April 11, 2024 • 39 mins
On December 21, 2002, 17-year-old Brian Carrick, a stock boy at Val’s Foods, a grocery store in Johnsburg, IL, was reported missing by his mother. Police determined that one of the last sightings of Carrick was a day earlier, on December 20, when he went to the store to pick up his paycheck. On December 22, police found blood spatter near a cooler used to store produce and a bloody fingerprint on the cooler’s exterior door handle. DNA tests identified the blood spatter near the cooler as Carrick’s. The blood that was on the cooler door handle was identified by DNA testing as belonging to Robert Render, another stock boy at Val’s. But a different stock boy, 19-year-old Mario Casciaro, was charged and sentenced to 26 years in prison for Carrick’s murder.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
On December twentieth, two thousand and two, seventeen year old
Brian Carrock was last seen at the Johnsburg, Illinois supermarket
where he worked as a stockboy. The following day, he
was reported missing, and then the police found blood spatter
near a produce schooler at the store, followed by a
bloody fingerprint on the door handle. DNA testing revealed two profiles,
(00:25):
Brian Carrick and another stockboy named Rob Render, who had
already quit his job at Skipped Town, while Brian or
his body were never found. However, according to the police,
Bryan's disappearance was much more complicated than it appeared. They
believed that another stock boy named Mario Kusharo, whose family
owned the supermarket, had orchestrated an incident that led to
(00:47):
Brian's death, while Rob Render and another stockboy were just
following orders. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
wrongful conviction. I am so excited today because this story
(01:13):
is a story I've been wanting to tell ever since
I met the man who lived it, Mario Kasharo. And
Mario's case is unique in so many ways. He's the
only person in the history of the Great State of Illinois,
to be convicted of murder without a body being found,
(01:34):
with the exception of two guys you've probably heard of
and probably wish you hadn't, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.
And to make matters even worse and stranger and more
mind boggling, Mario was convicted of a crime you've probably
never heard of. I'd never heard of it. It's called
murder by intimidation. So, without further ado, please join me
(01:58):
in welcoming my great friend and personally hero, Mario Cacio. Mario,
welcome to wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Thank you so much for having me on this wonderful show.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
So this story, I mean, you were nineteen years old
when this happened, but I want to go back even
farther than that. And it's crazy too because this is
a family story, because the alleged crime took place at
the supermarket you worked at that was owned by your family.
But let's rewind what was the previous eighteen years of
(02:29):
your life like before we get up to the faithful
occurrence that is the center of this story.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I would say, to summarize it short, would be a blessing.
My parents are the American dream my mother and father
emigrated from Italy Southern Italy. My dad found a job
as a janitor at a union company, worked there for
thirty six years and retired as union stewart and the
highest in command of a company that had twelve thousand employees.
(02:57):
And then he was too young to retire but too
old to start over, so he invested with some other
family members to start a grocery store in the far
northwest suburbs of Chicago. So we moved out to this
small little town called Johnsburg, Illinois, and my parents started
a supermarket because it was always my dad's dream to
(03:17):
own a business.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Johnsburg, Illinois has a population of less than sixty four
hundred people, so most of the people whose names pop
up in this story were all acquainted with each other
from either high school just around town, or from working
at vals to Cushao's grocery store, including a few of
the stock boys, Alan Leppert, Shane Lamb, Robert Render, and
then the victim in this case, a close friend of Mario's,
(03:41):
Brian Carrick.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Brian was one of fourteen children, nine of which worked
for my family's grocery store at one time or another,
so it was a family tradition for the Carrick children
to work at VAL's while they were in high school
until they went off to college or the army or
whatever endeavors they had in their life. So we're pretty
(04:04):
close because they lived also directly across the street from
the store, on the only main road in town.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Sounds like Smallville, USA. Pretty much everybody knows everybody. I've
like mister Rogers visions in my head, but okay, this
is the Actually it turns into the opposite of that.
So on December twenty first, two thousand and two, Brian Carrick,
who was seventeen at the time. Another stock boy at
VAL's Foods right Darren Johnsburg, Illinois, was reported missing by
(04:34):
his mother, and the police determined that one of the
last times he had been seen was the previous day,
December twentieth, when he went to the store to pick
up his paycheck, and then two days after that, the
twenty second, the cops found blood spatter near a cooler
that was used to store produce and a bloody fingerprint
on the cooler's exterior door handle. Now DNA tests identified
(04:57):
the blood spatter and the cooler as belonging to Bryan Carrick.
The fingerprint and the blood the print was in that
was on the cooler door handle or identified by DNA
testing as belonging to Robert Render, who was another stock
boy at Valves. As we've discussed, and witnesses told police
that Render was president at the store on December twentieth,
(05:18):
he quit his job, interestingly on December twenty second and
dropped out of sight. You don't need to be Colombo
to start to wonder what was going on there. But okay, now,
other stock boys who were present on the day that
Carrick was last seen, included you. The crime went unsolved
for several years, and this poor kid, Krrick, his body
was never found. Do we know or do we have
(05:41):
a strong theory about what actually happened to Brian And
how did Render convince them not to pursue him.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It's a great question that's largely gone unanswered. The lion's
share of the physical evidence indicated his involvement in this case,
from fingerprints to DNA evidence. The victim's blood is on
the top of his shoes that he was wearing the
night of the crime. Everything that's undisputed links him to
the case. Looking backward years later after civil depositions with
(06:09):
the police department, and their defense always was that he
wasn't a very big guy, and of course our defense
was that if you're stabbing somebody, you don't have to
be a big guy. And Brian Carrick and Rob Render
were approximately the same size. I would say Rob was
just a little bigger than Brian, but for some reason,
because I was a taller person, their opinion was that
(06:31):
I was more capable of committing this crime.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
You're not a big guy, You're a slender guy. Will
use skinny guy back then too.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, I was about one hundred and forty five pounds
one fifty maybe tops six ' one, so I was
a skinny, tall guy.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Six years after Brian characters appeared, Rob Render was finally charged,
but only with concealing a homicide and not homicide. However,
during the interim years the case went cold. In life
moved on.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, I graduated college and then me and my dad
and my brother opened a supermarket on our own because
the previous supermarket in Johnsburg had more family members in it,
and families were growing, so we decided to open our
own supermarket and it was wildly successful.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well. Mario's life was going great. An old high school acquaintance,
Alan Lippert, was not doing as well.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Now at this time, I hadn't seen Alan Lippert since
probably junior senior year of high school, so four or
five years had gone by. I went off to college.
He dropped out of high school and got really heavy
into drugs. He had just been released from prison and
then gotten himself in some trouble. He had drugs on
him and he was looking at going back to prison
(07:44):
for I think somewhere between two and four years. And
that is the beginning of what we call the dream
confession in our case, because Alan Lippert claimed that he
was sitting at his house one day at two o'clock
or three o'clock in the morning, and then my car
pulled into his driveway and I told him that I
needed to confess that I was involved in the murder
(08:07):
of Brian Carrick.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
According to Lippert, in the fall of two thousand and six,
Mario confessed that he had told one of the larger
Stock boys named Shane Lamb to intimidate Brian for reasons
related to drug trafficking, and quote things got out of
hand end quote. Additionally, Lippert said that Brian's body had
been buried locally, but then Mario allegedly called his cousins
(08:31):
from Chicago to exuom, dismember, and relocate the body to
a river in Iowa.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
The local police department at Alan Lippert come into my
grocery store wearing a wire and I hadn't seen him
in years, and he started asking me how I've been,
how's my family, stuff like that, and then he's like,
do you remember that night that you stopped over at
my house? And I was like, what are you talking about?
(08:59):
I didn't even I haven't seen you in a while.
