October 21, 2024 • 41 mins
On January 8, 1993, seven employees at a Brown’s Chicken and Pasta in Palatine, IL. were brutally murdered. With no solid physical evidence, police unsuccessfully chased down hundreds of leads. Local officials established a $100,000 reward. Still, the case went cold for nine years. Then, in 2002, two of James Degorski’s ex-girlfriends came forward with a story implicating James, and what they said would land him in prison for life. He continues to claim his innocence.
To learn more about James Degorksi and to contact James, visit:
https://jamesdegorski.com/
“The Brown's Chicken Massacre” by Maurice Possley
https://www.amazon.sg/Browns-Chicken-Massacre-Maurice-Possley/dp/0425190854
To learn more about Maurice:
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/Staff.aspx
Bonjean Law Group
https://www.bonjeanlaw.com/
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good™ Podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, This is a free call from Jim, an incarcerated
individual at they no correctional centers. This call is subject
to recording and monitoring.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
James de Gorski hates rudeness, especially when it comes to
the police.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Please please, literally came up to me and said, what's
your name? Just very arrogant and very rude.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
It sounds like you're pretty big on respect.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
You've mentioned that a few times, that they were really
just disrespectful and inappropriate.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Sounds like you introduce yourself to so many. That's so
we start off on the wrong path.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I spoke to James on the phone from prison, and
he explained the saga of his relationship with the police
officers who would end up arresting him in an Illinois
town called Palatine.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Palatine Please didn't like me from high school because I
wouldn't stitch On broke into all the lockers so well,
I was being a janitor there. Somebody broke in the
lockers and I didn't see who did it, and I
didn't speculate. I already had a problem with these Peloton
police from that. He's throw tiger parties and they didn't
like that, so I just I had problem with Peloton.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Police and the way James responded to the police wouldn't
exactly help him in the long run.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
So James is one of those guys who's very sarcastic
and he had a arrogance to him at that time.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This is Ashley Cohen. She's a partner at Bonjin Law Group.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
He would probably be the type of person to make
a joke that's not funny and that the police would
maybe turn into fact of sorts. You know, someone who
seems cold, but he's been through a lot and he
deals with his trauma by you know, humorizing it, or
(02:00):
he just thought they were crazy.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
These police are crazy, I'm not exaggerating. Unprofessional from the
get go, and they're consultational bullies and they escalated everything
the police. These police, not police in general. I have
nothing against the police. I have found with authority that
abuses to think they're above the law and above our constitution.
(02:23):
That's where I have a problem, and.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
James thinks that's exactly what happened in his case.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
My name is James de Gorski. I've been wrong. Sley
inclcerated for the.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Last twenty two years from Lava for Good this is
wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. James Degorski James de
Gorski was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August twentieth, nineteen
seventy two.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I've raised in off the Estates, Mon Prospect and Arlington Heights.
We had a very, very tight family. At seven, I
had an older fitter you knew, a younger brother and
a younger fitter.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Jim, as he likes to be called, says his mom
stayed home raising the kids, and his dad worked at motorola.
So what was family life like?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Loving? Fun, messy, lots of yelling. Tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Thanks for asking, because the last twenty some years it's
been about mitigation. But actually I have no complaints and
no regrets. I had an awesome family. We didn't the
normal things a family would do, go to church every Sunday.
We'd have family game night with pizza and all my
friends were welcome.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Jim remembers family vacations and camping trips and just hanging
with his siblings.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We grew up at the edge of the urban sprawl,
where with a cornerfield that started the meadows, the woods,
the Kanton pounds and fourth much where we spent most
of my time Bill Fifth in Bill Ramport, be on
next bike, hang out with some older friends, motorcycles and
a board ramp. Pretty independent. I was basically a free range.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Fit for so Jim says. His parents let him leave
at sunrise and return when the street lights were coming on.
He was independent, and because his dad worked so much,
Jim says, he also stepped in as a father figure.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I was like, I don't know how I say it.
I was like my brothers and my sister's dad, and
I took them everywhere. I took my brothers and sisters.
He just did everything. My older friends that I had
even enjoyed them around. So we had a blast as
a kid. I got no complaints about my dysfunctional family.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Jim says being free range, as he calls it, allowed
him to explore his curiosity. You know those annoying little
kids always asking why.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
They just he's saying why, and then you answer, and
they say why, and then they answer it, they say why.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
That was him, He calls them why kids.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I was one of those irritating kids. But hindsight, I
guess I wasn't irritating because my neighbor's always answered my
why why questions.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
And Jim learned things roaming around talking to the adults.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I just go to my neighbor's house and he does upholstery,
so I could help him do a polstery, and the
guy would throw me twenty dollars. His friend, his little kid,
throw me twenty dollars just to hear his stories.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Jim says. Another neighbor built toy cars.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I didn't want to play with the RC cars, which
he thought. I wanted to learn how to do electronics,
so the guy was teaching me electronics. This is all
in grammar school.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Growing up. His brothers delivered newspapers to help his parents
out with money. But Jim, I.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Would go garbage picking while they delivered their newspapers. And
then I'd get stuff by the trash and fix your
name in VCRs, radios, turlie and irens, blow dryers I'd get.
I'd get a pretty good money by selling stuff that
I can garbage hick. When you find one hundred dollars
VCR thrown in the trash, and all you need is
(06:06):
a fourteenth cent hues and a pretty profitable I had
a free apprenticeship as a kid. Being one of those
whyy why kids with all my neighbor Jim says he
didn't mind helping his parents because this was all fun
to him anyway. Just doing that as just like a
hobby in a way. But I had money, so I
(06:27):
helped my parents paid the bills or the watter, do
our little vacations, campouts and whatever. I was often letting
my parents brain my favorite account down to zero, trying
to keep the electric and the hour on. Whatever problems
we're having. Even with our van, our car would break down, So.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Jim says he learned how to fix car breaks in
grammar school. He was a hustler for sure. In his
freshman year, Jim worked as a janitor at his high school,
cleaning the cafeteria and vacuuming hallways after class, and with
the money he was able to keep for himself, he
would buy tools.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So in high school I started doing things like fixing cars,
their bikes, mini bikes.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He eventually rented out his mom's garage and had his
own mechanic shop there.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I had a friend Reggie in high school that him
and I were going to open a mechanic shop together.
We're going to build race cars, and we started in
my garage. We're popping motors in all the time we're
taking out We're taking out three o sevens, popping in
three fifties. So I was doing a lot of that stuff.
And when I started making good money, maybe I had
(07:35):
extra money to give away or charity for do whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
If it sounds like Jim de Gorski didn't have time
for any more activities, he was still going to high
school and church and volunteering. Jim de Gorski thought he
had the perfect life until police came knocking on the
(08:06):
morning of Friday, January eighth, nineteen ninety three. Jim remembers
waking up to his mom asking him to move a
car that was blocking the driveway.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So I had to get up and move his car.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
The car belonged to Jim's high school friend, Juan Luna.
He'd been in some sort of accident and Jan left
the car at Jim's place to get fixed.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I don't really know what he'd needs done. He got
tee boned or the side damage. So I fixed his car.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Jim says he waited for one to pick up the
car and pay him for the repairs, and when he
didn't I.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Took his car. I took it on a joy ride.
