00:00:07
[Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign garage wherever you are whatever you are
00:00:43
doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who
00:00:48
just renewed his subscription to corncob TV here is the captain took it took a choo choo it's good to be seen and good
00:00:56
to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend [Music] today is another great day in the garage
00:01:08
we are still sipping on this fine beer from the good Folks At Low res brewing in Chicago it's called Bob's your uncle
00:01:15
which is a fine British pub ale there are notes of bread and biscuits with some toffee to smooth things out a
00:01:22
little this is a fantastic Brown beer on tap at low res right now ABV 5.5 garage
00:01:29
grade four out of five bottle caps and cheers to these fine folks for supporting the garage a shout out to
00:01:38
Olivia Peterson in West Fargo North Dakota and a big we like to jib to Christy in Vancouver Washington next up
00:01:47
it cheers to Katie Keon in Aurora Ontario and last but certainly not least we have Amy and Guam everyone we
00:01:54
mentioned helped us out with this week's beer fund and for that we thank you yeah
00:01:59
bwe double arguing beer run thank you so much for supporting the show you want to
00:02:05
support the show go to iTunes and leave a 5 star review we would love you forever and Colonel
00:02:14
that's enough of the business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab
00:02:18
a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] thank you [Music] the Browns Chicken Massacre
00:02:48
unfortunately was not the first time Illinois had experienced such a tragedy you have The Saint Valentine's Day
00:02:56
Massacre which occurred on Valentine's Day 1929 in Chicago with seven victims left
00:03:04
dead the Browns Chicken case taking place in 1993 but sadly it would not be the last
00:03:14
of its kind experienced in the greater Chicago area we touched a little bit yesterday Captain on the importance of
00:03:22
hold back information and what could be considered hold back information in this case the hold back information
00:03:29
in the Brown's Chicken Massacre to me was kind of different than what we have come accustomed to
00:03:37
what's so great here is that we have no Witnesses now I say that's great that's obviously a big problem for the
00:03:47
investigation you want witnesses witnesses will help you solve this thing faster putting eyes on anything and then
00:03:54
relaying those details and that information to the investigators can only help solve this case faster however
00:04:03
what we have here is we don't have anybody that was in the restaurant that day or night that is saying look this
00:04:10
seems suspicious this seemed odd this guy looked bad I think this guy was walking into the place with a gun or as
00:04:17
I was leaving and I left the parking lot after closing I saw these vehicles there or these
00:04:24
people that were still in the store that's we don't have that here and on top of that we don't have security
00:04:29
footage like you mentioned yesterday exactly right and like we've seen in so many other cases where unfortunately
00:04:37
these murders or homicides take place at a store or a restaurant we oftentimes have a customer or patrons of that
00:04:45
restaurant that are saying when I left everything was fine and this was the person that was still in the store or
00:04:51
this was a person that I saw right before I left and the yogurt shop case we talk about several people saying that
00:04:59
there were still two guys in the store when the girls closed the yogurt shop that night now while I say that having
00:05:08
witnesses will help solve your case faster obviously I say here also that not having any Witnesses is
00:05:17
and can be a good thing it's a good thing for your hold back information because now you have
00:05:24
more pieces that you can hold back from the public that should help you quickly decipher who should be rolled in as
00:05:33
Apostles possible suspect and who should be ruled out and when you're talking about a case of this magnitude where we
00:05:39
have thousands of tips pouring in we have a lot of people working in the case you need it is advantageous to your
00:05:48
investigation if you have the ability to quickly move on from a potential suspect
00:05:53
or quickly hone in on a potential suspect and that's what your holdback information is going to help you with
00:06:01
so with no Witnesses the first item of hold back information and some of this is weird to me Captain because some
00:06:10
of this may have simply have been happenstance some of it had may have been actual hold back information and
00:06:17
we'll go through these one at a time first thing that we have is the actual exact location of the bodies so in the
00:06:23
early reports in the early media reports they had all seven bodies in one location of the restaurant and basically
00:06:32
one corner of the kitchen the northwest corner all in or around that cooler of course we know that was not true we know
00:06:43
that we have five victims in the freezer which is actually in an entirely different corner of the restaurant again
00:06:52
I don't know if that was a situation of the papers got it wrong and police chose
00:06:57
not to correct them or if they chose to hold back that information and just say very simply very generically we found