And it was really awkward conversation.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
At this point, Mario was still completely unaware that he
was a suspect in this cold case. Until the grand
jury was convened.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I was told that they had a lead in the
case and they needed help establishing timelines. And then I
was brought into the grand jury and I walked in
without an attorney because I didn't think I needed one.
I didn't do anything wrong, and of course there's three
prosecutors cross examining you for over an hour. Every question
is how did you kill Brian? Carrick, Where did you
(09:34):
put the murder weapon? Where did you put his body?
Why did you kill him? And I'm just answering, no, no, no,
I'm not involved in any of this, so I keep
saying no.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Mario still had no idea that Lippert was the source.
So after the grand jury, Lippert wired up a few
more times, and according to McHenry County prosecutors Michael Combs
and Patrick Knneely, Mario's grand jury testimony differed from the
recordings with Alan Lippert, and they charged him with nine
counts of per But something about the investigation piqued the
interest of the FBI, who interviewed Lippert about that fall
(10:06):
night in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
The FBI gave him a polygraph test and he failed miserably,
and then when they asked him why he failed, he
said it very well may have been a dream, and
that he was drinking alcohol all day in excess of
a case of beer and multiple shots, and that he
was also high on mushrooms and he wasn't sure if
(10:31):
I really came to his house or not.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That was their witness, which might explain why the prosecutors
were forced to drop seven of the nine counts before
trial in August of two thousand.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And nine, we were so confident in that they didn't
have any evidence. We actually paid an expert audio person
to make the tapes more so you could hear them
better once you removed all the background noise. You just
hear me asking him what the hell he's talking about?
And why are you asking me that? What are you
talking about? And then he tried to change the subject
(11:02):
and then ultimately left the store after his attempt to
frame me for a crime. And then after we played
it for the state's attorney, that's when they dismissed the counts.
But then they, of course they went to the media
and said it was inaudible. But yeah, So then we
proceeded the two counts that were remaining and we did
a bench trial in front of Sharon Prater in mckenry County.
(11:25):
And up until this point, a bench trials not a
lot of people usually elect those on a serious criminal
defense case. But ultimately we felt that they had absolutely
no evidence because they did not have any corroboration. They
had the testimony of a three time felon that was
looking to get out of an unrelated case. That's saying
that he isn't sure if it was a dream or not,
(11:47):
and that he was on mushrooms and drink a case
of beer. That's the only evidence they had, so she
dismissed it. She did a directed verdict acquittal.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Wow. Now I have to ask, did you think that
after that I'm not guilty verdict, that this was finally
over and you can put it behind you.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I did, and I didn't. I didn't because of the
reaction of the prosecutor. He slammed his hands on his table,
and then when we were walking out, he said, this
isn't over.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
And then three months go by and I am pulling
out of the parking lot of the store and I
get boxed in by white expeditions. They are screaming, get
out of the car, get on the ground, get on
the ground. I'm laying on my stomach, handcuffed behind my
back and shotguns drawn to my head and one of
the police officers tells me you have been charged with murder.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
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(13:09):
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Speaker 2 (13:20):
So it all stemmed from Shane Lamb. He had just
been released from prison on an unrelated drug case. They
set him up on an operation called Operation Lamb Chop
Believe or Not. They got an undercover to ask him
if he could find some cocaine, and when he was
broke and just got out of prison, he agreed to
selling cocaine, and then the undercover had him meet them
(13:43):
in a high school parking lot. So, now you have
a person that's on parole for two Class X felonies
and he's looking at like fourteen years in the Illinois
Department of Corrections. So now they put an unsurmountable amount
of pressure on him. And they said, well, here is
the testimony of all Lippert and Lamb and the prosecutor
(14:03):
met and they had concocted a story.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Shane Lamb was granted full immunity for his cooperation, and
in February twenty ten, they arrested Mario on six Velly
murder counts as well as concealing a homicide.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I think they just threw anything they could at the
wall and saw what stuck. This isn't a office that's
known for being very ethical.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
So Brian T.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Landers, who represented me, he previously was a state's attorney
in Cook County and then went to become a judge
in DuPage County and then came off the bench and
took my case.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Lander quickly poked holes in Lamb's story, who alleged that
he and Karak sold weed from Mario and that he
was Mario's alleged muscle, standing at six foot and two
hundred and forty pounds. Lamb alleged that Mario called him
into the store to intimidate Karrick and collect from him
on the day he disappeared.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Lamb's biggest quote was that if Mario didn't call, then
I wouldn't have been there. So what we did is
we got Lamb's phone record in my phone records, and
of course there's no phone calls between me and Lamb
at all. In fact, there's no phone calls for me
to anybody during the time that they think this murder happened,
and that gave him a stump.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
The prosecutors dropped five of the seven charges, but they
moved forward with two felony murder counts by unlawful restraint
and by intimidation. And the indictment read that Mario quote
or one for whom he was legally accountable while committing
the forcible felony of intimidation, struck Karc in the head,
causing his death end quote. So they brought this case
(15:37):
that was predicated on statements that had been impeached before trial. Now,
since the defense didn't feel like the burden of proof
was met, the strategy was to focus on cross examination.
They pointed out that Lamb was lying about any phone
calls that brought him to the store, but nonetheless he
maintained that he was there in the cooler under Mario's
direction and punched Karak in the face. Lamb said, quote,
(16:01):
I thought I knocked him out. I knock out a
lot of people. Mario grabbed me and said get out
of here. End quote.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
My attorney got Shane Lamb on cross examination to say
that he'll say whatever he's got to say to not
go to prison, and he said, even lying about a
murder case, and then he said yes, and then we
were like, no further questions.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The state trotted out Alan Lippert again to talk about
his alcohol and mushroom fueled fever dream. This time he added,
though that Mario had told him that quote, Shane hit Carrick,
but it was an accident end quote, again using the
info from the FBI interview. Mario's attorney shredded him on
cross examination. Now, had they put on a defense beyond
(16:46):
cross examination, calling Rob Render may have been a winning strategy.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
The state put him on the witness list and we
prepared for the cross examination, and then they just didn't
call him.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
However, the state did present a crime lab technician to
talk about the blood evidence that implicated Rob Render.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
When we had the state crime lab expert on the stand,
my lawyers started asking him, Okay, you guys took how
many swabs? And he said, we took I think it
was like thirty six. And then he said, well, are
you sure it's not eighteen because I only have eighteen
that were tested, and he said, no, we took thirty six,
but we didn't have all of them tested.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
This meant that there was new evidence available that would
further solidify renders guilt. But remember Mario's charges were not
about violence, but about who orchestrated the incident that resulted
in violence. And after two days of deliberation, eleven of
the twelve jurors believed the state's narrative about drug dealing
and musclemn and that Mario was in fact guilty of
(17:44):
murder by intimidation.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We thought that there was maybe one hold out that
wanted to convict, and it was eleven to one the
other way. I mean, they didn't have anything that put
me in it. They didn't have a motive, an opportunity,
any physical evidence. It was not a situation where I
was thinking I'm going to be convicted, So what do
I know?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Though? You know a lot more now. I mean, by
the way, whoever that one person is, I hope they're
listening right now, because life slaver and for everyone's listening.
When you serve on a jury, be that one, you
know what I mean, stand up. It's inconvenient, it can
be scary, intimidating, it could take more of your time.
You're not going to get home as quickly to your
family and the things that you love. But you know
(18:26):
what that person at least temporarily saved Mario's life. So
here we go to the third.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Trial, different jury, but we had actually more evidence that
was helpful to me.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
This time, Mario's team was going to mount a robust
defense beyond cross examination. First the remaining blood evidence.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
The very first motion that we filed was to have
all of the blood evidence examined by the state crime lab.
So those came back, and more of them were Render
than Carrick. So it's not like he had a little
bit of blood at the crime scene. He's got blood
all over the place at the crime scene. And the
experts that looked at the photographs of the crime scene,
(19:08):
they think it was a stabbing and they think that
Render cut himself with the knife, which is why there's
multiple places where his blood is actually meshed with Carricks.
