Mario Casciaro

Brian Carrick’s body has never been found.[2] Casciaro was first arrested in June 2007 and charged in McHenry County with nine counts of perjury related to the disappearance of Carrick.[2] He was acquitted by way of a directed verdict during a bench trial in September 2009.[2] He was subsequently arrested in February 2010 and charged with 6 counts of Felony Murder.[2] The state nolle prossed four of the counts and proceeded to trial on the two remaining counts of Felony Murder by Intimidation and Unlawful Restraint.[2] The January 2012 trial concluded in a hung jury.[3] He was tried a third time in 2013 on the remaining count of Felony Murder by Intimidation.[2] In his third trial, he was convicted by a jury after a two-day jury deliberation and sentenced to 26 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.[4] Casciaro is the only person to have ever been charged with Felony Murder Using Intimidation in the history of the United States.[5] Casciaro was also one of 523 people to have ever been brought to trial in a no-body murder case in the history of the United States.[6]

In September 2015, the Second District Appellate Court of Illinois unanimously overturned Casciaro’s conviction for Murder on direct appeal.[5] He was represented by Kathleen Zellner, a prominent attorney who is known for her representation of Steven Avery on Making a Murderer Season 2.[7] The court cited insufficiency of evidence and determined that no reasonable juror could have convicted on the evidence presented by the state.[5]  The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the Appellate Court in March 2016.[8]

In March 2017, Casciaro filed a Civil Rights case against McHenry County State’s Attorney Office, Johnsburg Police Department, Village of Johnsburg, McHenry Police Department, and City of McHenry in the Northern District of Illinois, Western Division.[9][10] Casciaro settled with the McHenry County State’s Attorney’s Office and has a pending suit against the remaining defendants.[11]

Mario Casciaro is a 2005 graduate of Illinois State University with a bachelor degree in finance and a minor in political science. In 2005, he opened a supermarket in Fox Lake, Illinois with his family. In 2016, less than a year after his release from Menard Correctional Center, Casciaro entered law school at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He graduated law school in January 2019 with a JD and a Certificate of Advocacy from Loyola University Chicago. During law school, he interned at the Federal Defender’s Program for the Northern District of Illinois; he also clerked for Thomas A. Durkin, a nationally recognized defense attorney specializing in federal terrorism cases.  On November 7, 2019, Casciaro was sworn in to the Illinois State Bar.[12]