00:07:06
seven victims they were all found in the kitchen area around this one cooler the other thing and you brought this up
00:07:14
yesterday was the guns remember the newspapers were reporting that it is believed that two guns were
00:07:23
used in the commission of these crimes and we know later that that wasn't the case it was one gun a 38 caliber again I
00:07:32
don't know if this was something that the investigators chose and strategized to withhold from the media and the
00:07:40
public or if it was just a reporter ran with an idea and they chose not to correct the narrative well
00:07:48
again law enforcement when they're talking to reporters because you got to talk to reporters in this
00:07:54
case because the Threat Level that the community and the locals would feel so you have to
00:08:02
pick and choose your words carefully because like you said you don't want to give out too much information and have
00:08:08
somebody come forward with wrong wrongful confession or somebody sending a tip that is sending you on a wild goose
00:08:18
chase because they they got this information from a report and then we have a crime scene detail that was withheld
00:08:29
there was a bullet that had been fired into one of the smoke hoods so this would be above the cookers or the Friars
00:08:38
we don't know if this was intentionally done by the perpetrator or you know to try to fire a shot in the air to gain
00:08:45
control of the people you have seven people that you have to control and Corral or if it was happenstance that there was
00:08:55
a struggle and for whatever reason the gun goes off or the perpetrator is just simply unable to hit their Mark but
00:09:03
there was a bullet that was fired into one of the smoke heads so that hit something either the smoke hood or
00:09:09
something above one of the cookers another item was the money situation now we've seen this with Las Cruces Bull and
00:09:19
several other cases it's very common that the money situation is part of the hold back information what we have in
00:09:29
the Browns Chicken case is we have police informing the media the registers were empty we have two
00:09:39
cash registers both were found empty the safe had been opened and money taken from the safe the only money that they
00:09:48
recovered from the Browns Chicken restaurant was one thousand dollars the one thousand dollars that remained was not
00:09:57
because the perpetrators failed to find this money they they just couldn't gain access to it so it was on one of those
00:10:07
timers so this safe had several different compartments a compartment where you can place things mainly cash
00:10:14
but it also had a compartment that was locked down via timer and you could access money by typing in a code and it
00:10:23
would release a small amount of money like you could request 20 ones or five twenties I don't know what denominations
00:10:31
were allowed for but basically you could not access that money without going past
00:10:38
this timer so that one thousand dollars remained in this compartment now I don't
00:10:44
believe that they released the exact amount of money that had been taken now that could be
00:10:51
considered hold back information the exact amount but also I found in many cases and I and I know you found this
00:10:59
too Captain I think that oftentimes they are not law enforcement is not incredibly precise on the exact amount
00:11:08
of money that was taken yeah I'm sure if they brought in like a financial forensic investigator they could come
00:11:16
up with the amount to the penny based on sales and receipts but if that is not clear at the end of the day law
00:11:25
enforcement just knows that there was some money taken and does it really affect the investigation if it was five
00:11:32
thousand dollars taken or six thousand dollars taken right it could affect your investigation if it's a very
00:11:40
you know not such a round number right if if one individual knew that exactly two thousand and eleven dollars was
00:11:47
stolen that night then that becomes of particular interest but you're exactly right you'd have to bring in somebody to
00:11:56
figure out and decipher exactly how much money was missing and the problem then becomes here in this situation
00:12:04
unfortunately everybody that was working that shift that night became a victim they were killed right
00:12:10
and on top of that the two owner operators were killed too so you don't have a lot
00:12:17
of great leads on getting you to that exact amount so therefore it wouldn't actually be hold back information but
00:12:24
what we do have here is the details of that safe and the registers they chose to release that information to the media
00:12:32
and to the public well again law enforcement could talk to possibly a manager or assistant manager or other
00:12:40
employees to just go hey what's the average sale look like day to day and what does one look like on a Friday and
00:12:48
to get does a ballpark figure on what possibly could have been taken now here is a big
00:12:57
a very big piece of holdback information the detectives were able to figure out a
00:13:04
couple things that went down that night and this is key for so many reasons first of all there was an actual sale
00:13:12
that took place after the store had closed so at 908 pm one of the registers recorded a sale for
00:13:25
