More than 25 years after two Chicago teenagers were convicted of the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl, new DNA tests suggest the men may have been wrongly convicted.
Now, additional genetic tests are under way as lawyers seek to free the two men convicted in a child-abduction case that once grabbed headlines, but has been revived quietly after doubts were raised by a most unlikely source–one of the prosecutors who put the men behind bars.
Since then, an investigation by the Tribune has found that key testimony in the trial was altered. In separate interviews, the slain girl’s parents each said the mother changed her testimony to make it agree with an account given by the state’s star witness.
Michael Evans and Paul Terry were 17 years old when the body of Lisa Cabassa was found in a South Side alley in the early morning hours of Jan. 15, 1976.
No physical evidence linked them to the killing and only one witness linked them to the crime–and then only to the abduction. During the trial, the witness had to admit she repeatedly lied to police.
Nevertheless, Evans and Terry were convicted in 1977 and sentenced to 200 to 400 years in prison.
If Evans and Terry are freed, it would be among the oldest cases unraveled by DNA tests, according to Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project at New York’s Cardozo Law School.
What makes the case especially remarkable, particularly in light of Illinois’ struggles with wrongful convictions, is how it was given new life.
Thomas Breen, now one of the city’s top defense attorneys, was the lead prosecutor of Evans and Terry when he was a young Cook County assistant state’s attorney. Nearly two decades later, in 1994, Breen confided in a friend, Lawrence Marshall of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, that he had misgivings about the case.
In October 2001, Karen Daniel, a center attorney, and Jeffrey Urdangen, a defense lawyer, petitioned for DNA tests. The results of those tests show that semen found on the girl’s clothing did not come from Evans or Terry.
Cook County prosecutors have begun to reinvestigate the case, interviewing witnesses and comparing the DNA of three other men police once linked to Cabassa’s murder. None of the three produced a DNA match.
Further DNA tests are being conducted on hair found on the girl’s clothing. Prosecutors are leaving open the possibility of even more tests on other evidence.
Both Terry and Evans have struggled during a quarter century behind bars, but the years have been most unkind to Terry. While Evans says a renewed faith in God has helped him fend off encroaching bitterness, Terry has deteriorated from a vital teenager to a man so debilitated by mental illness that he is virtually non-verbal.
In a recent interview with the Tribune, Terry barely managed single-word answers to questions.
“He was a very well-rounded and well-adjusted young man when he was arrested,” said Urdangen. “But now he’s clearly a very, very diminished man. He’s withdrawn and confused and not really able to carry on a conversation.”
