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Man found innocent of killing deaf 15-year-old girlfriend in 1981 - Aurora Beacon News
Gary Albert, pudgier than his 1981 yearbook showed him and wearing glasses, walked out of the Bridgeview courthouse Monday night a free man, acquitted of the cold case murder of his pregnant, 15-year-old deaf girlfriend.
Jurors who heard five days of evidence against Albert, who 30 years ago was an 18-year-old deaf student at Hinsdale South High School, decided in less than an hour that he did not kill Dawn Niles as prosecutors had charged.
“Mr. Albert, you are free to go,” Judge Joan M. O’Brien told the 49-year-old, and once the American Sign Language interpreter relayed her words, Albert looked up at the ceiling. His mother uttered “Oh dear God” and burst into tears.
“I knew they couldn’t convict my son,” Diane Dzierzynski said. “I knew it 30 years ago.”
Niles’ family — her brother, mother and the sister who urged the reopening of the case of the murdered blonde teenager — sat stunned a minute then left the courtroom to hug and cry. They had nothing to say afterwards.
Niles, of La Grange Park, disappeared after school on March 17, 1981. Her body, three months pregnant and fully clothed, was found by a teenager riding a horse around Horsetail Lake in the Cook County Forest Preserves near Palos Park five days later.
Photographs taken of her body showed her comb still in her back pocket; her shoes remained on her feet, Assistant State’s Attorney William Delaney told jurors in closing arguments.
“These photos show she was comfortable with who she was with,” Delaney said. “Because it was Gary Albert, her boyfriend of 10 months.”
Prosecutors pegged Albert’s motive to the pregnancy. He told his girlfriend to tell her mother she’d been raped, or that she’d been going with some other boy, a high school friend testified at the trial.
While Niles was missing, her mother called Albert’s Darien home looking for her daughter. Albert told her that the couple had broken up a month before.
The DNA swabbed from inside her body in 1981 could be further tested after a Cook County Sheriff’s detective reopened the case in 2006. The semen belonged to Albert, now living in Sugar Grove, and its quality indicated he had sex with Niles in more recent days than he initially admitted.
He spoke with police in 2008 through an amateur interpreter, but prosecutors did not play the recording of the six hour interview.
“They want you to believe that semen proves he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — bull!” Albert’s attorney, Tom Breen, shouted during closing arguments. “Just bull. It doesn’t prove anything other than they had consensual sex.”
Breen pointed to gaps in evidence — no specific date of death, no murder weapon, no indication of where Niles was punched in the face then stabbed 34 times before her body was dragged to the spot where it was found. He painted Niles, to her family’s hushed indignation, as a scared runaway who could have fallen prey to a dangerous stranger.
“It would be nice if they could get the person who killed her,” Breen said, dropping his voice.
“It would be real nice.”
Gary Albert, pudgier than his 1981 yearbook showed him and wearing glasses, walked out of the Bridgeview courthouse Monday night a free man, acquitted of the cold case murder of his pregnant, 15-year-old deaf girlfriend.
Jurors who heard five days of evidence against Albert, who 30 years ago was an 18-year-old deaf student at Hinsdale South High School, decided in less than an hour that he did not kill Dawn Niles as prosecutors had charged.
“Mr. Albert, you are free to go,” Judge Joan M. O’Brien told the 49-year-old, and once the American Sign Language interpreter relayed her words, Albert looked up at the ceiling. His mother uttered “Oh dear God” and burst into tears.
“I knew they couldn’t convict my son,” Diane Dzierzynski said. “I knew it 30 years ago.”
Niles’ family — her brother, mother and the sister who urged the reopening of the case of the murdered blonde teenager — sat stunned a minute then left the courtroom to hug and cry. They had nothing to say afterwards.
Niles, of La Grange Park, disappeared after school on March 17, 1981. Her body, three months pregnant and fully clothed, was found by a teenager riding a horse around Horsetail Lake in the Cook County Forest Preserves near Palos Park five days later.
Photographs taken of her body showed her comb still in her back pocket; her shoes remained on her feet, Assistant State’s Attorney William Delaney told jurors in closing arguments.
“These photos show she was comfortable with who she was with,” Delaney said. “Because it was Gary Albert, her boyfriend of 10 months.”
Prosecutors pegged Albert’s motive to the pregnancy. He told his girlfriend to tell her mother she’d been raped, or that she’d been going with some other boy, a high school friend testified at the trial.
While Niles was missing, her mother called Albert’s Darien home looking for her daughter. Albert told her that the couple had broken up a month before.
The DNA swabbed from inside her body in 1981 could be further tested after a Cook County Sheriff’s detective reopened the case in 2006. The semen belonged to Albert, now living in Sugar Grove, and its quality indicated he had sex with Niles in more recent days than he initially admitted.
He spoke with police in 2008 through an amateur interpreter, but prosecutors did not play the recording of the six hour interview.
“They want you to believe that semen proves he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — bull!” Albert’s attorney, Tom Breen, shouted during closing arguments. “Just bull. It doesn’t prove anything other than they had consensual sex.”
Breen pointed to gaps in evidence — no specific date of death, no murder weapon, no indication of where Niles was punched in the face then stabbed 34 times before her body was dragged to the spot where it was found. He painted Niles, to her family’s hushed indignation, as a scared runaway who could have fallen prey to a dangerous stranger.
“It would be nice if they could get the person who killed her,” Breen said, dropping his voice.
“It would be real nice.”