The death of three Naperville children at the hands of their mother 20 years ago left an indelible impression on Joseph Birkett and many in law enforcement. This week marks two decades since Lemak, a surgical nurse, gave her children prescription drugs and then suffocated them in their home at 28 S. Loomis St. Testimony from the trial painted a grim series of event that started playing out the afternoon of March 4, Emily and Thomas were killed first, while their older brother Nicholas played downstairs after he returned from an after-school activity.
Lemak then came downstairs and told Nicholas his siblings would not be joining them for dinner as she prepared him a bagel with crunchy peanut butter sprinkled with crushed tablets of the anti-anxiety tranquilizer Ativan, which physicians had prescribed her.
He, too, was smothered. Police found the two boys lying in their own beds; the girl was in her mothers' room. In a interview with French television channel M6 — her first and only public comments since her arrest made national headlines — Lemak said deepening depression amid a bitter divorce prompted her to drug and suffocate her children.
Birkett insists Lemak committed the murders to hurt her then-estranged husband, David Lemak, though in the interview, Marilyn Lemak said she did it to escape the pain brought on by depression. Neither Marilyn Lemak nor David Lemak could be reached for this story. Family members said Marilyn Lemak was struggling with depression for four years.
She filed for divorce the first time in , but changed her mind. The second divorce proceedings, both their divorce attorneys have said, were relatively amicable, until Marilyn Lemak discovered that her estranged husband had started dating. Birkett said while many murder investigations focus on who committed the crime, the goal in this case was to prove that despite the depression Lemak was sane at the time of the killings.
In the end, Lemak was found fit to stand trial and convicted. Birkett credits a thorough law enforcement investigation that included statements people who saw her every day as well as psychological experts. Marilyn Lemak received a life sentence and is currently housed at the Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln. Marilyn Lemak's doctor, Robert Hubbard, testified in October that although Lemak had been taking medication for depression, she reported to him that she was feeling better a few days before the killings.
But in a conversation with Hubbard at the hospital where she was treated for self-inflicted wrist wounds after the killings, Marilyn Lemak told Hubbard that she had seen her husband with his new girlfriend the day before the killings. It was then that she said she realized "she and her children were no longer the most important thing in his life and she was going to free him of that responsibility," Hubbard testified.
It was during the same pretrial hearing, in which defense lawyers unsuccessfully sought to bar Lemak's alleged confession to police from being admitted as evidence against her, that prosecutors played a recording of the call. At the time DuPage County Circuit Judge George Bakalis did not release the tape and a transcript of its contents for examination by the news media and public.
Lawyers for the Tribune then filed a motion seeking the tape and transcript. Bakalis later heard arguments on that motion and agreed to unseal only the transcript, which was obtained by the Tribune on Thursday. It showed that Lemak told the dispatcher on March 5 that she had given her children Ativan, an anti-anxiety drug, and that she was taking Ativan and the anti-depressant Zoloft. Dispatcher: "Okay, how did. Dispatcher: "They're on their way there now Lynn.
Are you in your car, are you in front of the house? Later, the dispatcher asked Lemak if she had been drinking and if she was on any medications. Dispatcher: "I just want you to. Where's your husband at? Don't let 'em let the cat run out," Lemak said.
Dispatcher: "Have you taken anymore meds that you needed to or have you taken your. But the kids didn't. At that point, police had apparently broken down the door, but Lemak remained on the phone with the dispatcher. They're right here," she tells the dispatcher. There's one right in here," she said in an apparent reference to Emily, who was in Lemak's bed.
Dispatcher: "Okay, just let me know when they. The two boys were found in their own beds, and the girl was found in what appeared to be the parents' room, the investigator said.
The children's mother, Marilyn Lemak, 41, was lying near her daughter, but still alive. The grim discovery came shortly after a call to was made to Naperville police at a. Police said the caller was Marilyn Lemak, who is the estranged wife of Dr. Although officials would not comment on what had happened to the mother, she was taken to Edward Hospital in Naperville, where she was listed in fair condition Friday evening. Shortly after the children's bodies were found, David Lemak, also 41, sped past police barricades, parked and ran up to the home on South Loomis Street, where he was stopped by police officers.