So the sample had both of their blood on one sample.
And then ultimately, though Render's thumb print is in Carrick's
blood on the wall, and the print had to have
been when the blood was wet, so it puts him
(19:31):
at the actual scene of the crime. So about a
week after the local news media, Northwest Herald released an
article that said that he had blood all over the place.
So unfortunately, in between the second and third trial, Rob
Rendered overdosed on drugs on a I think it's called
a hot shot, so it's like when you take caroin
(19:54):
and cocaine mixed together. But he was at a rehab center,
which was interesting. So he died at a re center.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
As strange and shady as that sounds, Rob Render clearly
was not going to be able to testify, but the
blood evidence could tell that story. Meanwhile, Mario was out
on bond when something truly extraordinary happened.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I was at a bar and Shane Lamb had been
released from prison, and he walked up to me at
the bar, and his conversation to me is I'm really
sorry that this is happening. I didn't mean for this
to happen. I didn't think that any Jerry would ever
actually believe me. I was just saying what I needed
to say to get out of prison. The state's attorney
(20:36):
told me specifically exactly what I should say, and fortunate
for me, there's multiple witnesses around, and one being a
criminal defense attorney that is not on my case, and
somebody that was near me went and grabbed him as
like you need to be over here, because you're an
officer of the court, you should hear this. And this
wasn't a situation where Lamb was intoxicated. He had just
(20:57):
gotten there and I had just gotten there. It was daylight,
and he's sitting there venting, telling me and this whole
group of people that he was forced to say all
this stuff and that he didn't think the jury would
believe it, and that all got entered into evidence in
my third trial.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Wow, it's quite a turn of events. He happened to
be in that bar and there happened to be an
officer of the court.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
There video camera, video camera, we had it on video
camera bar.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Wow. And it wasn't so noisy in the bar. The
video camera was able to pick it up.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
The audio on that one was garbled because the bar
obviously a loud place. But then you see four or
five people standing around just listening, and then you see
Ed Donahue on a camera sitting there listening to the conversation.
And Ed's an attorney. He was a former state's attorney
and he was a criminal defense attorney in mckenry County.
So he's ultimately pulled into this case because he just
(21:46):
was a patron of the local bar.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Even with this bombshell impeachment evidence, once again destroying the
testimony of Shane Lamb. Mario was tried for a third
time in March twenty thirteen, but this time the unlawful
restraint charge was which meant that the only charge he
was now facing was felony murdered by intimidation.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Of course, we alerted the judge that nobody in the country,
nobody in common law, has ever been charged with this.
So nobody in England, New Zealand, Australia, any country that
practices common law, has ever used intimidation as a predicate
felony for murder. And the judge's response was that would
be an item for the appellate court to decide, so
(22:26):
she wouldn't make a ruling on it and force us
to proceed on that last count.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
And before trial, the prosecutors did what they usually do
when their case is this thin.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
The morning that we selected the third jury, the States
Attorney's Office came to my attorney and said, if you
can get your client to plead guilty to concealment of
a homicide, which is a Class two felony, I believe
will dismiss the final murder count, and I think at
that time it already served two years in the county jail,
so I pretty much would addressed in and dressed out
(22:57):
because I had no criminal background. But I was unwe
willing to take a plea deal where I admitted to
concealing somebody's body when I had nothing to do with
the case.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So the state persisted once again presenting the evidence that
had convinced eleven out of twelve jurors during the second trial.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
I actually felt really confident going in because in the
third trial we actually presented a defense in which we
brought an attorney at Donahue to testify. I understand that
the state's main and only witness was being told what
to stay by the prosecution, and that he admitted to
lying and that none of that what he had testified
to was true. But also Lamb's in the second trial
(23:36):
he said that I told him to do it, but
then the third trial he came back and said that
he did it on his own and that I just
happened to be there with.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
The defense that was mounted the blood evidence, bone record,
Shane Lamb's recantation, and both states witnesses being destroyed on
cross It's really confusing how we're here speaking with Mary today.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I had the feeling during the third trial that the
jury pool was not paying At ten we had an
older jury. Every time that we looked over at them,
it was like they were like sleeping, but not like
resting their head on their arms.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
It appears that the state was able to muddy up
which should have been very clear waters for a very
sleepy jury. And Mario, after fighting the state for now
over six years, became the first person in US history
and common law history to be convicted of felony murder
by intimidation.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
When the judge read the verdict, people stood up and
started screaming at the jury, asking them if they listened
to any of the witnesses. I put my head down
because I just couldn't believe it. Everybody was up in arms,
My parents were crying, and that the two prosecutors were
high fiving each other. And then the one prosecutor ultimately
(24:52):
looked at me and said, I told you I was
going to get you. Told you it wasn't over. The
(25:15):
very next morning after I was convicted, Brian Telander came
to see me and He was obviously very apologetic, but
also was just telling me he could not believe still
that the jury convicted on that evidence. He was pretty broken.
I think he actually told me that he lost faith
in the justice system from that verdict. And he said
(25:36):
that I have talked to the States attorney. They're willing
to cut a deal with you if you can tell
them where the body is. So I told him I
had no idea where the body was. So even after
I was convicted, I still turned down a plea deal.
Of course, if I was actually responsible for this crime,
I would have taken both opportunities.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
In covering Mario's case. We had the opportunity to speak
with his post conviction attorney, Kathleen Zelner, and she told
us how she got involved.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
His sister worked for a law firm downtown and she
was researching I guess wrongful conviction attorneys and she found
me and then I met with them. I love his family,
and you hear his background, and you know he already
had a college degree. And then the judge has such
a horrible reputation. I was all in.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Two days after I was convicted, I get called for
a visit. I'm at the McKenny County Jail and I
walk into the visiting room and I see a woman there.
I had never seen her before, so I said, I
think I'm in the wrong room, and she said, Mario,
I'm here to talk to you. My name is Kathleen Zelner.
I'm very interested in helping you. This evidence is so
ridiculous that I think that we might be able to
(26:49):
get the judge to vacate the conviction before even the sentencing,
and then you'll have either a fourth trial or this
will be.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
The end of it.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
We didn't think that was like a high probably, but
it was a possibility.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Unfortunately, that possibility did not come to pass, and Mario
was sentenced to twenty six years.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So I'm down in Minard. Minard is a maximum security
prison that is about an hour south of Saint Louis,
and I was living prior to all this about an
hour north of Chicago, so it's about a six hour
drive for my family to come and see me. It's
a max security place, so there's not a lot of movement.
(27:29):
I was in my jail cell twenty three hours a day.
In one sense, it's terrible that you're confined to a
small space for twenty three hours a day. But in
another way, at least you're not open to getting attacked
by a bunch of people that have been legitimately convicted
of murder offenses. I would say it's probably the worst
place I've ever been. Wish it upon nobody. But what
(27:51):
they did have that I thought was good was a
law library. So I just stayed to myself from the
moment I got there till the moment I left. I
focused on case and tried to figure out how to
get out of there, and did as much legal research
as I possibly could, and read as many books about
the law as I could.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I thought that.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
It would be prudent for me to use every moment
that I had to focus on freedom. Even though I
have a great lawyer.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
I didn't want to just sit there with the direct appeal.
I wanted to reinvestigate, because in Illinois you can file
the post conviction and the direct appeal at the same time.
