aggravating one of twenty aggravating factors. That could include multiple murders,
Speaker 4: killing somebody who was either over or under a certain age,
Speaker 4: killing someone in the commission of another felony, being involved
Speaker 4: in planning and executing something intentionally. All these kinds of
Speaker 4: things play out, and there were four of these aggravating
Speaker 4: factors that the state was trying to prove that Luna
Speaker 4: had committed that made him eligible for death. Well, the
Speaker 4: jury came back again and selected two of the four
Speaker 4: aggravating factors and said, this is what makes one Luna
Speaker 4: eligible for the death penalty. Fortunately, from ourspect, of the
Speaker 4: two most serious allegations of or factors that the state
Speaker 4: was trying to pin on him, the jury did not
Speaker 4: buy into. And one of those was that Luna actually
Speaker 4: had killed one person or more in that room. And
Speaker 4: second that he and do Gorski had planned all this
Speaker 4: out and had this elaborately constructive deal as to how
Speaker 4: they were going to carry out these killings. And the
Speaker 4: jury didn't buy either one of those. So now we
Speaker 4: have Luna eligible for death, and the big battle occurs,
Speaker 4: and the big battle is will he get Will the
Speaker 4: jury decide that death is the appropriate sentence for one
Speaker 4: Luna or will the jury decide it is not. And
Speaker 4: in Illinois that must be unanimous, just as a guilt
Speaker 4: verdict and eligibility for death must be unanimous. And we
Speaker 4: were the biggest, biggest battle took place.
Speaker 6: What was Luna's demeanor and his family's demeanor during this
Speaker 6: at that time.
Speaker 4: On, they were very supportive of one, and they were
Speaker 4: in the courtroom every day during this entire proceeding, and
Speaker 4: one was kind of a from my perspective, an unusually
Speaker 4: calm and helpful and cooperative client defendant. He didn't act up,
Speaker 4: he didn't shout out, he didn't smirk, he didn't frown,
Speaker 4: he didn't grimace, he didn't do anything. He came into
Speaker 4: the courtroom dressed in a suit, tie and shirt, having
Speaker 4: changed from the from the jailhouse clothing that he had
Speaker 4: been wearing for five years when he was a waiting trial.
Speaker 4: He was a model prisoner when he was in the jail.
Speaker 4: During the five years, he never committed any infractions of
Speaker 4: jail house rules. He was a good client and in
Speaker 4: many respects, he was not someone that we would urge
Speaker 4: to testify. We saw no reason for him to testify.
Speaker 4: But he was cooperative and the only time he showed
Speaker 4: emotion during the trial was when the daughter of one
Speaker 4: of the daughters of the owners was describing the horrible
Speaker 4: consequences that had occurred after her parents were killed, and
Speaker 4: Juan cried.
Speaker 6: So, how did you deal with the statement that he
Speaker 6: got caught up in the moment and split the woman's throat.
Speaker 6: And how do you get around him not saying that
Speaker 6: he's not responsible for the murders. It was the was
Speaker 6: the the slitting of the throat determined not to be
Speaker 6: the actual cause of the murder.
Speaker 4: Tell us about that, well, there was a big that
Speaker 4: was a big part of the guilt and Innis's case,
Speaker 4: and that and the prosecution put on the medical examiner
Speaker 4: who described this woman the wounds of the of the owner,
Speaker 4: including the slit throat, and concluded that the slid throat
Speaker 4: was sufficient to have killed her. But the fact of
Speaker 4: the matter was that a bullet wound to the brain
Speaker 4: was what actually did kill her. We put on a
Speaker 4: forensic doctor who testified that the slit throat would not
Speaker 4: have killed her, that what killed her was the bullet wound.
Speaker 4: But more important than that, he claimed and insisted that
Speaker 4: the throat that her throat slitting occurred after she was dead.
Speaker 4: Another was postporum, not not before death, but after death.
Speaker 4: And we also were able to show that from even
Speaker 4: what the medical examiner said. Luna described how he slipped
Speaker 4: this woman's throat as though he was standing over her,
Speaker 4: and she was looking up at him. The medical examiner,
Speaker 4: who was telling a cop her an alsis of that
Speaker 4: wound was that whoever did it was standing behind lin
Speaker 4: Nfeld and was slitting her throat from left to right,
Speaker 4: which would indicate that he could not have seen her
Speaker 4: face and could not have been standing over her. That
Speaker 4: was just one of many inconsistencies in what Luna's videotape
Speaker 4: statement said that made us believe that he was coerced
Speaker 4: and fed information by the cops to get him to confess.
Speaker 6: So you did your team really and and well, I
Speaker 6: guess I don't want to say for your team, did
Speaker 6: you really believe that one Luna was innocent?