Neighbors said the officers led David Lemak to a police car parked nearby, and as he sat inside talking to officers, he suddenly broke into sobs. Officials said the couple had recently separated and the father was no longer living in the home.
Eight hours after the bodies were discovered, police formed a screen at the rear of the house while the bodies of the three children--contained in red body bags--were wheeled to a waiting gray van with funeral home plates.
The family lived in a Victorian house built years ago, possibly for the first president of North Central College, which is across the street. Tom Klingbeil, who lives just around the corner, said he watched the three children grow up in what he said was an obviously loving home, where the harshest discipline meted out was an occasional "time out. I remember David walking the kids to school. But Klingbeil conceded, and others agreed, that all did not appear to be well at the Lemak home in recent weeks.
And he said he noticed seeing less and less of the three children since the time David Lemak left, and especially over the course of the last two or three days. I had just been thinking how weird it was. Marilyn Lemak filed for divorce in April There apparently was a reconciliation, and she asked that the divorce case be dismissed, which it was on Aug. But the peace between David and Marilyn Lemak proved to be short-lived, and she filed again for divorce on June 1, In the divorce papers, Marilyn Lemak said there were "irreconcilable differences" that were tearing the marriage apart, and she asked for child support for her children.
The papers said she and her husband had been living under the same roof, but separately. On July 29, she filed papers with the court asking that she be given exclusive possession of the home, because, she said, living in the same house with her husband was "causing serious episodes of stress, which have resulted in physical symptoms.
Marilyn Lemak's request was denied in September, and David Lemak stayed at home. Meanwhile, the couple completed a court-ordered divorce education counseling program given by the DuPage County Psychological Services Department, and they then were ordered to undergo mediation.
Through that mediation process, they came to agreements on child custody and visitation rights, court records show. A court document on those subjects that was signed Jan.
The couple were to appear in court again on Feb. Although many questions about Marilyn Lemak's mental state remain, the year-old Naperville woman entered a plea of not guilty Monday to charges that she murdered her three young children one month ago.
Her lawyer spoke for her, telling the judge she was pleading not guilty to nine counts of first-degree murder. And Lemak's lawyer, John Donahue, also told Bakalis of a development in the lengthy court-ordered process of determining Lemak's mental fitness: A psychiatrist hired by the defense to examine Lemak has determined that she is not fit to stand trial for the killings of Nicholas, 7; Emily, 6; and Thomas, 3.
Joseph Birkett explained. Lemak still is to be examined by a psychiatrist appointed by Bakalis. That report is expected in three weeks. After those findings are issued, prosecutors are likely to seek an examination by an expert of their own.
Ultimately, a judge or a jury, after considering evidence presented during a hearing, will have to determine whether she is fit to stand trial. Bakalis had said at a hearing last week that he would hold off on accepting a plea from Lemak until the fitness reports were submitted. But without explanation, after a brief meeting in chambers with the lawyers and Lemak, Bakalis took the plea. Donahue would not reveal details of the psychiatric report, prepared by Dr.
Lyle Rossiter, saying only, "She cannot assist in her defense because of her mental condition. Under Illinois law, a person is presumed to be fit to stand trial. A person is not fit if he or she cannot understand the legal proceedings or cooperate in his or her defense. Bakalis said at a hearing last week that Lemak, who has been under hour suicide watch at DuPage County Jail since she was taken into custody, was on mood-altering medications and had been catatonic and non-communicative at times.
If Lemak were to be found fit to stand trial in the immediate or distant future, she could change her plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. In cases like Lemak's, in which complicated legal and psychological issues must be tackled, defendants routinely enter a plea of not guilty and then proceed with the business of gathering evidence and determining a defense strategy, legal experts explained.
