Under a thundering June sky, Hampshire Police Sgt. Gregory Sears lay face down in the muddy grass, three bullets fragmented in his head, his blue uniform drenched from the downpour, his body abandoned in an industrial park.
Police Chief Tom Atchison saw his officer’s body sprawled across a curb and fought back tears, then blocked off the area with yellow police tape. Working through the night, police detectives began unraveling Sears’ life to find his killer.
The trail, they said, led to his lifelong friend.
A day after Sears’ body was found June 1, 2000, Kane County authorities arrested John Carroccia, an unemployed construction worker from Rockford who had grown up with Sears.
Jury selection in the murder trial is to begin Monday. One theory prosecutors are expected to try to prove is that Carroccia killed Sears out of jealousy over the time Sears was spending with his new wife, Norma Jean. Sears, 50, married her three weeks before he was slain.
Assistant Kane County State’s Atty. Robert Berlin would only say: “It will all be detailed in my opening arguments.”
Their case is built mostly on circumstantial evidence; the gun has not been found. At least two witnesses have raised doubts about Carroccia’s alibi that he was home watching the TV sitcom “Frasier” when Sears was killed, according to court documents.
A neighbor told police that at the time of the slaying, Carroccia’s red van, which normally was parked in his driveway when he was home, was missing. A former waitress at the Travel Center of America truck stop near where Sears was found said she served coffee to Carroccia the night Sears was slain.
Carroccia, 51, is free after posting $400,000 bail. He will not talk about where he was the night Sears died.
“We are playing with high stakes: my future,” he said during an interview in his lawyer’s office. “I can’t give you all the answers.”
Carroccia and Sears were childhood playmates who grew up a few blocks apart in Marengo. They remained friends after high school, weathering Sears’ two divorces and the death of Carroccia’s wife in 1989.
“They were very close,” said Rita Valentine, Sears’ first wife. “It could almost be interpreted that they were like brothers.”
The two men went on motorcycle trips together and shared a passion for gun collecting. They ate dinner together almost every night at the Travel Center of America.
Atchison said Sears was “blinded and infatuated” when he met Norma Jean Cook, a vibrant woman and the daughter of a Pentecostal preacher from Ohio who captivated Sears with poetry and her openness about God.
Sears was so consumed with their growing relationship that he instructed patrol officers not to bother him while he took dinner breaks with her, conduct that drew a reprimand from the police chief.
`An uncomfortable situation’
As Sears began spending more time with Norma Jean, Carroccia became obsessed with Sears, a fellow police officer, Ron Malloy, told authorities.
Malloy had stopped Carroccia for erratic driving four times from October through December 1999 in Hampshire. During each stop Carroccia asked where Sears was and told Malloy he felt Sears was avoiding him.
Malloy also told detectives that Sears ordered him to patrol the Travel Center routinely because Sears wanted to avoid a confrontation with Carroccia.
Carroccia “seemed really upset” that Sears had changed the regular time the two met for dinner from 7 to 8 p.m., which was too late for Carroccia but convenient for Norma Jean, according to a Kane County sheriff’s report of Carroccia’s two-hour interrogation.
During premarital counseling the couple told their pastor that Carroccia was upset about their marriage.
“They said it was an uncomfortable situation when he was around,” said Rev. Alan Campbell, pastor of the United Methodist Church in Marengo.
It was Norma Jean who first led investigators to Carroccia, telling them her husband’s closest friend objected to their marriage. When called to testify about those suspicions at a pretrial hearing last year, however, Norma Jean claimed she didn’t remember anything about the three-week period after the death of her husband.
Police said they briefly considered Norma Jean a suspect. She stood to gain nearly $250,000 from Sears’ death, and a new will that left everything to her was found in Sears’ squad car the night he was killed.
Carroccia’s lawyer, Stephen Komie, is expected to argue that police were too quick to turn away from her as a suspect.
Defense lawyers have been gathering information about her past, including mental health records regarding her amnesia. But Kane County Circuit Judge Grant Wegner ruled Friday that Norma Jean’s background would not be admissible at Carroccia’s trial.
Said Atchison: “Every aspect of this case has been checked. We found nothing that would lead us to believe that she was involved.”
Norma Jean’s brief marriage to Sears was eventful. Just a week after the May wedding, Sears suffered a mild stroke in his squad car.
Two weeks later, on June 1, Sears returned to his 4 p.m.-to-midnight patrol shift. He had dinner around 6 p.m. with Atchison, then met briefly with Village Board members, who welcomed him back.
Afterward, Sears asked a fellow officer to notarize his last will and testament, which left everything to Norma Jean. Sears was to meet Norma Jean later at the Travel Center. He never made it.
The last time a dispatcher heard from him was around 8 p.m., when Sears was sent to a housing development to check on a report of a person acting suspiciously. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he headed to the Elgiloy Industrial Park on U.S. Highway 20 near Interstate Highway 90, a spot where Sears liked to keep an eye out for speeders.
Sears wheeled his squad car onto the entrance road to the industrial park and stopped his car facing U.S. 20. Sears left his squad car running with the driver’s side window down. His hat rested on the front seat, next to his will.
Empty, idling squad car
Police believe Sears walked about 30 feet toward a cul-de-sac in the park. Employees working the second shift at a nearby business, Poli-Film America, noticed the empty, idling squad car around 8:30 p.m. but were used to seeing Hampshire cops park there.
Police believe the killer approached Sears from behind and fired twice at point-blank range into his left temple. The killer fired a third shot into the back of his head.
Poli-Film employees later told police they had heard what sounded like a car backfiring. After finishing work, they found Sears’ body and dialed 911 from a nearby gas station.
John Rogula, a Poli-Film employee who was outside on a loading dock that evening, later told police he saw a man walk calmly to a red van and drive away from the scene.
Norma Jean was at the truck stop, waiting for Sears. Diane Barlett and her husband were sitting in a booth nearby.
“We happened to be eating in the restaurant at the same time,” Barlett said. “One of the waitresses said to her, `Where’s your husband? You never come here by yourself.’
“She said, `Yes, he’s late.