Speaker 4: It didn't matter what we believed, and we didn't spend
Speaker 4: a lot of time discussing that. He said he was innocent,
Speaker 4: and that was good enough for us. And we knew
Speaker 4: that if he had pleaded, if he had said I
Speaker 4: did it, then I think the position we would have
Speaker 4: tried to take would be, can we, somehow or other
Speaker 4: negotiate with the prosecutors to get him something less than death.
Speaker 4: But he was insistent that he had not committed this crime,
Speaker 4: and our responsibility as defense attorneys at that point was
Speaker 4: to give him the best defense we can give him
Speaker 4: and try to force the state, the prosecution, to prove
Speaker 4: its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Again, it's not our
Speaker 4: responsibility to prove a negative. We don't have to prove
Speaker 4: that Luna didn't do it. We just have to force
Speaker 4: the state has to prove that he did it and
Speaker 4: there's no reasonable doubt.
Speaker 6: Now, explain to our audience a little bit without getting
Speaker 6: too technical, But I think if we could just frame
Speaker 6: it as certain points when you talk about the DNA
Speaker 6: and that your expert got on the stand and said, listen,
Speaker 6: normally we'd use thirteen points to confirm UH DNA analysis
Speaker 6: and there's only nine here. When I'm not using the
Speaker 6: technical term that you use that I probably would mispronounce.
Speaker 6: But I talked about those, Pardon me.
Speaker 4: And I would too, Yeah, in terms of those.
Speaker 6: So basically you talked about that. But what was the
Speaker 6: crucial UH point that really that you didn't gain in
Speaker 6: this in this effort to try to save this gentleman's
Speaker 6: life in terms of was it was it the fingerprint
Speaker 6: was more conclusive or the DNA, even though you talk
Speaker 6: about DNA being a gold standard, which was the more
Speaker 6: conclusive evidence that convicted him, and and in his trial.
Speaker 4: We we talked briefly with the jury after everything that
Speaker 4: was over, and after the jury, by a vote of
Speaker 4: eleven to one, had to sign a verdict form saying
Speaker 4: that one was not eligible. It was not it was
Speaker 4: not going to get the death. See that death was
Speaker 4: not the appropriate sentence. But basically, what the jury was
Speaker 4: saying to us is the DNA was huge to a
Speaker 4: lesser extent his but not that much. His confession. The
Speaker 4: fingerprint mattered, but it was not as crucial, and they
Speaker 4: weren't particularly enamored with either of the two women in
Speaker 4: terms of how they came across. So the DNA was huge,
Speaker 4: And we had tried at one point to also show that,
Speaker 4: in spite of the fact that it's said that my
Speaker 4: DNA won't match eight zillion other people more than exist
Speaker 4: on a planet Earth, that there was at least one
Speaker 4: other study that had been done that suggested maybe the
Speaker 4: match of one person's DNA to another's persons could occur
Speaker 4: in as often as maybe one and two and twenty thousand.
Speaker 4: Now that doesn't sound like it's real good, but what
Speaker 4: we were trying to point out was that it's not
Speaker 4: as scientific and not as full proof as the people
Speaker 4: who claim it is are saying. And we had our
Speaker 4: own expert understand testifying as to why he believed Luna's
Speaker 4: DNA was not tested an sufficient number of points to
Speaker 4: make it almost a full proof match, and that more
Speaker 4: could have been done that might have eliminated his DNA
Speaker 4: as a matching DNA with that fund on the chicken.
Speaker 4: The other issue that played out was that there was
Speaker 4: a second DNA found on that chicken, but it was
Speaker 4: never determined whose it was, so we didn't know where
Speaker 4: that came from, and no one did. We argued as
Speaker 4: well that even if that was DNA from one, no
Speaker 4: one knew when it got on that chicken. The chicken
Speaker 4: that was found in the in that TRANSH receptacle could
Speaker 4: have been there more than a day. It's possible Luna
Speaker 4: could have been there for lunch the day before. No
Speaker 4: one knew that we were raising any possible point we
Speaker 4: could raise to draw reasonable doubt.
Speaker 6: Now, the conclusion of this is is what what did
Speaker 6: the well?
Speaker 4: The commodition is that one young woman on the jury,
Speaker 4: a young mother of two children, who was who said
Speaker 4: that she favored the death penalty. All the jurors were
Speaker 4: in favor of the death penalty. When a team time
Speaker 4: to decide whether Luna should be sentenced to death, she
Speaker 4: said no. And typically when you have a situation like this,
Speaker 4: the jurors who were in favor of the death penalty
Speaker 4: are going to gang up on the one or two
Speaker 4: people who aren't and try to get them to change
Speaker 4: their minds. But because of some things that had occurred
Speaker 4: earlier in the trial, even in the guilt innocence phase,
Speaker 4: this jury decided it would take one vote and one
Speaker 4: vote only, and if they couldn't get unanimity, then they
Speaker 4: would sign the form that said he was that death
Speaker 4: was not the appropriate sentence. She would not vote for
Speaker 4: the death penalty. She said, I'm not going to go
Speaker 4: along with it. They said, where's the form? They signed
Speaker 4: the form, came back into the courtroom two hours after
Speaker 4: they began their deliberations and made the announcement, much to
Speaker 4: Wan's relief and our relief.
