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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Serial Killer Fears Inmates Will Murder Him

CHICAGO (CN) - An Illinois serial killer has brought a lawsuit that says plans to put him in the general prison population will get him assaulted and possibly killed.

The rapist and serial killer Brian Dugan was sentenced to death for the 1983 murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicario.

Dugan abducted the girl from her home in Naperville, Ill., where she was sick with the flu. Her body was found 6 miles away, raped and beaten to death.

When Illinois abolished capital punishment, Dugan's sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Dugan was also convicted of murdering 27-year-old Donna Schnorr after he ran her car off the road. He raped and beat her, then drowned her in a quarry.

He also murdered 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman after abducting her while she was riding her bike with a friend. He confessed to these murders in a plea to avoid the death penalty.

Dugan is currently held in a protective custody unit at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Ill.

A handwritten complaint Dugan filed pro se in Will County Circuit Court says Stateville officials plan to transfer Dugan from protective custody to the general population.

He claims that a general-population assignment will place him at excessive risk of injury or death, because "plaintiff will likely be assaulted because of his criminal convictions" by other inmates.

Dugan seeks a restraining order requiring prison officials to house him in protective custody for the entirety of his life sentence.

"As a direct and proximate result of the defendants' actions, plaintiff has suffered and will continue to suffer the exposure to past, present and future substantial risks of physical assault and murder, as well as fear, anxiety, humiliation and mental anguish associated therewith," Dugan claims.

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