a meal this was a chicken coleslaw and Fries Meal which was I believe maybe the most popular
00:13:33
combo meal that they sold at the time we have the dollar amount that is rang in so what happened was they were able
00:13:41
to determine that the register had actually been closed down for the night remember the doors the main entrances
00:13:50
and exits found in the locked position when police arrived and then found the bodies and most those you have to lock
00:13:57
from the inside you can't just lock them from the outside unless you had a key obviously so registers closed and doors
00:14:06
locked those are going to be key indicators to investigators that the restaurant was successfully closed on
00:14:14
time at 9 pm for whatever reason even after the registers were closed we now have a sale of this meal at 908 PM after
00:14:24
the store was supposed to be closed now they also found in one of the trash receptacles
00:14:32
a receipt for this meal and in that trash receptacle they also found remaining portions of this meal in
00:14:42
particular they found chicken this sounds like it would be a complete mess but there was some pretty neat and tidy
00:14:50
things to this crime scene that really helped investigators one knowing that the registers had been successfully
00:14:58
closed to this meal or what remained of this meal in the receipt that they recovered from
00:15:05
the trash receptacle the other trash receptacles had been cleaned out so that part of the closing duties had been done
00:15:11
had been completed right you have this piece of information where you are sitting here going okay well let's try
00:15:19
to piece together what we think may have happened we think that the perpetrator or perpetrators may have gained access
00:15:27
to the store somehow after they closed or remained in the store unseen to other customers
00:15:34
when the store closed and for whatever reason an employee or somebody allowed this late order to be rang in
00:15:42
food prepared and served after the restaurant had actually closed the thing is there's a chance there's a strong
00:15:50
chance that that meal and that receipt have everything to do with your investigation yeah you could get a
00:15:58
fingerprint off that or obviously later on DNA evidence from the from the actual
00:16:04
food so police were working on a couple of theories they had a couple working theories here they weren't
00:16:12
silent about this to the media the one that they were most vocal about was they had said that we
00:16:21
believe this is a robbery gone wrong an armed robbery that went wrong and what they surmised could have happened
00:16:30
was that perp or perpetrators take the money after corralling and controlling the employees and the owners and then
00:16:40
become frustrated when they can't gain access to that last one thousand dollars and either a struggle takes place
00:16:50
or someone is taken out one of the workers which would be a witness was taken out and now you have witnesses and
00:16:58
then they take out the other witnesses that was their general theory that we couldn't gain access to the one
00:17:04
thousand dollars now we're flipping out and a problem breaks out and this thing just got really bad really quick
00:17:12
maybe they showed up never intending to kill anybody just wanted to clean the place out and were frustrated when they
00:17:20
couldn't do so and like you said you have seven victims so we have seven eyewitnesses to this robbery that might
00:17:26
not be that big of a deal to the perpetrators but once something happens and one of the victims now becomes a
00:17:34
murder victim now you have another six eyewitnesses that they felt like they had to dispose of now one theory that
00:17:42
you cannot dismiss and you touched on this yesterday Captain and this is something that I find to be fascinating
00:17:49
you also could have the situation where this was personal maybe somebody wanted revenge and like
00:17:57
you said maybe they thought you know what let's take the money anyway we're here anyway let's clean this place out
00:18:03
or let's clean out this place and make it look like the motive was something else right to jack up the investigation
00:18:10
now remember this whole idea money or something personal would be very similar to what we spoke
00:18:19
about when we discussed the Lane Bryant shooting that's in Tinley Park in another suburb of Chicago this was a
00:18:28
mass murder and armed robbery at a Lane Bryant outlet in Brookside Marketplace in Tinley Park that occurred in February
00:18:36
of 2008 and in that case sadly we end up with five dead one injured who the killer attempted to execute the gunman
00:18:46
was later described as a black man with thick cornrowed hair and a receding hairline
00:18:52
and a single braid that came down the front of his face or near his cheek in that case
00:19:00
was always believed to be a robbery gone awry police are on record saying we believe this was a robbery gone a ride
00:19:07
that one of the hostages taken called 9-1-1 the gunman freaks out and and starts shooting people
00:19:16
armchair detectives and people that we spoke with we're quick to point out hey there's all
00:19:22
these little weird things with inside this case to consider is it possible that there was a hit involved or was it
00:19:30
possible that this was not a robbery gone awry as the police said and that this person goes into the Lane Bryant
