Unsettling Ending: The Jaclyn Dowaliby Case

[Zoneboy]

More than 20 years later, many still have theories about who did it


Link


Chicagoans recall the constant media attention surrounding Jaclyn Dowaliby's case, which dominated headlines and TV news reports through the early 1990s. Jaclyn's neighbors and childhood friends were the first to canvass Midlothian streets, calling and searching for the blue-eyed second-grader.

Cynthia Dowaliby told Oprah Winfrey that she checked on Jaclyn the night of Sept. 9, 1988, and the child was asleep in her room. The Dowalibys slept in the following morning and discovered Jaclyn missing around 9:30 a.m., Cynthia said.



The Final Farewell


David Dowaliby read this out loud at Jaclyn's funeral on Sept. 18, 1988, at St. Mary's Cemetery in Evergreen Park.

Dear Jaclyn,

I knew you wanted to be a cheerleader and a mother. I loved and cared about you. I loved how you always wanted to wear a dress or a skirt to school. You were a beautiful roller skater and bike rider. You were a friend to everyone. We were so sad when we couldn't find you. Out hearts cried out for you every day. I'm sorry this happened. I will never give up on you. I'm sorry this happened to you. Our hearts grow and grow.

Love, Mommy, Daddy and Davey


David Dowaliby told police he noticed the front door was open that morning, and assumed his mother, who lived with the family in the basement of the home, had gotten in late and failed to shut door. The couple called neighbors and family members to see if anyone had seen Jaclyn.

"For a fleeting moment I doubted everyone," Cynthia told Winfrey in 1993. "I know my husband and he would never do anything to hurt his kids."

Neighbors tied yellow ribbons onto trees lining the streets near Jaclyn's home on 148th Place and kept children indoors, fearful the killer would return and snatch other kids.

"Every police officer and village employee at the time lived in this town," said Vincent Schavone, chief of Midlothian police who in 1988 lived about two blocks away from the Dowaliby family.

"This case negatively touched a lot of lives, and has an unsettling ending."

Jaclyn's horrific abduction and murder occurred eight years before child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, 6, was found dead under eerily similar circumstances in her Boulder, Colo., home.

In both the cases, a broken basement window became pivotal to the police investigation. In both cases, investigators did not immediately secure the homes to glean evidence and prevent contamination. In both cases, a media frenzy ensued when police fingered the parents and the parents shied from the press and hired lawyers.

"At the time this was a very rare occurrence. No one raced in and accused the parents. The police work was consistent with the times," Schavone said.

"This was the end of an era when people left keys in their cars, their doors unlocked and windows open at night to sleep."

The evidence

Investigators and prosecutors believe the evidence pointed to David and Cynthia. No one saw anyone enter their home, no one heard the basement window break and nothing - other than an innocent child - was taken from modest tan brick home the night of Sept. 9, 1988.

"We felt these two people were responsible, and nothing that's happened since then has changed my mind," said former Illinois state police investigator Kevin Shaughnessy, who interrogated David Dowaliby on Sept. 14, 1988, and informed him Jaclyn's maggot-infested body had been discovered in Blue Island.

"It wasn't a conspiracy to frame the parents; it was an objective to find Jaclyn alive, and after the murder, to find the person who did it. We followed the evidence, and that's where it led."

Police early on theorized the basement window had been broken from the inside - a theory later disproved by forensic scientists in court.

Police and prosecutors also publicized they had two eyewitnesses who had seen David Dowaliby at 2:30 a.m. in the parking lot of the Blue Island apartment where Jaclyn's body was found on the night she disappeared.

In fact, they had located one person who said he saw someone with a nose structure "similar" to David's from a distance of about 75 feet on a moonless night.

Police also failed to dust two doors on the rear of the home for fingerprints and failed to take close-up shots of the broken basement window sill. Investigators testified in court a thin layer of dust lined the window sill after the abduction, which they felt proved no one could have entered the window.

"It's very normal for an officer to sit and write a basic report at the crime scene and not be as thorough because originally we were talking about a missing girl," then-Midlothian Police Chief William Fischer told the Daily Southtown in May 1990. "But later on I had (the officer) sit down and write down every piece of information he could recall."

That was hotly disputed by the Dowaliby's defense attorneys because police failed to take a sample of the dust or take up-close photographs.

