Opinion ID: 2252960
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Background to Brian Dugan's Nicarico Statements and His Confessions to Other Crimes

Text: In 1985, while defendant's first appeal was pending, Brian Dugan was arrested in La Salle County in connection with the kidnapping, rape and murder of eight-year-old Melissa Ackerman. In June, shortly after Dugan's arrest, police from Du Page County attempted to speak with Dugan about the Nicarico murder, but Dugan refused. Sometime in September or October 1985, however, Dugan began authorizing his attorney to convey to La Salle County prosecutors that he was responsible for the murders of Ackerman, Donna Schnorr and an unidentified person in Du Page County. Dugan told La Salle County prosecutors, through his attorney, that he would confess to these murders and other offenses he had committed if he could obtain a plea agreement for a life sentence in the Ackerman case. At the time, Dugan was a suspect in the Schnorr murder, but he had not yet been charged with that crime. A La Salle County prosecutor subsequently deduced that the Du Page County murder referred to by Dugan was that of the Nicarico child. The prosecutor told Dugan that he knew it was the Nicarico murder and that he planned to contact Du Page County authorities. On November 13, 1985, Du Page County prosecutors met with Dugan's attorney to discuss Dugan's knowledge of the Nicarico murder. Dugan authorized his counsel to convey to the prosecutors that he had killed Jeanine Nicarico and was prepared to plead guilty to the offense in exchange for their commitment not to seek the death penalty. The prosecutors apparently did not accept Dugan's proposal, later terming the discussions as fruitless. On November 16, 1985, in accordance with previous discussions, Dugan confessed to the Ackerman and Schnorr sexual assaults and murders, two other sexual assaults and an attempted abduction. As part of this plea agreement, Dugan agreed to answer truthfully police questions about the Nicarico murder and another murder in McHenry County which Dugan denied committing. The La Salle and Kane County State's Attorneys expressed satisfaction that Dugan was responsible for the crimes and agreed to accept Dugan's guilty pleas. Dugan stated that he wanted to clear the books regarding the only other murder he had committed and did not want to see two innocent persons executed. Because no Du Page County authorities were present to discuss any possible plea agreement, Dugan gave a statement, couched hypothetically and initially related through his attorney, to Illinois Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) officers that he had abducted, raped and murdered Jeanine Nicarico. All present were aware that Dugan's statement concerned the actual Nicarico crime. In the course of the interview, Dugan began directly relating information to the DCI officers and drew sketches of the crime site. Dugan's essential Nicarico statement was that he was driving around in his green Plymouth Volare, smoking marijuana, and found himself in the area of Naperville. He stopped at the home of an elderly woman and borrowed and returned a screwdriver because he was having car problems. His car continued to have problems and he approached the Nicarico home to borrow another screwdriver. When he observed Jeanine through a window in the door and became aware that she was alone, he kicked the door open and entered. He indicated that he grabbed the child, secured her hands in some fashion, maybe her feet, obtained tape from his car, maybe moved his car in the driveway, returned to the home, blindfolded the child with the tape and a towel, gagged her, wrapped her in a bed sheet and abducted her after placing her in his car (witnesses' accounts differ as to whether Dugan said he put her in the front seat or the back seat). According to Dugan, he then drove to the wooded Prairie Path where he untied her, made her get in the back seat, maybe had forcible oral sex, and completed anal rape of the victim (witnesses' accounts differ concerning whether Dugan said he attempted vaginal intercourse). Dugan affirmed that he was high on marijuana at the time. Dugan indicated that, once outside the car, he struck the child several times on the head with a tire iron, she hit her head on the car as she fell, and he dragged her body to an area with bushes, then struck her again with a fallen tree branch. According to Dugan, he left the tree branch at the scene, but took the tire iron. Dugan's several Nicarico statements varied somewhat and contained inconsistencies, but not more than other evidentiary statements properly admitted in this case. On November 19, 1985, Dugan was found guilty of Ackerman's kidnapping, rape and murder, the several sexual assaults and was sentenced to life with a consecutive term of years. On that same date, Dugan was also found guilty of Schnorr's kidnapping, rape and murder and sentenced to a second life term. Within the next few weeks, Dugan made a series of statements, through his attorney, to DCI officers concerning