Looking back at Gone in the Night
the true crime that's worth your time
[for Susan’s full review of this 1994 Edgar nominee, click here; to get this and eeeeevery other article complete in your inbox, grab a paid sub!]
Our next 1994 Edgar nominee is Gone in the Night: The Dowaliby Family’s Encounter with Murder and the Law by David Protess and Rob Warden. ["I would link to Exhibit B.'s copy of the book here, but it seldom stays in stock long...and unsurprisingly, the PB I did have sold just last night, possibly on the heels of the death of Shannen Doherty, who played Cynthia in the 1996 TV movie." - SDB]
The crime
On a September night in 1988, 7-year-old Jaclyn Dowaliby went missing from her suburban Chicago bedroom. Days later, her remains were discovered behind a nearby apartment complex.
Law enforcement immediately suspected involvement by Jaclyn’s parents (mom Cynthia and stepdad David) despite scant evidence, and centered their investigation only on the Dowalibys. Both parents were arrested and tried for Jaclyn’s kidnapping and murder, lost custody of their young son, and found themselves subject to a host of injustices by the state. To date, Jaclyn’s murder remains unsolved.
The story
Gone in the Night is a meticulous account of the shoddiness of the police investigation into Jaclyn’s case, a chronicle of the infuriating prosecution and trial of the Dowalibys, and an ambitious attempt to document the Dowaliby family’s story. Both Protess and Warden are Chicago-area journalists who became involved in the case after David Dowaliby’s conviction (the trial judge vacated charges of first-degree murder against Cynthia) for Jaclyn’s murder. Together with a local Chicago television news reporter, Paul Hogan, they work with the Dowaliby family to amplify their story of police and prosecutorial malfeasance, solidify public opinion that the Dowalibys got a raw deal, and chart a course for the successful appeal of David’s conviction.
So what was the case against the parents, and what did law enforcement think happened the night Jaclyn disappeared? The “evidence” includes a small broken window and removed screen which police viewed as staged, broken by the Dowalibys to point toward an intruder; an eyewitness sighting of a car similar to the Dowaliby’s Chevy Malibu at the apartment complex where Jaclyn’s body was found; and the resemblance of the murder weapon to a rope from the Dowaliby home.
At every turn, however, this so-called evidence is offset by a whole lot of supposition. If you start from the presumption that the Dowalibys killed their daughter, then a rope that “looks like” one their young son used to play with becomes the murder weapon, and a car spotted in a dark parking lot from the length of a football field becomes the family car fleeing the scene of the body’s discovery with David behind the wheel.
The theory of the crime embraced and amplified by law enforcement was that Cynthia accidentally killed Jaclyn (despite no evidence of previous corporal punishment) and David helped her cover it up. However, at trial it becomes clear that there is no evidence implicating Cynthia, and the judge vacates charges against her. David, meanwhile, is convicted of first-degree murder, largely based on a far-from-reliable eyewitness identification, and an overzealous focus on what the “correct” actions of a parent in the aftermath of a nightmare scenario should be.
Why did the police dig their heels in and go so far in their targeting of the Dowalibys? Protess and Warden argue that the answer lies in politics. This case came at a seminal time in the career of prosecutor turned Chicago mayoral candidate Richard Daley. Under intense public pressure to solve Jaclyn’s murder, Daley pressed for advancing the case against against Dowalibys, despite the lack of a discernible motive or any notable evidence -- to even call this a circumstantial case is being extremely generous.
The Dowaliby case is a cautionary tale about just how easy it can be for police to railroad parent (or parents) when something tragic happens to their child. I’d like to think that criminal investigations have evolved over the last several decades to a point that it isn’t possible for something like this to happen, but once law enforcement sets it sights on a parent, a lot of reason goes out the window. At the hands of Protess and Warden, the Dowalibys’ story gets the humanity and care it deserves.