When Juanita Davoodi came home to find police officers sitting in her Carol Stream living room in 2002, the frustration and pain of waiting a week for news of her missing 14-year-old daughter came to a head.
“I was angry. They were just sitting there, and I wanted them to go and bring her back to me,” Davoodi said.
But the officers were there to tell Davoodi that her daughter, Nassim, had been found dead in a shallow grave in Lake County.
“I said, `That’s not my daughter. There has to be some mistake,'” Davoodi recalled tearfully Tuesday while testifying in the trial of Turner Reeves III of Hanover Park, accused of the slaying.
But when she visited the coroner’s office, she said, “There was my daughter. My baby was there. She was dead.”
It was the second time Davoodi has had to take the stand at the Rolling Meadows branch of Cook County Circuit Court to tell the story of her daughter’s death. She also testified at the trial of Skyler Chambers of California, who was convicted in April of raping and murdering Nassim.
Reeves, 25, is accused of driving Nassim to his home and suffocating her with pillows after both men raped her in the back seat of Reeves’ car, authorities said.
Prosecutors said Tuesday that Reeves and Chambers picked up Nassim, a freshman, in front of Bartlett High School, after Chambers lured her to Reeves’ gold Toyota Camry with promises of a trip to the mall.
The girl agreed to go with the two men and Reeves’ 16-year-old cousin, but the group went to Reeves’ home, said Assistant State’s Atty. Tom Byrne.
Reeves and Chambers, who had met on the Internet, took her body to rural Lake County and buried her in a shallow grave, Byrne said.
Nassim’s body was found after Reeves took police to the site, Byrne said, adding that prosecutors will present DNA evidence tying Reeves and Chambers to the rape.
But Reeves’ defense attorneys argued that although he was present for many of the events on May 31, 2002, it was Chambers–not Reeves–who killed Nassim.
Defense attorney Leland Shalgos called Chambers a “beast” who had an agenda and said that Reeves knew nothing of the man’s plans. Though Reeves helped to bury Nassim’s body, the attorney said it was only because he was in a panic after finding out Chambers had killed her.
“He knew police would not believe he had nothing to do with it,” Shalgos said. “He tried to cover up his complicity in this whole thing.”
Prosecutors called several witnesses Tuesday, including Reeves’ cousin Jarrett Curtis, who testified that after he got out of Reeves’ car in Hanover Park, he never saw Nassim again.
He testified that at one point that day, he went to the garage after he heard noises and saw a parked car running inside.
Curtis testified that when he saw Reeves and Chambers later that afternoon, Reeves told him if anyone asked, he should say Nassim got into a car with two Mexicans.
When he asked why he should say that, Reeves said he would tell him in two years, Curtis said.
Outside the courtroom, Davoodi said she and her family think about how her daughter would have graduated this year, and that she would have bought her daughter a prom dress in the spring.
She said she just wants the trial to be over, wants punishment for the accused and won’t return to the area from Arizona where she has moved.
“This is just opening up old wounds,” she said.
Shalgos moved for a mistrial at the end of the day Tuesday, arguing that an article about the trial in Tuesday’s Tribune could cause prejudice against his client. Cook County Judge Joseph Urso said he would conduct a hearing on the motion when the trial resumes Wednesday morning.
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arozas@tribune.com