I was so mad. I'm like, I just loaded up
his car and went out and did what I did
my rounds.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
He drove the car about ten miles west to Carpentersville
just to screw with Wan.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's kind of like an impovertish area with like a
high crime area out of Chicago Land, and it's far out,
it's almost rural. Left his I left his car there
being rude. It's it's a long distance away for him
to go pick up his car. And if you want
your car so bad, come pick it up. He paged
me twenty times and literally cussing me out.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Jim says he left the car parked at Jewel Osco,
the grocery store, and then his girlfriend at the time,
Eileen Baccala, picked him.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Up so so she got off work early.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
She came to meet me a Jewel and they hung
out the rest of the night smoking weed and cat sitting.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
It's a boring knife or whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
The next day, Jim and everyone in the Chicago suburbs
woke up to big news. A massacre at a Brown's
Chicken and Pasta in Palatine, Illinois. Palatine is about thirty
miles north of downtown Chicago. At the time, it was
a sleepy suburb where even one murder a year was rare,
(09:57):
so the whole community was shaken when news spread that
seven people were gunned down inside the fast food restaurant
shortly after closing around eight pm. Two of the victims
were the owners, Lynn and Richard Ellenfeldt, a married couple
who had just bought the franchise months prior, looking for
a fresh start after Richard had lost his job. The
(10:21):
other victims were employees Guadalupe Maldonado, Thomas Menez, Marcus Nelson,
Rico Solis, and Michael Castro. Rico and Michael were both
teenagers from the local high school working part time. It
was a bloody murder. Five of the victims were found
in the walk and cooler of the restaurant. Some had
(10:42):
been stabbed, one had their throat slit, and all had
been shot. Less than two thousand dollars was stolen from
the restaurant.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
The investigation went down as you would imagine a ninety
three mass killing investigation went down where it was a mess.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
This is Ashley Cohen again. Ashley says although the scene
at the restaurant was chaotic.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
There was a ton of forensic evidence pulled from the scene.
There were like two hundred fingerprints, there was food still
in the trash containers, there were bloody shoe prints. I mean,
anything and everything you imagine in forensic science and analysis
was present at this crime scene.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
One key piece of evidence was a receipt.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
So there was a cash register that appeared to have
been closed and reopened to sell a meal at nine
to eight pm. The receipt was consistent with the meal
that was discovered in the trash can. That led investigators
to believe that one of the offenders may have purchased
the meal prior to the shooting.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Since it was closing time, the trash cans were empty
except for one four piece chicken meal.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
One of the female investigators had the foresight to freeze
a eaten chicken bone that was in the trash and
I just recall she was a female, because females are
smart and have the future insight that there she saw
significance and was like, maybe we could use this eventually,
(12:20):
and so she froze it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Jim was shook when he heard about the murders, not
only because things like this didn't happen in Palatine, Illinois,
but because Wan used to work there.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
A few of his friends actually worked there too, so
we were just shocked that it happened so close to home.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Do you remember talking to him about it at all?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, I'm more because it was a lot of time ago.
I was at a party and it was one of
his friends. So we were over at his friend's house
and I saw an article they had on the wall,
and that was pretty much the longest conversation I ever
really had about it. How shocking that looking at my friends,
(13:07):
like justin you could have this could have been you.
So yeah, I think the longest conversation I ever had.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Jim didn't think much more about it until the police
showed up at his door two years later asking about.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Juan Luna nineteen ninety five. The police came to my
house and asked me about his alibi. They said they're
just doing they're doing follow up with a former employees alibi,
and then Jan Luna used me as an alibi. I'm like,
wasn't that like three years ago?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Jim says he felt put on the spot. He'd forgotten
all about that day he took one's car for a
joy ride.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Of course I didn't remember what I was doing today,
so they did kind of a rude question to sit
there and asked me what I was doing three years earlier.
So I didn't like that whole thing.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Apparently Wan Luna had told police that he'd been working
with Jim that day at his career fixing cars.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I never employed Lula never. Wan never worked at my house,
never worked in my shop never. So that was the
first thing that I just laughed about. The guy doesn't
even help me in my shop, so they'll have this
whole story that he's working for me in my shop.
I started lappened.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Jim says the interaction with police did not go well.
He was sarcastic and arrogant because he says the police
embarrassed him by coming to his house, and he was
bothered by the fact that they expected him to remember
on the spot something that happened almost three years prior.
So he brushed them off.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
When he left me in nineteen ninety five, said they
were going to go reinvestigate him. And then I went
to a party as a remodeling party were remodeling a
friend's house, and it was kind of funny because their
sister knew who Juan was, so it was funny for
everybody at the remodeling party to hear that these police
are going to go harass him again. We thought it
(14:56):
was funny and we had a conversation then, and then
I talked to Line after that, but he just never
really said anything and never acted guilty or concerned or anything.
I didn't think the cues involved whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
The police had been investigating the Browns Chicken murders for
more than two years. Ashley says they went through a
lot of potential suspects. According to one report, the police
would end up chasing down over four thousand leads.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
There were a lot of investigations, There were a lot
of different players. There was a whole task force assigned
to investigating this mass murder, and it was It was
one of those situations where people were just desperate to
find answers.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
And then the case went cold for seven more years.
Shortly after the murders, a Palatine council member started a
reward fund. It started with one thousand dollars, then the
community chipped in, raising almost one hundred thousand dollars for
any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
(16:09):
There was a lot of public pressure to solve this case.
The media hounded law enforcement looking for answers, civil advocates
blasted police for public dishonesty and deception, but nothing happened. Then,
nine years after the murder, in the spring of two
thousand and two, Jim Degorski was called to the police
(16:29):
station for questioning. Jim says he didn't think he had
anything to run from, so he went.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And it was the same sergeant that talked to me
all the way back in nineteen ninety five, which was
not good. I remember him from his lashes and the
way he talked, so I was kind of sarcastic to
him from the get go.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Jim sat down with law enforcement, including Police Commander William King,
and then.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Was talking to me. He just asked me basic general
questions about the same alibi. But before before I left,
like he started asking me about he basically said, we
have two suspects DNA, we have two suspects fingerprints, and
we and we have an eyewitness. We have eyewitnesses of
the murderers. So the guy who says everybody's a suspect,
(17:22):
So would you give us your DNA or your or
your fingerprints to clear your name? And you did so? I, oh, yeah,
I guess. I gave my DNA, like ten slabs of DNA.
I gave him my whole entire handprint, including the top
where I don't even have fingerprints. I gave them all
that stuff. But they asked me a bunch of questions
before I left, like if I had any problem with
one of my ex girlfriends and trying to have something
(17:44):
like that, and then that's right as I was leaving.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Did you have any problems with ex girlfriends at the time.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
No, not at all. I didn't even I didn't even
understand the line of questioning next time I'm being arrested
at my work parking lot.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
That ex girlfriend police were asking about was Anne Lockett.
Jim and Anne had dated around the time of the murders,
when he was twenty. They'd met through one in high school.
