Given the unpredictable and extraordinary events that followed the murder of Jaclyn Dowaliby, it is only fitting that the mini-series based on her case should contain its share of idiosyncrasies, from tabloid bad girl Shannen Doherty playing wronged mother Cynthia Dowaliby to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley being portrayed as a contemplative figure to a CBS movie offering as a hero an NBC employee, the late Paul Hogan of WMAQ-Ch. 5.
Jaclyn’s slaying shook the Chicago area in September, 1988. The 7-year-old girl with an impish, unforgettable smile, her parents who turned from demons into martyrs, and the various friends, relatives, investigators and observers all seemed part of some drama whose significance reached beyond a lone murder, beyond south suburban Midlothian, where she lived, and beyond neighboring Blue Island, where she was found strangled.
Her slaying spoke to some of our primal fears: about being unable to keep our children safe, about what has happened to families in the latter half of the century, about civil authority and, depending on whether you adopted a prosecution or defense perspective, its impotence against some evils or its ability to perpetrate others.
It was a case where a public search for a missing girl–a familiar occurrence now, it seems, but more unusual then–ended in the discovery of her decomposed body wrapped in a blanket. It was a case where police and, through police conduits in the press, the public quickly turned against the girl’s parents.
And it was a case where both parents were ultimately charged with the murder: Mother Cyndi Dowaliby was ruled innocent before the jury began deliberations, father David Dowaliby was found guilty by that jury, the Illinois Appellate Court tossed his conviction out for lack of evidence 18 months later, and the murder investigation since, while officially open, has remained largely dormant.
Wading into that pool of confusion and complication, a little like a goose into a great lake, comes the mini-series “Gone in the Night” (8 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday, WBBM-Ch. 2), which lays out the Dowaliby case from the Dowaliby perspective with precision and relative clarity and accuracy, if not with any particular poetic or dramatic flair.
This is not a trifling service. Where it once occupied a prominent place in the public mind, the case faded over the years to the point where many in the area are probably left with vague and suspicious memories and little more: phrases like “house of violence,” a father whose actions seemed suspect, and wasn’t there something about abuse of another Dowaliby child?
“Gone in the Night” is based both on the Dowalibys’ own story and on the 1993 book of that title by David Protess, a Northwestern University journalism professor, and Rob Warden, a free-lance writer now working as an aide to Cook County State’s Atty. Jack O’Malley.
Taking aim
Protess and Warden, in their book, take issue with much of the prosecution’s case against the Dowalibys, as well as charges that Jaclyn’s younger brother Davey was abused, the idea of violence as a regular visitor to the Dowalibys’ house, and the general competence of the police investigation.
Where they don’t try to debunk directly, they chronicle various courts doing it for them. In exonerating Cyndi after evidence had been presented in the couple’s trial, Cook County Criminal Court Judge Richard Neville ruled that there wasn’t enough against her and freed her forthwith. After the Appellate Court tossed out David’s conviction for insufficient evidence, appellate Justice Dominic Rizzi took the rare step of speaking out about it, calling that original prosecution “a waste of taxpayers’ money.” In returning the Dowalibys’ other two children to Cyndi, before her husband’s release, a juvenile judge ruled there was no credible evidence of abuse.
But Protess, Warden and the movie go beyond that, suggesting that Daley decided to prosecute the Dowalibys to further his political career.
It is hard to remember now, with him occupying City Hall like a birthright, but in 1988, Daley was Cook County state’s attorney, another pol who hoped to fill the void left by the death of Mayor Harold Washington.
The announcement that the Dowalibys were being charged came more than two months after their daughter was killed and on the same day Daley made it known he would seek the office from which his father once ruled. His platform was built on his record as state’s attorney. In Protess and Warden’s theory, the Dowalibys were the high-profile case that enabled Daley to showcase his hostility to crime.
Although the names of many other principals were changed for legal reasons, the mini-series doesn’t pull punches when it comes to Daley, though screenwriter Brian Ross said it was one of the areas where the filmmakers had to “go several rounds” to get CBS lawyers to allow it.
While Chicagoans familiar with the mayor may not recognize the movie’s calculating, even-tempered figure, the filmmakers got around lawyerly objections by hewing to the public record for his public utterances and using the book’s reporting for his private ones.
Noelle Gaffney, Daley’s current deputy press secretary, labeled the movie’s portrait of Daley’s motives “an absurd charge. The mayor . . . ran an office that was known for its integrity and professionalism.”
