Illinois : Jaclyn Dowaliby
Jaclyn Marie Dowaliby was born May 17th, 1981, to parents Cynthia and Jimmy Guess, who were only married for a short period. Then a custody battle ensued, with Cynthia gaining full custody. Cynthia would then marry David Dowaliby, and he adopted Jaclyn just six months after marrying her mom when Jaclyn was only two and a half years old. It was reported that David never missed a day of work in years as a construction foreman until the day he adopted Jaclyn. He was ecstatic to be her father, and Jaclyn would never know any other father but David. The family lived in a single-family home at 3636 148th Place, Midlothian, Illinois. David and Cynthia had a son, and Jaclyn became a big sister to Davey in 1984. Jaclyn was a seven-year-old girl described as always being happy and smiley. This brown-haired, brown-eyed little girl would never see her eighth birthday.
Midlothian, Illinois is a southwestern suburb of Chicago; the population was just under 15,000 in the 2020 census. I found it interesting that a village president runs this town. Midlothian has a much lower violent crime rate than the state of Illinois but a higher property crime rate. Theft in this town makes up 57% of all the crimes, but luckily in a typical year, there are zero murders. That would not be the case in 1988, which is when today's unsolved murder takes place.
September 10th, 1988, was a typical night for the family of four; Cynthia, Jaclyn, and Davey had dinner at a fast food place while David went bowling with some friends. Jaclyn put on her favorite nightgown, kissed her parents goodnight, and went to bed with her favorite thing, a Sears catalog. She was looking forward to the upcoming Christmas and wanted to circle what she was going to ask Santa. I remember these catalogs, Sears and JCPenney were the two I would look at most often. I would love to circle everything I wanted. I would look at all the household items to design what I would like my house to look like when I became an adult. I could only imagine Jaclyn doing this, laying in bed flipping the pages, with a marker in her hand, anxiously awaiting the upcoming holiday. I could only imagine the smile on her face as she fell asleep dreaming that night.
The following day David and Davey got up early to make breakfast. David saw the front door ajar and noticed his mothers, who lived in the family vehicle, was not in the driveway. He assumed she had left it open by accident when she left earlier that morning. Around 9:15, Cynthia decided to wake up Jaclyn only to find her bed empty. They weren't worried because they figured she was somewhere around the house or playing outside with her friends. After not finding any sign of her inside the house, the parents walked over to the neighbors to see if she was out playing. Again with no sign of her, but as the parents walked back to their house, they noticed a broken window leading into the basement. Every parent's worst fear was happening to these two people who loved their daughter dearly.
They reported Jaclyn missing, and the investigation started. The house was not disturbed and did not look like someone had broken in. The broken window in the basement was far from Jaclyn's room. The kidnapper would have had to go through the basement, up the stairs, and down the hall that had very squeaky floors to Jaclyn's room, which was right across from her parents, without anyone hearing anything. The only thing they found missing was Jaclyn's blanket from her bed and, of course, that sweet little girl. Another fact is how did this possible kidnapper know exactly where Jaclyn's room was?
The initial search included local law enforcement, dogs, volunteers, firefighters, and a helicopter. Police wouldn't say it was a kidnapping because of the lack of disturbance and no one hearing anything. They were keeping their minds open, that Jaclyn could have walked away on her own, she was abducted, did her biological father come for her, or did someone in the house have had something to do with her disappearance?
David and Cynthia were questioned for hours and given polygraph tests; it seemed early on that authorities believed the parents could have had something to do with this. When news broke that the basement window looked like it was broken from the inside and possibly done to look like someone had broken in, media outlets began to crucify these parents.
Police looked into Jimmy Guess, Jaclyn's biological father, and determined he was in prison in Florida. Authorities cleared him as a suspect pretty quickly. On September 14th, four grueling days after Jaclyn disappeared, her body was found at a dump site in Blue Island, a neighboring town just six miles from her home. She was strangled with a piece of twine that was found around her neck. Jaclyn was wrapped in the blanket that went missing with her, and she was still wearing her favorite nightgown, but her underwear was found near the body.
A man by the name of Michael Chatman is the one who found the remains. He lived in an apartment complex next to the dump site, and when he pulled into his parking spot, there was a foul odor from the woods. He went to investigate and got close enough to see something wrapped in a blanket and a head and arm visible. He immediately ran to call the police. The remains were heavily decomposed, but it only took a day to be identified as Jaclyn Dowaliby by dental records. An autopsy was unable to determine if Jaclyn was sexually assaulted, but the fact her underwear was found next to her body makes me think the worst. They could decide that Jaclyn most likely died right after she was abducted in the early morning hours of Saturday the 10th, the morning she was discovered missing.
David and Cynthia Dowaliby fully cooperated with authorities; they provided blood and urine samples, gave them access to their home for days, and told police they could take whatever they saw fit from the house that might help solve their daughter's murder. Just one day after Jaclyn's funeral, police executed another search warrant at the family's home, here they took nine paper bags full of items and the family vehicle; the car was a blue chevy malibu. This is when the parents retained a lawyer and wouldn't speak to the police unless their lawyer told them to. They never came out in the media to the public, but reports say that is because the police told them it would hurt the case.