"Would it have been nice to have photographic evidence of everything? Sure, but there is never a situation in any case where you get all the evidence you wish you had," said Patrick O'Brien, now a Cook County judge who in 1990 served as lead prosecutor in the trial. "I'm not going to criticize the police. In every case you wish you had more evidence."

The stand-off

During their 1993 taped interview with Oprah Winfrey, David Dowaliby said the couple stopped cooperating with police the day Jaclyn's body was discovered.

The public learned Jaclyn was dead during the Sept. 14, 1988, evening news, he said, while investigators Shaughnessy and Alfred Hardman held back that information from him for an hour-and-a-half while they tried to illicit a confession.

"Nothing is worse in this world than losing your daughter. You couldn't be accused of a worse crime," David Dowaliby told Winfrey.

'Gone in the Night'

Investigative reporters Robert Warden and David Protess in the early 1990s seized on the case as a wrongful conviction, and documented numerous evidentiary missteps by the police task force team that helped to buttress David's appeal.

"David and Cynthia were pleading with the police to shift their focus from them and on to who might have abducted their daughter," Protess said. "After Jaclyn was found, the state zeroed in on them and (the Dowalibys') lawyer appropriately demanded silence."

Protess' and Warden's 1993 book "Gone in the Night: The Dowaliby Family's Encounter with Murder and the Law" spawned a Lifetime movie of the same name that stars Shannon Dougherty, which depicts a Dowaliby relative as the killer; the family receives residuals from the movie when it airs.

The couple also cooperated with NBC's now-defunct "Unsolved Mysteries" series in 1993, in which the couple asked for the public's help to track Jaclyn's killer. David and Cynthia did not participate in A&E's 2008 American Justice program titled "A Parent's Nightmare," which also details the case.

"Whenever the (Lifetime) movie shows, we get a cold-case call," Schavone said. All of the calls are dead ends, he said.

Dead ends and unanswered questions may be all that's left of a case that began when Jaclyn Dowaliby somehow left her home in the middle of a warm autumn night in 1988. Though boxes of evidence gather dust in a Chicago warehouse, few expect authorities will ever deliver justice for Jaclyn.

"We're left with the mystery of what happened to Jaclyn and we wonder all the time what could've happened to her, who could've hurt her," Cynthia said in the "Unsolved Mysteries" story. "We want to find out what happened to Jaclyn. We want justice."

[browneyes106]

Very good article. I really feel for David and Cynthia.

[crochetbuff]

Thank you for posting the link and article.

Yes, the movie did leave it looking like the distant family member (Jaclyn's bio-Dad's brother) was most likely the guilty one. Read the book, though and I think that the other man looked at is more likely the real perpetrator (Can't remember his name, but see my posts in the Dowaliby thread.) He had done this exact same thing nearby, but police dismissed it as he hadn't killed the other girl.

[Mastermind]

The fact that the killer knew enough about the house to avoid that shelf tells me it was a close friend or family member.

The killer had to have known Jaclyn as well as the Dowaliby's to pull this thing off so easily and quickly.

[crochetbuff]

Originally Posted by Mastermind

The fact that the killer knew enough about the house to avoid that shelf tells me it was a close friend or family member.

The killer had to have known Jaclyn as well as the Dowaliby's to pull this thing off so easily and quickly.

That sounds probable and would make sense that it could be a relative or friend. In the book it said that the Bio-Uncle did not know the house well, possibly had never even visited. Perry Hernandez was convicted of going in through a window of a house and taking a little girl out and molesting her in the middle of the night, he let her go and she made her way home. This happened about a year after Jaclyn's killing. Same M.O., but he didn't kill the girl. He also, if I remember correctly had a car similar to the one spotted near where Jaclyn's body was found.

From my other post on other thread: Perry Hernandez who almost exactly one year after Jaclyn's death broke into a home in the area through an open window, took the little girl out of her bed from the same room where her brother was sleeping, past the dog and all, and sexually assaulted her. She was let go and made her way home. He went to prison for that. There's an article online that Hernandez was going to submit blood samples in 1989, it's through one of those services that you have to sign-up for, so I can't read the article. I don't know if Hernandez ever submitted those samples. If he had, he could have been ruled in or out as a suspect, as there was blood under Jaclyn's fingernails. It was type O, David Dowaliby's was Type A. I have no idea if anyone has since done any DNA testing on the blood found under Jaclyn's fingernails.