During that investigation, we found a former employee that had
worked there that had discovered a pair of men's underwear
in the women's restroom up in the ceiling. The tiles
(28:41):
had been removed and somebody had thrown it up there
and it was bloodstained, and it turned out render had
gone in that bathroom. He was cut and bleeding. It
was his underwear. He used that as a tourniquet to
stop the bleeding, and then he threw it up in
the ceiling. And it turned out this employee that had
discovered a pair of men's underwear, this kid's father, was
(29:02):
a deputy sheriff. So the father said, we got to
take this over to the sheriff's office and turn it in,
so they did, and then the police chief threw it away.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
He admitted that in his civil deposition, I filed a
post conviction petition along with the appeal so that I
could put all the new evidence in that and publicize it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
ABC's twenty twenty began looking into the case, and Shane
Lamb agreed to participate, where he gave a videotaped recantation
while exposing state's attorney Michael Combs, saying, quote all of
it was false. The state's attorney set it up. I
didn't have anything to do with this. Maria didn't have
anything to do with this. I would be indicted for
murder if I didn't cooperate. I was following what Combs
(29:46):
wanted me to say. They just wanted to close the
case end quote. Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Yeah. And we planned all that with twenty twenty because
that's one of my really good friends, Lisa's soul away,
so we had given them like questions. We thought he
would give a confession, but if he'd do it on
the air, that would be even better.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I can't think ABC twenty twenty enough. That show changed
everything I thought, because it really just undermined that conviction
and it just ferreted out how bad the prosecutors are
in mckenry County. I mean, it's pretty bad when you
have on national show saying that the prosecutors are coursing
witnesses and telling them what to say.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
That's how you get leverage with the appellate court.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
At the time this aired, Mario's direct appeal was pending
in a filing where the focus was insufficient evidence. Having
the information that your jury appeared to have missed be
broadcast nationally probably didn't hurt when a three judge panel made.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Their ruling September twenty third, twenty fifteen, I got a
call from Kathleen's office. My parents were in the room
and I think ABC taped it. Kathleen said, the appellate
opinion came out and they overturned your case, and you
are going to be a free man. All three judges
said that no reasonable juror could convict me based on
(31:04):
the evidence that was presented.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Somehow they still found twelve. Yeah, for your third.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Trial, they're saying there's twelve people that are unreasonable.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
It makes it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
So at the time, and I don't know if that's
still the case, but at the time, this was only
the fourth case to ever be overturned for insufficiency evidence,
for specifically for no reasonable dur could convict base on
the evidence that was presented.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I'm rarely at a loss for words, Mario, but this
is one of those times. But so let me just
take a deep breath and then let's get to the
good stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So two days later, I am told that I'm going
to be released by the guards. So I'm packing everything
up and I go to the front door. The warden
is there. I actually asked the warden if I could
speak to her about running her facility more efficiently, and
she thought that was very odd. She said, you're free
(31:57):
to walk out the door and I said, yeah, I know,
but I was brought up in a grocery store and
we had a pretty large business, so in a very
professional manner, so I think you could address these issues
and you guys would actually make more money too. And
it boiled all the way down to phones. So there
was only four phones available on the yard, but there's
two hundred and fifty people. I said, why don't you
(32:20):
triple the amount of phones, because they're making ten dollars
a phone call at the time, so it would be
to their benefit to have more phones. But also what
happened is the gang's one of the biggest reasons they
had power is they would control the phone. So I
explained to her, why don't you triple the amount of phones.
You guys can make more money, you'd have less fights,
and she acted like she had no idea, and then
(32:42):
she was like, you're being released, see you later. So
my family brings clothes in to me, and then I
walk out the door. Kathleen, she raised my hand up
as we were walking down the stairs because we had
defeated the state. After long rigorous wore thirteen years after
the disappearance.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
You and and we're close though, right, So What did
his thirteen siblings think of all this.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I had spoken to a few of them during the years,
and it seems like they're conflicted something that I'm responsible.
Some don't. Some of the siblings thought that I knew
what happened and that I wasn't telling them or wasn't
coming clean to the police department, when in reality, I
would have been the first one that would have because
it would have absolved me from having.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Anything to do with this.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
They were all really good people. I feel terrible that
this happened to them. For me, I wish they would
have directed their energy more at being upset with the
State's Attorney's office for just having such an inadequate investigation
in the local police department.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
The reasons for that righteous indignation ended up on full
display during the depositions for Mario's civil litigation.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
When we were deposing the lead investigator, he disclosed to
us that he had never been to the police academy
prior to this investigation.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, because I always start in those depths with, well,
give us a little bit about your job history.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Three months before the investigation, he was working at ACE
Hardware and he was let go for being an incompetent
stock man and then walked into the police department and
was told that they were looking for somebody part time.
He had never been to the police academy prior to
this investigation. He was pending he was going to go.
So a guy that was let go from the ACE
(34:26):
Hardware because he couldn't figure out where to stock items
correctly three months in is now in charge of a
murder investigation.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
He felt tremendous guilt because he really gave up everything
in that deposition. It was like, you know, I never
should have done.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
That, and even their attorneys were just in awe. And
then we informed him that if you know somebody's innocent
of a crime, you have what's called a duty to intervene.
And his response was, I didn't know that I could
do that. I didn't know that I could tell the
state's attorney that do you guys have the wrong guy
or so well, Honestly, the civil rights depositions made everything
(35:04):
that happened over the years crystal clear, and you could
see why it happened, and it just it boiled all
the way down to if somebody's not trained to be
a police officer and has no experience and has no
idea what they're doing. They should not be at a
crime scene. I mean, he's at the crime scene touching
everything without gloves on because he didn't know that you
should put gloves on.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
If only mckenry County managed to have the same standards
as ACE Hardware, I mean, can you imagine not to
mention how the prosecuting attorneys Michael Combs and Patrick McNeely
had the same duty right they did to intervene, but
in a sick, sinister twist, they somehow still felt it
(35:45):
was appropriate for them to high five each other when
you got convicted.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
But karma works itself out. I think, I don't know
if you guys have followed aftermath, But the prosecutor that
was the lead on this case ended up being fired
and his pretty much incapable of finding a meaningful employment. Interestingly,
because it's a small town, multiple people have sent me
he can't control his liquors, so he falls off barstools
(36:11):
and talks about how powerful he is in that little town.
Has claim to fame was that he got a conviction
with nobody. He's willing to tell people this and actually
as if it's an achievement when really you should be
ashamed of himself. And then the second prosecutor is now
the state's attorney of the county, but has had a
(36:32):
number of issues. I know, he attacked his wife, the
police were called, and just really become an embarrassment to
the state.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Meanwhile, since his release, Mario graduated from Loyola Law School
and was admitted to the Illinois State Bar in twenty nineteen,
all while settling his civil case.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So I actually settled with the State's Attorney's office and
with the police department separately. I'm one of very few people,
if any, I've never actually met any other wrongfully convicted
people that actually settled with the state's attorney's office because
they have absolute immunity, and they still settled with me,
primarily because they were concerned about their image, the way
(37:11):
that they were being portrayed in the media, and I
think that they were concerned if this went any further
that their law licenses would be in jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Mario, It's been a real joy for me to get
to know you and to work with you on cases,
and I'm just so happy that you have come through
this and risen above it. So with that, we're going
to go to closing arguments, where first of all, I
thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining
us and sharing your incredible story. And now I'm going
(37:41):
to kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off,
leave my headphones on, and close my eyes and just
listen to anything else you have to say.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
For as awful of a situation as it was that
happened to me, the silver lining was as I came
out of this winning my civil rights lawsuit publicly embarrassing
the state's attorney's office, and I am a successful attorney.
In a weird way, this changed my life trajectory. It's
almost like if you watched the movie Back to the Future,
(38:11):
the moment that Brian Carrick disappeared changed my entire life.
And now I'm sitting here as a criminal defense attorney
working in post conviction unit in Cook County, and I've
had a huge effect on a lot of my client's lives.
I've had people that I've had life sentences vacated, and
it's alarming that this could easily happen again. There's just
(38:33):
so many incompetent people still involved and still in positions
of power in that very county, and so I try
to talk to people about how important it is to
actually pay attention to your local elections. The people that
you elect to be judge your state's attorney are often
more critical to you than electing the president, because those
are the people that can indict you, indict the wrong person,
(38:56):
or choose to not charge people. It's a very very
important job. I can't stress that enough.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor
Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive
producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
(39:29):
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all
social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm.
Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
On December twentieth, two thousand and two, seventeen year old
Brian Carrock was last seen at the Johnsburg, Illinois supermarket
where he worked as a stockboy. The following day, he
was reported missing, and then the police found blood spatter
near a produce schooler at the store, followed by a
bloody fingerprint on the door handle. DNA testing revealed two profiles,
(00:25):
Brian Carrick and another stockboy named Rob Render, who had
already quit his job at Skipped Town, while Brian or
his body were never found. However, according to the police,
Bryan's disappearance was much more complicated than it appeared. They
believed that another stock boy named Mario Kusharo, whose family
owned the supermarket, had orchestrated an incident that led to
(00:47):
Brian's death, while Rob Render and another stockboy were just
following orders. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
wrongful conviction. I am so excited today because this story
(01:13):
is a story I've been wanting to tell ever since
I met the man who lived it, Mario Kasharo. And
Mario's case is unique in so many ways. He's the
only person in the history of the Great State of Illinois,
to be convicted of murder without a body being found,
(01:34):
with the exception of two guys you've probably heard of
and probably wish you hadn't, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.
And to make matters even worse and stranger and more
mind boggling, Mario was convicted of a crime you've probably
never heard of. I'd never heard of it. It's called
murder by intimidation. So, without further ado, please join me
(01:58):
in welcoming my great friend and personally hero, Mario Cacio. Mario,
welcome to wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Thank you so much for having me on this wonderful show.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
So this story, I mean, you were nineteen years old
when this happened, but I want to go back even
farther than that. And it's crazy too because this is
a family story, because the alleged crime took place at
the supermarket you worked at that was owned by your family.
But let's rewind what was the previous eighteen years of
(02:29):
your life like before we get up to the faithful
occurrence that is the center of this story.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I would say, to summarize it short, would be a blessing.
My parents are the American dream my mother and father
emigrated from Italy Southern Italy. My dad found a job
as a janitor at a union company, worked there for
thirty six years and retired as union stewart and the
highest in command of a company that had twelve thousand employees.
(02:57):
And then he was too young to retire but too
old to start over, so he invested with some other
family members to start a grocery store in the far
northwest suburbs of Chicago. So we moved out to this
small little town called Johnsburg, Illinois, and my parents started
a supermarket because it was always my dad's dream to
(03:17):
own a business.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Johnsburg, Illinois has a population of less than sixty four
hundred people, so most of the people whose names pop
up in this story were all acquainted with each other
from either high school just around town, or from working
at vals to Cushao's grocery store, including a few of
the stock boys, Alan Leppert, Shane Lamb, Robert Render, and
then the victim in this case, a close friend of Mario's,
(03:41):
Brian Carrick.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Brian was one of fourteen children, nine of which worked
for my family's grocery store at one time or another,
so it was a family tradition for the Carrick children
to work at VAL's while they were in high school
until they went off to college or the army or
whatever endeavors they had in their life. So we're pretty
(04:04):
close because they lived also directly across the street from
the store, on the only main road in town.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Sounds like Smallville, USA. Pretty much everybody knows everybody. I've
like mister Rogers visions in my head, but okay, this
is the Actually it turns into the opposite of that.
So on December twenty first, two thousand and two, Brian Carrick,
who was seventeen at the time. Another stock boy at
VAL's Foods right Darren Johnsburg, Illinois, was reported missing by
(04:34):
his mother, and the police determined that one of the
last times he had been seen was the previous day,
December twentieth, when he went to the store to pick
up his paycheck, and then two days after that, the
twenty second, the cops found blood spatter near a cooler
that was used to store produce and a bloody fingerprint
on the cooler's exterior door handle. Now DNA tests identified
(04:57):
the blood spatter and the cooler as belonging to Bryan Carrick.
The fingerprint and the blood the print was in that
was on the cooler door handle or identified by DNA
testing as belonging to Robert Render, who was another stock
boy at Valves. As we've discussed, and witnesses told police
that Render was president at the store on December twentieth,
(05:18):
he quit his job, interestingly on December twenty second and
dropped out of sight. You don't need to be Colombo
to start to wonder what was going on there. But okay, now,
other stock boys who were present on the day that
Carrick was last seen, included you. The crime went unsolved
for several years, and this poor kid, Krrick, his body
was never found. Do we know or do we have
(05:41):
a strong theory about what actually happened to Brian And
how did Render convince them not to pursue him.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It's a great question that's largely gone unanswered. The lion's
share of the physical evidence indicated his involvement in this case,
from fingerprints to DNA evidence. The victim's blood is on
the top of his shoes that he was wearing the
night of the crime. Everything that's undisputed links him to
the case. Looking backward years later after civil depositions with
(06:09):
the police department, and their defense always was that he
wasn't a very big guy, and of course our defense
was that if you're stabbing somebody, you don't have to
be a big guy. And Brian Carrick and Rob Render
were approximately the same size. I would say Rob was
just a little bigger than Brian, but for some reason,
because I was a taller person, their opinion was that
(06:31):
I was more capable of committing this crime.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
You're not a big guy, You're a slender guy. Will
use skinny guy back then too.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, I was about one hundred and forty five pounds
one fifty maybe tops six ' one, so I was
a skinny, tall guy.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Six years after Brian characters appeared, Rob Render was finally charged,
but only with concealing a homicide and not homicide. However,
during the interim years the case went cold. In life
moved on.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, I graduated college and then me and my dad
and my brother opened a supermarket on our own because
the previous supermarket in Johnsburg had more family members in it,
and families were growing, so we decided to open our
own supermarket and it was wildly successful.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well. Mario's life was going great. An old high school acquaintance,
Alan Lippert, was not doing as well.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Now at this time, I hadn't seen Alan Lippert since
probably junior senior year of high school, so four or
five years had gone by. I went off to college.
He dropped out of high school and got really heavy
into drugs. He had just been released from prison and
then gotten himself in some trouble. He had drugs on
him and he was looking at going back to prison
(07:44):
for I think somewhere between two and four years. And
that is the beginning of what we call the dream
confession in our case, because Alan Lippert claimed that he
was sitting at his house one day at two o'clock
or three o'clock in the morning, and then my car
pulled into his driveway and I told him that I
needed to confess that I was involved in the murder
(08:07):
of Brian Carrick.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
According to Lippert, in the fall of two thousand and six,
Mario confessed that he had told one of the larger
Stock boys named Shane Lamb to intimidate Brian for reasons
related to drug trafficking, and quote things got out of
hand end quote. Additionally, Lippert said that Brian's body had
been buried locally, but then Mario allegedly called his cousins
(08:31):
from Chicago to exuom, dismember, and relocate the body to
a river in Iowa.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
The local police department at Alan Lippert come into my
grocery store wearing a wire and I hadn't seen him
in years, and he started asking me how I've been,
how's my family, stuff like that, and then he's like,
do you remember that night that you stopped over at
my house? And I was like, what are you talking about?
(08:59):
I didn't even I haven't seen you in a while.
And it was really awkward conversation.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
At this point, Mario was still completely unaware that he
was a suspect in this cold case. Until the grand
jury was convened.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I was told that they had a lead in the
case and they needed help establishing timelines. And then I
was brought into the grand jury and I walked in
without an attorney because I didn't think I needed one.
I didn't do anything wrong, and of course there's three
prosecutors cross examining you for over an hour. Every question
is how did you kill Brian? Carrick, Where did you
(09:34):
put the murder weapon? Where did you put his body?
Why did you kill him? And I'm just answering, no, no, no,
I'm not involved in any of this, so I keep
saying no.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Mario still had no idea that Lippert was the source.
