Slaying Haunts Ill. Suburb 23 Years Later
Sunday, February 26, 2006
In the 23 years since 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico was raped and beaten to death, her friends and family have sat through trial after trial, seen men sentenced to die, then seen them exonerated and released. Late last year, prosecutors charged yet another man.
But for those who lived in this Chicago suburb in February 1983, the story even now is not about the suspect, not about the endless investigations, not about the death penalty.
Even after all these years, it is still the story of fifth-grader Jeanine home from school with the flu in her pink "I'm Sleepy" nightshirt, telling the stranger at the front door that he couldn't come in, just as her mother had told her to say. It is a splintered door frame, the fingernail marks made on a wall by a desperate child, and a body found a few miles away in a nature preserve.
It is their own childhoods and lives irrevocably altered. Like the little next door neighbor who now _ 23 years later _ hates being alone and fears her own children might be snatched. Or the friend who didn't cry at death again until her mother passed away two decades later. Or Jeanine's childhood sweetheart, who today laments his inability to comfort those closest to him when they need him most.
"With Jeanine's death, very clearly something died in me that day," said Mark Givens, who days before had gone to the girl's house with his mom to deliver a box of chocolates and a Valentine's Day card.
"A lot was ripped away and forever taken," he said. "There are very little illusions that an 11-year-old can hold onto after an event like that, knowing one of your friends was raped, was beaten to death."
What happened here happens whenever a close-knit community is hit with something as incomprehensible as a child's murder. Assumptions about human nature and personal safety were shattered. In Jeanine's life people saw their own lives, and in her death they saw a child and parents who did nothing wrong _ what they would have done themselves.
But the pain might be different here because the story is different. Unlike so many other cases that made headlines but faded from memory after suspects were convicted, this one keeps finding its way onto the front page.
Two men were convicted and sentenced to death in 1985, but appeals courts over the following decade twice reversed the convictions. Both men eventually were exonerated, and charges were dropped against a third. Amid allegations of concealed and fabricated evidence and self-serving jailhouse snitches, the case became a national symbol of death penalty flaws and was one of the key cases that prompted former Gov. George Ryan's decision to clear out the state's death row three years ago.
In November, years after he emerged as a suspect in Jeanine's death and a full decade after an expert concluded DNA evidence linked him to the crime, convicted killer Brian Dugan was indicted by a DuPage County grand jury.
"You just feel like it's never going to end," said Michele Michael, a classmate who now owns a pub in Naperville where news stories, chance meetings with classmates or members of the Nicarico family, or events in Jeanine's honor are regular reminders of the slaying.
Melissa Starr moved out of state shortly after her friend was killed, but the story continues to find her.
"I was driving to work one day listening to NPR and Scott Turow was on (talking about the case) and you kind of have to pull over to the side of the road and say, 'Oh my gosh,'" said Starr, 33, who lives in suburban Kansas City. "You think it's going to get easier and it never really does."
There are reminders in their own lives as well.
"One of the things that I have come to realize _ it was a very, very long time after Jeanine's death before I ever cried about somebody dying," Starr said. "I do not remember another death affecting me in a deep way until my mom died three years ago."
From Givens, a vice president of a high-tech firm in Massachusetts, there is this: "When my wife needs a tender moment I can get very cold very quickly, and when every logical part of my body says reach out, touch her, hold her, do the natural things that a person would do, I have a tremendous struggle with that. I trace that to Jeanine."
Jeanine's friend and neighbor Sonya Shuey filled her childhood with sleepovers, her teen years with sports simply to avoid being alone. Today a 33-year-old nurse, Shuey lives in Bloomington with her husband and three small children _ and still hates the idea of being by herself.
Becoming a parent has made her fears even more pronounced.
"She said, 'Mom, it's worse. Now I'm petrified (of) someone coming into the house and taking one of the kids,'" said Shuey's mother, Shirley Steck.
Starr, too, fears for the lives of her two small children. The scenes she plays in her head of what her friend must have gone through are more haunting than ever.
"Like the scratch fingernail trail out the door, that fact hits me so much harder now than it did 23 years ago because I think of my own daughter when I think of that image," she said.
That helps explain why she is obsessed with car seat safety for her own children and volunteers her time to instruct other parents how to properly secure their children in their vehicles.
"I'm going to protect my children in ways that I can ... and try not to obsess and make myself crazy about the things that I can't," Starr said.
Now Dugan has been charged and prosecutors vow to seek the death penalty for the man they say confessed to the crime two decades ago, but wouldn't make the confession formal unless they ruled out execution. Those who knew Jeanine say they hope the case will shed light on the afternoon of Feb. 25, 1983, when she was kidnapped from her home.
But they're also bracing for what they are about to go through yet again, something Jeanine's father, Thomas Nicarico, has over the years compared to having a scab torn open.
Jeanine's mother, Patricia Nicarico doesn't want to say too much, fearing her words could somehow harm the case. But she hopes: "Maybe we can get some of the truth, maybe. And maybe get some justice for Jeanine."
http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2006/2/26/145923.html 
Convicted murderer indicted for 1983 Nicarico slaying
November 29, 2005 (WHEATON, Ill.) - Convicted murderer Brian Dugan was indicted Tuesday for the 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville. The 15-count indictment against Dugan, 49, is the latest development in a 22-year-old case that put Illinois' capital punishment system under a national spotlight after two men who were convicted of the crime and sent to death row were freed years later.
"This is the result of a full and open minded investigation of the facts and circumstances of this case," Birkett said at a press conference to announce the indictment.
Nicarico was home alone from school recovering from the flu on Feb. 25, 1983, when she was abducted, leaving no sign but fingernail scratches on the wall near the kicked-in front door. Birkett said Tuesday that Dugan raped and bludgeoned the girl to death. Her body was later found in a nature preserve.
Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were convicted of the crime and condemned to death in 1985, but appeals courts over the following decade twice reversed the convictions. Cruz was acquitted during a third trial in 1995 after spending almost a decade on death row, and prosecutors later dropped the charges against Hernandez.
ABC 7 Chicago