the Nicarico murder. The officers had been asked by Du Page County prosecutors to obtain additional information. Essentially, these statements supplemented Dugan's previous Nicarico statements by providing additional details about the crime. Dugan also spoke directly to a polygraph examiner and gave a complete statement concerning the Nicarico murder. Dugan provided information about the circumstances of the murder itself, volunteered his secretor type, related that he was observed in his green Volare automobile near the murder site by utility workers, that he had asked an elderly woman living in the vicinity of the Nicarico home for a screwdriver to fix his car shortly before the crime, that he had missed work the day of the crime, and that fibers on the towel he used to blindfold Jeanine could be traced by police to the trunk of his mother's boyfriend's car. Dugan also participated in a drive-around with police to locate the Nicarico home and the Prairie Path, and submitted to polygraph examination and hypnosis. Throughout these discussions, Dugan made statements about the Nicarico murder on the condition that they could not be used as evidence against him. No assistant State's Attorneys, however, were involved in these discussions which occurred after Dugan was convicted and sentenced for the murders of Ackerman and Schnorr. Dugan provided information about the crime in the belief that he could obtain a third life sentence for Nicarico's murder, which term he was willing to accept. Dugan's defense counsel believed that unless deals were made for all of Dugan's crimes, Dugan had some exposure. On at least one occasion, Dugan's counsel requested that police convey the information to the Du Page County authorities. Dugan never engaged these authorities in any further plea discussions about the Nicarico crime. Prior to defendant's trial, the State filed a motion in limine to exclude Dugan's Nicarico statements. The trial court first determined as a matter of law that Dugan's Nicarico statements were against his penal interest and therefore met a threshold requirement for admissibility as a hearsay exception. The trial court then conducted a three-week long evidentiary hearing to determine whether there were additional indicia of the statements' trustworthiness to warrant their admission. (See Chambers v. Mississippi (1973), 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 1049, 35 L.Ed.2d 297, 313.) More than 30 live witnesses testified and the stipulated testimony of 15 additional witnesses was also introduced. Incidentally, we note that the dissenters urge us to conduct a de novo review of the evidence offered at this hearing. However, the State did not contend on appeal that this evidence was insufficiently corroborative of Dugan's Nicarico statements. The State only contends, with respect to the admissibility of Dugan's statements, that the statements were not against his penal interest. The State's challenge on appeal of the trial court's ruling admitting the evidence is therefore limited to that extent. In doing so, the State apparently conceded at that time that the evidence was corroborative of Dugan's Nicarico statements, despite the dissenter's present imaginative characterization of it. However, to the extent that the dissenters and the State's brief in opposition to rehearing now argue the matter, we believe it appropriate to present these additional facts. Nonetheless, while presenting the evidence in some detail, we do not decide whether the trial court abused its discretion to the extent that it found the evidence to be sufficiently corroborative. We confine our review to the issues presented on appeal. Moreover, even were we to engage in such a determination, our review could not be a de novo review of the evidence as is suggested by the dissenters' review. In short, the State did not appeal the trial judge's ruling that this evidence was sufficiently corroborative, nor could we properly second-guess that determination were we to consider that ruling. We present this evidence to indicate merely what was before the trial court. During the course of the hearing, significant aspects of Dugan's Nicarico statements were corroborated by the evidence. First, Dugan's account showed basic familiarity with the Nicarico home. While there existed minor discrepancies in Dugan's description of specific details of the home, Dugan's account was, nonetheless, generally accurate, considering the circumstances of his purported presence there. Dugan's description of the home's floor plan was accurate (stairs near front door, leading to below-ground recreation room; nearby stairs leading to upstairs bedrooms; wooden railing on stairs). Dugan was also able to describe certain features of the Nicarico home: he recounted correctly that there was a brown dresser in Jeanine's bedroom; that there was beige-colored carpeting in the lower recreation room and on the stairs leading down to the room; that the entry way flooring was parquet-like; that the television in the lower recreation room was set apart from