#486 Maggie Freleng with James Degorski

Hello, this is a free call from Jim. And incarcerated individual at the Phil Correctional Center. This call is subject to recording and monitoring. James Degorsky hates rudeness, especially when it comes to the police. These police literally came up to me and said, "What's your name?" "Just very arrogant and very rude." It sounds like you're pretty big on respect. You've mentioned that a few times that they were really just disrespectful and inappropriate. "I like to introduce yourself with Somerads, so we start off on the wrong path." 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. Palatine police didn't like me from high school because I wouldn't stitch on who broke into all the lockers. So, while I was being a janitor there, somebody broke into lockers and I didn't see who did it and I didn't speculate. I already had a problem with these Palatine police from that. They throw keg or parties and they didn't like that, so I had a problem with Palatine police. And the way James responded to the police wouldn't exactly help him in the long run. So, James is one of those guys who's very sarcastic and he had a arrogance to him at that time. This is Ashley Cohen. She's a partner at Bonjean Law Group. 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. Someone who seems cold but he's been through a lot and he deals with this trauma by humorizing it or he just thought they were crazy. These police are crazy. I'm not exaggerating. Unprofessional from the get-go and they're confrontational 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 that think they're above the law and above our constitution. That's where I have a problem. And James thinks that's exactly what happened in his case. My name is James Degorsky. I've been wrongfully incarcerated for the last 22 years. From Laval for Good, this is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling. Today, James Degorsky. James Degorsky was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 20th, 1972. I've raised in Austin, States, Montprog, St. John, and Arlington Heights. We had a very tight family of seven. I had an older sister, a junior younger brother, and a younger sister. 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? Was it loving, fun, messy, lots of yelling? Tell me about it. Thanks for asking because the last 20-some years has been about mitigation, but actually I have no complaint and no regrets. I had an Austin family. We didn't. The normal things a family would do. We'd go to church every Sunday. We'd have family, like game night, with pizza, and all my friends were welcome. Jim remembers family vacations and camping trips and just hanging with his siblings. We grew up at the edge of the urban sprawl word. When I cornerfield started the meadows, woods, the tents and ponds and forth. That's pretty much what we spent most of my time. So 15-build ramps for it. Be on that site. Hang out with some older friends, motorcycles, and skateboard ramp. Pretty independent. I was basically a free-range fish. I forget what they call it though. 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. I was like, I don't know how to say it. I like my brothers and my sisters dad. I took them everywhere. I took my brothers and sisters. He just did everything. My older friends and I had even enjoyed them around. We had a blast as a kid. I got no complaints about my dysfunctional family. Jim says being free-range as he calls it allowed him to explore his curiosity. You know those annoying little kids always asking why. They're just saying why. And then you answer and they say why. And then they answer it. They say why. That was him. He calls them why kids. I was wondering if he was irritating kids with a link in sign site. I guess I wasn't irritating because my neighbor has always answered my why-why questions. And Jim learned things roaming around, talking to the adults. I've gone to my neighbor's house and he does a poll street. So I can help him do a poll street. And again, with $30, this friend has a little kid, $20. Jim says another neighbor built toy cars. I didn't want to play with R.C. cars, which he thought I wanted to learn how to do the electronic so the guy with teaching me the electronic is going grammar school. Growing up, his brothers delivered newspapers to help his parents out with money. But Jim. I would go garbage picking. Well, they delivered their newspapers and then I'd get stuff out of the trash and fix you name it BCR's radios, turn in iron, blow dryer. I'd get pretty good money by selling stuff that I can garbage pick. When you find a $100 BCR thrown in the trash and all you need is a 14 cent fuse. And it's probably possible. So I had a free apprenticeship as a kid and one of those why-why-why kids with all my neighbors. Jim says he didn't mind helping his parents because this was all fun to him anyway. Just doing that is just like a hobby in a way. But I had money. So I'd help my parents pay the bills or the lottery or little vacations, campouts and whatever. I would often let it my parents bring my favorite account down to zero and find a complete electric and so power on whatever problems were having. Even with our van, our car would break down. 