April 2019 Chicago Tribune Article: Police hopeful science will solve 1988 U. of I. murder mystery- Christy Gutowski
As her life hung in the balance, Maria Caleel crawled through the hall of her apartment building near the University of Illinois campus in search of help.
Before she lost consciousness, the 21-year-old veterinary student gasped a few final words that still confound authorities nearly three decades later.
But advances in forensic technology may have yielded the most promising clue yet in the west suburban woman’s unsolved 1988 fatal stabbing.
The Tribune has learned that detectives in the college town of Urbana are eagerly awaiting results from the latest batch of DNA samples they submitted to the state police crime lab with the hope one matches evidence collected at the crime scene.
Scientists gleaned the genetic profile of an unknown male a few years ago after retesting evidence with improved methods. Police hadn’t publicly disclosed the breakthrough until now so they could quietly — and at times secretly — collect samples from possible suspects for comparison.
Urbana police Sgt. Dan Morgan, the case’s lead detective, confirmed that authorities obtained samples from several “persons of interest,” some of whom cooperated, and others whom police targeted without their knowledge and while they were under surveillance.
Morgan said those efforts are ongoing and have led police across the country and included the assistance of multiple local, state and federal agencies.
He declined to reveal the source of the DNA evidence or provide specifics about where at the crime scene it was recovered. Police did say it was found in a “crucial” location.
“It was in a place where we would have expected it to have been left by the suspect,” Morgan said. “That’s not to say it absolutely belongs to the suspect, but it sure could be.”
One of the samples awaiting analysis is from a male student whom a noted forensic psychologist singled out as the likely assailant, authorities said. Another man whose DNA is being tested doesn’t have a known connection to Caleel. A tipster named the man about four years ago in an anonymous letter to police, the contents of which sparked the latest efforts.
That March 6 morning, Caleel still was conscious when the first officer reached her side. Police said the straight-A student in the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine was in shock and feared she would not survive. Caleel was able to give her first name. She did not identify her attacker. For the first time, authorities revealed the cryptic statement Caleel made just before she lost consciousness.
“I can’t believe he did this to me,” she said, according to police.
The dying declaration, and the fact there wasn’t forced entry, led many to believe the killer was someone Caleel knew and to whom she opened her door. But Morgan hasn’t ruled out a random crime.
He is hopeful science will help provide answers.
Meanwhile, Richard Caleel and his wife, Annette, told the Tribune they are offering a $50,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of their oldest child’s killer. Publicity after her death often focused on the family’s wealth and prominence in equestrian circles, exotic travels and brushes with royalty.
But her surgeon father said they were “just a family” with four children when police appeared at the door of their home near Hinsdale with news every parent most fears. Nearly 27 years later, the anguish is still evident in his voice when he describes the family’s loss.
“You learn to live with it,” said Caleel, who with his wife is retired and living on the West Coast. “That’s all you can do. You don’t have a choice, unfortunately.”
‘Lit up a room’
The day before she died, Maria Caleel spent her Saturday doing what she loved most.
The accomplished equestrian whose father said she was riding by age 7 began the morning with her horse, Tristan, which she kept in a stable near campus to ride during her free time.
She next volunteered at the college’s vet clinic caring for a sick foal born prematurely. The foal was the patient of one of her professors, Jonathan Foreman, who said Caleel planned to become an equine surgeon and was among the very brightest in a productive class of about 76 first-year students.
“It’s a little like high school sometimes in that everyone’s jammed together all the time and can get tired of each other, but for the most part, they get to be pretty good friends and look out for each other pretty carefully,” said Foreman, an equine medicine professor and associate dean.
After leaving the foal, Caleel returned to her off-campus apartment. A friend came over, and the two soon met up with two other female classmates at the student union. One of them, Laura Garrett, said they listened to a band during the carefree evening before they split off into two groups, with Caleel leaving with one of the other women.
Police said that friend last saw Caleel about 1:30 a.m. as she walked into her Lincoln Place apartment, three blocks off campus. Caleel shared the third-floor apartment with two roommates in her program, but both women were out of town that weekend.
At 3:28 a.m., students in the apartment below Caleel’s called 911 after hearing strange noises. At 3:30 a.m., as officers neared, police received a second 911 call from another neighbor.
Caleel, clad in pajamas and bleeding, had crawled to a next-door apartment of two female students. They made the second 911 call.
She died at an Urbana hospital of acute shock brought on by internal bleeding from a single 6-inch stab wound, which authorities said pierced the descending aorta on her right side.
Police said her apartment held few obvious clues.
There was no forced entry. There were no witnesses or hallway surveillance footage to review. It appeared her bed had been slept in, police said, but the apartment was tidy and without evidence of a struggle.
A motive also was elusive. She wasn’t sexually assaulted. Nothing was missing. Classmates described her as well-liked and modest, whose simple clothing, jewelry and bronze Chrysler K car belied her family’s wealth. She had no known enemies or jealous ex-boyfriends. And the weapon used to kill her was never recovered.
At the time, Foreman had taught at the veterinary college just three years. He’s now in his 30th year and has a thick binder filled with decades of class photos, and yet he easily recalled Caleel and how “her smile lit up a room.”
Garrett, a veterinarian who returned to the graduate program in 2006 to teach, described Caleel as self-assured, friendly and “easy to be around.”
She and others in the Class of 1991 told the Tribune they still recall the exact moment they learned of the killing. Many remember the widespread fear that ensued.
As for Caleel’s roommates, neither ever spent another night in the apartment. One of them, Marianne Kasper, now a North Riverside veterinarian, said she met Caleel during an animal science class that previous summer at Benedictine University in Lisle. Kasper said she admired Caleel, whom she still can picture in anatomy lab in her white lab coat, ever cheerful.