And Midlothian Police Chief John Bittin said investigators still believe the right people were prosecuted in the case.
“Our investigation culminated with the arrest of Mr. and Mrs. Dowaliby,” he said.
Bold accusation
The film’s other aggressive stance is in following the lead of Protess and Warden and suggesting as the likely killer a real person. Though given a pseudonym, the movie character Rob Kinney is identified as the mentally ill brother of Cyndi’s first husband, Jaclyn’s biological father (David adopted the girl after he and Cyndi married). It’s left a shade nebulous, but if Kinney isn’t the one shown taking the girl from her bed, then it’s another white guy with greasy dark hair, razor stubble and a perpetual cigarette on his lips.
In the book, Protess and Warden call Cyndi’s schizophrenic ex-brother-in-law by his real name, Timothy Guess.
Investigators, to this day, say they definitively ruled Guess out as a suspect, and he has denied involvement in the crime.
But the authors and the movie chronicle a conversation they report having had with him in which they say he talked about what “the spirit” knows about Jaclyn’s murder, including some very specific and non-public details.
The movie reproduces verbatim excerpts of that chilling reported interview, though Warden’s role in it has been taken by Hogan, the late Ch. 5 reporter who aggressively challenged the prosecution case in news reports after Dowaliby’s conviction. (To make the story easier to follow, screenwriter Ross said, Warden was written out and Hogan’s role grew.)
The bulk of the film rights money, Protess said, went to the Dowalibys, though he characterized it as not even enough to pay their legal debts.
“We still owe money and probably will for the rest of our lives,” said David, who got his old job back as a foreman for a contractor after his release from prison and is now in the same line of work for another company.
The Dowalibys still live in the area but have moved out of Cook County and changed their last name, because it’s easier not to have to explain all the time, they said.
They’ve made a couple of public appearances in conjunction with the movie, at a CBS press preview in Pasadena, Calif., in January, and at Northwestern a week ago Saturday, when Protess showed the film for students, friends and other interested parties. “We decided to go with the movie back three or four years ago,” David said in California. “We wanted to wake up the public. . .
“We wanted to get the truth out. But then later, our reasoning for the movie was that it’s not over. There’s still somebody out there. Somebody killed our daughter and other children could be at risk.”
In a panel discussion after the showing at Northwestern, which was closed to TV cameras at the couple’s request, the Dowalibys said they hope the movie will break a couple of leads free and maybe reawaken police interest in pursuing the case.
Cyndi said, “The most satisfying thing is that our story is being told in a way it never was before by the media, with the exception of Paul Hogan.”
The movie’s limitations
As befits its source book, the movie opts for a journalistic approach. Where the book is a detailed police and courtroom procedural, though, the movie aims more to tug at the heartstrings by adopting the Dowalibys’ perspective and focusing on their emotions.
But it never quite succeeds at putting the viewer in the middle of this multiple nightmare–from having your daughter kidnapped from your house while you sleep, to having her turn up dead, to realizing you are the chief suspect in this ultimate crime and then being convicted. Instead it feels a little detached, a little dispassionate. Part of that is the difficulty in getting past the presence of Shannen Doherty, who seems through most of the movie like a notorious glamor puss dropped into this middle-class family-drama milieu. (It should be noted that Doherty, on the Pasadena publicity panel with the Dowalibys, had the nerve, or lack of perspective, to equate her troubles with the media to the Dowalibys being accused of killing Jaclyn.)
As David Dowaliby, Kevin Dillon conveys a fuller emotional range, from anguish to anger, resignation to rejuvenation.
Part of the problem, too, is that the movie is too willing to caricature the Dowalibys’ enemies. The cops are portrayed as being more interested in having something to offer the press than in finding the truth; the Daley character only appears in shadow; and an unfriendly reporter character prattles on to a colleague during the trial about earning good ratings.
And part of it, too, is that it is a complicated story with a broad cast of facts and characters to weave in. Ed Asner, for instance, plays John Waters, the Chicago police detective who, though dying of cancer, did significant investigative work for the defense. He shows up at the beginning of Night 2 only to pass away without the movie fully establishing the important role made clear in the book.
When it is all over, though, viewers will likely take away a clarified picture of what the Dowaliby side believes happened in and around one of the area’s most horrifying murders.
They will also take away an indelible image of Jaclyn Dowaliby, age 7, spinning cartwheels and playing in a pool, frozen in time. Home movie footage of her closes “Gone in the Night,” and it hits you like the emotional equivalent of a blow to the solar plexus.