Jim says Anne had demons, she'd been in rehab and
spent some time in a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt,
but she was also fun. She wanted to learn how
(18:21):
to work on cars, and they both liked the outdoors.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
We were great tree hugger, so we went hiking inside
and all the trees hadible foods. Every day that we're
going through eating herbs. It's fun to go camping, hiking
with knocking out her life. Bucket left the whole entire
time we dated. But a lot of my friends did
not care for her.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Why didn't they like her?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Didn't trust her, didn't like her.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Ann was different than Jim's friends.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Some of my friends are yuppies. Some of my friends
are gearheads. I have different groups of friends, and they
liked me day nurse. A lot of people they voiced it,
Jim says.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Back in high school, she was the type to hang
out with the heavy partying crowd, the burnouts at the
back of the school cafeteria, as Jim calls them.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
She's like me. She goes a lot of concerts, so
she goes like she likes that death metal stuff, like
the Cannibal corpse stuff. Oh, and she wore the leather
jacket heavy metal parties and tiger parties, and she got
some wild stories of all her party lifestyle. So a
(19:33):
lot of my friends didn't really care for that.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
His relationship with Anne worked for about a year, he says,
until they broke up seven years later. In two thousand
and two, Anne Lockett came forward with a story. Anne
said that Jim had called her while she was at
the psychiatric hospital on January ninth, nineteen ninety three, the
day after the murders. She said that she.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Received a call from James de Gorski at a payphone
at the hospital and that he told her to watch
the news because he had done something big. So she
turns on the television and saw that the lead story
on the news was the Browns Chicken murder.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Police said Anne had information only the killers would have known.
She said she waited so long to come forward because
she'd been afraid Jim would kill her. On May sixteenth,
two thousand and two, Jim Degorski and Wan Luna were
arrested for the Browns Chicken murders. Jim lived in Indianapolis
at the time and was about to start work when
(20:37):
two officers showed up, including police Commander William King. Again
literally told me to.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Leave my inhaler, put your FN hands on the fing car.
They started off all wrong, embarrassed front of my co workers,
in front of my friends. The gas station the subway
in front of my It was bad.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
They got in the car and drove four hours to Palatine.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And it just went downhill from then because I literally
had to go to the bathroom the whole time, and
they made me hold it all the way to the
Illinois border. I was in pain.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Jim says he also had a job interview.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
After work, which is why my sister didn't put out
an app for me. They wouldn't let me change my
clothes from my work all day. I'm a blue collar
I do a property management, property maintenance. I'm dirty. They
wouldn't let me change my clothes. They wouldn't let me
grab my inhaler, they wouldn't let me grab my I
have a next cell slash cell phone. They wouldn't let
(21:36):
me even chirp on that.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Jim was pissed, just like the other times he encountered
Palatime police.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So by the time we got in the interrogation room,
we started off the wrong way with them being confrontational bullies,
escalating everything, and.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
It only got worse from there. What were you thinking?
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Honestly, these counts are so unprofessional. I didn't know what
they were going to do next.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Were you scared, terrified, police said, Jim waved his Miranda rights,
but he remembers it differently.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
They wouldn't let me use their phone since they wouldn't
let me take my phone to call my lawyer. So
I have two attorney friends based family friends. I had
no rights, what's one? I was terrified the whole time.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Eventually police told Jim why they were holding him. They
said he and Wan Luna had robbed the Brown's Chicken
restaurant and killed everyone inside, and they had the DNA
to prove it from that chicken bone the investigator saved
back in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
The case went cold. Then DNA starts vamping up. They
test the chicken bone and Juan Luna's a match. I
think once the DNA hit against Juan Luna, they built
their case around that.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The police told Jim that after murdering the Browns Chicken
employees in cold blood, he and Juan met Eileen Bacala,
his girl friend, at the jewel oscar parking lot in Carpentersville,
with a duffel bag full of cash. Then they all
drove together to another town to meet a friend, and
in that ride, one and Jim bragged about what they'd done.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Once they accused me and started putting me into the narrative,
that's when I started saying out no, and I'm going
to remain asilent.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Jim says police were using his alibi to actually implicate
him in the murder.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
They're putting words in my mouth and they mixed my
truth with lies, and they're telling me what other people
are saying, which I know are lies. And they wouldn't
tell me after a while who was saying what, so
that would get really confusing. And this this is this NonStop.
This is going on like a tag team.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
It was relentless until finally Jim allegedly confessed.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
He allegedly made oral statements.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
King brought in assistant state's attorney Michael McAll to take
his statement on camera. So was there a statement that
you made?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So what they were trying to do is tell me
we will let you use the telephone right now. All
you have to do is say that you did this.
They will let you use the phone. Just say that
you just did this, Say that Luna did this, say this.
Say they're telling me what to say. And then if
I say that on a video, And it was incriminating.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Police said. Jim admitted that he and Wan were involved
in the crime, but then refused to further elaborate on camera.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I don't even know what the video said. I think
I said yeah, right to their narrative m and then
immediately said that now I get to talk to my
Now I can talk to a judge.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So did you get to use the phone?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Never?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Jan Luna allegedly confessed as well, saying that he'd been
with Jim all day working on cars, then they'd robbed
the Browns Chicken and then met Eileen at the jewel Osco.
Did you have a lot of support when this happened?
Do people believe you did this? Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
My god, My friends thought I had absolutely no involvement
in this whatsoever. Every time they tried to voice it,
they were literally told to shut up, and as far
as shut the fuck up, and then as far as
the police literally threatening them telling them that they better lie,
tell me you better say this, or basically threaten them
(25:19):
with going to Cook County jail. They couldn't even have voice.
My their beliefs were not even accepted. They were told
this and threatened by this, and they basically feared for
their lives from the police and from this crazy vigilante
psychos in society.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Jim says his family got the worst of it and
were tormented for being related to a Brown's Chicken murderer.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
They didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong
at all. But my family did absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever,
and the least bit to be persecuting them and targeting
with comments even it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Jim sat in jail for years and finally went to
trial in August two thousand and nine, sixteen years after
the murders. The prosecution had painted one and Jim as
quote people without a soul who went on a killing
spree just for the thrill of it. It was all
over the news and now Jim was facing the death penalty.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
By the time trial came along, he just knew I'm toast.
Nobody gives a shit about me. And I mean, if
you read the trial, I would say like ten percent
of it is actually is a defense and ninety percent
of it is offense on the part of his public
(26:46):
defender to try to not get him to get the
death penalty. It was all mitigation, like everything was you
are You're going to be convicted so let's just mitigate
and let's not get you the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
The prosecution did not use the alleged tape confession by Jim.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
They just use the testimony of the prosecutor and the
officer who were present for the alleged oral statements, rather
than the videotaped confession exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Instead of using the video, the prosecution had King and
McHale testify about the confession.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
The videotape confession would be the best evidence. If it's
a solid videotape confession, that would be the best evidence,
But obviously they didn't think it would play well with
the jury, so they didn't show it. It just was
not even believable on its face.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Since the prosecution had no forensic evidence tying Jim to
the murders, they relied heavily on their star witnesses. Jim's
ex girlfriends An Lockett and Eileen Bacalla, repeated the stories
they told police. Jim says, the whole experience was grueling.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I thought it was bad that I had to be forced,
actually everybody, to be honest with you, was forced to
watch that those videos and those photos, like just the
crime scene that was one of the worst things for me.