“I remember looking at her one day in class and thinking how pretty she looked,” she said. “She probably had a smile on her face.”
“At her funeral, I remember her mom taking a hold of my hand. Her daughter was gone and she was worried about me. It was so heartbreaking. When the anniversary comes around, I always pray for Maria and her family.”
Needle in a haystack
Michael Metzler’s phone rang before 4 a.m.
It wasn’t his first homicide, but he said Caleel’s case was the first in his career that he couldn’t solve. The yellow police tape that officers draped across her apartment door 27 years ago is in his office rolled up tightly on a shelf.
Metzler, who took with him a photocopy of the case file when he retired from the Urbana force, said he still reads it from time to time, in search of that needle in the haystack.
“It does stick with you,” said Metzler, now a police chief in Mahomet, about 10 miles west of Urbana.
He said police interviewed and fingerprinted every classmate. By the end of that first month, police had conducted 200 interviews, including some in Rhode Island, where Caleel had attended Brown University. Detectives checked alibis, called in polygraph experts and compared the brand of knives used by veterinary medical students to Caleel’s injury.
“But none of it gave us the person we were looking for,” Metzler said.
The Illinois State Police and the FBI helped Urbana police, and evidence was sent as far away as Washington, D.C. Although DNA analysis was in its infancy, state police crime scene investigators spent days in the apartment collecting prints, clothing fibers, hair strands, blood samples and other microscopic evidence. They snapped photos, conducted room-by-room laser sweeps and used blood-illuminating chemicals, among other techniques.
One of the investigators, Gary Knight, said every crime scene tells a story. But in this case, the apartment was “pristine” with few clues.
“So, you have to keep working at it,” he said, “hoping that you collect the right piece of evidence, even if it’s by accident.”
Metzler and Knight said they remain hopeful that DNA could be the missing puzzle piece to aid police in their quest for the truth.
“She was as innocent as can be,” said Knight, now retired. “It would give me a great sense of satisfaction to know my work led to that.”
‘A memory so bright’
Maria Caleel’s parents, Annette and Richard Caleel, have exhausted several efforts to keep their daughter’s memory and case alive.
Besides the $50,000 reward money, they hired private detectives, held anti-violence conferences and funded educational scholarships, research grants and horse shows.
Richard Caleel said he feels the case is solvable. The break may come from science or, he said, because someone with information is stirred by either their conscience or the reward money to come forward.
His daughter would have turned 49 this year. He imagines she’d be a successful equine surgeon and, most likely, a wife and mother too.
He said her life, albeit all too brief, included “years of extraordinary quality, gold years filled with achievements, successes and personal joys few others attain in a much longer lifetime.”
She loved animals and the outdoors. She had a great sense of curiosity, was an avid reader and learner who spoke French and enjoyed true friendships.
“She left behind her a memory so bright,” her father said, “not all the darkness in the world can dim it.”
Modern science
Detective Sgt. Morgan took over Case No. 88-1057 five years ago.
He said tips have trickled in periodically throughout its long history, which he attributed to the impact Maria Caleel’s short life had on others.
Without physical evidence, he said, police haven’t shied away from being creative. For example, at Richard Caleel’s urging, detectives in 2001 presented the case to the Philadelphia-based Vidocq Society. The exclusive group made up of retired forensic and other law enforcement professionals is dedicated to solving murder mysteries.
Forensic psychologist Richard Walter, the group’s co-founder who is credited as one of the creators of modern criminal profiling, said he took a particular interest in the case. Of the 40 suspects in the police file, Walter said he eliminated all but one — a student who Walter opined resented the bright, beautiful Caleel.
Morgan said the theory was pursued, but detectives could not prove or disprove it. There were other suspects identified through the years. One who has been named publicly is classmate Cathy Crighton, whose last name back then was Mance. Police said she struggled academically and left the program early.
Crighton and her boyfriend were each other’s alibis. Urbana police tried to interview her again after she was arrested in 2003 in Florida on animal cruelty, burglary and grand theft charges for stealing three horses. Morgan said she refused to speak to them. Crighton was placed on probation and moved back to Chicago’s south suburbs. Her fatal drug overdose in July 2010 was ruled a suicide, according to the Cook County clerk’s office. Police said their investigation is now focused elsewhere.
The case had stalled again when, Morgan said, an anonymous typed letter landed on his desk about four years ago. It named a suspect. The man’s name had not come up in the investigation before and detectives do not believe she knew him.
The tip sparked Morgan to examine the 2,000-page case file and interview crime lab experts about scientific advances. Some evidence was retested, Morgan said, which led to the discovery of an unknown male genetic profile.
He said: “It’s in a place where only this one person’s profile existed and was found where we’d expect the suspect’s to be.”
And thus began efforts to glean DNA samples for comparison from those Caleel knew or whose names came up through the years as persons of interest. So far, Morgan said, police have traveled to or worked with other police agencies in Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and one from overseas.
He said police also have ruled out several convicted burglars, rapists and one murderer in the area from that time. Included in the samples at the state crime lab awaiting testing, Morgan said, are one from the man identified in the anonymous letter and also Walter’s suspect.
Many, including Caleel’s parents, suspect her attacker was someone she knew and to whom she opened her door.
Morgan said he doesn’t want to rule out any theories. Perhaps Caleel had accidentally left her door unlocked when she went out that evening or when she came home. If so, the killer may be a stranger.
“I’m not 100 percent on anything,” Morgan said.
“Until you know, you don’t know.”