In the early fall of 1988, in the Midwestern United States, a little girl would vanish in the middle of the night from her own bedroom, and her own parents would later be suspected in her murder.
Seven-year-old Jaclyn Dowaliby lived in Midlothian, Illinois with her family. She had gone to bed as usual at around ten p.m. on the evening of September 9th, 1988, but on the following morning, the child’s stepfather David awoke early and noticed with some alarm that the front door of the house was standing slightly ajar. He initially thought that perhaps his mother had gone out and accidentally left the door open, and so didn’t think any more about it.
A few hours later, however, when Jaclyn’s mother Cynthia went into her daughter’s room to wake up the little girl, she found that the child was not in her bed. But since it was Saturday, Cynthia figured that maybe Jaclyn had also risen early and gone outside to play with her friends. A brief search of the neighborhood, though, turned up no sign of her, and when Cynthia realized that the comforter was missing off the child’s bed, and also that a window in the basement had been broken—possibly by an intruder—she and David called the police and reported Jaclyn missing.
She would not be found until days later. On September 14th, the body of seven-year-old Jaclyn Dowaliby was discovered in a field in Blue Island, six miles away from her home. She was still clad in her nightgown, and had a length of rope around her neck. The missing comforter from her bed was also found with the remains. An autopsy was unable to determine when the child had been killed.
From the beginning, authorities had their suspicions that Jaclyn’s parents might be involved in the death of their daughter. There were some ambiguous clues, such as the fact that the basement window might have been broken from the inside to make it look as though an intruder had entered through it. There were also allegedly hairs belonging to Jaclyn in the trunk of the Dowalibys’ car, and blood stains on one of the child’s pillowcases. In addition, Jaclyn’s four-year-old brother David Jr. claimed that their parents had spanked Jaclyn a lot; he was also reported to have been playing with the very same rope that was later found around the throat of his dead sister.
Jaclyn’s parents were ultimately arrested and placed on trial for the murder of their daughter. Besides all the aforementioned evidence, there was also some eyewitness testimony presented on the stand, namely that David Dowaliby had been seen sitting in his car near the site where Jaclyn’s body had been dumped. Two witnesses also claimed to have seen Cynthia’s vehicle at the same location, but these sightings were later shown to be erroneous, and indeed, even the sighting of David’s car could not be confirmed, as the time and the distance from which the witness claimed to have seen him would have made it impossible for him to identify David undeniably.
It was also determined that, contrary to initial suspicions, the basement window had actually been broken from the outside. Further, the hair and blood evidence presented were found to be inconclusive. The case against Cynthia Dowaliby was subsequently dismissed, but David’s trial continued, and in 1990, he was found guilty of murdering his daughter and given a sentence of forty-five years. His conviction, however, was overturned on appeal in October of 1991.
Though some investigators still suspect that the Dowalibys were behind the death of their daughter, two other individuals are still considered persons of interest. One of these was another family member: Jaclyn’s uncle, Timothy Guess. Guess suffered from schizophrenia, and came under suspicion because his alibi for the night of Jaclyn’s disappearance was believed to be false. He also seemed to know a few details about the Dowaliby home, even though he claimed he had never been there. Guess was never arrested for the child’s murder, however, and he died in 2002.
Another possible suspect was a known sex offender by the name of Perry Hernandez, who turned up on the police’s radar a year after Jaclyn’s murder when he perpetrated a nearly identical crime in September of 1989: abducting a little girl from her home in Blue Island. This second child survived, but the modus operandi was too similar to ignore.
The slaying of Jaclyn Dowaliby remains a heartbreaking cold case.
Crime Immemorial 