00:19:38
with the purpose of killing one or more of these people but kills all of them or
00:19:44
attempts to do so to cover up who the actual Target was well think about this if you're in law
00:19:51
enforcement if you just have if somebody breaks into somebody's house and kills them and and takes nothing or or kills
00:19:59
somebody in their car you start with the Inner Circle and you start working out if you believe that
00:20:06
the crime is not targeted in this case then you're looking for almost an infinite amount of suspects and it's not
00:20:16
crazy that these things actually happen or that people would suspect this in any of these cases you know I was
00:20:24
reviewing a case just the other day where a woman hired two men to kill her husband he was killed inside their home
00:20:31
and of course she tells them make sure you ransacked the place before you leave there's been a string of burglaries here
00:20:39
in our neighborhood it will look like he stumbled upon this break-in and he was attacked and killed not that it was
00:20:48
something personal where a hired hit right so it's not out of the realm of possibility now that Lane Bryant case
00:20:54
was our episode's True Crime garage episodes 200 and 201 that case is is one of the cases that has intrigued me for
00:21:04
years since back in 2008. it's a very fascinating case and one that I think we both believe is very solvable but for
00:21:12
whatever reason it just hasn't been it's rumored that they have DNA in that case
00:21:16
so maybe we get something that that breaks here this year or 2023 the year of got him yeah let's make it happen
00:21:25
let's let's cuff these people and bring them in now we do have suspects and we had
00:21:31
suspects early on in this case so this is actually within hours of the case breaking so there was a man that was
00:21:44
held for questioning this was a 23 year old man he was a former employee of this
00:21:51
particular Brown's Chicken restaurant this man was let go he was fired from his job
00:21:59
what was stated was that he vowed to seek revenge and actually I have a portion from one
00:22:07
of the newspapers here that say police raided the house of a 23 year old former employee and arrested the man at
00:22:14
gunpoint on Saturday afternoon remember they discovered the bodies at 2 30 a.m Saturday morning this man was arrested
00:22:22
Saturday afternoon this after police learned that the man had been fired from the restaurant earlier and had vowed
00:22:31
Vengeance so police have a motive they hold this guy they keep him for questioning
00:22:36
they actually went to his house they searched this man's house and they were moved we have the media this was a media
00:22:43
Frenzy when the case broke media they're watching this man's house as it's being
00:22:49
searched they see police leaving this band's house with two bags two big bags that they brought out of this guy's
00:22:59
house one of the officers has asked hey you know did you got the guy do you got the guy that did this is that what is
00:23:07
this what are you removing from his home what did you guys find and he simply says
00:23:13
this is evidence and I'll say nothing more than that are you sick of dealing with psoriasis
00:23:34
and an itchy scalp sick of scratching your head trying to figure out how to fix it check out ocean soothe a natural
00:23:41
solution that relieves psoriasis and problematic skin and scalp conditions it's sourced in Australia and
00:23:49
manufactured in the USA ocean soothe products deliver relief to the areas you need it most they offer head to toe
00:23:57
Solutions so you don't need to put together a whole cocktail of products to treat your skin the ocean soothe gel and
00:24:04
lotions are recognized by the national psoriasis Foundation to relieve psoriasis and can be used across your
00:24:12
whole body they're naturally made so you shouldn't experience any side effect and
00:24:16
they're odorless so you can get relief without the stink for optimal psoriasis relief start with ocean soothe gel
00:24:24
during the day followed by ocean stewed lotion at night and if you want on-the-go relief for dandruff or dry
00:24:31
itchy scalp up the ocean soothe scalp Serum is all you need it has been a game changer for me the winner comes my scalp
00:24:39
becomes a problem but no more and I love the fact that ocean soothe products they
00:24:46
have head to toe Solutions so really they're the only product that I need I absolutely love them I think you're
00:24:54
going to love them too abundant Natural Health ocean soothe products are available at CVS Health Hub stores head
00:25:02
over and shop today all right we are back thank you for joining us here in the garage cheers to
00:25:20
you all and cheers to you the crispiest of the kernelist cheers everybody out there he's back I never left but uh
00:25:30
cheers to you Captain thanks for returning uh this guy though he would not be their only suspect in this case
00:25:40
because what we have here Captain is they are able to hold this man for two days for approximately 48 hours
00:25:48
and then they released him they sent him along his way even though the officer says this is evidence and uh that's all
00:25:56
I'll say about that the thing is they may have had a motive or could put a motive on this guy for
00:26:03