[browneyes106]

Does anyone know what mental illness or disability Jacyln's uncle had? I remember it was mentioned in the movie but I can't remember what it was.

[crochetbuff]

Originally Posted by browneyes106

Does anyone know what mental illness or disability Jacyln's uncle had? I remember it was mentioned in the movie but I can't remember what it was.

On another board, it says "paranoid schizophrenic" I don't remember for sure, but that sounds about right.

[Cori aka ChrisSCrush]

Originally Posted by crochetbuff

I have no idea if anyone has since done any DNA testing on the blood found under Jaclyn's fingernails.

That just drives me when there's a possible answer and they don't follow up!

[Shahla]

Maybe they did follow it up but:
1. it came back inconclusive
2. it was not Hernandez's blood
3. it was from Jaclyn herself
4. it was from an unknown person, not in the DNA data bank
5. there was too little to test, contaminated

[mwcarolina]

i feel it was either a family member or a neighbor behind this, the shelves and the fact that he knew where Jaclyn's room was exactly makes me believe that the killer knew this family or stalked them.

[Clockworkhigh]

The Dowaliby's seem like nice people. But I do tend to agree with the prosecutor in the UM segment who said that someone inside that house is responsible for her disappearance/death.

Every is just too convenient. I often wonder why the grandmother was never interviewed here. Why is it that this broken window occurs a night that she doesn't come home? Something was fishy about that. I am not saying she or David were necessarily involved but it is a fantastic coincidence that this "burglar" broke into the house knowing the grandmother was not home.

I also wonder how someone could not have heard or scene something. Minus the grandmother there was David his wife and their son in that house. No one heard a thing? No neighbours heard a window smash? The grandmother was coincidentally not home? The desk below the window was not upset?

Also another thing. This may not be a big deal but here goes: When I was 7, the last thing in the world I did was sleep in until 9:30am. I was up at 7am if not sooner watching cartoons. David did not check on Jacklyn until 9:30am? I don't know many 7 year olds that would sleep in until then. This is 1988, do you know the cartoons you would be missing?

Lastly the polygraph. I know David's account is that the man administering the exam told him to intentionally lie. Yes this sounds weird and makes it sound like a little bit of a witchunt but at the end of the day wasn't the polygraph inconclusive? If David wasn't lying about his involvement of killing her wouldn't it have showed up that he was telling the truth with that?

[Mastermind]

i feel it was either a family member or a neighbor behind this

1.Much as in the Jon benet Ramsey case there seems to be a belief that "neighbor" equals "friend".

You could be a neighbor next door and not know a thing about the inside of someone;s house.

I was close by to my next door neighbors house several years back and I probably couldn;t tell you intricate details about their home like that shelf.

Think about how many neighbors you have that are practically strangers to you and how many people you don;t even know live in the house a few houses down.

It's either friends or family member...neighbors do not need to be included.

2. To actually know someone elses house... you have to have been there multiple times and spent a huge amount of time around the house and in most of the rooms.

If you think about this...there are not that many people that you invite to your home that often and for that great length of time. Not even your relatives may spend that much time there.

If you really think about it....there is a really finite number of people that know the inside of your house as well as you and your family.

[Clockworkhigh]

Correction: this person had to most likely be close to the GRANDMOTHER. A close friend of David's would not really know the set up of the room of the grandmother unless he/she knew her as well. He had to know she was not coming home that night.

Again, like I said something is amiss with this case. I think the prosecution went fishing with trying to nail David but I have never in my life ruled him out as a suspect. A lot of fantastic coincidences happen.

Like I have said before, 9:30am is awfully late for a 7 year old to be assumed to be sleeping in before checking in on her on a Saturday cartoon-filled morning. I was ALWAYS up before my parents on the weekends without a second thought.

And that polygraph thing, I don't like it............

[Priddo]

Wouldn't it be ironic if the real murderer was the neighbour they filmed getting in through the basement window, to prove it was easily possible to do.

[Mastermind]

Correction: this person had to most likely be close to the GRANDMOTHER. A close friend of David's would not really know the set up of the room of the grandmother unless he/she knew her as well. He had to know she was not coming home that night.

I'm sorry it was the grandmother's house and not the Dowaliby's?

The house was not David Dowaliby's primary residence?