But it was bad to listen to hand Locket's testimony,
but listening to those cops law enforcement officers under oath
lion and the calla lion, which is supposed to be
(28:24):
like a real good friend of mine, since for a
long time, that was gut wrenching for me. Just those
two were the worst.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
On September nineteenth, two thousand and nine, thirty seven year
old James de Gorski was convicted of all seven counts
of murder. His defense attorney Mark Levitt addressed to the press, obviously.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
Very disappointed in the verdict that we respect to that
the jury is not a guilty. My focus now obviously
turns to the setsunury and trying to convince this jury
to the appropriate sense for mister Devarsky life in prison.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
The jurors agreed to life in prison, though many told
the press they wanted the death penalty and that Anne
and Eileen's testimony had convinced them Jim was guilty.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
I think that their testimony was very key decisions that
we reached.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Wan Luna had gone to trial in two thousand and
seven and was also convicted of the murders. Jim has
been incarcerated over two decades, and he spent most of
his time alone.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I just don't fit in. So I really just preferred
just to walk around the yard by myself, do things
by myself. If I can help out where it comes
to a school work or I went to a college
program and stuff like that, I don't mind helping people
do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
But Jim says he's a different person on the inside.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Kindness is considered a weakness and to me, to avoid
fighting and whatever. I don't put myself out as charitable
because you can't be charitable. I'm not in I only
want to describe this environment.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Has your family supported you while you're in there.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, I got a great family. I got a great
support network through them. They just I'm an embarrassment to
them now. I was like that brother that was actually
like a father. When I first got arrested. It was
nice to get happy Father's Day cards for my sibling. Yeah,
so they've been supportive. It just they don't know what
to do, and I really don't know what to do either.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Jim met the Bojin Law group where Ashley is partner,
when he was first arrested for the murders in the
early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
One James was arrested. He went Cook County Jail and
when a correction officer found out that he was the
Brown's Chicken murderer, he punched him so hard in the
face that it broke one of the plates in his face.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
So Jim hired Jennifer Bonjin to file a civil case.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
James felt very strongly about Jenny because she was the
only one who would even consider his case. I mean,
you have a guy who was accused of one of
the biggest mass murders in Illinois at that time, and
nobody wants to represent the Brown's Chicken murder. So she
she did. She represented him, and she got a pretty
(31:42):
favorable verdict for him.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
She got him over five hundred thousand dollars in damages.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
So once they got to know each other, he said,
will you represent.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Me in his post conviction proceedings.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
I think we started investigating his criminal case around two thousand,
fifteen twenty fourteen. We just hit the ground running doing
investigation for him.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
What specifically were you interested in? Because there's a thousand
cases you could take, you know, why look at this one?
Speaker 4 (32:16):
What was it? I think that the fact that he
was claiming actual innocence was appealing to Jenny. Also, the
evidence is just really scarce. It's just not as it's
not what they paint in the media.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Remember, police found no evidence tying Jim to the murder scene.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
The fact that this was like a massacre of the
scene with blood everywhere and fingerprints everywhere and hair and
all of this analysis, all of his DNA and not
a single stitch of evidence was found to implicate James
was seem very problematic. When we started investigating James's case,
(33:00):
a lot of there were a lot of holes in
the story, in the investigation, everything seemed very confusing and
not clear. And why ten years later, and also why
were these two guys, Wan Luna and James de Gorski
the suspects, Like, usually you don't just go murder seven
(33:23):
people and then go about their merry business just living.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Their lives, Ashley says. Another thing that didn't make sense
was how the prosecution painted Wan Luna as a disgruntled employee.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
There wasn't really any testimony or anything that he was
a disgruntled employee. I mean, the woman who owned the restaurant,
her throat was slashed, and these are young kids who
are all killed. Just because you don't like one person
your prior employment doesn't mean you're murdering everybody who works there.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
There were other leads the police pursued that seem much
more plausible, like one about gangs committing similar crimes in
the area.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
That makes more sense to me, not just a senseless
killing for no apparent reason from a disgruntled employee.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
And Ashley says she thinks Swan's confession, similar to Jim's,
was coerced.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
The police really, you know, threatened to deport his wife,
They refused to let him use his phone or see
his son, and that they were screaming at him. He
was an immigrant, so they were threatening to deport him,
deport his family, take his kid away from him, typical
tactics that we see with police interrogations, and he probably
(34:46):
feared for his life and the safety of his family.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Ashley and the Bonjin team also looked at Ann Lockett,
the star witness and Jim's ex girlfriend. They wound up
tracking down her roommate at the psychiatric facil she was
in at the time of the murder in nineteen ninety three, and.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
We started talking to her about the protocols, because just
when you're suicidal, you're not gonna be at a psychiatric
facility that is going to give you access to anything
and everything on the outside world that is probably causing
you distress in the first place, right, so you are
likely not able to get phone calls on a payphone.
(35:30):
It just the face value of her testimony seemed very implausible.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Not only did they find it would be highly unlikely
Jim was able to call a payphone at the psychiatric
center to tell Anne about the murder, but on top
of that.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
She was dating somebody else. His name was Richard Billock.
We found Richard Billock and he provided an affidavit and
basically said that he was the one dating her at
the time and that he had not been dating She
had not been dating James at that time.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
And dated months after the murders. So why would Anne lie.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
An Lockett was going to receive the one hundred thousand
dollars in reward money, and that was our biggest issue.
The jury did not know that she would have received
money for her testimony.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Ashley says this is a Brady violation the prosecution hiding
exculpatory evidence. She says the jury could have been swayed
differently had they known. As far as Eileen Bacala Ashley says,
she had a partner who was in some trouble with
the law at the time she came forward.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
I think, if you're anybody you know about the brown
chicken at the time you get arrested, You're like, what
if I give you information about the brown chicken murder?
Would that Would that get you to not look at
me and look at somebody else? So, I mean, these
are all theories. We had no idea, but that was
our theory.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Are you resentful towards and Eileen for lying against you?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
That's a good question to be resentful and that I
won't talk to him. I'll go my own way and
I never want to see these people ever again. And
I can totally be happy content. I don't need to
answer the why questions. I was a white kid growing
up a free range why kids independent? Now, I don't
need to know the whise. I don't want to know
the whys. But I blame Pelotime Police because they were
(37:25):
the filter that was supposed to stop this. Instead they did.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It right now. Jim has a habeas petition pending in
front of the court. But Ashley worries about the charged
politics of the Browns Chicken murder.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
There's a lot of people involved in this particular situation
that are now judges, you know Chicago, Illinois politics that
they run real deep.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Michael McHale, who took the alleged confession from Jim and
testified to it at trial, is now a circuit court
judge in Cook County.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
So there's probably a lot of people who want to
keep this dead and buried and do not want to
think that they got it wrong. I mean, it's hard
to know, but I think it would take it a
lot for the world to come to terms with the
fact that they got the Browns Chicken murderer wrong.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Do you think about life like, what life will be
like when you do get out.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I'm definitely not going to be free range. I'm definitely
gonna be a hermit. I'll definitely live off the grid,
and I'm maybe in this country hopefully, but if not,
I'll be a hermit somewhere else. It's the stuff that
the stuff I see here, the stuff I hear never
really saw that part of this. I knew stuff was
happening in society I just never really talked to somebody
(38:53):
at rates and killed people and the stuff. I listened
to them for the years and just somebody talk about
robbery and murder and no, I'm gonna be hurm it.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So you feel now that you've been in prison, your
apprehensive about the outside world because of how terrible it is.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Is kind of what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
So before I was just like social of all my neighbors.
They enjoyed me helping them with chores and taught me
these trades and how to do all this stuff. I've
learned all that from my neighbors and my community growing up.
Now I just I just want to go away from everything.
I just want to hopefully you can find something to
(39:35):
fix and remodel and build, and just hope you just
fix up from the friends I still have.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
Thank you to Maurice Poseley. We relied on his reporting
about the Browns Chicken murders. We have a link to
his book The Browns Chicken Massacre in the episode description.