So after the grand jury, Lippert wired up a few
more times, and according to McHenry County prosecutors Michael Combs
and Patrick Knneely, Mario's grand jury testimony differed from the
recordings with Alan Lippert, and they charged him with nine
counts of per But something about the investigation piqued the
interest of the FBI, who interviewed Lippert about that fall
(10:06):
night in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
The FBI gave him a polygraph test and he failed miserably,
and then when they asked him why he failed, he
said it very well may have been a dream, and
that he was drinking alcohol all day in excess of
a case of beer and multiple shots, and that he
was also high on mushrooms and he wasn't sure if
(10:31):
I really came to his house or not.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That was their witness, which might explain why the prosecutors
were forced to drop seven of the nine counts before
trial in August of two thousand.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And nine, we were so confident in that they didn't
have any evidence. We actually paid an expert audio person
to make the tapes more so you could hear them
better once you removed all the background noise. You just
hear me asking him what the hell he's talking about?
And why are you asking me that? What are you
talking about? And then he tried to change the subject
(11:02):
and then ultimately left the store after his attempt to
frame me for a crime. And then after we played
it for the state's attorney, that's when they dismissed the counts.
But then they, of course they went to the media
and said it was inaudible. But yeah, So then we
proceeded the two counts that were remaining and we did
a bench trial in front of Sharon Prater in mckenry County.
(11:25):
And up until this point, a bench trials not a
lot of people usually elect those on a serious criminal
defense case. But ultimately we felt that they had absolutely
no evidence because they did not have any corroboration. They
had the testimony of a three time felon that was
looking to get out of an unrelated case. That's saying
that he isn't sure if it was a dream or not,
(11:47):
and that he was on mushrooms and drink a case
of beer. That's the only evidence they had, so she
dismissed it. She did a directed verdict acquittal.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Wow. Now I have to ask, did you think that
after that I'm not guilty verdict, that this was finally
over and you can put it behind you.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I did, and I didn't. I didn't because of the
reaction of the prosecutor. He slammed his hands on his table,
and then when we were walking out, he said, this
isn't over.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
And then three months go by and I am pulling
out of the parking lot of the store and I
get boxed in by white expeditions. They are screaming, get
out of the car, get on the ground, get on
the ground. I'm laying on my stomach, handcuffed behind my
back and shotguns drawn to my head and one of
the police officers tells me you have been charged with murder.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison.
Now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us at
eight three three two O seven four six sixty six
and leave us a message tell us how these powerful,
often tragic stories make you feel outraged, inspired, motivated. We
want to know. We may even include your story in
(13:09):
a future episode. Call us A three three, two, O
seven four six six X.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
So it all stemmed from Shane Lamb. He had just
been released from prison on an unrelated drug case. They
set him up on an operation called Operation Lamb Chop
Believe or Not. They got an undercover to ask him
if he could find some cocaine, and when he was
broke and just got out of prison, he agreed to
selling cocaine, and then the undercover had him meet them
(13:43):
in a high school parking lot. So, now you have
a person that's on parole for two Class X felonies
and he's looking at like fourteen years in the Illinois
Department of Corrections. So now they put an unsurmountable amount
of pressure on him. And they said, well, here is
the testimony of all Lippert and Lamb and the prosecutor
(14:03):
met and they had concocted a story.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Shane Lamb was granted full immunity for his cooperation, and
in February twenty ten, they arrested Mario on six Velly
murder counts as well as concealing a homicide.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I think they just threw anything they could at the
wall and saw what stuck. This isn't a office that's
known for being very ethical.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
So Brian T.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Landers, who represented me, he previously was a state's attorney
in Cook County and then went to become a judge
in DuPage County and then came off the bench and
took my case.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Lander quickly poked holes in Lamb's story, who alleged that
he and Karak sold weed from Mario and that he
was Mario's alleged muscle, standing at six foot and two
hundred and forty pounds. Lamb alleged that Mario called him
into the store to intimidate Karrick and collect from him
on the day he disappeared.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Lamb's biggest quote was that if Mario didn't call, then
I wouldn't have been there. So what we did is
we got Lamb's phone record in my phone records, and
of course there's no phone calls between me and Lamb
at all. In fact, there's no phone calls for me
to anybody during the time that they think this murder happened,
and that gave him a stump.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
The prosecutors dropped five of the seven charges, but they
moved forward with two felony murder counts by unlawful restraint
and by intimidation. And the indictment read that Mario quote
or one for whom he was legally accountable while committing
the forcible felony of intimidation, struck Karc in the head,
causing his death end quote. So they brought this case
(15:37):
that was predicated on statements that had been impeached before trial. Now,
since the defense didn't feel like the burden of proof
was met, the strategy was to focus on cross examination.
They pointed out that Lamb was lying about any phone
calls that brought him to the store, but nonetheless he
maintained that he was there in the cooler under Mario's
direction and punched Karak in the face. Lamb said, quote,
(16:01):
I thought I knocked him out. I knock out a
lot of people. Mario grabbed me and said get out
of here. End quote.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
My attorney got Shane Lamb on cross examination to say
that he'll say whatever he's got to say to not
go to prison, and he said, even lying about a
murder case, and then he said yes, and then we
were like, no further questions.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The state trotted out Alan Lippert again to talk about
his alcohol and mushroom fueled fever dream. This time he added,
though that Mario had told him that quote, Shane hit Carrick,
but it was an accident end quote, again using the
info from the FBI interview. Mario's attorney shredded him on
cross examination. Now, had they put on a defense beyond
(16:46):
cross examination, calling Rob Render may have been a winning strategy.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
The state put him on the witness list and we
prepared for the cross examination, and then they just didn't
call him.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
However, the state did present a crime lab technician to
talk about the blood evidence that implicated Rob Render.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
When we had the state crime lab expert on the stand,
my lawyers started asking him, Okay, you guys took how
many swabs? And he said, we took I think it
was like thirty six. And then he said, well, are
you sure it's not eighteen because I only have eighteen
that were tested, and he said, no, we took thirty six,
but we didn't have all of them tested.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
This meant that there was new evidence available that would
further solidify renders guilt. But remember Mario's charges were not
about violence, but about who orchestrated the incident that resulted
in violence. And after two days of deliberation, eleven of
the twelve jurors believed the state's narrative about drug dealing
and musclemn and that Mario was in fact guilty of
(17:44):
murder by intimidation.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We thought that there was maybe one hold out that
wanted to convict, and it was eleven to one the
other way. I mean, they didn't have anything that put
me in it. They didn't have a motive, an opportunity,
any physical evidence. It was not a situation where I
was thinking I'm going to be convicted, So what do
I know?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Though? You know a lot more now. I mean, by
the way, whoever that one person is, I hope they're
listening right now, because life slaver and for everyone's listening.
When you serve on a jury, be that one, you
know what I mean, stand up. It's inconvenient, it can
be scary, intimidating, it could take more of your time.
You're not going to get home as quickly to your
family and the things that you love. But you know
(18:26):
what that person at least temporarily saved Mario's life. So
here we go to the third.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Trial, different jury, but we had actually more evidence that
was helpful to me.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
This time, Mario's team was going to mount a robust
defense beyond cross examination. First the remaining blood evidence.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
The very first motion that we filed was to have
all of the blood evidence examined by the state crime lab.
So those came back, and more of them were Render
than Carrick. So it's not like he had a little
bit of blood at the crime scene. He's got blood
all over the place at the crime scene. And the
experts that looked at the photographs of the crime scene,
(19:08):
they think it was a stabbing and they think that
Render cut himself with the knife, which is why there's
multiple places where his blood is actually meshed with Carricks.
So the sample had both of their blood on one sample.
