'I saw Missy beating on the window,' Dugan's last surviving victim testifies

On that summer day, Opal Horton recalls, she and her best friend Missy rode pink bikes to their elementary school to play on the swings and monkey bars.

They stopped briefly at their principal's house. As Opal, then 8, sat on her bike waiting for Missy to come back outside, she saw a rusty, blue car pass along the gravel road.

Minutes later, Horton testified Wednesday, a man in that same rusty car slowed down and asked the girls for directions to town. He opened his car door, claiming he could not hear them. Horton turned to Missy.

"I whispered that we had to go."

A riveted DuPage County jury heard her emotional testimony about how she escaped Brian Dugan's deadly grasp more than 24 years ago and watched in horror as he drove off with Melissa "Missy" Ackerman.

Jurors are hearing evidence before deciding whether Dugan should be executed for the Feb. 25, 1983, abduction, rape and bludgeoning of Jeanine Nicarico, 10, of Naperville. Dugan, 53, linked through DNA, pleaded guilty July 28.

Jeanine's was his first murder. Before police nabbed him, Dugan also raped and drowned Geneva nurse Donna Schnorr, 27, on July 15, 1984, and Missy, 7, of Somonauk, on June 2, 1985. Dugan has been in prison since 1985 serving life terms for the two later sex slayings and three May 1985 sex attacks in which the women survived.

For the first time, Horton testified Wednesday about the day she lost her best friend. Her fear hasn't subsided. She trembled uncontrollably, cried and took deep breaths between answers during her 30-minute testimony.

"He grabbed me by my neck and threw me in the car ... like a ball," said Horton, now a 32-year-old married mother. "(I was) panicking, like I just had to get out."

Horton said she tried to open the passenger-side door, but the lock's knob was removed. She rolled down the window, escaped and hid behind a tractor tire at a nearby John Deere dealership. As she heard the car pull off, Horton said she poked her head out.

Prosecutor Michael Wolfe asked: "And what did you see as that car was pulling away?"

"I saw Missy beating on the window," Horton sobbed. "I waited until I couldn't see the car any longer and I had to get help. So, I started running. I tried to run and duck down so he couldn't see me."

She reached a yellow house, but panicked and kept running. At the second home, local math teacher Charles Hickey called 911 after listening to the panicked child's story.

"She said Melissa was getting away but didn't want to leave," Hickey testified. "She was telling Opal to get out of the car. (Opal) told us the man had grabbed Melissa by the ankle and dragged her into the car."

Despite a massive search, Missy's nude body wasn't found until two weeks later, partially buried under rocks and submerged in water in LaSalle County. A necklace, with the letters "MISSY," in beads, hung around her neck. She had been sexually assaulted and drowned in a creek shortly after the abduction.

Her father, Michael Ackerman, 55, described his final morning with his only child. Missy ate a cinnamon roll and Cabbage Patch cereal before heading out on her bike. He identified Missy's photo, and another of her bike. He still has that bicycle.

In seeking a death sentence, prosecutors are detailing Dugan's litany of crimes. So far, as his sentencing hearing stretches through its third week, jurors heard about three murders and nine rapes or attempts from 1974 to 1985 of women who lived.

Opal Horton is his last surviving victim.

As she left the witness stand, the married mother hugged Michael Ackerman. Tom and Pat Nicarico, with their two other daughters, Chris and Kathy, sat nearby. So were Donna Schnorr's siblings. The families support Dugan's execution.

The defense team is fighting to save Dugan's life by arguing he is a psychopath who, because of a genetic brain defect, lacks the ability to feel true emotion or to control his impulses. Dugan has remained outwardly unemotional through the proceedings. He often keeps his head lowered and avoids eye contact with witnesses.

His attorneys contend Dugan deserves credit for pleading guilty to his crimes, sparing victims' families emotional trials. They said Dugan tried to admit that he alone killed Jeanine back in 1985 if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. They refused. They also didn't believe him, as two other men sat on death row for Jeanine's murder. Both men were exonerated in 1995.

One of them, Rolando Cruz, drove Wednesday from Wisconsin to witness the court proceedings. The defense team had planned to call him as a witness when their case begins, but Cruz said he no longer is testifying.

"It's closure for me," said Cruz, 46. "I'm glad they finally got the right guy. Brian Dugan had a lot of victims, directly and indirectly, including myself."

He had harsh words for the men who prosecuted him. Cruz also said he does not believe in the death penalty and that life in prison is a harsher existence, anyway.

One day after Missy's abduction, investigators closed in on Dugan. They knew he was in the area because a police officer from a neighboring town who chatted with him briefly June 2, 1985 at a gas station had obtained his information. Officer James McDougall testified Dugan was very polite and did not appear nervous.

Dugan matched Horton's description of her assailant, and drove a similar car as well. In a joint sting operation, local, state, county and FBI officials swooped in on a 28-year-old Dugan early June 3, 1985, after he pulled into his job at Midwest Hydraulics just outside Geneva.

He's been behind bars ever since.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at http://corp.brightcove.com/legal/terms_publisher.cfm. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience43606475001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="300" /> <param name="height" value="255" /> <param name="playerID" value="18011347001" /> <param name="publisherID" value="1659832549"/> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="43606475001" /> </object> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> </ul> <h2>Photo Galleries</h2> <ul class="gallery"> <li><a href="/story/?id=325418">Images of Brian Dugan's victims </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325419">Images of Brian Dugan </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325420">Images of Nicarico's wrongly accused </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325421">Images from Brian Dugan's trial </a></li> </ul> <h2>Related links</h2> <ul class="moreWeb"> <li><a href="/story/?id=308729">Dugan's criminal background</a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308727">Timeline of Nicarico murder investigation, trials</a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=326654">Brian Dugan's victims</a></li> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=326645">Cruz: Dugan confessed to save himself <span class="date">[10/02/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325829">Jury picked to decide Dugan's sentencing <span class="date">[10/02/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=317249">Dugan says he tried to confess in '85 to Nicarico slaying <span class="date">[08/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310026">The statement Brian Dugan wanted to read in court <span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310014">Nicarico neighbor recalls the search for Jeanine, painful aftermath?<span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310033">State moratorium on executions - 10 years and counting<span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310040">A timeline of the Nicarico-Dugan cases<span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308853">After a lifetime of violence, will jury show Dugan mercy?<span class="date">[07/23/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308535">Guilty plea expected in Nicarico murder <span class="date">[07/22/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=203555">Did one Chicago-area killer create another? <span class="date">[06/05/08]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308721">Inside the FBI files of Brian Dugan <span class="date">[01/07/07]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308724">Grand jury indicts Dugan in Nicarico murder <span class="date">[11/30/05]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>