Every Town - Snatched In The Night: Who Took Young Jaclyn, A Modern Day American Mystery

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Today we’re covering the mysterious circumstances under which Jaclyn Dowaliby vanished one evening, taken right from the comfort and safety of her bed and was never seen alive again. 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries 🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT 💀 Exclusive Videos, Podcasts & Perks: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries  👁 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg 👁 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald 👁 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial 🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Everytown has a dark side. The D'Aulabees, back in 1988, were a modern-day American family when their lives were rocked by a very unfortunate and terrifying incident. It happened right at their home in the suburb of Midlothi in Illinois, which is about 30 minutes south of the city of Chicago. The four family members, Father David, Mother Cynthia, 7-year-old Jacqueline, and 4-year-old David Jr., went to bed one night, and when they woke up, one of them advanced. seemingly into thin air. It was Jacqueline, and what followed was an intense search, a gruesome discovery, and the parents then put on trial. But did they really have anything to do with the murder of young Jacqueline?

Hey guys, it's Andrew. Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Everytown where today, we're covering the mysterious circumstances under which Jacqueline de Wallaby vanished one evening, taken ride from the comfort and safety of her bed and was never seen alive again. If you were their parents, Latin of itself would be a nightmare in which they'd never be the same.

But when they were put on trial for the crime, they made it all that much more unbearable, and many agreed that the evidence just didn't add up. And so, let's head over to Midlothian now and check out the still, unsolved case of Jacqueline de Wallaby. Jacqueline was born on May 17th of 1981 in Chicago. Seven years before that, her mom, Cynthia, was still just a teenager when she met James guest when she went for an afternoon of skating and James was working there.

The two got talking and before they knew it, they were in love and in a full-on relationship. However, James had a bit of a temper. He was sort of a bad boy, which is probably part of what attracted Cynthia to him in the first place. As a result, their relationship suffered. They had their ups and downs. By the time, Cynthia was pregnant. The two were fighting on a fairly regular basis, mainly about money, and the added stress of a baby coming on board into the world

was just a bit too much for them to handle. They got stretched too thin and eventually that rope snapped. Shortly before Jacqueline was born, the couple broke it off for good. James was pretty pissed about it, and he wanted to get his revenge. As many broken and divorced couples can attest to what was once a love that could conquer all, somehow turns into a pile of resent and anger,

and sometimes a person will stop at nothing to write what they feel wrong in them. So James demanded custody of his daughter. It was a bitter battle in the courts for baby Jacqueline, but in the end, the mother tends to win these things, and Cynthia did as well, gaining full custody. After that, James was defeated and out of the picture, but not gone for good. About a year after all this, in 1982, Cynthia met a man named David Diwali. A construction foreman, the two started dating, and David was more of a reliable man.

He had a study job and a one-story ranch-style home on 148th Street in Midlothian. It was actually his mom's house, but she lived down in the basement. and pretty soon they got married, David adopted Jacqueline, raising her as his own. In fact, by all accounts, Jacqueline was never even told David wasn't her real father. She was too young for that. In 1984, David Jr. was born, and the four of them lived a happy life under that roof. In a community where nature reserves were the playgrounds of childhood,

Jacqueline was a happy child, attending Central Park Elementary, where she was pretty popular. Cynthia worked at the local hospital, and so things were solid. But then, just like many real-life horror stories we hear about, out of nowhere, their lives got completely flipped upside down, and things would never be the same for any of the doolabies again. On Friday, September 9th of 1988, David went out to a local bowling alley with some friends to sip a few brews and roll a couple strikes. Cynthia, not in the mood to cook and looking to relax, took the kids to one of their favorite, at spots in town and type of fried chicken for dinner.

While they sat among the other patrons, eating wings and biscuits, sipping their sodas, Cynthia was oblivious to the fact that this would be the last meal she'd ever share with her daughter again. Back at home around 9.20 p.m., David had finished up with his friends and walked in the front door to his family hanging out in the living room. Cynthia put David Jr. to bed shortly after that. Then about an hour later, Jacqueline went up to her room where she sat for a bit reading a Sierra's catalog, because it was 1988. David went to bed around 10.30 as well, and before she hit the hay, Cynthia checked on her kids who were both sleeping soundly and peacefully.