Speaker 6: What was the issue that she was stuck on and it
Speaker 6: made her refuse?
Speaker 4: Don't know that. I talked with her briefly several months
Speaker 4: or maybe even a year after the case of trying
Speaker 4: to get her to explain, and she said she was
Speaker 4: not going to discuss it. Some family members of hers
Speaker 4: were quoted in the press as saying things like, well,
Speaker 4: she felt that sending him to prison for life would
Speaker 4: be greater upon than having him die. But she insisted
Speaker 4: that no one else spoke for her. In other words,
Speaker 4: whatever they were saying was not her thoughts, and she
Speaker 4: was not going to tell anyone why she did what
Speaker 4: she did. I say the other jury, it was interesting
Speaker 4: when we met with a jury, they all seemed to
Speaker 4: be in relatively good spirits, and I got the impression,
Speaker 4: and I said this in the end of this book,
Speaker 4: the last meal, that they felt justice had been done,
Speaker 4: even though one now convicted and now no longer covered
Speaker 4: by the presumption presumption of innocence, could go to prison
Speaker 4: for life, and that was enough.
Speaker 6: Right What happened to the other accused Degorski.
Speaker 4: De Gorski's trial took place about eighteen months later. He
Speaker 4: too was found guilty. He too was found eligible for death,
Speaker 4: and because of some evidence that came out in the
Speaker 4: sentencing phase of the trial that showed that he had
Speaker 4: undergone a horrendous childhood, two of the twelve jurors said
Speaker 4: they could not go along with the death penalty, so
Speaker 4: that jury too said that death was not the appropriate sentence.
Speaker 4: So both de Gorski and Luna are serving life sentences
Speaker 4: in Illinois.
Speaker 6: All right. So both the defense teams were successful in
Speaker 6: a pretty daunting, uphill battle to try to get brightday
Speaker 6: these guys' lives.
Speaker 4: When you're involved in a capital case like this, victory
Speaker 4: from a defense perspective, and I want to emphasize that
Speaker 4: because a lot of people would say that's not victory
Speaker 4: at all. But from a defense perspective, if you can
Speaker 4: keep your defendant off of death row after he's been convicted,
Speaker 4: that's huge. And we felt that there was a tremendous
Speaker 4: amount of passion that went into this. From the standpoint
Speaker 4: of the defense team. I would hate to use the
Speaker 4: word zeal because a zella is not going to be successful.
Speaker 4: You have to work at it very hard, and you've
Speaker 4: got to cover every base and you can't be standing
Speaker 4: around saying, God, this death penalty is a horrible trouble thing.
Speaker 4: It should never occur. We're going to fight it on
Speaker 4: that basis. You lose hands down. You have got to
Speaker 4: fight it methodically, carefully and cover every base, and that's
Speaker 4: what the attorneys, the principal attorneys on this case who
Speaker 4: represented Luna, and I think de Gorski as well, tried
Speaker 4: to do right.
Speaker 6: Well, you've written a fine book, The Last Meal Defending
Speaker 6: an accused mass murderer.
Speaker 4: I can just say that they can be purchased either
Speaker 4: on Amazon or it can be purchased through Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 4: Borders and other bookstores, and I hope readers who do
Speaker 4: read it will get a better sense of what the
Speaker 4: challenges are for defense attorneys in cases like this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's great. Do you have it also an ebook form?
Speaker 4: Yet?
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, do you have it an ebook or kindle form?
Speaker 4: People form as well? It can be purchased on Amazon
Speaker 4: either through hardcover it's a paperback book, or it can
Speaker 4: be purchased through kindle.
Speaker 6: On both great. Well, thank you very much Dennis for
Speaker 6: coming on the program. The audience has been listening to
Speaker 6: Dennis Sheer with his book The Last Meal Defending an
Speaker 6: q's mass murder, The Browns Chicken and pasta Massacre from
Speaker 6: quite a few years ago. Thank you very much for
Speaker 6: appearing on the program, Dennis, And have yourself a good
Speaker 6: evening and good luck with the book.
Speaker 4: Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be on.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Thank you, Dennis. Good night. You've
Speaker 6: been listened to the program True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history, and the authors that are
Speaker 6: written about them, with your host Dan Zupaski. Good evening,