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. So in high school, he started doing things like fixing cars, there are bikes, many bikes. He eventually rented out his mom's garage and had his own mechanic shop there. 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 waste cars and we started in my garage. We're popping motors in all the time. We're taking out three old sevens, popping in three fifties. So I was doing a lot of that stuff. And when I started making good money, I had extra money to give away or security for my third food, whatever. If it sounds like Jim DeGorsky didn't have time for any more activities, he was still going to high school and church and volunteering. Jim DeGorsky thought he had the perfect life until police came knocking. On the morning of Friday, January 8th, 1993, Jim remembers waking up to his mom asking him to move a car that was blocking the driveway. So I had to get up and move his car. The car belonged to Jim's high school friend, Juan Luna. He'd been in some sort of accident and one left the car at Jim's place to get fixed. I didn't really know what he'd need done. He got T-bone or the side damage. I fixed his car. Jim says he waited for Juan to pick up the car and pay him for the repairs. And when he didn't. I took his car. I took it on a joyride. I was so mad. I got loaded up his car and went out and did my rounds. He drove the car about 10 miles west to Carpenter'sville, just to screw with Juan. It's kind of like an impoverished area with a high crime area of the Chicago land suburbs. And it's far out. It's almost rural. I left his car there being rubbed. It's a long distance away from him to go pick up his car. If he want your car so bad, come pick it up. He paid me 20 times and it literally cost him me out. Jim says he left the car parked at Jewel Asco, the grocery store. And then his girlfriend at the time, Eileen Bakala picked him up. So since she got off work early, she came to meet me at Jewel. And they hung out the rest of the night, smoking weed and cat sitting. It was a boring night or whatever. The next day, Jim and everyone in the Chicago suburbs woke up to big news. A massacre at a browns chicken and pasta in Palatine, Illinois. Palatine is about 30 miles north of downtown Chicago. At the time, it was a sleepy suburb where even one murder a year was rare. So the whole community was shaken. When news spread that seven people were gunned down inside the fast food restaurant, shortly after closing around 8 pm. Two of the victims were the owners, Lynn and Richard Ellenfeld, a married couple who had just bought the franchise months prior, looking for a fresh start after Richard had lost his job. The other victims were employees Guadalupe Maldonado, Thomas Menes, 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 walking cooler of the restaurant. Some had been stabbed, one had their throat slit, and all had been shot. Less than $2,000 was stolen from the restaurant. The investigation went down as you would imagine a 93 mass killing investigation went down where it was a mass. This is Ashley Cohen again. Ashley says, although the scene at the restaurant was chaotic, there was a ton of forensic evidence pulled from the scene. There were like 200 fingerprints. There was food still in the trash, containers, there were bloody chuprints. I mean, anything in everything you imagine in forensic science and analysis was present at this crime scene. One key piece of evidence was a receipt. So there was a cash register that appeared to have been closed and reopened to sell a meal at 9.08 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. Since it was closing time, the trash cans were empty, except for one four piece chicken meal. One of the female investigators had the foresight to freeze a eaten chicken bone that was in the trash. 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. So she froze it. Jim was shook when he heard about the murders, not only because things like this didn't happen in Palatine, Illinois, but because Juan used to work there. A few of his friends actually worked there too. We were just shocked that it happened so close to home. Do you remember talking to him about it at all? Yeah, I remember it because it was a long time ago. I was at a party and it was one of his friends. So we were over his friends' house. I saw an article they had on the wall. That was pretty much the longest conversation I ever really had about it. I was shocking that it was looking at my friends like, "Just as you could have been you." So I think the longest conversation I ever had. Jim didn't think much more about it until the police showed up at his door two years later asking about Juan Luna. In 1995, the police came to my house and asked me about his alibi. They said they were doing follow-ups with former employees' alibi. And then Juan Luna used me as an alibi. I'm like, "Wasn't that like three years ago?" Jim says he felt put on the spot. He'd forgotten all about that day he took Juan's car for a joy ride. Of course, I didn't remember what I was doing the day. So they kind of a rude question to sit there and ask me what I was doing three years earlier. I didn't like that whole thing. Apparently, Juan Luna had told police that he'd been working with Jim that day at his garage, fixing cars. "I never employed Luna. I've never, one never worked at my house. Never worked at my shop. Never." So that was the first thing 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 just really laughed at it. 