Illinois Man, James Degorski, Killed 7 at Brown's Chicken [FOUND GUILTY]

[Roamer]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090831/ap_on_re_us/us_illinois_restaurant_slayings


http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090831/capt.c622eb9c7f9542ad9f25c9c2daa9ebb4.restaurant_s layings_cx302.jpg?x=213&y=210&xc=1&yc=1&wc=410&hc=404&q=85&sig=PKVvbXDUTRKcJ0poo2fF2Q-- (http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/undated-photo/photo//090831/480/c622eb9c7f9542ad9f25c9c2daa9ebb4//s:/ap/20090831/ap_on_re_us/us_illinois_restaurant_slayings)AP – An undated photo provided by the Cook County Sheriff's Department shows inmate James Degorski. On Monday, …
By KAREN HAWKINS, Associated Press Writer Karen Hawkins, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 58 mins ago

CHICAGO – Sixteen years after seven employees were killed inside a suburban Chicago fast food restaurant, their families are bracing to hear details of the deaths — for the second time in only two years — as the last suspect goes on trial.

While some say closure is just one more verdict away, others aren't so sure.

Opening statements were scheduled for Monday in the capital murder case against James Degorski, one of two men accused of killing everyone inside a Brown's Chicken and Pasta restaurant in the quiet bedroom community of Palatine in 1993.

A jury convicted Degorski's high school friend, Juan Luna, in 2007 and sentenced him to life in prison. Luna once worked at the restaurant and told authorities he thought it would be an easy target at closing time. The robbery netted less than $2,000.

Prosecutors said the men shot and stabbed restaurant owners Richard Ehlenfeldt, 50, his wife Lynn, 49, and five of their employees: Michael Castro, 16; Rico Solis, 17; Marcus Nellsen, 31; Thomas Mennes, 32; Guadalupe Maldonado, 46.

Victims' families said justice is long overdue, but the emotional ending they hope to walk away with differs.

"I'd like to get it over with so we can get on with our lives," said Robert Mennes, whose younger brother Thomas was killed. "For me, it's just a long, long time."

But Dana Sampson, who lost both of her parents during the ambush of their restaurant, said she isn't looking for closure.

"I cannot say I'm going to shut the door, then it's also shutting the door on my parents' life," said Sampson, who plans to again travel from her Arizona home to attend the second trial. "I want that door open, I want the memories of them."

Degorski faces the death penalty, though prosecutors may have less convincing evidence this time around.

They had physical evidence including a fingerprint and DNA in Luna's case, and a lengthy videotaped statement in which he implicated himself and Degorski in the killings. But a statement taken from Degorski after his arrest was brief and far less detailed, and prosecutors haven't indicated that any physical evidence ties him to the crime scene.

Degorski and Luna were arrested in May 2002, after Degorski's former girlfriend told police that both men confessed about their roles in the crime. She and another woman who made the same claim are expected to testify.

As they did during Luna's trial, victims' families plan to crowd the Chicago courtroom of no-nonsense Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan.
Sampson watched as Luna was tried and convicted. As she prepares for Degorski's trial, she said she doesn't know which is worse: the fear that came with the first, or the anticipation that is coming with the second.

Her aunt, Ann Ehlenfeldt, said she also doesn't know what to expect.

"I don't know what closure is," she said. "I have no idea what I'm going to feel like after it's over. I would imagine a sense of relief."

[LiveLaughLuv]

:1222423: X 7

[Roamer]

I'm still trying to figure out why it took 16 years to try this guy. :waitasec:

[packy]

If I remember right it took a long time for the ex girlfriend to come forth with what she heard. I remember when it happened, and it was so horrible and such a shock to hear so many people were killed. And so sad that they had no leads to the killers for so long.

[Alibar]

Has this second man been free on bond during these years?

[AmandaReckonwith]

GUILTY verdict returned just a little while ago. No good links yet, developing news.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/
dailyherald.com has a whole section for the Browns massacre

The jury took just 2 hours to find him guilty unanimously.

Pics:
http://s296.photobucket.com/albums/mm166/crankycrankerson/Browns%20Chicken%20Massacre/

[packy]

Thanks, Amanda. This was such a gruesome case, and I'm glad they finally caught who did the murders. Let Justice be served.

Now if they could only find who did the Tinley Park murders.

[packy]

Brown's Chicken killer is told, 'What you did was cowardly'

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-browns-chicken-trial.3oct03,0,4640635.story

[packy]

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=329620

Updated: 10/16/2009 8:21 PM

James Degorski is not a psychopath. Not according to a psychologist who testified Friday during the ongoing sentencing phase of Degorski's capital murder trial.

"He does not fit the profile of people who typically, on their own, kill many people," said Orest Wasyliw, a clinical psychologist who has evaluated hundreds of individuals who've murdered, including people who've committed multiple murders.

Late last month, a jury convicted Degorski of the 1993 murders of seven workers at a Palatine Brown's Chicken and Pasta Restaurant. Degorski's co-defendant Juan Luna received life in prison following his 2007 conviction.

Wasyliw's testimony came on Friday, which marked the end of the trial's seventh week and the second week of the defense's efforts to convince the jury to sentence Degorski to life in prison instead of death.