This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
(40:20):
editing and sound designed by senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our
producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher is Shelby Sorels, with
mixing by Josh Allen. Our executive producers are Jason Flamm,
Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis, with additional production help by
Jeff Cliburn. The music is by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Make sure to follow us on all
(40:42):
social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
You can also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling.
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hello, This is a free call from Jim, an incarcerated
individual at they no correctional centers. This call is subject
to recording and monitoring.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
James de Gorski hates rudeness, especially when it comes to
the police.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Please please, literally came up to me and said, what's
your name? Just very arrogant and very rude.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
It sounds like you're pretty big on respect.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
You've mentioned that a few times, that they were really
just disrespectful and inappropriate.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Sounds like you introduce yourself to so many. That's so
we start off on the wrong path.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I spoke to James on the phone from prison, and
he explained the saga of his relationship with the police
officers who would end up arresting him in an Illinois
town called Palatine.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Palatine Please didn't like me from high school because I
wouldn't stitch On broke into all the lockers so well,
I was being a janitor there. Somebody broke in the
lockers and I didn't see who did it, and I
didn't speculate. I already had a problem with these Peloton
police from that. He's throw tiger parties and they didn't
like that, so I just I had problem with Peloton.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Police and the way James responded to the police wouldn't
exactly help him in the long run.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
So James is one of those guys who's very sarcastic
and he had a arrogance to him at that time.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This is Ashley Cohen. She's a partner at Bonjin Law Group.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
He would probably be the type of person to make
a joke that's not funny and that the police would
maybe turn into fact of sorts. You know, someone who
seems cold, but he's been through a lot and he
deals with his trauma by you know, humorizing it, or
(02:00):
he just thought they were crazy.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
These police are crazy, I'm not exaggerating. Unprofessional from the
get go, and they're consultational bullies and they escalated everything
the police. These police, not police in general. I have
nothing against the police. I have found with authority that
abuses to think they're above the law and above our constitution.
(02:23):
That's where I have a problem, and.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
James thinks that's exactly what happened in his case.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
My name is James de Gorski. I've been wrong. Sley
inclcerated for the.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Last twenty two years from Lava for Good this is
wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. James Degorski James de
Gorski was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August twentieth, nineteen
seventy two.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I've raised in off the Estates, Mon Prospect and Arlington Heights.
We had a very, very tight family. At seven, I
had an older fitter you knew, a younger brother and
a younger fitter.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Jim, as he likes to be called, says his mom
stayed home raising the kids, and his dad worked at motorola.
So what was family life like?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Loving? Fun, messy, lots of yelling. Tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Thanks for asking, because the last twenty some years it's
been about mitigation. But actually I have no complaints and
no regrets. I had an awesome family. We didn't the
normal things a family would do, go to church every Sunday.
We'd have family game night with pizza and all my
friends were welcome.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Jim remembers family vacations and camping trips and just hanging
with his siblings.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We grew up at the edge of the urban sprawl,
where with a cornerfield that started the meadows, the woods,
the Kanton pounds and fourth much where we spent most
of my time Bill Fifth in Bill Ramport, be on
next bike, hang out with some older friends, motorcycles and
a board ramp. Pretty independent. I was basically a free range.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Fit for so Jim says. His parents let him leave
at sunrise and return when the street lights were coming on.
He was independent, and because his dad worked so much,
Jim says, he also stepped in as a father figure.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I was like, I don't know how I say it.
I was like my brothers and my sister's dad, and
I took them everywhere. I took my brothers and sisters.
He just did everything. My older friends that I had
even enjoyed them around. So we had a blast as
a kid. I got no complaints about my dysfunctional family.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Jim says being free range, as he calls it, allowed
him to explore his curiosity. You know those annoying little
kids always asking why.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
They just he's saying why, and then you answer, and
they say why, and then they answer it, they say why.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
That was him, He calls them why kids.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I was one of those irritating kids. But hindsight, I
guess I wasn't irritating because my neighbor's always answered my
why why questions.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
And Jim learned things roaming around talking to the adults.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I just go to my neighbor's house and he does upholstery,
so I could help him do a polstery, and the
guy would throw me twenty dollars. His friend, his little kid,
throw me twenty dollars just to hear his stories.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Jim says. Another neighbor built toy cars.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I didn't want to play with the RC cars, which
he thought. I wanted to learn how to do electronics,
so the guy was teaching me electronics. This is all
in grammar school.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Growing up. His brothers delivered newspapers to help his parents
out with money. But Jim, I.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Would go garbage picking while they delivered their newspapers. And
then I'd get stuff by the trash and fix your
name in VCRs, radios, turlie and irens, blow dryers I'd get.
I'd get a pretty good money by selling stuff that
I can garbage hick. When you find one hundred dollars
VCR thrown in the trash, and all you need is
(06:06):
a fourteenth cent hues and a pretty profitable I had
a free apprenticeship as a kid. Being one of those
whyy why kids with all my neighbor Jim says he
didn't mind helping his parents because this was all fun
to him anyway. Just doing that as just like a
hobby in a way. But I had money, so I
(06:27):
helped my parents paid the bills or the watter, do
our little vacations, campouts and whatever. I was often letting
my parents brain my favorite account down to zero, trying
to keep the electric and the hour on. Whatever problems
we're having. Even with our van, our car would break down, So.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Jim says he learned how to fix car breaks in
grammar school. He was a hustler for sure. In his
freshman year, Jim worked as a janitor at his high school,
cleaning the cafeteria and vacuuming hallways after class, and with
the money he was able to keep for himself, he
would buy tools.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So in high school I started doing things like fixing cars,
their bikes, mini bikes.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He eventually rented out his mom's garage and had his
own mechanic shop there.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I had a friend Reggie in high school that him
and I were going to open a mechanic shop together.
We're going to build race cars, and we started in
my garage. We're popping motors in all the time we're
taking out We're taking out three o sevens, popping in
three fifties. So I was doing a lot of that stuff.
And when I started making good money, maybe I had
(07:35):
extra money to give away or charity for do whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
If it sounds like Jim de Gorski didn't have time
for any more activities, he was still going to high
school and church and volunteering. Jim de Gorski thought he
had the perfect life until police came knocking on the
(08:06):
morning of Friday, January eighth, nineteen ninety three. Jim remembers
waking up to his mom asking him to move a
car that was blocking the driveway.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So I had to get up and move his car.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
The car belonged to Jim's high school friend, Juan Luna.
He'd been in some sort of accident and Jan left
the car at Jim's place to get fixed.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I don't really know what he'd needs done. He got
tee boned or the side damage. So I fixed his car.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Jim says he waited for one to pick up the
car and pay him for the repairs, and when he
didn't I.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Took his car. I took it on a joy ride.