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. "When he left me in 1995, they said they were going to go reinvestigate him. And then I went to a party. It's a remodeling party. A remodeling of 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 harass him again. And we thought it was funny. We had a conversation then. And then I talked to Juan after that. But he just never really said anything and never acted guilty or concerned or anything. I didn't think the accused involved whatsoever." 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 4,000 leads. 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 one of those situations where people were just desperate to find answers. And then the case went cold for seven more years. "I'm Munga Shategatherer and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about. And what it really means to live forever for all of us." I learned about some rad science. "I can make a brain for you. And then we can test what draw is the best for your brain. A suppose to his brain." "Here are some hard truths." "I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a 4-5-year acceleration." "And get myself into a world of trouble." "I'd say probably start bone smashing." "That doesn't work." "Make you look more defined." "They say it works. I don't know." Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey guys, Paul Verzi here, and I want to talk to you about Paul's Best Podcast. "I will, Pharaohs, big money players, network, and iHeart Radio." "I sit down each week with a special guest, and we discuss the absolute best of things." "He's David's." "It's that, and then there's everything else." "He would just shout one line and he would murder." "Murray!" "Bunch!" "Murray!" "Let's talk about the best moments that we had on the road." "I would love a cocktail." "Through Joker get last-world videos on a Southwest Airlines flight." "Joh, I was your flight." "It was great." "The guy on the table stayed, moving on the field, and the player saw Joe as his former coach." "And he hugged him, and now Joe just went with it." "And you know, the guy goes, "What are you doing here, coach, and Joe just goes mad." "And you walk in, and it is bananas." "I mean, it's a feast for the eyes, and I was like, it's not my thing either, but we're here." "When in Rome." "Top athletes, chefs, musicians, everybody." Listen to Paul's best podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers, like composer Mark Schemman. Once you've established it, you have the talent. It's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbets for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him. The time together, laughing. Lawyer Robbie Kaplan. The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. And you can really make a difference to causes. And I say to you, if you bring the right case at the right time and everything. Marriage equality. Yeah, when there's the perfect example. Director Morgan Neville. Film school teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary. What do you want to say? Documentary is all about your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard. Listen to hears the thing on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Shortly after the murders, a Palatine Council member started a reward fund. It started with a thousand dollars. Then the community chipped in, raising almost a hundred thousand dollars for any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case. 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 2002, Jim DeGorsky was called to the police station for questioning. Jim says he didn't think he had anything to run from. So he went. And it was the same sergeant that talked to me all the way back in 1995, which was not good. I remembered him from his glasses and the way he talked. So I was kind of sarcastic to him from the get go. Jim sat down with law enforcement, including police commander William King. And then, well, he was talking to me. He just asked me basic general questions about the same alibi. But before he left, he started asking about-- he basically said, we have two suspects DNA. We have two suspects, fingerprints. And we have an eyewitness. We have eyewitnesses of the murders. So the guy says, everybody's a suspect. So would you give us your DNA or your fingerprints, the clear your name? And you did. So I-- oh, yeah. I guess I gave my DNA like 10 slabs of DNA. I gave them my whole entire hand print, 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 like that, and then that's right as I was leaving it. Did you have any problems with ex-girlfriends at the time? 