”Between taking care of Carli, I`m on the phone continuing to work for Jaclyn, David and Davey. I`m always talking with my friends about what our next plan is, what needs to happen and what we will try to do to make it happen.”
David`s brother Brian, Cynthia said, worked with a man who knew Linda Petrine, a Chicago psychic who had dealt with police departments and the FBI on missing-persons cases. The friend suggested to Brian that the Dowalibys call Petrine to see if she would help find Jaclyn. The Dowalibys agreed.
”I didn`t believe in psychics,” Cynthia said. ”But we were desperate. We would have done anything that would help.”
Petrine said she was unable to come to their house until late Monday night, three days after Jaclyn had been discovered missing. Although law-enforcement officials had declined to attend the session, Petrine brought a tape recorder to tape her impressions, thinking it might help the police later.
When Petrine arrived at their home, she said, the Dowalibys showed her the broken basement window, and she touched the glass.
Petrine almost immediately began to describe two men. The tape has her stating that one was ”a black youth with medium skin tone.” The other was
”a thin white man . . . dingy light brown hair that needed to be washed . . . light-colored eyes-blue or green . . . bad teeth.” Petrine added that he was ”spacey-like he was on drugs. . . . He had very nervous habits. . . . He has a tattoo on his arm, his right arm. . . . It`s in blue ink. . . . It`s not a very well-done tattoo.”
Petrine continued describing her impressions as she walked through the house, talking about feelings she was having about Jaclyn.
On the tape of the session, David is heard saying to the psychic, ”All I ask is that you just try to think of how we can get her back.”
Petrine said that when the Dowalibys first called her, she had ”felt”
Jaclyn`s strangulation. She said she knew she had to tell them that Jaclyn was dead. She could also tell that Cynthia was in no condition to hear that news. Petrine said she waited until she and David were alone in Jaclyn`s room, then turned to him.
”I feel I have to tell you that your daughter has been strangled,” she said.
”He said, `No!”` Petrine recalled. ”He kept repeating: `I know we`re going to find her. I know she`s going to be all right.”`
Petrine went on to describe the site where she felt Jaclyn`s body would be found. She said she drew a sketch of a field with grasses 3 to 4 feet high in front of a woods with billowing trees. Two streams of water crossed nearby, she said, and the body would be found near a large building.
(Later, when an FBI agent told David that ”we found her,” David responded, ”In the field?” The prosecution contended that this response was evidence of David`s involvement in the crime. The defense countered that the response reflected David`s recollection of his conversation with the psychic.) Cynthia said David chose not to tell her then what the psychic had said.
”I had a feeling after the jury verdict that I was a widow. I hated to see cars going by and people going about their daily business when everything was wrong. It was like David had died.”
According to Cynthia, on Sunday, Sept. 11, David volunteered to take a lie detector test. ”He told me: `I will do anything they want. I just want Jaclyn to be found.”`
Cynthia also agreed to take a lie detector test, but, she said, ”when they took me downtown to where the lie detector machine was, I got really upset. I told them: `I`m here. My daughter`s out there somewhere. She could be scared and she doesn`t know where I am.”` She began to cry. An agent told her she was too upset to take the test at that time.
”By Tuesday,” Cynthia said, ”I noticed a change in the way the police questioned us. The FBI agents asked for another set of fingerprints and said, `We`re not approaching this with tunnel vision. We just want to exclude both of you as suspects.”`
That morning, almost as soon as Cynthia left her bedroom, an FBI agent began questioning her. ”It was as if he wanted to get to me before I was awake,” Cynthia said. ”Maybe he thought I`d tell him something I hadn`t already said. I made coffee, and then we went outside and talked.”
That day, FBI agents asked Cynthia and David to come back to the Midlothian police station for what Cynthia thinks was the third or fourth set of fingerprints. When they reached the station, she said, the agents asked Cynthia if she would like a soda. When she said yes, they took her to another room away from David.
”That`s when they started to go over the same questions for about the 10th time,” Cynthia said. ”What were we doing on the day Jaclyn disappeared? And then he asked how it was I showed Jaclyn I loved her.”
Cynthia gave blood and urine samples. She also took a lie detector test.
The agents told Cynthia that because of her emotional state, her test had been ”inconclusive.” (State police documents support that conclusion.) They urged her to come for a ride with them. ”Do you want to go to a shopping mall?” they asked. She said she knew they were being sarcastic but agreed to go, hoping to spot Jaclyn along the way.
As they drove through Midlothian, the agents asked Cynthia questions about who disciplined Jaclyn and whether she ever spanked her children.
Cynthia was sick of being asked the same questions over and over again and stared out the window looking for Jaclyn, looking for her Lady Lovelylocks comforter.
When the agents finally took Cynthia home, she found that David was still at the station. One of the FBI agents stationed at her house took her aside and said he`d like to talk to her. They walked outdoors.
Cynthia sat at the picnic table facing him. ”Cynthia, we feel David knows something he`s not telling us,” she said the agent told her.
”Accidents happen, and we think David may know something about that.”
”No,” she said, ”I would know if he knew something.” The agent kept pressing her, she said, trying to see if she would say something to confirm his apparent suspicions about David. According to Cynthia, he told her that David had failed his lie detector test. (The report of the Sept. 11 test shows no evidence of David lying about Jaclyn`s disappearance.)
Cynthia told the agent it was impossible that David could have had anything to do with Jaclyn`s disappearance. She would have known, she said.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that two other FBI agents were talking to her mother at the end of the yard.
By now it was early evening and the FBI agent finally agreed to let Cynthia return to the house. She walked into the hall, where she saw her mother waiting for her.
”Cyndi, they`ve found Jaclyn,” Mary Malia said.
”Where is she?” Cynthia screamed.
”Cyndi,” Mary Malia said, ”she`s dead.”
Cynthia collapsed. Her mother and one of the FBI agents reached out and caught her. They carried her to a couch, where another agent was sitting.
”How could this happen? Who would do this?” Cynthia sobbed.
According to Cynthia, the agent on the couch tried to put an arm around Cynthia to comfort her. He was the same man, she said, who had spoken to her moments before at the picnic table. Cynthia pushed him away, crying: ”Where`s David? I want David.”
Aghast at the scene in front of her, Anna Dowaliby decided to take action. She drove to the Midlothian police station and demanded to see David, who had been there throughout the afternoon.
”His wife needs him,” she told the officer at the desk. The officer replied that David was unavailable. When she returned home, Anna called a neighbor who was a retired Chicago police detective and asked him if he knew of any attorneys. ”I felt we had to get a lawyer to get David out of the police station,” Anna said. ”I didn`t know what our rights were.”
The neighbor recommended she call attorney Ralph Meczyk. Anna was on the phone with Meczyk when a squad car drove up and David got out. The officers had told him of Jaclyn`s death as they drove him home from the station, Cynthia said.
According to Cynthia, at first David thought it was a trick to force him to say something, but when he saw the scene at his house, he knew it was true. He began to cry. He went straight to the couch, Cynthia said, and put his arms around her. ”Cyndi, I`m so sorry I couldn`t be with you,” he said.
Angered by the way the police had kept her son from his wife when she learned of Jaclyn`s murder, Anna Dowaliby turned to the FBI agents still in her home. ”Get out,” she told them.
”We need our phone equipment,” they replied.
Anna instructed a relative to disconnect the equipment and then, thrusting it into their hands, she repeated, ”Get out.”
From that day forward, the Dowalibys, following the instructions of their attorneys, never met with law-enforcement officials without the lawyers present.