I was so mad. I'm like, I just loaded up
his car and went out and did what I did
my rounds.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
He drove the car about ten miles west to Carpentersville
just to screw with Wan.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's kind of like an impovertish area with like a
high crime area out of Chicago Land, and it's far out,
it's almost rural. Left his I left his car there
being rude. It's it's a long distance away for him
to go pick up his car. And if you want
your car so bad, come pick it up. He paged
me twenty times and literally cussing me out.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Jim says he left the car parked at Jewel Osco,
the grocery store, and then his girlfriend at the time,
Eileen Baccala, picked him.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Up so so she got off work early.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
She came to meet me a Jewel and they hung
out the rest of the night smoking weed and cat sitting.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
It's a boring knife or whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
The next day, Jim and everyone in the Chicago suburbs
woke up to big news. A massacre at a Brown's
Chicken and Pasta in Palatine, Illinois. Palatine is about thirty
miles north of downtown Chicago. At the time, it was
a sleepy suburb where even one murder a year was rare,
(09:57):
so the whole community was shaken when news spread that
seven people were gunned down inside the fast food restaurant
shortly after closing around eight pm. Two of the victims
were the owners, Lynn and Richard Ellenfeldt, a married couple
who had just bought the franchise months prior, looking for
a fresh start after Richard had lost his job. The
(10:21):
other victims were employees Guadalupe Maldonado, Thomas Menez, Marcus Nelson,
Rico Solis, and Michael Castro. Rico and Michael were both
teenagers from the local high school working part time. It
was a bloody murder. Five of the victims were found
in the walk and cooler of the restaurant. Some had
(10:42):
been stabbed, one had their throat slit, and all had
been shot. Less than two thousand dollars was stolen from
the restaurant.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
The investigation went down as you would imagine a ninety
three mass killing investigation went down where it was a mess.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
This is Ashley Cohen again. Ashley says although the scene
at the restaurant was chaotic.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
There was a ton of forensic evidence pulled from the scene.
There were like two hundred fingerprints, there was food still
in the trash containers, there were bloody shoe prints. I mean,
anything and everything you imagine in forensic science and analysis
was present at this crime scene.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
One key piece of evidence was a receipt.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
So there was a cash register that appeared to have
been closed and reopened to sell a meal at nine
to eight pm. The receipt was consistent with the meal
that was discovered in the trash can. That led investigators
to believe that one of the offenders may have purchased
the meal prior to the shooting.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Since it was closing time, the trash cans were empty
except for one four piece chicken meal.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
One of the female investigators had the foresight to freeze
a eaten chicken bone that was in the trash and
I just recall she was a female, because females are
smart and have the future insight that there she saw
significance and was like, maybe we could use this eventually,
(12:20):
and so she froze it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Jim was shook when he heard about the murders, not
only because things like this didn't happen in Palatine, Illinois,
but because Wan used to work there.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
A few of his friends actually worked there too, so
we were just shocked that it happened so close to home.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Do you remember talking to him about it at all?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, I'm more because it was a lot of time ago.
I was at a party and it was one of
his friends. So we were over at his friend's house
and I saw an article they had on the wall,
and that was pretty much the longest conversation I ever
really had about it. How shocking that looking at my friends,
(13:07):
like justin you could have this could have been you.
So yeah, I think the longest conversation I ever had.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Jim didn't think much more about it until the police
showed up at his door two years later asking about.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Juan Luna nineteen ninety five. The police came to my
house and asked me about his alibi. They said they're
just doing they're doing follow up with a former employees alibi,
and then Jan Luna used me as an alibi. I'm like,
wasn't that like three years ago?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Jim says he felt put on the spot. He'd forgotten
all about that day he took one's car for a
joy ride.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Of course I didn't remember what I was doing today,
so they did kind of a rude question to sit
there and asked me what I was doing three years earlier.
So I didn't like that whole thing.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Apparently Wan Luna had told police that he'd been working
with Jim that day at his career fixing cars.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I never employed Lula never. Wan never worked at my house,
never worked in my shop never. So that was the
first thing that I just laughed about. The guy doesn't
even help me in my shop, so they'll have this
whole story that he's working for me in my shop.
I started lappened.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Jim says the interaction with police did not go well.
He was sarcastic and arrogant because he says the police
embarrassed him by coming to his house, and he was
bothered by the fact that they expected him to remember
on the spot something that happened almost three years prior.
So he brushed them off.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
When he left me in nineteen ninety five, said they
were going to go reinvestigate him. And then I went
to a party as a remodeling party were remodeling a
friend's house, and it was kind of funny because their
sister knew who Juan was, so it was funny for
everybody at the remodeling party to hear that these police
are going to go harass him again. We thought it
(14:56):
was funny and we had a conversation then, and then
I talked to Line after that, but he just never
really said anything and never acted guilty or concerned or anything.
I didn't think the cues involved whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
The police had been investigating the Browns Chicken murders for
more than two years. Ashley says they went through a
lot of potential suspects. According to one report, the police
would end up chasing down over four thousand leads.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
There were a lot of investigations, There were a lot
of different players. There was a whole task force assigned
to investigating this mass murder, and it was It was
one of those situations where people were just desperate to
find answers.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
And then the case went cold for seven more years.
Shortly after the murders, a Palatine council member started a
reward fund. It started with one thousand dollars, then the
community chipped in, raising almost one hundred thousand dollars for
any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
(16:09):
There was a lot of public pressure to solve this case.
The media hounded law enforcement looking for answers, civil advocates
blasted police for public dishonesty and deception, but nothing happened. Then,
nine years after the murder, in the spring of two
thousand and two, Jim Degorski was called to the police
(16:29):
station for questioning. Jim says he didn't think he had
anything to run from, so he went.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And it was the same sergeant that talked to me
all the way back in nineteen ninety five, which was
not good. I remember him from his lashes and the
way he talked, so I was kind of sarcastic to
him from the get go.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Jim sat down with law enforcement, including Police Commander William King,
and then.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Was talking to me. He just asked me basic general
questions about the same alibi. But before before I left,
like he started asking me about he basically said, we
have two suspects DNA, we have two suspects fingerprints, and
we and we have an eyewitness. We have eyewitnesses of
the murderers. So the guy who says everybody's a suspect,
(17:22):
So would you give us your DNA or your or
your fingerprints to clear your name? And you did so? I, oh, yeah,
I guess. I gave my DNA, like ten slabs of DNA.
I gave him my whole entire handprint, including the top
where I don't even have fingerprints. I gave them all
that stuff. But they asked me a bunch of questions
before I left, like if I had any problem with
one of my ex girlfriends and trying to have something
(17:44):
like that, and then that's right as I was leaving.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Did you have any problems with ex girlfriends at the time.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
No, not at all. I didn't even I didn't even
understand the line of questioning next time I'm being arrested
at my work parking lot.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
That ex girlfriend police were asking about was Anne Lockett.
Jim and Anne had dated around the time of the murders,
when he was twenty. They'd met through one in high school.
Jim says Anne had demons, she'd been in rehab and
spent some time in a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt,
but she was also fun. She wanted to learn how
(18:21):
to work on cars, and they both liked the outdoors.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
We were great tree hugger, so we went hiking inside
and all the trees hadible foods. Every day that we're
going through eating herbs. It's fun to go camping, hiking
with knocking out her life. Bucket left the whole entire
time we dated. But a lot of my friends did
not care for her.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Why didn't they like her?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Didn't trust her, didn't like her.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Ann was different than Jim's friends.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Some of my friends are yuppies. Some of my friends
are gearheads. I have different groups of friends, and they
liked me day nurse. A lot of people they voiced it,
Jim says.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Back in high school, she was the type to hang
out with the heavy partying crowd, the burnouts at the
back of the school cafeteria, as Jim calls them.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
She's like me. She goes a lot of concerts, so
she goes like she likes that death metal stuff, like
the Cannibal corpse stuff. Oh, and she wore the leather
jacket heavy metal parties and tiger parties, and she got
some wild stories of all her party lifestyle. So a
(19:33):
lot of my friends didn't really care for that.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
His relationship with Anne worked for about a year, he says,
until they broke up seven years later. In two thousand
and two, Anne Lockett came forward with a story. Anne
said that Jim had called her while she was at
the psychiatric hospital on January ninth, nineteen ninety three, the
day after the murders. She said that she.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Received a call from James de Gorski at a payphone
at the hospital and that he told her to watch
the news because he had done something big. So she
turns on the television and saw that the lead story
on the news was the Browns Chicken murder.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Police said Anne had information only the killers would have known.
