Retrial Of Man In Baby-sitter's Slaying To Begin

September 14, 1998|By Phuong Le, Tribune Staff Writer.

Six years ago, 11-year-old Holly Staker was raped, strangled and stabbed 27 times while baby-sitting two small children in a brick two-flat apartment in Waukegan.

When Juan Rivera, a 20-year-old Waukegan high school dropout and gang member, was arrested two months later and subsequently convicted of the crime, the news brought solace to the girl's family.

But those emotional wounds are likely to reopen Monday when the retrial of Rivera is to begin. Opening statements are expected late Tuesday.

A state appellate court in 1996 ordered a new trial because of four problems with evidence and testimony, none of which it said was serious enough to warrant a new trial on its own.

Holly's murder on Aug. 17, 1992, prompted one of the most intense investigations in Lake County and forced officials to abandon use of electronic monitoring devices to track jail inmates.

Prosecutors say Rivera slipped out of an electronic leg monitor he was wearing while awaiting trial on a burglary charge. Prosecutors have said that Rivera was acquainted with Holly and followed her into the apartment where she was baby-sitting. There, he repeatedly stabbed Holly after she mocked his inability to have sex with her, authorities said.

Rivera, now 25, has maintained his innocence but did not take the witness stand in the first trial. His attorneys had argued that he was home on the night of the murder, strapped to the monitoring device.

Assistant State's Atty. Mike Mermel, who is prosecuting the case with Matthew Chancey, said the state has a tighter case than in the first trial. Chancey, a former assistant state's attorney who prosecuted Rivera in 1993, has been assigned as a special prosecutor.

"We have additional evidence this time around," Mermel said, who declined to elaborate. "The noose has tightened."

As in the first trial, the prosecution's case largely depends on two confessions that Rivera allegedly gave to police on the morning of Oct. 30, 1992.

There is no physical evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA, linking Rivera to the crime and no witnesses to place Rivera at the crime scene.

On three typewritten, single-spaced documents, Rivera allegedly detailed the events from when he took cocaine and marijuana to later showering and burning his clothes after he stabbed Holly and raped her.

Defense attorneys again intend to argue that the confessions were coerced after four days of relentless questioning. Rivera suffered a physical and mental breakdown requiring medication in the hours before he signed the statements, his attorneys said.

"We're convinced we're defending an innocent man," said defense attorney Henry Lazzaro, who also defended Rivera in the first trial. "False confessions are a fact of life in the criminal justice system."

Days before the trial, Lazzaro and co-counsel Patrick Tuite drew parallels to the Ryan Harris murder case in Chicago, where police got confessions from 7- and 8-year-old boys but dropped charges when testing found semen on the girl's panties.

"They turned a blind eye to all the physical evidence," Tuite said about his client's case. "They were in a rush to judge. They just wanted to wrap things up."

Both attorneys are defending Rivera on a pro bono basis.

Tuite said his client felt good and upbeat about his retrial. Defense attorneys likely will introduce to the second trial testimony about another Waukegan man who allegedly admitted to having sex with Holly and stabbing her 27 times during an LSD-induced rage.

Testimony for the prosecution likely will come from several people, including Lake County investigators and convicts or jail inmates who said they heard Rivera confess or suggest he committed the crime.

Presiding in the case will be Associate Judge Christopher C. Starck, the same judge who heard the 1993 case and had sentenced Rivera to life in prison without parole.

Holly's mother, Nancy Kalinoski, declined to comment on the retrial when reached last week.

Holly was slain in the early evening in a neighbor's upstairs apartment on tree-lined Hickory Street on Waukegan's historic north side.

Holly was watching the 2-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son of neighbor Dawn Engelbrecht, who was working at nearby John's Cheers tavern.

Engelbrecht rushed home about five hours later when she learned that her son had been locked out of the house and Holly had not answered repeated phone calls.

She met Holly's mother at the apartment. The two discovered the 2-year-old girl in the living room and called police when they did not see Holly.

Police discovered Holly's body partially clothed in a fetal position behind a bedroom door in the apartment.

The girl had been stabbed 27 times, strangled and sexually assaulted, according to an autopsy report.

After 10 grueling weeks in which investigators tracked down more than 500 leads and interviewed hundreds of people, the Lake County Major Crime Task Force announced that they had the killer.