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Investigations
Jerry went to investigate. He saw a man rise up and flee on foot. In the yard Pacek discovered 52 year old Lillian Stevick. She had been beaten savagely and died 45 minutes later on a hospital operating table. -
Where it all started....
13 year old Jerry Pacek was walking home from his girlfriend's home late at night when he heard moans from a neighbor's yard in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, a steel mill town about 20 miles from Pittsburgh. -
Interrogation
Later that night, Pacek was brought to the police station for questioning because he said he found the victim's body. Pacek denied committing the crime and passed two polygraph exams. -
False Confession
17 hours later of interrogation he provided a confession. He would say that that he believed his girlfriend would be arrested if he told the truth. At the time his girlfriend was 20 years old and Pacek's parents obtained a court order forbidding her from seeing him. Pacek said this statement to protect his girlfriend and because he believed the court would recognize it as false and release him. He said he committed the crime with a metal object, then changed it to a hachet. -
Continuation of False Confession
The reason Pacek changed his story was so the police would fail to find a weapon on the crime scene -
Period: to
False Evidence
In between this time, the chief investigator found a rusty covered hachet in the woods, 100 yards from the crime scene. -
Conviction
Pacek was convicted and he was sentenced to 10-20 years in prison. -
Period: to
Prison
Pacek was in prison. -
Pacek's Release
Pacek was released from prison on this day. -
Jim Fisher
Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent and a criminology professor at Edinboro University, took an interest in the case. He began investigating and amassed considerable evidence suggesting Pacek's innocence, including his clothes were clean despite evidence that blood splattered as far as 25 feet from the victim. In addition, he bore no scratch marks though it appeared that fragments of the attackers flesh were lodged under the victim's fingernail. -
Alleghany County Law
Alleghany county law enforcement re-opened the case. Pacek was hypnotized for five hours to help police produce a sketch of the man he saw that night of the murder. -
Pennsylvania State
The Pennsylvania State pardons board voted unanimously to pardon Pacek. -
Robert P. Casey
The pardon was approved by Governor Robert P. Casey. -
Unresolved
Pacek filed a civil wrongful lawsuit, but it was dismissed. Police developed two suspects in the murder and said that they found a heavy metal in a Brackenridge basement that might have been the murder weapon. DNA testing was unsuccessful and no one was ever charged with the murder. Two attempts to pass legislation to compensate Pacek failed to pass. -
Death
Pacek died from stomach cancer.
