Originally published in The Rock River Times.

Sue Fiduccia had seen a lot of deaths in her forty-three years with the Winnebago County Coroner’s Office. She had processed a lot of bodies to determined how they died while serving as coroner for over twenty-one years. But according to an article written in the Rockford Register Star on April 1, 2018, there was one case in Fiduccia’s illustrious career that affected her the most.

It was the murder of twenty-two-month-old Carrie Lynn Gaines. This murder touched a lot of people in the Rockford region and beyond for years. Fiduccia and the others involved in this case were affected by the fact that the people who should have been protecting the little girl were the ones who caused her death. Those same people covered up their crime by burying the evidence for over five years. Though many in Carrie Lynn’s family had suspicions that something was wrong, no one acted on those feelings.

The story began in 1988 when Carrie Lynn was born to Sherri and John Gaines. The young couple struggled with raising Carrie and her older sister while also dealing with money problems and addictions.
The couple broke up and Sherri started dating a man fourteen years her senior named Richard (Rick) Howard. Sherri became pregnant and the couple moved into a house in the 3100 block of Searles Avenue. The neighbors quickly realized that all was not well between the young couple.

Apparently, Howard had a terrible temper. One of Sherri’s friends would describe him as “evil and sadistic” especially in his treatment of Sherri and the two little girls. People who lived on Searles suspected the couple of selling drugs because of all the comings and goings at the house. In fact, one neighbor allegedly reported this activity to the police. The neighbors also saw Howard hitting Sherri but didn’t feel they should get involved in that situation. It was a decision that most of them would come to regret.

It was while the couple lived in the house on Searles Avenue that twenty-two-month-old Carrie Lynn disappeared. The couple moved out and no one saw the little girl again. When relatives asked Sherri about Carrie Lynn, she told them that the little girl was living with some other relatives. Sometime in 1990, Sherri reunited with a girlfriend from high school. Sherri told her friend that the couple still received welfare payments for Carrie Lynnl even though the girl lived with relatives in Wisconsin. The friend later stated that she contacted DCFS and made a report about her suspicions that something had happened to Carrie Lynn. DCFS said they had no report in their system about Carrie Lynn.

Howard and Sherri lived with the lie until 1995. The police received an anonymous tip in October that a body had been buried in the backyard of a house on Arthur Avenue. The police and Fiduccia went to the house and began to dig. Fiduccia stated later that it was a slow process and took over five hours. They finally unearthed a cardboard box. Inside the box they recovered a small bundle wrapped in a blanket. Inside the blanket they found the skeletal remains of a small child. It was later discovered that Sherri had made the blanket while she was pregnant with Carrie Lynn.

Everyone involved with the recovery of Carrie’s body and finding her killer was touched by the sight of the little skeleton. They were determined to bring her killer to justice.
Richard Howard was arrested for the killing of Carrie Lynn. He claimed that Carrie drowned in the bathtub. The couple were afraid that the other little girl would be taken away if Carrie’s death was discovered. But the autopsy conducted by Fiduccia proved that is not what happened to the little girl.

Carrie Lynn’s body told the horrible truth of what had been done back in 1990. Howard had beaten and kicked the child. Carrie Lynn was badly injured and took another day to die while Howard and her mother did nothing to get her the medical care she needed. Sherri, who was pregnant with her third child at the time, stated she was frightened of what Howard would do to her and her other daughter. The couple buried Carrie in the back yard of a friend’s house on Arthur Avenue. Sherri kept the awful secret of Carrie’s death and burial for those five years because of her fear of Howard.

The State considered bringing charges against Sherri for the concealment of a homicidal death. But there was a five-year statute of limitations for that charge in 1995. This has now been changed because of Carrie Lynn’s case.

Howard was convicted of first-degree murder in 1997 but in 1999 the conviction was overturned. Howard was scheduled to face trial again but in July of 2000 he instead pled guilty to first degree murder and was sentenced to forty-five years. Howard served eighteen years of that sentence at Dixon Correctional Center before being released in 2018. The papers reported that Howard had been released and his whereabouts were unknown. Another secret in a case so full of them.

The people who worked on this case wanted to make sure Carrie Lynn was never forgotten again. They also wanted to make sure that they helped other children who might be suffering from abuse. The decision to rename the Children’s Advocacy Center after Carrie Lynn in 1997 was a way to keep her story alive while assisting other children.

The Carrie Lynn Center differed from the centers for abused children that had existed before 1995. The center uses a team approach to help make the process less traumatizing for a child who has been the victim of abuse. Kathy Pomahac has been the Executive Director since the center opened. “It’s a team approach that gathers all the law enforcement investigators together and attempts to prevent the system itself from traumatizing a child victim”, Pomahac stated in an interview.

Carrie Lynn’s body was released in October 1996 after Sherri petitioned the court for the right to bury her daughter. The folks of Rockford and Loves Park were so touched by this crime that a collection was gathered to help fund the burial of Carrie Lynn. But the money was used for other things after the Delahanty Funeral Home and the Sunset Memorial Gardens donated all the services for Carrie Lynn’s funeral.
Sue Fiduccia was vital in exposing the horrible secret of what happened to Carrie Lynn. She and the others who exhumed Carrie Lynn’s body, never forgot this crime or the little girl buried so long ago. In another article written several years later, Fiduccia shared her own secret. She continued to visit the little girl’s grave even years after the crime was solved.

 

Photo Source:
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