Ex-cop: Rivera acted out attack on 11-year-old babysitter

Juan Rivera wanted his interrogators to understand exactly what he was talking about, a former detective testified Friday.

Rivera, 36, is on trial for the third time for the Aug. 17, 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Waukegan baby sitter Holly Staker. He has been found guilty and sentenced to life in prison twice, but new trials were ordered after each conviction.

Rivera now claims the confessions were coerced and the fact that the DNA found inside the girl does not match his is proof he had nothing to do with the crime.

Prosecutors, however, contend that Rivera told them things in his confessions that only the killer would know and that the DNA could have been deposited by another man who had sex with Holly up to four days before her death.

Michael Maley, a retired investigator for the Illinois State Police, said Friday he was one of two detectives who took a second statement about the killing from Rivera on Oct. 30, 1992.

Officials had decided to get a second statement, Maley said, because they believed Rivera had lied to them about certain details in his first confession.

Maley said he and former Waukegan detective Lou Tessmann asked Rivera to tell them about the events surrounding Holly's death. He said Rivera more than obliged.

"He was talking about how he began stabbing her, and he reached over and grabbed a pen off the desk," Maley said. "It kind of startled me, because I was sitting right next to him, but it turned out he only wanted to demonstrate how he was doing the stabbing."

Maley held a pen in his fist on the witness stand and moved his arm up and down to show how Rivera had acted out the stabbing motion.

Maley said Rivera also had him hold his wrists as he again made stabbing motions with the pen in his hand to show the detectives how Holly had tried to fight him off.

Later on in the session, Maley said Rivera again used the pen to show the detectives how he had wiped his fingerprints off a mop he used to break out a section of the back door, then propped the mop up in a corner.

Police say Rivera told them he damaged the door in an effort to make it appear that someone had forced their way into the apartment Holly was baby sitting in.

Maley said Rivera corrected the obvious falsehoods he had told them in the first statement, such as what Holly was wearing when she died, during the course of the second statement.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Thomas Sullivan, Maley said that Rivera told him and Tessmann that he had gotten some sleep after he made his first statement and that he appeared coherent and alert as they talked.

This was despite Rivera having gone through what the defense calls a "psychotic event" after his first statement.

Witnesses have testified that at around 3 a.m. on Oct. 30, Rivera began tapping his head against the wall, would not respond to spoken instructions and said he would kill himself before he went back to prison.

Rivera spent about five hours in a padded cell after that incident, and a jail doctor prescribed some drugs for Rivera but he was never given any of the medicine.