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. That ex-girlfriend police were asking about was Ann Lockett. Jim and Ann had dated around the time of the murders when he was 20. They'd met through one in high school. Jim says Ann 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 to work on cars. And they both liked the outdoors. We were great, man. She's three huggers. So we went hiking inside and all the trees, edible foods, everything. Whatever we-- so we're going through, we're eating her. It's a fun to go camping and hiking with. Not going out her wife bucket left. The whole entire time we dated. But a lot of my friends did not care for her. Why didn't they like her? We didn't. Jim trusted, didn't like her-- Ann was different than Jim's friends. Some of my friends are yuppies. Some of my friends are gear heads. Some of my different groups of friends. And they like me dating her. So a lot of people, they voiced it. Jim says back in high school, she was the type to hang out with the heavy party in crowd. The burnouts at the back of the school cafeteria, as Jim calls them. She's like me. She goes a lot of concerts. And she goes like-- she likes that death-not-all stuff, like the cannibal corpse stuff. So she wears leather jackets, heavy metal parties, and cager parties. And she's got some wild stories of all her party lifestyle. So a lot of my friends didn't really care for that. His relationship with Ann worked for about a year, he says, until they broke up. Seven years later, in 2002, Ann Lockett came forward with a story. Ann said that Jim had called her while she was at the psychiatric hospital on January 9, 1993, the day after the murders. She said that-- She received a call from James Degorski at a pay phone 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. Police said Ann 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 16, 2002, Jim Degorski and Womluna were arrested for the Browns Chicken murders. Jim lived in Indianapolis at the time, and was about to start work when two officers showed up, including police commander William King, again. Literally told me to leave my inhaler, put your ass-man hands on the F in car. They started off all wrong. It bears me some of my cold workers. It's one of my friends, the gas station, the subway, and it was bad. They got in the car and drove four hours to Palatine. And he just went down hill from now, 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. Jim says he also had a job interview after work, which is why my sister didn't put out an APB for me. They wouldn't let me change my clothes for my work all day. I'm a blue collar. I do, but you are 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 neck cell cell phone. They wouldn't let me even chirp on that. Jim was pissed, just like the other times he encountered Palatine police. But when I finally got into the interrogation room, we started off the wrong way, with them being confrontational bullies escalating everything. And it only got worse from there. What were you thinking? Honestly, these cops were so unprofessional. I didn't know what they were going to do next. Were you scared? Terrified. Police said Jim waived his Miranda rates, but he remembers it differently. They wouldn't let me use their phones since they wouldn't let me take my phone. They call my inhaler, because I have two attorney friends, they see the family friends. Yeah, it was-- I had no rights whatsoever. I was terrified the whole time. Eventually, police told Jim why they were holding him. They said he and Juan Luna had robbed the Browns chicken restaurant and killed everyone inside. And they had the DNA to prove it. From that chicken bone, the investigator saved back in 1993. 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. The police told Jim that after murdering the Browns chicken employees in cold blood, he and Juan met Eileen Bacala, his girlfriend at the Jewel Oscar parking lot in Carpenter'sville, with a duffel bag full of cash. Then they all drove together to another town to meet a friend. And in that ride, Juan and Jim bragged about what they'd done. Once they accused me and started putting me into the narrative, that's when I started saying, no, I'm going to remain in silence. Jim says police were using his alibi to actually implicate him in the murder. They put words into 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 they would get really confusing. And this is nonstop. This is going on like a tag team. It was relentless until finally Jim allegedly confessed. He allegedly made oral statements. King brought in assistant state's attorney Michael MacKell to take his statement on camera. So was there a statement that you made? 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 and we'll let you use the phone. Just say that you just did this. Say that Luna did this. Say this. They're telling me what to say. And then if I say that on a video, it was incriminating. Police said Jim admitted that he and Juan were involved in the crime, but then refused to further elaborate on camera. I don't even know what the video says. I think I said, yeah, right to their narrative. And then immediately said that's not like it's a talk of my, I can talk to a judge. So did you get to use the phone? Never. Juan 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 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 them you better say this, or basically threaten them with going to cook County jail. They couldn't even have voiced their might, 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 cycles in society. Jim says his family got the worst of it and were tormented for being related to a browns chicken murderer. They didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong at all. But my family did absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever in the least bit. To be persecuting them and targeting them with comments even. It's wrong. [MUSIC] Jim sat in jail for years and finally went to trial in August 2009. 