She said she waited so long to come forward because
she'd been afraid Jim would kill her. On May sixteenth,
two thousand and two, Jim Degorski and Wan Luna were
arrested for the Browns Chicken murders. Jim lived in Indianapolis
at the time and was about to start work when
(20:37):
two officers showed up, including police Commander William King. Again
literally told me to.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Leave my inhaler, put your FN hands on the fing car.
They started off all wrong, embarrassed front of my co workers,
in front of my friends. The gas station the subway
in front of my It was bad.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
They got in the car and drove four hours to Palatine.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And it just went downhill from then because I literally
had to go to the bathroom the whole time, and
they made me hold it all the way to the
Illinois border. I was in pain.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Jim says he also had a job interview.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
After work, which is why my sister didn't put out
an app for me. They wouldn't let me change my
clothes from my work all day. I'm a blue collar
I do a property management, property maintenance. I'm dirty. They
wouldn't let me change my clothes. They wouldn't let me
grab my inhaler, they wouldn't let me grab my I
have a next cell slash cell phone. They wouldn't let
(21:36):
me even chirp on that.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Jim was pissed, just like the other times he encountered
Palatime police.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So by the time we got in the interrogation room,
we started off the wrong way with them being confrontational bullies,
escalating everything, and.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
It only got worse from there. What were you thinking?
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Honestly, these counts are so unprofessional. I didn't know what
they were going to do next.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Were you scared, terrified, police said, Jim waved his Miranda rights,
but he remembers it differently.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
They wouldn't let me use their phone since they wouldn't
let me take my phone to call my lawyer. So
I have two attorney friends based family friends. I had
no rights, what's one? I was terrified the whole time.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Eventually police told Jim why they were holding him. They
said he and Wan Luna had robbed the Brown's Chicken
restaurant and killed everyone inside, and they had the DNA
to prove it from that chicken bone the investigator saved
back in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
The case went cold. Then DNA starts vamping up. They
test the chicken bone and Juan Luna's a match. I
think once the DNA hit against Juan Luna, they built
their case around that.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The police told Jim that after murdering the Browns Chicken
employees in cold blood, he and Juan met Eileen Bacala,
his girl friend, at the jewel oscar parking lot in Carpentersville,
with a duffel bag full of cash. Then they all
drove together to another town to meet a friend, and
in that ride, one and Jim bragged about what they'd done.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Once they accused me and started putting me into the narrative,
that's when I started saying out no, and I'm going
to remain asilent.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Jim says police were using his alibi to actually implicate
him in the murder.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
They're putting words in my mouth and they mixed my
truth with lies, and they're telling me what other people
are saying, which I know are lies. And they wouldn't
tell me after a while who was saying what, so
that would get really confusing. And this this is this NonStop.
This is going on like a tag team.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
It was relentless until finally Jim allegedly confessed.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
He allegedly made oral statements.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
King brought in assistant state's attorney Michael McAll to take
his statement on camera. So was there a statement that
you made?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So what they were trying to do is tell me
we will let you use the telephone right now. All
you have to do is say that you did this.
They will let you use the phone. Just say that
you just did this, Say that Luna did this, say this.
Say they're telling me what to say. And then if
I say that on a video, And it was incriminating.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Police said. Jim admitted that he and Wan were involved
in the crime, but then refused to further elaborate on camera.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I don't even know what the video said. I think
I said yeah, right to their narrative m and then
immediately said that now I get to talk to my
Now I can talk to a judge.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So did you get to use the phone?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Never?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Jan Luna allegedly confessed as well, saying that he'd been
with Jim all day working on cars, then they'd robbed
the Browns Chicken and then met Eileen at the jewel Osco.
Did you have a lot of support when this happened?
Do people believe you did this? Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
My god, My friends thought I had absolutely no involvement
in this whatsoever. Every time they tried to voice it,
they were literally told to shut up, and as far
as shut the fuck up, and then as far as
the police literally threatening them telling them that they better lie,
tell me you better say this, or basically threaten them
(25:19):
with going to Cook County jail. They couldn't even have voice.
My their beliefs were not even accepted. They were told
this and threatened by this, and they basically feared for
their lives from the police and from this crazy vigilante
psychos in society.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Jim says his family got the worst of it and
were tormented for being related to a Brown's Chicken murderer.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
They didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong
at all. But my family did absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever,
and the least bit to be persecuting them and targeting
with comments even it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Jim sat in jail for years and finally went to
trial in August two thousand and nine, sixteen years after
the murders. The prosecution had painted one and Jim as
quote people without a soul who went on a killing
spree just for the thrill of it. It was all
over the news and now Jim was facing the death penalty.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
By the time trial came along, he just knew I'm toast.
Nobody gives a shit about me. And I mean, if
you read the trial, I would say like ten percent
of it is actually is a defense and ninety percent
of it is offense on the part of his public
(26:46):
defender to try to not get him to get the
death penalty. It was all mitigation, like everything was you
are You're going to be convicted so let's just mitigate
and let's not get you the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
The prosecution did not use the alleged tape confession by Jim.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
They just use the testimony of the prosecutor and the
officer who were present for the alleged oral statements, rather
than the videotaped confession exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Instead of using the video, the prosecution had King and
McHale testify about the confession.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
The videotape confession would be the best evidence. If it's
a solid videotape confession, that would be the best evidence,
But obviously they didn't think it would play well with
the jury, so they didn't show it. It just was
not even believable on its face.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Since the prosecution had no forensic evidence tying Jim to
the murders, they relied heavily on their star witnesses. Jim's
ex girlfriends An Lockett and Eileen Bacalla, repeated the stories
they told police. Jim says, the whole experience was grueling.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I thought it was bad that I had to be forced,
actually everybody, to be honest with you, was forced to
watch that those videos and those photos, like just the
crime scene that was one of the worst things for me.