And then ultimately, though Render's thumb print is in Carrick's
blood on the wall, and the print had to have
been when the blood was wet, so it puts him
(19:31):
at the actual scene of the crime. So about a
week after the local news media, Northwest Herald released an
article that said that he had blood all over the place.
So unfortunately, in between the second and third trial, Rob
Rendered overdosed on drugs on a I think it's called
a hot shot, so it's like when you take caroin
(19:54):
and cocaine mixed together. But he was at a rehab center,
which was interesting. So he died at a re center.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
As strange and shady as that sounds, Rob Render clearly
was not going to be able to testify, but the
blood evidence could tell that story. Meanwhile, Mario was out
on bond when something truly extraordinary happened.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I was at a bar and Shane Lamb had been
released from prison, and he walked up to me at
the bar, and his conversation to me is I'm really
sorry that this is happening. I didn't mean for this
to happen. I didn't think that any Jerry would ever
actually believe me. I was just saying what I needed
to say to get out of prison. The state's attorney
(20:36):
told me specifically exactly what I should say, and fortunate
for me, there's multiple witnesses around, and one being a
criminal defense attorney that is not on my case, and
somebody that was near me went and grabbed him as
like you need to be over here, because you're an
officer of the court, you should hear this. And this
wasn't a situation where Lamb was intoxicated. He had just
(20:57):
gotten there and I had just gotten there. It was daylight,
and he's sitting there venting, telling me and this whole
group of people that he was forced to say all
this stuff and that he didn't think the jury would
believe it, and that all got entered into evidence in
my third trial.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Wow, it's quite a turn of events. He happened to
be in that bar and there happened to be an
officer of the court.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
There video camera, video camera, we had it on video
camera bar.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Wow. And it wasn't so noisy in the bar. The
video camera was able to pick it up.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
The audio on that one was garbled because the bar
obviously a loud place. But then you see four or
five people standing around just listening, and then you see
Ed Donahue on a camera sitting there listening to the conversation.
And Ed's an attorney. He was a former state's attorney
and he was a criminal defense attorney in mckenry County.
So he's ultimately pulled into this case because he just
(21:46):
was a patron of the local bar.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Even with this bombshell impeachment evidence, once again destroying the
testimony of Shane Lamb. Mario was tried for a third
time in March twenty thirteen, but this time the unlawful
restraint charge was which meant that the only charge he
was now facing was felony murdered by intimidation.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Of course, we alerted the judge that nobody in the country,
nobody in common law, has ever been charged with this.
So nobody in England, New Zealand, Australia, any country that
practices common law, has ever used intimidation as a predicate
felony for murder. And the judge's response was that would
be an item for the appellate court to decide, so
(22:26):
she wouldn't make a ruling on it and force us
to proceed on that last count.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
And before trial, the prosecutors did what they usually do
when their case is this thin.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
The morning that we selected the third jury, the States
Attorney's Office came to my attorney and said, if you
can get your client to plead guilty to concealment of
a homicide, which is a Class two felony, I believe
will dismiss the final murder count, and I think at
that time it already served two years in the county jail,
so I pretty much would addressed in and dressed out
(22:57):
because I had no criminal background. But I was unwe
willing to take a plea deal where I admitted to
concealing somebody's body when I had nothing to do with
the case.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So the state persisted once again presenting the evidence that
had convinced eleven out of twelve jurors during the second trial.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
I actually felt really confident going in because in the
third trial we actually presented a defense in which we
brought an attorney at Donahue to testify. I understand that
the state's main and only witness was being told what
to stay by the prosecution, and that he admitted to
lying and that none of that what he had testified
to was true. But also Lamb's in the second trial
(23:36):
he said that I told him to do it, but
then the third trial he came back and said that
he did it on his own and that I just
happened to be there with.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
The defense that was mounted the blood evidence, bone record,
Shane Lamb's recantation, and both states witnesses being destroyed on
cross It's really confusing how we're here speaking with Mary today.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I had the feeling during the third trial that the
jury pool was not paying At ten we had an
older jury. Every time that we looked over at them,
it was like they were like sleeping, but not like
resting their head on their arms.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
It appears that the state was able to muddy up
which should have been very clear waters for a very
sleepy jury. And Mario, after fighting the state for now
over six years, became the first person in US history
and common law history to be convicted of felony murder
by intimidation.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
When the judge read the verdict, people stood up and
started screaming at the jury, asking them if they listened
to any of the witnesses. I put my head down
because I just couldn't believe it. Everybody was up in arms,
My parents were crying, and that the two prosecutors were
high fiving each other. And then the one prosecutor ultimately
(24:52):
looked at me and said, I told you I was
going to get you. Told you it wasn't over. The
(25:15):
very next morning after I was convicted, Brian Telander came
to see me and He was obviously very apologetic, but
also was just telling me he could not believe still
that the jury convicted on that evidence. He was pretty broken.
I think he actually told me that he lost faith
in the justice system from that verdict. And he said
(25:36):
that I have talked to the States attorney. They're willing
to cut a deal with you if you can tell
them where the body is. So I told him I
had no idea where the body was. So even after
I was convicted, I still turned down a plea deal.
Of course, if I was actually responsible for this crime,
I would have taken both opportunities.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
In covering Mario's case. We had the opportunity to speak
with his post conviction attorney, Kathleen Zelner, and she told
us how she got involved.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
His sister worked for a law firm downtown and she
was researching I guess wrongful conviction attorneys and she found
me and then I met with them. I love his family,
and you hear his background, and you know he already
had a college degree. And then the judge has such
a horrible reputation. I was all in.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Two days after I was convicted, I get called for
a visit. I'm at the McKenny County Jail and I
walk into the visiting room and I see a woman there.
I had never seen her before, so I said, I
think I'm in the wrong room, and she said, Mario,
I'm here to talk to you. My name is Kathleen Zelner.
I'm very interested in helping you. This evidence is so
ridiculous that I think that we might be able to
(26:49):
get the judge to vacate the conviction before even the sentencing,
and then you'll have either a fourth trial or this
will be.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
The end of it.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
We didn't think that was like a high probably, but
it was a possibility.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Unfortunately, that possibility did not come to pass, and Mario
was sentenced to twenty six years.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So I'm down in Minard. Minard is a maximum security
prison that is about an hour south of Saint Louis,
and I was living prior to all this about an
hour north of Chicago, so it's about a six hour
drive for my family to come and see me. It's
a max security place, so there's not a lot of movement.
(27:29):
I was in my jail cell twenty three hours a day.
In one sense, it's terrible that you're confined to a
small space for twenty three hours a day. But in
another way, at least you're not open to getting attacked
by a bunch of people that have been legitimately convicted
of murder offenses. I would say it's probably the worst
place I've ever been. Wish it upon nobody. But what
(27:51):
they did have that I thought was good was a
law library. So I just stayed to myself from the
moment I got there till the moment I left. I
focused on case and tried to figure out how to
get out of there, and did as much legal research
as I possibly could, and read as many books about
the law as I could.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I thought that.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
It would be prudent for me to use every moment
that I had to focus on freedom. Even though I
have a great lawyer.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
I didn't want to just sit there with the direct appeal.
I wanted to reinvestigate, because in Illinois you can file
the post conviction and the direct appeal at the same time.