16 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. >> 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 10% of it is actually, is defense and 90% of it is offense on the part of his public defender to try to not get him to get the death penalty. It was all mitigation. Like everything was, you were going to be convicted. So let's just mitigate and let's not get you the death penalty. The prosecution did not use the alleged tape confession by Jim. 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, instead of using the video, the prosecution had King and Mikhail testify about the confession. The videotaped confession would be the best evidence. If it's a solid videotaped 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. Since the prosecution had no forensic evidence tying Jim to the murders, they relied heavily on their star witnesses, Jim's ex-girlfriends. And Lockett and Eileen Bakala repeated the stories they told police. Jim says the whole experience was grueling. It was bad that I had to be forced. Actually, everybody got us with it. It was forced to watch those videos and those photos. Like, just the crime scene, that was when the worst thing for me. It was bad to listen to the Ann Lockett testimony, but listening to those cops, law enforcement officers under oath lying. And Bakala lying, which is supposed to be like a real good friend of mine since it was a long time. That was the other wrenching for me. It was always true with the worst. On September 19, 2009, 37-year-old James Degorski was convicted of all seven counts of murder. His defense attorney, Mark Levitt, addressed to the press. Obviously, very disappointed in the verdict that we respect the fact that the jury is not guilty. My focus now obviously turns to the sense of hearing. And trying to convince this jury that the appropriate sense for Mr. Degorski is life in prison. The jurors agreed to life in prison, though many told the press they wanted the death penalty. And that Ann and Eileen's testimony had convinced them Jim was guilty. I think that their testimony was very key decisions that we reached. Juan Luna had gone to trial in 2007 and was also convicted of the murders. I'm Munga Shategatherer and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. And what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you. A suppose to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a 4-5 year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make you look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey guys, Paul Verzi here. And I want to talk to you about Paul's best podcast. I will, Pharaohs, big money players, network, and iHeart Radio. I sit down each week with a special guest and we discuss the absolute best of things. He's David's. It's that. And then there's everything up. He would just shout one line and he would murder. Marie! One! Oh, man. Let's talk about the best moments that we had on the road. I would love a cocktail. Through Joker Get, last row of "Middle See" on a Southwest Airlines flight. It was great. The guy on the airport stayed, put him on the field. And the player saw Joe as his former coach. And he hugged him and hugged him and Joe just went with it. And the guy goes, "What are you doing here, coach?" And Joe just goes, "Man!" And he walk in and it is bananas. I mean, it's a feast for the eyes and I was like, "It's not my thing either." But we're here. Went in Rome. Top athletes, chefs, musicians, everybody. Listen to Paul's best podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, it's Alex Baldwin. It's about the hang. You know, Robin I was always a great hang. And I say to if you bring the right case at the right time. Marriage equality. What do you hear? Listen to hears the thing on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Jim has been incarcerated over two decades and he spent most of his time alone. I just don't fit in. I really just prefer just to walk around the yard by myself. I do things by myself if I can help out where it comes to school work. I want to a college program and stuff like that. I don't mind helping people do stuff like that. But Jim says he's a different person on the inside. 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 have only want to describe this environment. Has your family supported you while you're in there? 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. They just, they don't know what to do. And I really don't know what to do either. Jim met the Bonjean Law Group where Ashley is partner when he was first arrested for the murders in the early 2000s. When James was arrested, he went to Cook County Jail. And when a correction officer found out that he was the Browns chicken murderer, he punched him so hard in the face that it broke one of the plates in his face. So Jim hired Jennifer Bonjean to file a civil case. 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 is accused of one of the biggest mass murders in Illinois at that time. And nobody wants to represent the Browns chicken murder. So she, she did, she represented him and she got a pretty favorable verdict for him. She got him over $500,000 in damages. So once they got to know each other, he said, will you represent me? In his post-conviction proceedings. I think we started investigating his criminal case around 2015, 2014. We just hit the ground running doing investigation for him. What specifically were you interested in? Because there's a thousand cases you could take. You know, why look at this one? 