The man Brookfield police suspected of the rape and murder of a woman and the attempted murder of her boyfriend in 1991 was convicted – for the second time – of the crime during a trial at the Maybrook courthouse earlier this month.
On June 4, Darryl Sutton – a man who sports a tattoo reading “Sutton Death” on his right arm and one of a tombstone on the left side of his chest – was found guilty of murdering Monica Rinaldi, shooting her in the head and leaving her for dead in the back seat of a car in a Brookfield alley almost two decades ago.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 14 by Judge Thomas M. Tucker.
The guilty verdict finally lays to rest a case that saw Sutton’s original conviction overturned by an appeals court. In 2007, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed part of that decision, and in 2009 the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the 2007 decision, sending the case back to Maybrook for a re-trial.
According to court documents, at around midnight on Feb. 13, 1991 Sutton happened upon Rinaldi and David Janik, who were making out in the back seat of a car in a parking lot near Summit.
Sutton, now 48 years old, got into the driver’s seat of the car and drove off, stopping in another parking lot on Harlem Avenue in Summit where he made Janik get in the trunk. After driving for awhile, according to Janik’s statements to Brookfield police, the car stopped and he heard gunshots from inside the car.
Sutton then opened the trunk and shot Janik in the head. Janik, however, was able to escape the trunk through the back seat, where Rinaldi was unclothed and dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
Brookfield police shortly after midnight responded to the 4000 block of Forest Avenue, where Janik was banging on doors crying for help. Officer Timothy Moroney, now a 30-year veteran of the force was the first on the scene.
“It was nothing you forget,” Moroney told the Landmark last week.
He found Janik bleeding from the head and pointing to a car in the alley, where his girlfriend lay dead. Moroney accompanied Janik in the ambulance to the hospital; during the ride, Moroney recorded Janik’s description of what had happened.
But police didn’t find Sutton that night and after Janik woke up in the hospital a few days later, he had amnesia. From 1991 to 1993, Janik underwent hypnosis to try to recall the details from the night of Rinaldi’s rape and murder. It came back “in bits and pieces,” according to court documents.
In March 1996, Sutton was convicted of rape, armed robbery and home invasion and received an 18-year sentence in state prison. A year later, with new DNA technology available to them, state police were able to match DNA taken from the scene of Rinaldi’s murder with Sutton. In 1998, Janik picked Sutton’s picture out of a photo lineup, and the stage was set for Sutton’s first trial for Rinaldi’s murder.
A jury found Sutton guilty of seven counts of murder and he was sentenced to four 100-year sentences and three life sentences. But Sutton’s lawyer appealed the verdict, stating that Janik’s hypnosis-aided statements and his statements to Moroney in the ambulance were inadmissible.
An appeals court sided with Sutton and threw out the convictions. The Cook County State’s Attorney filed a counter appeal, arguing that the statements were admissible. The appellate court ruled that while the statements made with the aid of hypnosis were not admissible, Janik’s statement’s to Moroney immediately after the incident were. On April 16, 2009, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed and the case was remanded back to Maybrook for a second trial.
Both Moroney and retired Brookfield Deputy Chief Michael Manescalchi were called to testify at Sutton’s re-trial, which began June 1. Three days later, Sutton was again found guilty of Rinaldi’s murder.