During that investigation, we found a former employee that had
worked there that had discovered a pair of men's underwear
in the women's restroom up in the ceiling. The tiles
(28:41):
had been removed and somebody had thrown it up there
and it was bloodstained, and it turned out render had
gone in that bathroom. He was cut and bleeding. It
was his underwear. He used that as a tourniquet to
stop the bleeding, and then he threw it up in
the ceiling. And it turned out this employee that had
discovered a pair of men's underwear, this kid's father, was
(29:02):
a deputy sheriff. So the father said, we got to
take this over to the sheriff's office and turn it in,
so they did, and then the police chief threw it away.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
He admitted that in his civil deposition, I filed a
post conviction petition along with the appeal so that I
could put all the new evidence in that and publicize it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
ABC's twenty twenty began looking into the case, and Shane
Lamb agreed to participate, where he gave a videotaped recantation
while exposing state's attorney Michael Combs, saying, quote all of
it was false. The state's attorney set it up. I
didn't have anything to do with this. Maria didn't have
anything to do with this. I would be indicted for
murder if I didn't cooperate. I was following what Combs
(29:46):
wanted me to say. They just wanted to close the
case end quote. Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Yeah. And we planned all that with twenty twenty because
that's one of my really good friends, Lisa's soul away,
so we had given them like questions. We thought he
would give a confession, but if he'd do it on
the air, that would be even better.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I can't think ABC twenty twenty enough. That show changed
everything I thought, because it really just undermined that conviction
and it just ferreted out how bad the prosecutors are
in mckenry County. I mean, it's pretty bad when you
have on national show saying that the prosecutors are coursing
witnesses and telling them what to say.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
That's how you get leverage with the appellate court.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
At the time this aired, Mario's direct appeal was pending
in a filing where the focus was insufficient evidence. Having
the information that your jury appeared to have missed be
broadcast nationally probably didn't hurt when a three judge panel made.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Their ruling September twenty third, twenty fifteen, I got a
call from Kathleen's office. My parents were in the room
and I think ABC taped it. Kathleen said, the appellate
opinion came out and they overturned your case, and you
are going to be a free man. All three judges
said that no reasonable juror could convict me based on
(31:04):
the evidence that was presented.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Somehow they still found twelve. Yeah, for your third.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Trial, they're saying there's twelve people that are unreasonable.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
It makes it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
So at the time, and I don't know if that's
still the case, but at the time, this was only
the fourth case to ever be overturned for insufficiency evidence,
for specifically for no reasonable dur could convict base on
the evidence that was presented.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I'm rarely at a loss for words, Mario, but this
is one of those times. But so let me just
take a deep breath and then let's get to the
good stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So two days later, I am told that I'm going
to be released by the guards. So I'm packing everything
up and I go to the front door. The warden
is there. I actually asked the warden if I could
speak to her about running her facility more efficiently, and
she thought that was very odd. She said, you're free
(31:57):
to walk out the door and I said, yeah, I know,
but I was brought up in a grocery store and
we had a pretty large business, so in a very
professional manner, so I think you could address these issues
and you guys would actually make more money too. And
it boiled all the way down to phones. So there
was only four phones available on the yard, but there's
two hundred and fifty people. I said, why don't you
(32:20):
triple the amount of phones, because they're making ten dollars
a phone call at the time, so it would be
to their benefit to have more phones. But also what
happened is the gang's one of the biggest reasons they
had power is they would control the phone. So I
explained to her, why don't you triple the amount of phones.
You guys can make more money, you'd have less fights,
and she acted like she had no idea, and then
(32:42):
she was like, you're being released, see you later. So
my family brings clothes in to me, and then I
walk out the door. Kathleen, she raised my hand up
as we were walking down the stairs because we had
defeated the state. After long rigorous wore thirteen years after
the disappearance.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
You and and we're close though, right, So What did
his thirteen siblings think of all this.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I had spoken to a few of them during the years,
and it seems like they're conflicted something that I'm responsible.
Some don't. Some of the siblings thought that I knew
what happened and that I wasn't telling them or wasn't
coming clean to the police department, when in reality, I
would have been the first one that would have because
it would have absolved me from having.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Anything to do with this.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
They were all really good people. I feel terrible that
this happened to them. For me, I wish they would
have directed their energy more at being upset with the
State's Attorney's office for just having such an inadequate investigation
in the local police department.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
The reasons for that righteous indignation ended up on full
display during the depositions for Mario's civil litigation.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
When we were deposing the lead investigator, he disclosed to
us that he had never been to the police academy
prior to this investigation.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, because I always start in those depths with, well,
give us a little bit about your job history.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Three months before the investigation, he was working at ACE
Hardware and he was let go for being an incompetent
stock man and then walked into the police department and
was told that they were looking for somebody part time.
He had never been to the police academy prior to
this investigation. He was pending he was going to go.
So a guy that was let go from the ACE
(34:26):
Hardware because he couldn't figure out where to stock items
correctly three months in is now in charge of a
murder investigation.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
He felt tremendous guilt because he really gave up everything
in that deposition. It was like, you know, I never
should have done.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
That, and even their attorneys were just in awe. And
then we informed him that if you know somebody's innocent
of a crime, you have what's called a duty to intervene.
And his response was, I didn't know that I could
do that. I didn't know that I could tell the
state's attorney that do you guys have the wrong guy
or so well, Honestly, the civil rights depositions made everything
(35:04):
that happened over the years crystal clear, and you could
see why it happened, and it just it boiled all
the way down to if somebody's not trained to be
a police officer and has no experience and has no
idea what they're doing. They should not be at a
crime scene. I mean, he's at the crime scene touching
everything without gloves on because he didn't know that you
should put gloves on.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
If only mckenry County managed to have the same standards
as ACE Hardware, I mean, can you imagine not to
mention how the prosecuting attorneys Michael Combs and Patrick McNeely
had the same duty right they did to intervene, but
in a sick, sinister twist, they somehow still felt it
(35:45):
was appropriate for them to high five each other when
you got convicted.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
But karma works itself out. I think, I don't know
if you guys have followed aftermath, But the prosecutor that
was the lead on this case ended up being fired
and his pretty much incapable of finding a meaningful employment. Interestingly,
because it's a small town, multiple people have sent me
he can't control his liquors, so he falls off barstools
(36:11):
and talks about how powerful he is in that little town.
Has claim to fame was that he got a conviction
with nobody. He's willing to tell people this and actually
as if it's an achievement when really you should be
ashamed of himself. And then the second prosecutor is now
the state's attorney of the county, but has had a
(36:32):
number of issues. I know, he attacked his wife, the
police were called, and just really become an embarrassment to
the state.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Meanwhile, since his release, Mario graduated from Loyola Law School
and was admitted to the Illinois State Bar in twenty nineteen,
all while settling his civil case.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So I actually settled with the State's Attorney's office and
with the police department separately. I'm one of very few people,
if any, I've never actually met any other wrongfully convicted
people that actually settled with the state's attorney's office because
they have absolute immunity, and they still settled with me,
primarily because they were concerned about their image, the way
(37:11):
that they were being portrayed in the media, and I
think that they were concerned if this went any further
that their law licenses would be in jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Mario, It's been a real joy for me to get
to know you and to work with you on cases,
and I'm just so happy that you have come through
this and risen above it. So with that, we're going
to go to closing arguments, where first of all, I
thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining
us and sharing your incredible story. And now I'm going
(37:41):
to kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off,
leave my headphones on, and close my eyes and just
listen to anything else you have to say.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
For as awful of a situation as it was that
happened to me, the silver lining was as I came
out of this winning my civil rights lawsuit publicly embarrassing
the state's attorney's office, and I am a successful attorney.
In a weird way, this changed my life trajectory. It's
almost like if you watched the movie Back to the Future,
(38:11):
the moment that Brian Carrick disappeared changed my entire life.
And now I'm sitting here as a criminal defense attorney
working in post conviction unit in Cook County, and I've
had a huge effect on a lot of my client's lives.
I've had people that I've had life sentences vacated, and
it's alarming that this could easily happen again. There's just
(38:33):
so many incompetent people still involved and still in positions
of power in that very county, and so I try
to talk to people about how important it is to
actually pay attention to your local elections. The people that
you elect to be judge your state's attorney are often
more critical to you than electing the president, because those
are the people that can indict you, indict the wrong person,
(38:56):
or choose to not charge people. It's a very very
important job. I can't stress that enough.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor
Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive
producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
(39:29):
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all
social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm.
Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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