The next morning, David got up, made himself some coffee at around 8 a.m. He certainly noticed that his stepdaughter wasn't downstairs watching cartoons as she normally should be, but it didn't raise any alarm bells. He went upstairs, expecting to find her playing with some toys in her room, but she wasn't there either. He noticed her small piece of luggage opened on her bed with some clothes strewn about. And some of her drawers were also left open, so he figured she must be playing with the neighbor,

her friend, some sort of dress-up fantasy game around the neighborhood. When Cynthia got up around nine, and David told her about Jacqueline not being around, and almost immediately, she seemed to know that something was wrong. Cynthia checked her girls' room as well, and amongst the clothes, saw that Jacqueline's favorite purple and white blanket was missing, which then brought her closer to a panic

because she knew there was no way Jacqueline would ever take her binkie outside out of fear of getting it dirty and ruining it. The couple marched over to the neighbors, where David expected to find Jacqueline, but Cynthia was more skeptical. As they made their way to the back door through the kitchen, he then noticed it had been left open slightly. Now, this door was always locked at night, not typically the way Jacqueline would leave the house anyway if she headed outside to play. She always just used the front door. At the neighbors, both the parents and their child said they hadn't seen the girl. As Cynthia and David walked back home, and that's when they saw that the screen door to a basement window had been cut open, sliced with a knife or box cutter, as if someone had tried to come in that way. And the glass of

that window had also been smashed. So piece by piece, it all connected as a wave of absolute terror washed over the DeWalabies. By all accounts, it appeared someone had been in the house during the night and snatched little Jacqueline away. A thorough investigation immediately began as police swarmed the DeWalabi house. While detectives looked for more evidence

around the window and in the little girl's room, police outside combed over the woods out back along with search dogs and other volunteers from the neighborhood. A swamp nearby the home is painstakingly dredged while a helicopter from the Coast Guard was deployed overhead to provide aerial support. Upon a closer inspection of that broken window, on the inside window sill, there was a completely undisturbed layer of dust and no hand or fingerprints at all. And this would be simply impossible to happen if someone entered the house this way.

So it appeared that if, in fact, the perpetrator did this, it only begun to enter the home before boarding and then found a different way in. Strange, but I guess that could happen. But Jacqueline's room was also right across from her parents' bedroom, and the police just didn't understand how an intruder could take away the little girl without the parents noticing. Both David and Cynthia said they heard nothing. Neighbors clanging the same thing, they saw no cars.

No doors opening or glass breaking, woke them up. No screams from the girl. no sounds of someone rummaging through the clothes, so that seemed a bit odd as well. It is possible a child's sleeping stayed that way and just allowed a grown-up to pick them up and walk out, but still strange nonetheless. And really, why cut a screen and break that glass, only to not enter that way? Well, the authorities thought that maybe an intruder didn't come in the home that night at all, that this was staged to make it all look like a home invasion, when in reality,

was an inside job. As police continued their investigation, Cynthia told the detectives about how Jacqueline's biological father, James, had a few years ago actually attempted to break into the Diwalibe house with the intention of taking his daughter away with him. Of course, because of that, he immediately became suspect number one. However, he didn't do it, as James was locked up in jail at the time on two counts of battery. But with the bitter custody battle seven years prior, The attempt to take his daughter from that home and his shady criminal record,

isn't it possible James hired someone? Perhaps an old prison mate to go take care of the job he had failed to accomplish. While looking for more evidence, specifically in Jacqueline's room, police did find something that didn't belong there. It was a lone hair, found on her pillow, the one that belonged to a black male. However, other than this, the broken window and the clothes being strewn about, there really wasn't anything else to go on.