November 22nd, a month and a half after their daughter was murdered, Cynthia and David were arrested for her murder. Authorities made this conclusion based on eyewitness testimony. A man stated he saw a blue Chevy Malibu in the apartment complex next to where Jaclyn was found the morning of the 10th around 2 am. This witness said he even saw David Dowaliby driving that vehicle. Davey was put in foster care for a while until he eventually went with an aunt and uncle.
So the parents are about to be on trial for their daughter's murder. Cynthia was three months pregnant when she was arrested, and the couple was let out on bond while awaiting trial. The baby, Carlie, was under the temporary guardianship of Cynthia's parents, and they were allowed to see Davey on supervised visitation for 12 hours weekly.
I can not even begin to comprehend the trauma and fear this family must have endured over the first few years after Jaclyn's death. Not only did their oldest daughter get brutally murdered, but their youngest son was taken away by the state, they are being charged with murder, and Cynthia gives birth to a baby girl she has to hand over to her parents. Words cannot express what they must have gone through.
September 9th of 1989, almost one year after Jaclyn's kidnapping. A man by the name of Perry Hernandez raped and kidnapped a six-year-old girl in blue island, the town where Jaclyn was found. This is a tiny, tiny town right next to Midlothian. This guy broke a window and crawled through it; that is how he gained access to this six-year-old. This guy confessed to the Blue Island kidnapping but said he had nothing to do with Jaclyn's murder. The fact that two little girls were taken is literally unfathomable.
The jury didn't believe the guy that confessed to kidnapping the six-year-old was the same one that kidnapped Jaclyn because, at the six-year-olds house, he knocked over a lot of stuff and left fingerprints while at the dowaliby's house, everything was in pristine order. No sign of a disturbance at all. The fact that this guy kidnapped a little girl in the middle of the night through a broken window did not matter to the jury.
In April of 1990, the judge dismissed the charges against Cynthia for lack of evidence, but authorities were full steam ahead on the case against David. In May of 1990, David was convicted of first-degree murder in the case of Jaclyn Dowaliby.
One of the main reasons the jury convicted David Dowaliby had nothing to do with what was said in the courtroom; it had nothing to do with the evidence presented or the argument the defense gave. It had to do with a photo of Jaclyn's bedroom. Nothing stood out in the room to me; it was just a little girl's room, but the jury members focused on three significant marks on an interior door. These large marks look like punches, and eventually, after the case is closed and David is serving his time, it will come out that these punch marks were caused by David's brother when they were children. The house the family lived in was David's childhood home, and Davey's room was his uncle's old room; when he was a teen, he threw a fit about something and punched his door. The jury felt this was evidence of how violent David was. Those marks could have been from anything, and the fact that the jury made that leap is seriously wrong.
On October 30th, 1991, David Dowaliby's sentence was overturned entirely because the key witness was 75 yards away and couldn't see who was in the vehicle; all of this came out in cross-examination, but that didn't matter to the jury. This so-called witness changed his story multiple times and only stated he saw a blue vehicle after police told him of this vehicle.
David gets out of prison, and all abuse allegations are closed as unfounded. The couple finally had time to grieve for their oldest daughter while getting custody back for their other two children.
A possible person of interest was Jaclyn's biological uncle on her father's side. This man's name was Tim Guess; he had an alibi; he stated he did not know what happened to Jaclyn. His girlfriend and two others would say Tim was in a restaurant all night after her disappearance. Tim lived with his mother, Jaclyn's grandmother, who Jaclyn would see a few times a year. Tim was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but none of that matters. What matters is that two of the three people that said he was with them all night recanted and said Tim wasn't at the restaurant that night and that he only stopped by for a short while. Another suspicious thing about this Tim guy is that after David's release, they started looking into other possibilities, and Tim was one of them. When they were interviewing him again and never being inside the dowaliby's home, he knew the details of the layout. He said he knew these details because of a spirit inside him. When asked how to get to Jaclyn's room, he said, and I quote, "I walked past Davey's room," quickly adding, "That was the spirit talking, not me. I didn't say anything; I just released information." However, Timothy had a mental disability, and friends would say he would believe whatever he was told. He would tell everyone he worked at a restaurant, but he just hung out there regularly. The restaurant owner would state Timmy hung around for seven or eight years but didn't work there; he also said he yelled at Timmy once and cried. Timmy was violent or angry at all. Timothy Guess died in 2002 without any additional information coming out or officially being charged.
It has been 34 years since Jaclyn Marie Dowaliby was taken from her bed with her blanket around her and brutally murdered and thrown in the woods. Police state the case is active, but they are not pursuing anything, possibly because they believe they had it right the first time. Maybe no new leads, nothing to go on to find this child killer. Jaclyn will forever be seven years old.
Who killed Jaclyn Dowaliby?
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlothian,_Illinois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jaclyn_Dowaliby
https://www.newspapers.com/image/388769589/?terms=Jaclyn%20Dowaliby&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/388804080/?terms=Jaclyn%20Dowaliby&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/389238526/?terms=Perry%20Hernandez&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/389323289/?terms=Perry%20Hernandez&match=1
https://the-line-up.com/who-killed-jaclyn-dowaliby
https://www.newspapers.com/image/538017731/?terms=%22jaclyn%20dowaliby%22&match=1