why he would be the perpetrator of the crime they actually had zero evidence connecting him to the murders they found
00:26:10
nothing actually in his house that connected him to the murders and yes he did vocally tell at least one other person
00:26:19
that he was going to get Vengeance or some kind of Revenge it's not clear it's what he stated you know if he said he
00:26:27
was going to kill the owner or kill the person that fired him or you know egg the place we don't know what type of
00:26:35
Revenge he was seeking because that portion is not reported and probably rightfully so because as it turns out
00:26:41
this guy doesn't look so good after you've talked to him for two days yeah I used to get in trouble for this all the
00:26:47
time and I blame Frank Rizzo r-i-z-z-o because there was that famous jerky boy sketch and he would say my
00:26:54
wife is sick my kids are sick you you want to talk about coupon I'll bomb this place I used to make that
00:27:03
threat a lot when I was younger in my my Dumber days now 10 days after the murders we get additional potential
00:27:12
suspects we get three people that police brought into the station for questioning this is because
00:27:22
well and face it they didn't have to look very hard for these these persons so these individuals were suspects in
00:27:30
another case that took place within a week or so of the Brown's Chicken Massacre
00:27:37
these suspects had committed some armed robberies and they were all robberies that were
00:27:46
committed in suburbs surrounding Chicago and the reason why the police were really interested in these three guys is
00:27:54
that in all cases the employees were rounded up and forced into the coolers of those restaurants
00:28:03
and businesses that makes sense so it seems like something they've done before but then this one maybe got out of hand
00:28:10
and that's why we have murdered victims now I'm uncertain captain of how long it
00:28:15
took for investigators to determine if if and when and how these guys are just robbers and not actual murderers but at
00:28:26
some point these guys go from looking really good for this to not looking good for it at all what I do want to point
00:28:32
out here too and this is something you can learn from the actions of an actual investigation is what have the police
00:28:40
figured out and what have they not figured out about the crime scene and about the perpetrators well here when
00:28:47
you see one individual being arrested in question for two days and then later a week later or so you find three persons
00:28:55
being arrested it looks to me like police are uncertain or they have evidence that's telling them don't lock
00:29:04
into an idea of how many people committed this crime don't lock in on if it's one guy two guys or three or four
00:29:12
people that you are looking for in the Brown's Chicken case but also if these guys end up not being such aspects
00:29:19
that's fine but think about the information that you're probably going to learn during the questioning of that
00:29:25
well how would this go down and and these guys essentially are somewhat of experts when it comes to armed robbery
00:29:33
by the one year anniversary of this massacre sadly the case was still unsolved and police were
00:29:42
they had assembled a task force very early in this investigation which consisted of 84 detectives and support
00:29:51
staff from 10 law enforcement agencies including the state police the Chicago Police Department and the FBI this task
00:30:02
force Captain would include more than 100 individuals from 21 law enforcement agencies the task force ultimately
00:30:11
within that first year received more than 3 000 tips we said this was going to be a large complicated investigation
00:30:19
and you can see by the 3000 tips and then them following up on more than one thousand leads how complicated this case
00:30:27
was police spent more than 400 hours processing the actual crime scene and collected more than 240 pieces of
00:30:36
evidence at the scene and lifted 200 latent fingerprints sadly after 365 days while we had some suspects that may have
00:30:47
looked good briefly we don't end up with any arrest there's no court date set for
00:30:52
anybody for a murder trial here after that time period which is tough on the victims families it's tough on law
00:31:00
enforcement it's also tough on the community because this is a tragic situation and we just don't have any
00:31:06
answers after 365 days the task force dwindled and numbers of course they they send these officers and investigators
00:31:15
onto cases other cases that they acquire throughout that time period so did the tips the tips dwindled as
00:31:23
well now after one year there was a 107 thousand dollar reward for information leading to an arrest and a conviction
00:31:33
here in the Browns case police used the one-year anniversary to remind the public they believed that the case was
00:31:42
simply just one phone call away from being solved someone out there knows who the Killer is and hasn't come forward
00:31:50
they go on to say that we're looking for someone who could be an accessory to the
00:31:56
trigger man or someone that the killer or Killers have talked to about what they have done and they were
00:32:05
reminding the public hey we want that person to contact us well like the colonel was saying we we have this task
00:32:12