Prosecutors allege that on March 4, after the children had returned to the family's Victorian home after school, Lemak sedated them and then suffocated them by covering their mouths and pinching their noses. The bodies were discovered the next morning after police received a call from Lemak, authorities said. As Lemak entered the courtroom and was seated off to the side waiting for her case to be called, her father, William Morrissey, stood up and blew her a kiss. He held two fingers first to his lips and then out toward her.
Her mother and a sister were also in court, but had no comment after the hearing. Lemak was carrying a large plastic bag up to her chest when she entered the courtroom. She gave the bag to Donahue, who said after the court hearing that the bag contained letters from people who were supportive and sympathetic about her situation. He said Lemak has read the letters, but he would not comment about her reactions. Lemak appeared more animated than in previous court appearances, and was seen talking with her lawyer for a few minutes at the side of the courtroom.
Asked about her condition, Donahue said: "Just because a person speaks to you and may speak what appears to be lucidly doesn't mean they're speaking rationally and in reality.
The question is what is she communicating. As police sifted through their evidence Friday and friends and neighbors sorted through their memories for clues to what had happened at the cranberry-red Victorian house in downtown Naperville, there was one horrid and indisputable fact: Three small children had been killed.
One investigator working the case said it appeared that the Lemak children--Nicholas, 7; Emily, 6; and Thomas, had ingested poison or drugs, perhaps at dinner time or later Thursday night. There was no evidence that they had been given injections. During a news conference late Friday at the Naperville Police Department, officials offered few details about one of the most horrifying crimes in DuPage's history.
Joseph Birkett said. Birkett sought to allay fears that the family was the victim of random poisoning. Finding out exactly what happened could take weeks because toxicology reports take a long time, officials said. Under questioning from reporters, Birkett said several times that the murders appeared to have stemmed from problems at the Lemak home. And while he would not get into specifics, he emphasized several times that David Lemak had been cooperating with police throughout the short span of the investigation.
He would not discuss the details of the telephone call made to nor Marilyn Lemak's medical condition, saying the matter remained under investigation. Naperville Police Capt. Robert Marshall said no one in the Police Department could remember another triple homicide. The county's Major Crimes Task Force has been activated for the first time since its creation last year.
The task force is a special unit developed among area police departments to bring to bear special areas of expertise in significant crimes. Officials said they would open Ellsworth School from 9 a. Nicholas was a 2nd grader at Ellsworth, and his sister was in kindergarten at the school, which is just blocks from the family home.
News of the tragedy spread quickly through the area, prompting neighbors to gather in the midday chill and discuss the events unfurling before them. Rumors spread that the family had been victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, as if those who lived in the quiet community could not believe--would not believe--that murder had transpired.
Crime is rare in Naperville, as many of the neighbors noted. Hal Wilde, North Central College president, came across the street to disperse some students. Murderpedia Juan Ignacio Blanco.
Families quiet after hearing Marilyn Lemak's parents and sisters attended the hearing but declined to comment afterward. Focus on scorn Prosecutors will concentrate on evidence that supports their revenge-of-a-woman-scorned theory.
Turning to family At the October court hearing, Lemak's father said his daughter first divulged her problems to her family less than a month before the slayings. The couple began dating and got married in September Divorce proceedings The second divorce proceedings, both their divorce attorneys have said, were relatively amicable, until Lemak discovered that her estranged husband had begun dating.
Changes in state law in Illinois, as well as in other states, since have made it even tougher to win acquittal on the basis of insanity. Before , it was prosecutors who had the burden to prove defendants were sane. Under the current law, Donahue can argue only that a mental disease or defect left Lemak unable to appreciate or understand that her actions toward her children were criminal. Donahue and his defense team likely will try to show that Lemak showed signs of irrational behavior both before and after the killing to bolster claims she was insane when the children were killed, defense attorneys not connected with the case say.
The time that a person acquitted because of insanity spends in a locked treatment center can range from a couple of years to life, with the average stint being about 5. Ron Simmone, chief of adult forensic programs for the state mental health agency. Gary Johnson talks about his book, with stories of him going to jail and defending a man wrongfully charged with killing Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville. Johnson of St.
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