The widow of a slain Hampshire police officer broke into tears Thursday when a defense lawyer questioned her about the memory loss she said she suffered after her husband was shot to death.
In questioning that drew an angry response from Norma Jean Sears, the lawyer for murder defendant John Carroccia repeatedly asked why she couldn’t remember details of the night her husband, Sgt. Gregory Sears, was killed.
“You took my memory from me for three weeks,” she said to the lawyer, Stephen Komie. “I can’t remember anything. I can’t even remember my husband’s funeral. You took that from me.”
Carroccia, 51, is on trial in the Kane County Courthouse in Geneva, accused of gunning down Sears, his lifelong friend, on June 1, 2000. The officer’s body was found near his parked squad car in a Hampshire industrial park.
The defense called Sears, 51, as a witness in an attempt to portray her as a more likely suspect, pointing out that she benefited financially from her husband’s death, receiving $250,000 in benefits.
Sears testified that she filed for personal bankruptcy in Florida in 1997. The case was settled in July 1999, a few months before she moved to Illinois to marry Gregory Sears, she said.
Soft-spoken and polite throughout most of her 2 1/2 hours of testimony, Sears shouted at Komie when he reminded her of a steak dinner she had with friends in Elgin after the slaying. During the dinner she talked about the 1996 death of her previous husband, Gary Rahilly, Komie said.
“Do you recall telling them you murdered your former husband?” he asked Sears, who for the most part sat calmly on the witness stand with her hands folded.
“How dare you,” she shouted. “He died of cancer.”
As Komie pressed for details about the night Gregory Sears died, she wept quietly and wiped her eyes with tissues.
She told jurors she lost her memory after returning to Florida about three weeks after the slaying and doesn’t remember that period or the night her husband was shot.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said over and over to Komie’s questions. “I don’t remember anything about that night.”
Sears said her memory loss was caused by “the constant harassment, constant reading of negative articles in the paper, living behind locked doors, the windows are still nailed shut. It just took its toll, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”
She also blamed Komie, saying he sent investigators to interview her about the slaying.
Komie showed Sears a copy of two wills she had signed, including one that left her everything and was found in her husband’s squad car the night he was killed.
She told jurors that she didn’t remember signing them that night.
Komie asked Sears why she made 121 phone calls to a male friend in Florida in the two months before her husband was slain, including 12 calls the day he died.
“My husband and I called him and he called us because he was managing our property in Florida,” she testified. “But that many calls, I can’t say that is true.”
Sears initially pointed police to Carroccia as the suspect because of a falling-out between the two men. She said she didn’t remember any interviews with police the night of the slaying or implicating Carroccia.
Questioned by the prosecutor, Sears said she was unaware that money was available to her as a widow of a slain police officer.
“Were you even aware you could receive this money?” asked Assistant Kane County State’s Atty. Robert Berlin.
“No,” she said. “It was a very big surprise.”
After the slaying, Hampshire Police Chief Tom Atchison told her about the benefits and asked her to fill out the forms, she testified.