force and they're together for a whole year and yes we don't have an arrest yet and
00:32:19
the Brown's Chicken Massacre but this task force was successful because as they're questioning individuals and
00:32:26
and gathering information in this case they were able to actually make a rest of 10 to 12 individuals in other cases
00:32:35
some other statements that were released to by the police on the one-year anniversary that I like here Captain
00:32:42
they went on to say some of the officers said this offender has caused a lot of human suffering
00:32:49
the task force has compiled thousands of pages of reports and information that has been shared with police agencies
00:32:57
throughout the country The Killers eventually will slip up this case is going to be solved we have some
00:33:06
unfortunate little details in this case yeah there's always these sad little details that you find Captain in these
00:33:14
cases where you're like this victim could have been avoided it may not this person didn't have to be there that
00:33:21
night or this person was scheduled to be there at the last minute so yeah like an
00:33:27
unfortunate change of events exactly so we have the restaurant owners themselves
00:33:33
they had actually just bought this store months earlier and it was actually the first restaurant
00:33:39
that the married couple had ever owned it was a career change for the couple right then we have the cook
00:33:49
Maldonado he had just started working there three weeks prior to the massacre the two teenagers were just part-time
00:34:00
employees and you know one thing that's sad here in that case you go back to 1993 we had two million Americans 18 and
00:34:11
younger that made up two-thirds of America's fast food Workforce at the time where most of them were making the
00:34:19
federal minimum wage of just 4.25 cents an hour and then we have one of the individuals
00:34:28
that was working that night Rick Salas who was actually filling in for another employee that night after having traded
00:34:36
shifts with a fellow employee so that one of them or both of them could attend events that they wanted to go to on for
00:34:45
Rick a different night and for this employee that particular night well and that's what we talk about with the
00:34:51
when you have a victim there's multiple victims family members co-workers the community but now in this
00:34:59
situation you have these guys that they traded shifts with each other and and that guy has to live with that for the
00:35:06
rest of his life where he you know that'd be that'd be difficult for me if if one of my buddies took on my shift
00:35:14
and something bad happened to him uh that would be very difficult there's always a lot of survivors guilt
00:35:23
in these type of cases and circumstances you touched on something earlier captain
00:35:28
that will end up being the Crux of this case and the investigation and remember police pointed out in interviews shortly
00:35:38
after the homicides took place that you know we have blood evidence here in this
00:35:42
case and we've really been working significantly with a lot of blood evidence and spatter and positional
00:35:49
things and directional things involving blood spatter that tell us certain aspects about a crime and how things
00:35:56
went down at a scene and we believe that soon one day that's going to lead to more DNA technology that can be used in
00:36:06
these types of Investigations that was all very foretelling in a way because what we have here is
00:36:14
after years of the case not being solved there's a lot of pressure being put on the police department a lot of criticism
00:36:24
being thrown their way by the media and by the public because they wanted this thing solved and they started to think
00:36:31
that it would never be solved well meanwhile behind the scenes police were still working with the idea of hey
00:36:39
that big piece of holdback information that we had about the receipt about the meal being sold after the store closed
00:36:47
and the chicken and the items that were found in that trash receptacle while we couldn't pull any fingerprints from it
00:36:54
in 1993 we better save all this stuff because we think one day we might be able to use these items and pull
00:37:03
evidence particularly DNA from them at some point hopefully we can connect it to an actual suspect and then we know
00:37:11
who was there that night all the while I believe it was about five years they kept testing these items that they found
00:37:18
in that trash receptacle eventually after about five years they were able to pull DNA from one of those pieces of
00:37:27
chicken they're not working with genealogy detective work back then so we can't just take this and then work it
00:37:35
for six months to 18 months and hopefully figure out family tree that may lead us to the
00:37:42
perpetrator but if we get the right guy or girl or whomever we at least have DNA
00:37:49
now that we can start comparing it to suspects what happens is they actually end up with several confessions in this
00:37:58
case I don't know the total number of confessions that they ended up with but even after the five-year Mark once they
00:38:06
have this DNA we have confessions from a boyfriend and girlfriend that say that they were involved we have confessions
00:38:13
from two friends uh not related to the boyfriend and girlfriend that admitted to being involved and had
