Ex-Con Found Guilty of 1997 Attack on Girl X in Chicago Housing Project
By Mike Robinson
Originally published by The Associated Press, April 5, 2001
CHICAGO — An ex-convict who lured a 9-year-old girl into an apartment, poured roach killer down her throat and beat her in an attack that left her blind, mute and crippled now faces up to life in prison.
The girl, known as Girl X in the media, had been found unconscious with gang symbols scrawled on her body in a filthy stairwell of the city's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project. Now 13 and in a wheelchair, she testified against her attacker in court, moving her head and making eye movements to communicate.
"The heart of this case was the heart of the victim who was willing after a devastating attack to come forward and face the person who did it to her," Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine said Wednesday after a jury found Patrick Sykes, 29, guilty of predatory criminal sexual assault, kidnapping and attempted murder.
Devine said Sykes faces a maximum sentence of 120 years for the 1997 attack. A sentencing date was not immediately set.
"This is one of the most vicious things I've ever encountered in all my years of being involved in the criminal justice system," Devine said.
Defense attorney Robert Byman, who represented Sykes, said the verdict would be appealed.
"We understand that the jury was faced with a very sympathetic set of facts, a very sympathetic victim in this case and unfortunately we think sympathy was not set aside," Byman said. "That's a difficult thing to overcome."
In court, Girl X told how she had often seen the man sitting on a crate and drawing outside Apartment 405 in her building, though she didn't know his name. On Jan. 9, 1997, she said, he offered her a banana to lure her inside the apartment, then locked the door, pulled a knife and molested her. Roach killer was poured down her throat and she was left for dead in a stairwell of the building known as a base for drug dealers.
Sykes testified he was living in the apartment with a girlfriend at the time but denied attacking the girl. He said he had never seen Girl X until she testified against him.
Sykes, who had a previous conviction for armed robbery and attempted sexual assault, was picked up by police three months after the attack. He was questioned, then charged after signing what interrogators said was a confession.
He later denied having confessed and said he didn't know what he was signing because he was coming out of an epileptic seizure when the paper written by an assistant state's attorney was placed in front of him.
Juror Kathy Bajer, a registered nurse, didn't believe him.
"It's virtually impossible that he could be incoherent—related to one seizure—through all that time," she told WGN-TV after the verdict.
She said she and other jurors, who declined to comment, had been frustrated early in the trial by the lack of physical evidence. But she said the closing arguments and a re-examination of evidence in the jury room helped her make up her mind.
She also said some jurors were worried at first that Girl X's testimony might have been coached.
"By going through all the doctors' testimony, though, we were able to assure everybody that it was her own memory," Bajer said.
Prosecutor Anita Alvarez said she spoke to the girl after the verdict and she was happy and relieved. "She smiled the biggest smile that you can imagine," she said.
"She came back and refused to die," said Detective Fred Wheat, who had questioned Sykes. "Isn't it great that she is the one who put away the one who hurt her. This is her day."
