On the afternoon of 17 August 1992, an 11-year-old girl called Holly Staker walked from her home to a neighbour’s apartment in Waukegan, a small town in Illinois. She had been asked to babysit two children, a girl aged two and a boy of five. By 8pm Holly was dead. An unidentified intruder had broken into the apartment, violently raped her, and stabbed her 27 times. The local police force pursued 600 leads and interviewed 200 people, but within a few weeks the trail had run cold.
Then, through the testimony of a jailhouse informant, police happened upon a new suspect: Juan Rivera, a 19-year-old man who lived a few miles south of the murder scene. Over four days, Rivera, who had a history of psychological problems, was subjected to a gruelling examination by the Lake County Task Force. At one point it seemed to get too much for Rivera. Officers saw him pulling out a clump of hair and banging his head on the wall.
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