Ultimate Punishment
A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty
Chapter One
Law and Murder: Michelle Thompson and Jeanine Nicarico
On February 3, 1984, a young woman named Michelle Thompson and a male
friend, Rene Valentine, were forced at gunpoint from the car they'd just
entered in a parking lot outside D. Laney's, a nightclub in Gurnee,
Illinois, north of Chicago. The gunman walked Valentine a short distance,
then shot him in the chest at point-blank range. When the police arrived,
Michelle Thompson was gone.
I was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago at the time, and my
oldest friend in the federal prosecutor's office, Jeremy Margolis, helped
direct the FBI's search for Thompson. Initially, the case appeared to be
an interstate kidnapping, which is a federal matter. Within a few days,
the crime proved to be one within the province of state authorities:
murder. Beaten, raped, and strangled, Thompson's body was discovered in
Wisconsin. Shortly thereafter, Hector Reuben Sanchez, an illiterate but
ambitious factory worker and burglar, was arrested, along with an
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