Recent History
In March 2002, more than nine years after the murders, Anne Lockett implicated her former boyfriend, James Degorski, and his associate, Juan Luna, in the crime. In April 2002, the Palatine Police Department obtained a DNA sample from one suspect and matched it to a sample of saliva from a piece of partially eaten chicken found in the garbage during the crime scene investigation. The chicken was kept in a freezer for most of the time since the crime; testimony at trial indicated it was not frozen for several days after discovery, and was allowed to thaw several times for examination and testing, in the hope of an eventual match via increasingly sophisticated testing methods not available in 1993.
The Palatine Police Department took the two suspects, one of them a former employee of the restaurant, into custody on May 16, 2002. Luna confessed to the crime during an interrogation, though his lawyers would later claim that he was coerced to do so through corporal punishment and threats of deportation. The pair, who met at Palatine's William Fremd High School, subsequently went to trial.
On May 10, 2007, Juan Luna was found guilty of all seven counts of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole on May 17. All but one juror had voted for the death penalty for Luna, but in Illinois the vote must be unanimous, so Luna was spared the death penalty.
On September 29, 2009 James Degorski was found guilty of all seven counts of murder. On October 20, 2009 he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. All but two of the jurors had voted for the death penalty.
Read more about this topic: Brown's Chicken Massacre
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