But it was bad to listen to hand Locket's testimony,
but listening to those cops law enforcement officers under oath
lion and the calla lion, which is supposed to be
(28:24):
like a real good friend of mine, since for a
long time, that was gut wrenching for me. Just those
two were the worst.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
On September nineteenth, two thousand and nine, thirty seven year
old James de Gorski was convicted of all seven counts
of murder. His defense attorney Mark Levitt addressed to the press, obviously.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
Very disappointed in the verdict that we respect to that
the jury is not a guilty. My focus now obviously
turns to the setsunury and trying to convince this jury
to the appropriate sense for mister Devarsky life in prison.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
The jurors agreed to life in prison, though many told
the press they wanted the death penalty and that Anne
and Eileen's testimony had convinced them Jim was guilty.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
I think that their testimony was very key decisions that
we reached.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Wan Luna had gone to trial in two thousand and
seven and was also convicted of the murders. Jim has
been incarcerated over two decades, and he spent most of
his time alone.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I just don't fit in. So I really just preferred
just to walk around the yard by myself, do things
by myself. If I can help out where it comes
to a school work or I went to a college
program and stuff like that, I don't mind helping people
do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
But Jim says he's a different person on the inside.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Kindness is considered a weakness and to me, to avoid
fighting and whatever. I don't put myself out as charitable
because you can't be charitable. I'm not in I only
want to describe this environment.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Has your family supported you while you're in there.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, I got a great family. I got a great
support network through them. They just I'm an embarrassment to
them now. I was like that brother that was actually
like a father. When I first got arrested. It was
nice to get happy Father's Day cards for my sibling. Yeah,
so they've been supportive. It just they don't know what
to do, and I really don't know what to do either.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Jim met the Bojin Law group where Ashley is partner,
when he was first arrested for the murders in the
early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
One James was arrested. He went Cook County Jail and
when a correction officer found out that he was the
Brown's Chicken murderer, he punched him so hard in the
face that it broke one of the plates in his face.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
So Jim hired Jennifer Bonjin to file a civil case.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
James felt very strongly about Jenny because she was the
only one who would even consider his case. I mean,
you have a guy who was accused of one of
the biggest mass murders in Illinois at that time, and
nobody wants to represent the Brown's Chicken murder. So she
she did. She represented him, and she got a pretty
(31:42):
favorable verdict for him.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
She got him over five hundred thousand dollars in damages.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
So once they got to know each other, he said,
will you represent.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Me in his post conviction proceedings.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
I think we started investigating his criminal case around two thousand,
fifteen twenty fourteen. We just hit the ground running doing
investigation for him.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
What specifically were you interested in? Because there's a thousand
cases you could take, you know, why look at this one?
Speaker 4 (32:16):
What was it? I think that the fact that he
was claiming actual innocence was appealing to Jenny. Also, the
evidence is just really scarce. It's just not as it's
not what they paint in the media.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Remember, police found no evidence tying Jim to the murder scene.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
The fact that this was like a massacre of the
scene with blood everywhere and fingerprints everywhere and hair and
all of this analysis, all of his DNA and not
a single stitch of evidence was found to implicate James
was seem very problematic. When we started investigating James's case,
(33:00):
a lot of there were a lot of holes in
the story, in the investigation, everything seemed very confusing and
not clear. And why ten years later, and also why
were these two guys, Wan Luna and James de Gorski
the suspects, Like, usually you don't just go murder seven
(33:23):
people and then go about their merry business just living.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Their lives, Ashley says. Another thing that didn't make sense
was how the prosecution painted Wan Luna as a disgruntled employee.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
There wasn't really any testimony or anything that he was
a disgruntled employee. I mean, the woman who owned the restaurant,
her throat was slashed, and these are young kids who
are all killed. Just because you don't like one person
your prior employment doesn't mean you're murdering everybody who works there.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
There were other leads the police pursued that seem much
more plausible, like one about gangs committing similar crimes in
the area.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
That makes more sense to me, not just a senseless
killing for no apparent reason from a disgruntled employee.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
And Ashley says she thinks Swan's confession, similar to Jim's,
was coerced.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
The police really, you know, threatened to deport his wife,
They refused to let him use his phone or see
his son, and that they were screaming at him. He
was an immigrant, so they were threatening to deport him,
deport his family, take his kid away from him, typical
tactics that we see with police interrogations, and he probably
(34:46):
feared for his life and the safety of his family.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Ashley and the Bonjin team also looked at Ann Lockett,
the star witness and Jim's ex girlfriend. They wound up
tracking down her roommate at the psychiatric facil she was
in at the time of the murder in nineteen ninety three, and.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
We started talking to her about the protocols, because just
when you're suicidal, you're not gonna be at a psychiatric
facility that is going to give you access to anything
and everything on the outside world that is probably causing
you distress in the first place, right, so you are
likely not able to get phone calls on a payphone.
(35:30):
It just the face value of her testimony seemed very implausible.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Not only did they find it would be highly unlikely
Jim was able to call a payphone at the psychiatric
center to tell Anne about the murder, but on top
of that.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
She was dating somebody else. His name was Richard Billock.
We found Richard Billock and he provided an affidavit and
basically said that he was the one dating her at
the time and that he had not been dating She
had not been dating James at that time.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
And dated months after the murders. So why would Anne lie.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
An Lockett was going to receive the one hundred thousand
dollars in reward money, and that was our biggest issue.
The jury did not know that she would have received
money for her testimony.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Ashley says this is a Brady violation the prosecution hiding
exculpatory evidence. She says the jury could have been swayed
differently had they known. As far as Eileen Bacala Ashley says,
she had a partner who was in some trouble with
the law at the time she came forward.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
I think, if you're anybody you know about the brown
chicken at the time you get arrested, You're like, what
if I give you information about the brown chicken murder?
Would that Would that get you to not look at
me and look at somebody else? So, I mean, these
are all theories. We had no idea, but that was
our theory.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Are you resentful towards and Eileen for lying against you?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
That's a good question to be resentful and that I
won't talk to him. I'll go my own way and
I never want to see these people ever again. And
I can totally be happy content. I don't need to
answer the why questions. I was a white kid growing
up a free range why kids independent? Now, I don't
need to know the whise. I don't want to know
the whys. But I blame Pelotime Police because they were
(37:25):
the filter that was supposed to stop this. Instead they did.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It right now. Jim has a habeas petition pending in
front of the court. But Ashley worries about the charged
politics of the Browns Chicken murder.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
There's a lot of people involved in this particular situation
that are now judges, you know Chicago, Illinois politics that
they run real deep.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Michael McHale, who took the alleged confession from Jim and
testified to it at trial, is now a circuit court
judge in Cook County.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
So there's probably a lot of people who want to
keep this dead and buried and do not want to
think that they got it wrong. I mean, it's hard
to know, but I think it would take it a
lot for the world to come to terms with the
fact that they got the Browns Chicken murderer wrong.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Do you think about life like, what life will be
like when you do get out.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I'm definitely not going to be free range. I'm definitely
gonna be a hermit. I'll definitely live off the grid,
and I'm maybe in this country hopefully, but if not,
I'll be a hermit somewhere else. It's the stuff that
the stuff I see here, the stuff I hear never
really saw that part of this. I knew stuff was
happening in society I just never really talked to somebody
(38:53):
at rates and killed people and the stuff. I listened
to them for the years and just somebody talk about
robbery and murder and no, I'm gonna be hurm it.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So you feel now that you've been in prison, your
apprehensive about the outside world because of how terrible it is.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Is kind of what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
So before I was just like social of all my neighbors.
They enjoyed me helping them with chores and taught me
these trades and how to do all this stuff. I've
learned all that from my neighbors and my community growing up.
Now I just I just want to go away from everything.
I just want to hopefully you can find something to
(39:35):
fix and remodel and build, and just hope you just
fix up from the friends I still have.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
Thank you to Maurice Poseley. We relied on his reporting
about the Browns Chicken murders. We have a link to
his book The Browns Chicken Massacre in the episode description.
This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
(40:20):
editing and sound designed by senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our
producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher is Shelby Sorels, with
mixing by Josh Allen. Our executive producers are Jason Flamm,
Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis, with additional production help by
Jeff Cliburn. The music is by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Make sure to follow us on all
(40:42):
social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
You can also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling.
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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