other furnishings in the room; that colors in the home were light; that certain doors opened in particular directions; that the bed on which he threw the victim was unmade. (Jeanine's sister testified that she had not made the bed that morning, but had simply covered it with a spread.) Dugan also suggested to police investigators that they conduct a drive around for him to locate the Nicarico home and the Prairie Path. During the drive around, Dugan was able to provide detailed and accurate directions to the home as well as to the vicinity of the Prairie Path. Notably, regardless of any mailbox name or street sign identifiers of either the home or the Prairie Path, Dugan demonstrated an awareness of where the home and murder site were actually located. Dugan provided directions to as well as identified those sites. The evidence shows, for example, that during the drive around, after looking for the screwdriver lady's home, police asked Dugan to specifically locate the Nicarico home. Dugan replied that they had already driven past it. He then correctly directed the driver to take several turns. According to the agent, at that point [w]e were still westbound approaching Clover Street, and he stated something to the effect that it is the next street, turn left, it should be the second house on the left. Upon locating the Nicarico home during the drive around, Dugan also correctly recognized that there had been certain changes made to the home's exterior since the time of the murder. There were also several facts introduced which served to corroborate Dugan's Nicarico statements. Dugan's work records revealed that he missed work the day of the murder; the shoeprint appearing on the front door of the Nicarico home was made by a right foot which kicked the door twice, just as Dugan had related. The print was also consistent in size and type with Dugan's shoes at the time. Perhaps most corroborative was the fact that a police investigation of the cloth tape used to wrap the victim's head, which was conducted after Dugan made his statements, revealed the tape to be exactly as he had described it in detail: threefourths to one inch wide, several feet long, with serrated edges and sold packaged in a metal container at the time of the murder. (By the time of the statement, the tape was no longer packaged in metal.) Although not nearly as significant, evidence was also introduced that Dugan's repossessed auto was missing a tire jack, the instrument he had identified as the murder weapon. Witnesses also testified that they saw a person similar to Dugan on the Prairie Path on the afternoon of the murder. According to Dugan's Nicarico statements, he was observed with his green 1980 Plymouth Volare auto on the Prairie Path around the time of the murder by two utility workers. According to a prior owner, as well as a subsequent police investigator, Dugan's auto was missing one hubcap. Evidence was presented during the hearing that, on the afternoon of the murder, two tollway workers observed a male Caucasian in his late twenties in a green car with a missing hubcap in the vicinity of the Prairie Path. The testimony was conflicting, however, in terms of the exact type and color of vehicle (green or darkgreen, Plymouth Volare or Ford Granada), and the exact time of the encounter (2:45, 2:30, or 3:15 p.m.). One of the workers unequivocally testified, too, that Dugan was not the man he had observed. The other worker testified that Dugan's Volare could have been the vehicle he saw. There were also discrepancies surrounding whether Dugan and the person observed exited the vehicle or whether the vehicle was stuck in the mud. However, it was also determined that a tire impression discovered by police on the Prairie Path was made by a Goodyear Viva tire, a particular type of tire issued as original equipment on the 1980 Plymouth Volare, but not on the Ford Granada. Eloise Suk, a worker in a church located several blocks from the Nicarico home, testified that Dugan came into the church during the afternoon of the murder, asked about a job application, and wrote down his name and phone number. Suk's testimony concerning the exact time of the visit has varied; however, the time frame consistently remains sometime between 1:10 and 2:23 p.m. Suk consistently testified that the day of Dugan's visit was a Friday. United States Department of the Treasury Agent Thomas Fischer, the person to whom Suk reported this incident, testified that Suk referred to the day as a Friday, but in testifying, Fischer, himself, apparently mentioned the wrong date, February 23 rather than February 25. According to Suk, she later recalled Dugan's visit both because she recognized that his name was Irish and thought his spelling of it was uncommon; and because, as a cartoonist, she paid attention to facial physiognomy. Although Dugan has never mentioned visiting the church that afternoon, Lauren Fessler and Kelly Fessler, Suk's daughter and son-in-law, both testified that Suk reported the visit to them several days after it occurred and that Suk raised it again