NY woman sues Buffalo police

After real killer went on to kill again

Lynn M. DeJac Peters filed a $30 million lawsuit Wednesday against Buffalo police and former Erie County prosecutors for the 14 years she spent in prison after her wrongful conviction for killing her teenage daughter.

The federal court lawsuit follows the claim that DeJac Peters filed more than two years ago against the state for slightly less than $14.5 million. That action in the Court of Claims is still pending.

The lawsuit names Erie County, former District Attorney Frank J. Clark and former Deputy District Attorney Joseph J. Marusak, the City of Buffalo and the Buffalo Police Department as defendants.

Frank A. Sedita III, the current district attorney, is not named in the lawsuit because "he helped us to exonerate Lynn," said Steven M. Cohen, an attorney for DeJac Peters.

The attorney alleged that police and prosecutors knew "from Day One" that DeJac Peters was not the real killer of her 13-year-old daughter, Crystallynn Girard. "All kinds of evidence" pointed to Dennis P. Donohue, who was DeJac Peters' boyfriend at the time, as the real killer, Cohen said.

"The evidence was right in front of everybody's nose that Dennis Donohue was guilty of this crime," Cohen told The Buffalo News at federal court. "They ignored all the evidence against him, went after Lynn and gave him immunity. ... Why they did that, I do not know."

"I just hope this lawsuit will prevent this kind of injustice from happening to anyone else," said DeJac Peters, 47. "There aren't words in the English language dictionary to describe everything I have been through."

DeJac Peters was convicted in April 1994 of murdering her daughter. Buffalo police and prosecutors initially believed that Crystallynn, who died Feb. 13 or 14, 1993, had been strangled in her bed in her Babcock Street home in South Buffalo.

DeJac Peters was imprisoned until November 2007, when her murder conviction was overturned. The district attorney's office re-examined the case, and a forensic pathologist said Crystallynn actually died of a cocaine overdose and a head injury.

While thankful to be released from prison, DeJac Peters and her lawyers strongly disagreed with the pathologist's findings on the cause of death, as did Dennis A. Delano, a Buffalo Police Cold Case Squad detective who has since retired. DeJac Peters claims Donohue killed her daughter. Donohue, now 57, never has been charged with Crystallynn's death. He was granted immunity from prosecution when he testified about the death before a grand jury.

But he later was convicted of the 1993 strangulation of Joan Giambra of South Buffalo. Donohue is serving a prison term of 25 years to life for that slaying.

Efforts made Wednesday to reach Clark, who retired at the end of 2008, and Marusak, now in private practice in Buffalo, were unsuccessful. Dennis J. Richards, chief of detectives for the Buffalo Police, said commenting would be premature because he had just learned of the lawsuit.

Clark and Marusak previously have defended their office's handling of Crystallynn's death. After the murder conviction against DeJac Peters was lifted, Clark said he still had questions about DeJac's "moral guilt" for the death of her daughter.

In a February 2008 interview, DeJac Peters said: "I've already said that I feel 100 percent guilty for leaving [Crystallynn] alone. ... I've already paid in my own mind for doing that."

According to court papers, police and prosecutors knew of "considerable evidence" pointing to Donohue as Crystallynn's killer.

DeJac Peters called 911 late on Feb. 13, 1993, asking police to eject Donohue from her home, the court papers state. The papers state that, early the next morning, DeJac Peters called a neighbor to ask her to check on Crystallynn because she feared Donohue was going to hurt her.

Blood was found on the shirt Donohue was wearing that night and on a knife in his apartment, Cohen said in court papers. He said police also knew that Donohue had been a suspect in an unsolved 1977 murder. Despite those circumstances, Donohue was permitted to testify as a witness before a grand jury with immunity from prosecution in Crystallynn's death, the lawyer said.

Cohen added that, at the time, Donohue was working as a bartender at an establishment that was co-owned by a Buffalo police officer.

When a jury convicted DeJac Peters of murder in 1994, Marusak called the evidence against DeJac Peters "overwhelming." He told a judge he knew of "absolutely no evidence" linking Donohue to the killing.

According to Cohen, the conviction was overturned years later because of the persistent efforts of Delano -- recently elected a Cheektowaga town justice -- and defense attorney Andrew C. LoTempio.

DeJac Peters said she remains convinced that her daughter was murdered and that the pathologist's 2008 finding of a cocaine overdose is incorrect. She is now married to Chuck Peters, a home repair contractor.

On Wednesday, DeJac Peters said life has been difficult for her and her family since her release from prison during Thanksgiving week nearly three years ago. She said she suffers from panic attacks and has had a hard time reconnecting with her twin sons, who are now 16 but were toddlers when she went to prison. "It's been very rough," she said. "I was without them for 14 years, and they were without me."

Original report here




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