About 35 miles west of Chicago. For a number of reasons, the authorities got fixated on Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez as the culprits. However, the only piece of physical evidence, a bootprint on the door of her home, didn't match either man. There was reason to suspect another man, Brian Dugan (who did have the correct foot size), but the DuPage County Sherriff's office and State's Attorney insisted on trying Cruz and Hernandez. The case was kicked back by the appellate court twice for retrial, and the State's Attorney kept ignoring Dugan to retry Cruz and Hernandez. Finally, at the third trial, it was shown that a Sherriff's detective had perjured himself (he testified about a phone call on a specific date, and the defense showed that he was on vacation in Florida on that date), and the judge threw out the case.
In 1996 the state indicted seven DuPage County law enforcement officials for conspiracy to convict Cruz and wrongful prosecution. They were acquitted but Cruz, Hernandez and Steven Buckley (one of the three original defendants) filed a civil suit against DuPage County and won.
Brian Dugan, already convicted of rape and murder of both a child and an adult woman in separate events, had claimed in 1985 to have committed the crime. His DNA was later found to match that from the Nicarico crime scene. Dugan was not indicted until 2005 by a DuPage County grand jury for the crimes against Nicarico, and he pleaded guilty in 2009. He was initially sentenced to death. After Illinois abolished this punishment, his sentence was commuted to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
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