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, it's not what they paint in the media. Remember, police found no evidence tying Jim to the murder scene. 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 this DNA and not a single stitch of evidence was found to implicate James was seem very problematic. When we started investigating James's case, there were a lot of holes in the story, in the investigation. Everything seemed very confusing and not clear and why 10 years later. And also why were these two guys, Juan Luna and James Degorski, the suspects? Usually you don't just go murder seven people and then go about their Mary business just living their lives. Ashley says another thing that didn't make sense was how the prosecution painted Juan Luna as a disgruntled employee. 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 were all killed just because you were a victim of the murder. you don't like one person at your prior employment doesn't mean you're murdering everybody who works there. Ashley says there were other leads, the police pursued, that seemed much more plausible. Like one, about gangs committing similar crimes in the area. That makes more sense to me. Not just a senseless killing for no apparent reason from a disgruntled employee. And Ashley says she thinks Wands confession, similar to Jim's, was coerced. The police really 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 feared for his life. And the safety of his family. Ashley and the Bond Jean team also looked at Ann Locke, the star witness and Jim's ex-girlfriend. They wound up tracking down her roommate at the psychiatric facility she was in at the time of the murder in 1993. And 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 pay phone. It just, the face value of her testimony seemed very implausible. Not only did they find it would be highly unlikely Jim was able to call a pay phone at the psychiatric center to tell Ann about the murder, but on top of that, 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 James at that time. Jim and Ann dated months after the murders. So why would Ann lie? Ann Locke was gonna receive the $100,000 in reward money. And that was our biggest issue. The jury did not know that she would have received money for her testimony. Ashley says this is a Brady violation, the prosecution hiding ex-gulpatory evidence. She says the jury could have been sued differently had they known. As far as I lean Bacala, Ashley says she had a partner who was in some trouble with the law at the time she came forward. I think if you're anybody you know about the brown chicken at the time you got arrested. You're like, what if I give you information about the brown chicken murder? 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. Are you resentful towards Ann and I lean for lying against you? That's a good question because the be resentful of 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, white kid independent. Now I don't need to know the why. I don't want to know the why. But I blamed Palatine police because they were the filter that was supposed to stop this and said they did it. Right now Jim has a habeas petition pending in front of the court but Ashley worries about the charged politics of the brown chicken murder. 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. Michael McHale, who took the alleged confession from Jim and testified to it at trial, is now a circuit court judge in Cook County. 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 a lot for the world to come to terms with the fact that they got the brown chicken murder wrong. Do you think about life, like what life will be like when you do get out? I'm definitely not going to be free range. I'm definitely going to 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 I see here, the stuff I hear, never really saw that part of this. I knew stuff was happening inside. I just never really talked to somebody that raped and killed people. I just, the stuff I listened to for years and just somebody talked about robberies and murder and not I'm gonna be a hermit. Wow, so you feel now that you've been in prison, you're apprehensive about the outside world because of how terrible it is, is kind of what you're saying. So before I was just like social with 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 want to go away from everything. I just want to, hopefully, you're gonna find something to fix and remodel and build and just, I think just fix stuff from the friends I still have. (soft music) - 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 Marie's pose Lee. 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 editing and sound design by senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher is Shelby Sorrels, with mixing by Josh Allen, our executive producers are Jason Flom, Jeff Kempler and Kevin Wartis. With additional production help by Jeff Clyburn, the music is by three time Oscar-nominated composer, Jay Raoff. Make sure to follow us on all 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. [Music]