The murder of 24-year-old Gold Coast resident Dana Feitler became a symbol of the violence plaguing Chicago in 1989.
It happened the day before Feitler was scheduled to start graduate school at the University of Chicago to earn the MBA she hoped would lead to a career as a hospital administrator.
Under intense pressure to solve the case, Chicago police charged Lee Harris, a convicted burglar-turned-police informant who later was wrongfully convicted of Feitler’s murder. Harris spent more than 33 years in prison before being exonerated eight months before his death.
On Monday, the City Council’s Finance Committee agreed to pay $4 million to compensate Harris’ son, Jermaine Harris, for the police and prosecutorial misconduct that led to in his father being framed for a murder he did not commit.
“Gosh, I’m sorry that somebody was punished for a crime he didn’t do. How can I feel good about that?” said Robert Feitler, the victim’s father. “My daughter was murdered. That’s something you don’t get over. But to punish the wrong person is terrible. And frankly, when he was put in jail, it doesn’t bring our daughter back.”
During Monday’s Finance Committee meeting, Deputy Corporation Counsel Jessica Felker described the heinous and still unsolved 1989 crime that generated national headlines.
Feitler was abducted as she returned to her Gold Coast apartment building. She was taken at gunpoint to a nearby ATM and forced to withdraw $400 before being shot in the back of her head and left for dead in an alley. She remained in a coma for three weeks before she died.
Harris was known to two of the officers assigned to investigate Feitler’s murder, having served as an informant for those officers on unrelated crimes.
He initially spoke to officers about a week after the murder. After he learned there was a large reward in connection with the case, Harris told police he had information about the Feitler murder, but feared for his safety if he gave that information to police.
Over the next several weeks, Harris gave police various “versions of the shooting” that he subsequently denied were truthful. Harris initially told police he saw two men in the alley near the ATM at the time of the shooting and identified those two men. He was taken for a polygraph test on that version of events and failed.
Over the next few weeks, Harris was questioned by multiple detectives and continued to implicate others. He was then driven to the alley where Feitler was murdered. Only then did Harris admit to having been in that same alley when Feitler was shot. He claimed he saw the two men he accused earlier and a third man rob and shoot Feitler.
A second polygraph was administered. Harris passed the second test. Police and prosecutors then provided him with housing, a “small amount of money” and groceries.
“Harris contends that this food, money and housing was used to induce him to give more false statements,” Felker said.
“About four months after the murder, Harris told detectives that he was the third man involved in the robbery-turned-murder.” He told police an accomplice wanted to kill her he and a third man “wanted to let her go.”
An eyewitness subsequently identified Harris in a lineup and was “pretty sure” he was one of the perpetrators.
On March 6, 1992, a jury convicted Harris even though no physical evidence linked him to the crime.
At trial, prosecutors contended Harris confessed to another inmate while in Cook County Jail that he shot Feitler in the head when she screamed after refusing to have sex with him.
When Judge John W. Crilly announced the 90-year sentence, Feitler’s family rejoiced while Harris’ wife tearfully proclaimed her husband’s innocence.
“I know he didn’t do it. They got the wrong man,” Veronica Harris said that day.
In a statement read in court by his attorney, Harris said he was sorry for the Feitler family’s “tragic loss” but insisted he “had no part in it.”
In 2015, an investigation by The Guardian accused Richard Zuley, the lead detective in the case of using “unorthodox,” often violent interrogations to coerce false confessions. The publication reported that Zuley took part in interrogations involving military torture at Guantanamo Bay.
Felker portrayed the $4 million as a “cost-effective resolution” of the case.
“We avoid the cost of a defense, which, to get to trial, would likely be close to $3 million. … There is evidence that points to another suspect. There is a jailhouse snitch who has recanted,” Felker said.
Noting Harris spent 33½ years in prison, Felker said the $4 million settlement amounts to “just under $120,000 per year in custody.”