following Dugan's arrest in the Melissa Ackerman murder, well before Dugan became publicly associated with the Nicarico murder. This fact is true as well in the case of Suk's report to Fischer on September 15, 1985. Other aspects of Dugan's statements were shown to be inconsistent, including, inter alia, that he did not see a 22-foot sailboat in the Nicarico driveway, did not see a pet, believed there was a chain on the front door, was unsure about whether the stairs leading to the Nicarico upstairs bedrooms were to the right or the left, was incorrect about a small nightstand in Jeanine's bedroom, was equivocal about what happened to the tire iron, and was inconsistent in his description of the house of the elderly woman from whom he borrowed the screwdriver or how many persons were there. In this regard, the trial court did not have evidence before it concerning two of the several inconsistencies pointed out by the dissenters. Neither is this evidence now properly before this court. The statement attributed to Suk which appeared in the Chicago Lawyer article, referred to by the dissenters (162 Ill.2d at 410, 205 Ill.Dec. at 385, 643 N.E.2d at 680), was not introduced into evidence; neither was the written statement by Dugan referring to defendant and Hernandez as baby killers introduced (162 Ill.2d at 414, 205 Ill.Dec. at 387, 643 N.E.2d at 682). Based on the evidence properly before it, the trial court concluded, however, that there existed sufficient corroborating circumstances to justify the admission into evidence of Dugan's Nicarico statements under the against-penalinterest exception to the hearsay rule (see People v. Bowel (1986), 111 Ill.2d 58, 66, 94 Ill.Dec. 748, 488 N.E.2d 995). Dugan's Nicarico statements were introduced at defendant's trial through the testimony of police officers and Dugan's attorneys. The defense sought to similarly introduce the facts of Dugan's other admitted crimes and that he confessed to them contemporaneous to his Nicarico statements. The evidence concerning Dugan's five admitted assaults was as follows: 1. On June 2, 1985, around noon, Dugan, while driving around alone in his car, smoking marijuana, noticed Melissa Ackerman, an eight-year-old Caucasian girl and her eight-year-old female playmate riding bicycles in Somanauk, La Salle County. Dugan approached, ostensibly to ask for directions, and then grabbed and threw them in his auto. Ackerman's playmate escaped from the car and Dugan drove off with Ackerman. Dugan made Ackerman sit on the front, passenger-side floor of the car and covered her with a sleeping bag. He drove to a wooded area, tied Ackerman's hands behind her back, and anally sexually assaulted her. Dugan drowned Ackerman in a nearby creek and then attempted to hide her body under rocks. 2. On July 15, 1984, Dugan was driving alone in his car in Aurora and noticed Donna Schnorr, a 27-year-old Caucasian female, driving her car. Dugan followed her to a remote stretch of road in Kane County and forced her car off the road. Dugan struggled with Schnorr, tied her hands behind her back and drove her in his car to a secluded water-filled gravel pit. He then forced her to engage in sexual intercourse and oral sex. Dugan killed Schnorr by blunt trauma to the head and drowning. 3. On May 6, 1985, Dugan was driving alone in his car, in the early morning and followed a 21-year-old Caucasian female, also driving a car, to her home in North Aurora, Kane County. He approached her on foot as she sat in her parked car, engaged her in conversation, forcibly entered her car, and produced a knife. Dugan gagged her, took her into his car and blindfolded her. He then drove to a nearby secluded area and sexually assaulted her in the back seat of his auto. Dugan drove her to her residence parking lot and released her after telling her his name and where he went to high school. She later identified Dugan in a lineup. 4. On May 28, 1985, in the late afternoon, Dugan was driving alone in his car and approached a 19-year-old Caucasian woman, walking along a State highway in Geneva, Kane County. Dugan attempted to force the woman into his car, but she escaped. She later identified Dugan in a lineup. 5. On May 29, 1985, Dugan was driving alone in his car and approached a 16-yearold Caucasian girl as she walked along a street in Aurora, Kane County, in the early evening. Dugan forced her into the front floor passenger area of his car, placed a blanket over her and threatened her with a tire iron. He drove to a remote area in rural Will County, took her from the car by a belt around her neck, removed her clothing, removed his, and sexually assaulted her. Dugan then drove her to her home and released her after telling her his name and where he went to high school. Police later recovered the belt from the area of the assault. The victim identified Dugan in a lineup. The trial court ruled that this evidence was inadmissible under a theory of modus operandi. The jury was allowed to hear only that Dugan had been convicted of several sexual assaults and the murders of Ackerman and Schnorr. B.