7-year-old Streator boy's murder still unsolved 20 years later
STREATOR, Ill. (CBS) – Her 7-year-old son was killed 20 years ago while waiting for a church van in the small town of Streator, about two hours southwest of Chicago.
His killer has never been found.
CBS 2's Chris Tye spoke to the mother and the FBI about the new theories, old questions, and the possibility that enough time has passed for a killer to come clean in the murder of Dalton Mesarchik.
"At this point 20 years later, I really don't think somebody's going to call up and say, 'Hey, guess what I did 20 years ago,'" said Michelle Mesarchik, Dalton's mother, said. "I don't see that happening."
She added, "There are no perfect crimes."
"The longer it goes on, the harder it is to solve," said Carrie Landau, who investigates missing and murdered children for the FBI. "It's somebody one or two removed from the family, maybe even closer than one or two removed."
"When you break it down, it all points at one person," said Danielle Mesarchik, Dalton's sister.
"Don't get comfortable," Michelle added.
Danielle recalled the last conversation she had with her brother.
"He's like, 'What about Church sissy?'" she said. "'I want to go to church tonight.' I'm like, 'You're going. We're going.'"
Danielle was going to weeknight church in Streator with friends. He was waiting on a church van to take him, but the van never showed up.
"Nobody knew that the van wasn't coming, so everybody stayed waiting that night," Danielle said. "So it wasn't our family. It was 10-plus families waiting."
Those other families saw their kids come home. Dalton, who was waiting on the front porch for about an hour, never did.
During that hour, someone coaxed him off the porch and away from his house without a scream or a struggle.
"Dalton didn't trust easily, and he was afraid of the dark," Danielle said. "So if he left with anybody in the dark , it had to have been somebody that he knew and trusted and it had to have been somebody that he knew well."
Tye: "Do you think the person that took him knew the van wasn't coming?"
Danielle: "Yes. Yes I do.
"The person took that opportunity, knowing that Dalton was waiting without me, and did what they did.
Tye: "In a very short amount of time, they calculated the situation."
Danielle: "I think so, yeah."
Five miles away, just outside of town, Dalton was found murdered. He had gone missing about 7 p.m. and was found the next morning in the Vermillion River, face down and floating, Landau said.
"He was found by a local fisherman who was familiar with the family," Landau said.
Days later, a hammer discovered behind a local business was determined to be the murder weapon. There have been over 1,000 leads and tips, a $50,000 reward, DNA tests and polygraph tests, but in a test of wills, the killer has evaded it all by, it appears, keeping quiet.
"It's probably someone that isn't talking," Michelle said. "Why would you?"
She added, "I think that's the only way we'll get them to come forward would be a deathbed confession."
Landau said she believes someone in the community still has the answer of what happened to Dalton.
"I think it makes it really hard in this instance especially," she said. "Because everyone knew everyone and everyone knew Dalton.
"By people kind of minding their own business too, and maybe something they saw they thought wouldn't be helpful, but it absolutely would be helpful for law enforcement."
Not long after pulling the body from the river, investigators determined Dalton wasn't sexually assaulted, so the question turns to why someone would target a 7-year-old boy. Experts who study such cases said the list of motives is actually quite short.
"Short list would be: he saw something he wasn't supposed to see. The child may have been in a situation where a fight ensued, and an accident happened," Landau said. "Possibility of a payback or revenge."
Tye: "Do you have any theory of the case why the person who did this did this?"
Danielle: "I believe the person that did it, did it to hurt my mom. She's not the type of person who carries a bunch of enemies on her back, but there's one person in particular that, I believe-"
Michelle: "Hates me."
Tye: "You agree with her?"
Michelle: "Yeah, but I don't know if we can put anything like that in there."
The Mesarchiks did not want to elaborate further on their theory.
"We believe it was someone who knew Dalton and Dalton was familiar with," Landau said. "He willingly got into a vehicle at the time."
At the time, and now, Dalton's family hopes justice does come for the killer of the young boy from the small town en route to church, who would be 27 years old today.
"I don't know what we could have done any different than what we've done," Michelle said. "You know that gut feeling, when you talk to someone, makes you feel creepy, did we miss that about somebody 20 years ago?"
The last 20 years have come with major technical advancement in criminology, but those tools only work when fresh tips and threads emerge.
Investigators need more tips, more threads, to weave together a case. Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the FBI or the Illinois State Police.