00:38:21
done the killings however Captain what we end up with is in March of 2002 police are going back through and they
00:38:30
are going to kind of toss everything out except for the DNA evidence and look at this case with new fresh
00:38:39
eyes Start Anew and one thing they had always been really working in this case and it's obvious by the actions of the
00:38:48
investigation remember we had said that 23 year old former employee was brought in within hours of the murders and
00:38:54
questioned and held for two days his home searched they were always locked in on this idea that
00:39:01
the probability of it being a current employee or former employee they thought was rather High
00:39:08
so when they start investigating this case Anew in 2002 one of the first things they were doing was they were contacting
00:39:17
all of the former employees and Associates of known associates of the former employees
00:39:25
well in March of 2002 they get an individual named Ann Lockett on the phone and Ann Lockett is somebody that they
00:39:34
had interviewed a couple of times but in March of 2002 she has a very different story to tell them than what she's told
00:39:41
them in the past and this time she's telling them I know exactly who did it because the two individuals told me that
00:39:49
they did it so now we have to introduce James de Gorski and Juan Luna the way that this story works here
00:40:00
Captain is that dagorski and Luna told Lockett that they had committed the crimes
00:40:08
here's a little bit of a problem for investigators this is not the first person to tell them that they had
00:40:14
committed the crimes not not Luna and degorski right but remember they have the other confessions and they've had
00:40:20
other people along the way that have told them hey I think I know who did it but we
00:40:25
have all that hold back information so now we can ask her well what are the details that they gave you and do those
00:40:31
match anything that maybe somebody in the public wouldn't know yes and the reason why I cited those two specific
00:40:40
confessions the boyfriend and the girlfriend pair and then you also have the two friends
00:40:44
I cited those because police had a hard time moving on from both of those because they both nailed a lot of the
00:40:53
hold back information in fact in one of those cases the detectives were screaming and shouting hey we gotta
00:41:00
arrest these guys and take them to court and the prosecutor kept reminding him okay now
00:41:06
keep in mind guys we have the DNA they can say all day and night that they did this and that the um they know
00:41:15
intimate details of the murders or the crimes but their DNA does not match that that is found on the chicken
00:41:21
so the prosecutor did not allow for the arrest in either occasion well one of the problems too with the case not being
00:41:27
solved right away is that hold back information starts leaking out in a small town I mean you you said it was
00:41:35
a village basically less than 50 000 people there's information that's probably getting leaked out and we've
00:41:42
seen that in other investigations as well it just happens unfortunately it's unfortunate but it just happens now in
00:41:49
this case one piece that nobody had gotten right about the hold back information
00:41:57
was that and this is very sad and disturbing to say all at the same time so I apologize
00:42:04
for having to say this but one piece of holdback information was that one of the
00:42:09
victims vomited as he was being shot or or just before he was shot right and these other confessions that
00:42:20
they had that detail was missing from those confessions when they speak with Anne Lockett
00:42:27
and then they start talking to Luna and dagorski that detail is present in those stories thus separating them
00:42:38
immediately from anybody else that they've ever spoken to and then they say to Juan Luna they're
00:42:46
they're interviewing him at his home I believe it might have been right in front of his home take this swab and
00:42:52
just rub it on the inside of your mouth here when we put it in this tube no big deal we're asking everybody to do this
00:42:58
we're asking anybody that we talked to to do it and he willingly agrees and he swabs the inside of his cheek and it
00:43:05
takes some time of course but after they check that swab and then compare it to the DNA found on
00:43:12
the chicken it's a match so now we have a DNA match putting one Luna at the scene later he gives a
00:43:20
confession that puts James de Gorski there with him they are both the gunmen in this confession we have Ann Lockett
00:43:28
who says that Juan Luna did it and James degorski did it and they told me the detail about the victim vomiting
00:43:35
and so all these things are matching up eventually James de Gorski gives a confession as well
00:43:41
the short of it here captain is that we end up with two individuals as being present there two individuals
00:43:49
involved and responsible for the murder of seven individuals and they end up being tried and tried separately now
00:43:58
while this case took place the murders took place in 1993. the arrests do not occur until
00:44:06
May of 2002 this is after they get the DNA sample back right almost 10 years and then we don't
00:44:14
have trials that start until one trial start in 2007 and the other started in 2009.