Wasyliw, a clinical psychologist and expert in the use of psychological tests to evaluate criminal defendants, came to his conclusion after interviewing Degorski six times between 2005 and 2006 and evaluating Degorski's response to 14 different psychological tests.

Dr. Peter Fink, a Rush University Medical Center psychiatrist, seconded Wasyliw's conclusion.

Before his first and only interview with Degorski several years ago, Fink said he expected to meet a psychopath: a cool, calculating, manipulative killer. Instead, he encountered a nervous, smiling Degorski who offered him sugarless candy and inquired if his chair was comfortable.

(More at link)

[AmandaReckonwith]

Decision is in. He will live.





Brown's jury spares James Degorski's life

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=330289

For shooting to death seven people in 1993, James Degorski will spend the rest of his own life in prison, a Cook County jury determined today.

The six men and six women who convicted Degorski on Sept. 29 of the infamous slayings at a Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant in Palatine deliberated for about five hours before coming to a decision on the sentence.

In the Chicago courtroom of Judge Vincent M. Gaughan - the same place accomplice Juan Luna was convicted in 2007 and also given life in prison for the slayings - Degorski appeared unemotional during the reading of his sentence.

He could have been sentenced to death.

Degorski's mother, who pleaded for his son's life on the witness stand and recounted his alleged child abuse at the hands of his father, told reporters shortly after the verdict that she felt for the victims' families.

"I appreciate the jury's decision," she said. "My heart goes out to what the families of the victims have been through this whole trial. I appreciate how kind and carrying they have been."

The decision brings a close to a vicious murder that shocked the nation when seven bodies were found in a walk-in freezer and cooler at the fast food restaurant on the night of Jan. 8, 1993.

The crime went unsolved for nearly a decade before police received a phone call from the friend of Degorski's ex-girlfriend. All along the murderers were local misfit teenagers who were out to "do something big," jurors in both trials determined.

Over more than two weeks, prosecutors urged jurors to put Degorski to death, saying he should be shown no mercy for his ruthless crimes. Members of the victims families told jurors of their loss and the people - some of them just teenagers - who were killed. Pictures of the victims, both alive and dead, were flashed before jurors.

For Diane Clayton, the Schaumburg mother of Brown's victim Marcus Nellsen and a death penalty supporter, the decision was clear.

"He willfully killed seven people just for the sake of killing and to do something big," she said, while adding that even though both killers are convicted, she will never find closure.

"That would be like closing my son out of my life and I could never do that," she said.

As reporters asked her questions in a crowded and hot media room at the Cook County criminal courts building in Chicago, Clayton briefly passed out. She appeared to be OK shortly afterward.

The defense presented a line of psychologists and Degorski family, friends and acquaintances who described an abusive, dysfunctional home in which the condemned man grew up. His father was accused of sexually and physically abusing Degorski and his siblings.

Degorski's own mother took the stand on her son's behalf, describing in soft, almost pained tones, the troubled family circumstances in which he grew up and insisting that "of course" his life still has value.

Still, prosecutors argued the crime was cold blooded and Degorski didn't deserve to live.

"They had the intent that nobody was going to walk out of there alive," said assistant state's attorney Lou Longhitano. "This guy's not just cold, he's subzero."

Degorski and Luna, who previously worked at the Brown's Chicken, killed restaurant owners Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt and employees Michael Castro, 16; Guadalupe Maldonado, 46; Thomas Mennes, 32; Marcus Nellsen, 31; and 17-year-old Rico Solis. All were shot in the head.

The killers showed up just before closing armed with a knife, a gun and pockets full of bullets supplied by Degorski and they had no intention to leave behind any witnesses, prosecutors said. They wore old clothes to carry out the murders, put on gloves and mopped up the blood after the shootings.

But in opening statements during the sentencing phase of the trial, assistant public defender Susan Smith countered that despite the enormity of Degorski's crime, jurors should not respond emotionally.

"You may be filled with vengeance and a desire to see blood spilled where blood has already been spilled," she said, referencing 17th-century poet John Donne's "Meditation XVII" in which Donne writes, "any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind."

Asking the jury to consider life, she assured them it guarantees Degorski will never again walk free.

"James Degorski is not a monster," she said. "James Degorski is a human being."








Pictures saved:
http://s296.photobucket.com/albums/mm166/crankycrankerson/Browns%20Chicken%20Massacre/

[packy]

Thanks for the update, Amanda.

Right now IL has a moratorium on the death penalty anyway and Gov. Quinn has said he has no plans to lift it last I heard.

[packy]

Inside the jury room: How they deadlocked

The first vote went 8-4 in favor of James Degorski's execution.

No one in the jury room blinked. The panel's initial vote had gone the same way three weeks earlier, when they found Degorski guilty of the Brown's Chicken slayings, but everyone eventually had come around.

So this time the jurors all explained their positions. And they voted again.

10-2.

The two holdouts -- men who had become friends over the seven-week trial -- stood firm. They would not sign Degorski's death warrant, insisting the man who killed seven people inside the Palatine restaurant 16 years ago deserved the kind of mercy and understanding he never received as a child.

The tension level in the room shot up, jurors said. The panel that had convicted Degorski and found him eligible for the death penalty in less than two hours was now deeply divided. (More at link)

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/10/browns-jurors-deadlocked-10-2-on-death-penalty.html#