The truth of the matter was, is that hair could have gotten on her clothing somewhere out in public and then found its way to her bed. Detectives figured if she had been abducted, then likely a ransom call was coming up next, but that never came through. In order to try and sort through it all

and get their stories straight, David and Cynthia were brought down to the station in order to eliminate them as suspects, which they couldn't believe, but still wanted to do anything they'd be. could to help find their daughter, so they obliged. They each took polygraph tests and were asked if they had anything to do with the girl's disappearance, to which they both denied any involvement, and they were apparently telling the truth. The search continued on with flyers

being passed around town and posted on every telephone pole and on all the storefront. Everyone did their part to aid in the search for Jacqueline, but with each passing day, it felt like she was just getting further and further away. On the afternoon of September 14th, four days after she vanished, and about six miles away from her home, Michael Chapman pulled up to a garbage dump to get rid of some trash, and when he got out of his car to unload,

smelled something God-awful. It was horrid, something beyond just the stench of decomposing trash, and he followed it, and then there among the barren wasteland, he saw a small arm sticking out from underneath the white and purple blanket, Jacqueline's blanket, the one she never would have brought outside because it would get dirty. And he had found the girl, and she'd been shoved underneath some brush,

and the covering was a poor attempt at concealing the body. Jacqueline still had the twine that killed her, double-wrapped around her neck. She was still wearing her purple nightgown, and it appeared, based on the good amount of decomposition. her life had been extinguished not long after she had been taken. She was officially identified through dental records, and there was no DNA evidence on her that pointed towards any person in particular. As of course, back then, DNA testing wasn't up to today's standards. Under her fingernails, though, after scratching her attacker, there was a small trace of type O blood. All of Jacqueline's family had type O blood, except for David Sr., who had type A, so that she was a small trace of type O blood. So,

that pretty much excluded him from being a suspect, although not entirely. Because pretty much in the blink of an eye, as if losing a daughter wasn't bad enough, the Dwalobites found themselves being investigated as the perpetrators of this crime. The way police saw it, there were two possible scenarios that could have transpired in this case. One is that a stranger did in fact break into the house and kidnap the girl in the middle of the night. And two, it was David and or Cynthia. Cynthia, actually committed the crime themselves, and then tried to make it look like someone broke in. Why exactly they would harm their little girl? Well, it doesn't really matter if you have enough evidence.

Given the fact that both parents didn't wake up, even though, according to them, a man broke into their home, climbed the creaky wooden stairs up to Jacqueline's bedroom, right across the hallway from them, rummage through her stuff, and then took her away without them noticing. Well, that just didn't sit right. Then, of course, that slash screen and broken window that was never actually used to gain entry. That just looked too staged, so the evidence against them was mounting little by little, but police needed more. They had already had it in their heads that David and Cynthia might actually be the ones who did this.

So once they found the girl's body, before they even told either of them about it, police decided to bring them down to the station and into separate rooms where David was once again given a polygraph test. And a tactical move, right in the middle of it, they told him about finding Jacqueline's body to get a true reaction. They did the same to Cynthia and both were utterly devastated. David's polygraph this time came back inconclusive and so another small piece of evidence. Two days after she was discovered in that brush, authorities were going door to door at the apartment complex across the street, seeing if anyone had seen or heard anything from the night in question. Everett Mann, who lived there, said that in the early hours of September 10th, sometime around 2 a.m.,

he did notice a car parked out there, a dark-colored Chevy Malibu. He also saw a man, and when shown a picture of David Sr., he agreed that that was the person he saw that night. And when you know it, the D'Walabies owned a blue Chevy Malibu. Not long after they buried Jacqueline, before they even had a chance to mourn. mourn their loss. David and Cynthia were then arrested and would be brought to trial for the crime. The entire time and to this day, they claim they're innocent. These were, by all accounts, just two normal people raising their kids. Why they would want to harm the daughter really made no sense. What made a lot more sense would be that the bitter criminal biological father had a

hand in all this. If he couldn't have her, he didn't want Cynthia to either. Given the fact that someone could have owed him a favor or he paid them to, James certainly had access to bad people and could have set this up, yet that angle was never followed up on. Instead, you had a trial that had a whole slew of witnesses saying a bunch of different things. For starters, you had Everett Man, the guy who saw the Chevy Malibu outside that night near the garbage dump. Lighting outside at night isn't all that bright.