00:44:21
and these took so long to get to court because both of these trials were rather complicated you had yes the DNA with
00:44:30
Juan Luna but just because he ate a piece of chicken and left it at this restaurant does not
00:44:36
necessarily mean that he's the killer it just means he was the last customer of that day he was there and he was
00:44:42
somebody that was never willing for all these years to admit that he was there so that makes him much more suspicious
00:44:48
than anybody else of course you end up getting a confession out of him well and he also confessed to
00:44:55
and so correct and then after you arrest his partner in crime James de Gorski you get
00:45:02
a confession out of him as well the problem with the Gorski is you actually end up with zero physical evidence
00:45:09
putting him at the crime scene you're arresting him based off of what Juan Luna is saying and what Anne Lockett is
00:45:15
saying yes degorski eventually confesses and I keep circling around on this because what ended up being a problem at
00:45:23
both trials was that it was quickly pointed out that yeah these two guys confessed but so did other people right
00:45:31
and other people confessed because of the pressure that was put on them by the police by the detectives they may have
00:45:39
been a little overly aggressive in their pursuit of suspects that were not correct but like you said the difference
00:45:46
between those confessions and these confessions are little details and that's good thing so when everybody's
00:45:53
screaming at the top of their lungs that law enforcement needs to release more information well this is one of the
00:46:00
reasons why it's so important that they keep certain details back because if they would have said that one of the
00:46:07
victims threw up then that's that one little detail that than anybody would have known both Luna and agorski while
00:46:16
tried separately they were both found guilty on all seven counts of murder in both cases we have the state of Illinois
00:46:27
unsuccessfully sought the death penalty against igorski and Luna and they were both
00:46:34
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole now keep in mind those trials were 2007 2009
00:46:47
the state of Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011. at the time there were 15 inmates of the state still on
00:46:55
death row the then Governor Pat Quinn commuted those sentences to life sentences but if you look up this case
00:47:04
now you're going to see that James degorski he's been fighting for a new trial and trying to bring new evidence
00:47:10
and he's he's actually one and and and got to higher courts to actually hear this information but
00:47:20
the last thing I read on it was that he got to the higher courts but then the courts listened to the argument but then
00:47:27
dismissed they dismissed his notion to get a new trial yeah again the complications were the confessions
00:47:36
themselves because they did both give different versions a few different versions of what went
00:47:43
down there that night it could just be that they're trying to put more blame on the other perpetrator and put less blame
00:47:50
on themselves dagorski ended up being compensated by the state to the tune of 451 thousand
00:47:59
dollars this was in 2014 when a jury awarded him that money for punitive damages this was because he was beaten
00:48:08
severely by a sheriff's deputy in Cook County Jail in May of 2002 this was days after his arrest for these seven murders
00:48:18
yeah which would make you question the validity of a confession under oath because he's basically being
00:48:28
physically tortured by the police and both Luna and dagorski have recanted all of their confessions and they are
00:48:38
also saying that they were fed information from the police during the interrogation or questioning process
00:48:45
their lawyers have pointed out that Anne Lockett was awarded money a hundred and
00:48:51
seven thousand dollars roughly actually her and another woman split the money because they provided information about
00:48:58
the Gorski and Luna to the police to me Captain I I see their arguments and I understand them and I think that there
00:49:08
is some level of Merit there that they have in an argument and of course look that's why I am
00:49:17
that's why in some cases I am fond of our system because they do have appeals where they can express those concerns
00:49:24
and can make those arguments however from where I sit both of these guys look incredibly guilty I do want to make sure
00:49:34
that we give a big shout out to the Chicago Tribune who did an absolute gangbusters job
00:49:41
absolutely gangbusters work on covering this case over the many many years that it took to see this thing through
00:49:52
[Music] I want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage for another week
00:50:05
onward and upward inching our way towards episode 1000. it'll be here before you know it colonel
00:50:12
but do we have any recommended reading this week we are recommending a lovely girl the tragedy of Olga Duncan and the
00:50:20
trial of one of California's most notorious Killers by Deborah Larkin this is the incredible story of a murder that
00:50:30
ended with the last woman to ever be executed in California a lovely girl by Deborah Larkin follows a murder so
00:50:38
Twisted it seems ripped from a Greek tragedy the Mystery Begins on a quiet November night in Santa Barbara when a
00:50:46
pregnant nurse named Olga Duncan disappeared from her apartment check out a lovely girl the tragedy of Olga Duncan
00:50:54
and the trial of one of California's most notorious Killers by Deborah Larkin you can find that great title and many
00:51:01
more wonderful recommendations on our recommended page at truecrimegarage.com yeah you wanted the best and you got the
00:51:09
best the colonel is the goat I've said it before and I'll say it again and until next week be good be kind and
00:51:17
don't litter [Music] [Applause] foreign