A friend of James Degorski’s testified yesterday that he admitted to killing some of the victims in the 1993 Palatine Browns Chicken slayings.
Eileen Bakalla said Degorski confessed his involvement in the heinous crime while the two smoked marijuana together, according to a trial report in the Sun-Times.
According to her testimony, Degorski said that Juan Luna, who was convicted for the murders, was the instigator and main perpetrator of the crime. But that Degorski did pull the trigger on at least two victims.
Bakalla’s testimony was instrumental in convicting Luna in 2007.
"Juan went ballistic and started killing people,” Bakalla told jurors. He told me that Juan had a knife, and that he used that knife to slit the lady owner's throat ear to ear," she said.
"He said they herded the rest of the people to the cooler, where Juan shot four of them. He said that Juan then handed the gun to him and told him to shoot the other people in the freezer. He said he went to the freezer and shot the other two people."
Bakalla said Degorski came clean just hours after the crime. After a pot-smoking session at her house in Elgin, she gave the pair Luna and Degorski rides home. After she dropped Luna off, Degorski asked her to drive by the Brown’s Chicken and confessed when he saw numerous cop cars at the restaurant, the Sun-Times reports.
"He started telling me the story of what actually happened that night," she said.