There was a couple of street lights, but not much, and he even said the car was parked in the darkness. He couldn't even tell the real color of the vehicle, just that it was dark blue, maybe black. But then again, maybe it just looked darker than it was because it was nighttime. He claimed to have seen a late 70s model Malibu. He was adamant about that, and that car had more of a sporty look to it than the Duolabee's 1980s model Malibu, which had more of a boxy form. With all the darkness, really, how could you get a good look at the man who was in the car in the first place?

I mean, he saw this all in passing. It wasn't like he was watching them to see what they were up to. So really, how many details can you get? Two other witnesses from the complex said they believed they saw the Chevy out there as well. But this contradicted two of the DeWolabee's neighbors' testimonies who explained they saw the to Wallaby's car in their driveway, parked at around 2 a.m. The neighbor next door, who they talked to that morning, said she woke up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night on September 10. She got some water, at which point while filling up her glass at the sink, she could see right

there, the car sitting, and she remembers that. Another witness in the neighborhood claimed to have seen David Jr. playing with the exact same type of twine earlier that week that was found wrapped around the girl's neck. But again, really, in what world does anybody notice a kid playing with twine, and then have the ability to claim it was the same kind several weeks later that was discovered on a dead body? Detectives, of course, had hairs from the girl that were found in the family's car, which the prosecution tried to spin as a sign they had done something to her, but she was also their daughter, so why wouldn't her hair be found in their car? And so this really was all they had in terms of evidence.

And that's what they went with at trial. As a result, before it concluded, the judge and both counsels gave up on trying to prosecute Cynthia altogether. She was acquitted of all charges because of a lack of evidence. And David, though, would still have to go through it. After three days of back and forth, finally the jury spoke. On May 3rd of 1990, they said David was guilty on the murder charge and gave him 40 years for first-degree murder, plus an additional five for concealing the body.

This never really sat right, though, with many people and the media. The case against them was very loose, and so over the next year, there were petitions and appeals to get him out of jail. In terms of the judicial system, it actually came pretty fast for David. In October of 1991, his sentence was unanimously overturned due to a lack of concrete evidence and was let out. As the dust settled from all the trauma, the D'Walabies sought anonymity, attempting to reconstruct a life, shattered by tragedy and suspicion.

No matter what the truth is, there's no shaking off the stink of going through a murder trial. No matter what people say to their faces, there were always murmurs around town that possibly they had done this horrible act. As a result, the D'walabies moved to another town 40 miles away, changed their names, just to try and keep some sense. semblance of a normal life going. Over the years, police have revisited the case and tried to retest evidence, but still there are no suspects, and so it remains unsolved to this day. Someone did it, many wonder if perhaps they had it right the first time around, but just

couldn't pin it on the doolobies due to the insufficient evidence. In a case like this, you have to bring motive into play, which was never really the main topic of consideration at trial or even in the investigation. For me, the Dualabies appear to be a regular loving family, so why they would do such a horrific thing just out of the blue doesn't make any sense at all. They were not abusive. Jacqueline was a great kid,

and they gained nothing from it other than a tremendous amount of pain. I keep going back to James, the biological father who hated the fact that he couldn't beat Cynthia in that custody battle and bring her anguish in that way. If that was all he did, well, maybe it wasn't him, but he literally tried to kidnap his kid from their home before going to jail for separate offenses. When you're dealing with such a volatile man who has a criminal record and a motive for revenge, it doesn't seem too far-fetched that he would take out his own daughter, just in order to bring his ex into his world, a world that was full of pain. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you guys enjoyed it.

If you like the podcast we're putting out, there's a lot more content we have for you to listen to. Go check out our other podcast called Scary Mysteries or go watch us on YouTube at Scary Mysteries. Thanks for tuning in today. Remember to come back next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your tell will be next.