Seven-year-old Jaclyn Dowaliby was abducted from her Midlothian, Illinois, home and found murdered on September 14, 1988, after disappearing from her bedroom four nights earlier. Investigators initially noted a smashed basement window and a missing blanket, suggesting forced entry and abduction, but later forensic observations indicated the window might have been staged because the dust on the windowsill showed no recent disturbance. Jaclyn’s body was discovered wrapped in her blanket in wasteland near an apartment complex in Blue Island, about six miles from her home; an autopsy found she had been strangled with a piece of twine and could not rule out sexual assault due to advanced decomposition.

Her parents, David and Cynthia Dowaliby, were under suspicion and David was convicted in 1990, but that conviction was overturned by the Illinois Appellate Court in 1991 as insufficient and largely circumstantial. The identity of Jaclyn’s killer remains unknown.

If anyone knew Jaclyn, her family, or saw anything in Midlothian or Blue Island around that September, please come forward with information.