A 17-year-old man named Brian Carrick worked as a stock boy at Val’s Foods, a grocery store in Johnsburg, Illinois. Until one day in 2002 he disappeared. He was last seen at the store. His body has never been found but the store owner’s son, Mario Casciaro, was convicted of his murder. He was found guilty of the rare charge of “murder with intimidation.” He was sentenced to 26 years in prison in 2013. This week, Casciaro is a free man. His conviction was reversed based on “insufficient evidence.”
Another stock boy at Val’s Food, Shane Lamb, a five-time convicted felon with an attempted murder charge on his rap sheet, testified against Casciaro. Lamb said Casciaro asked Lamb to scare Carrick. Lamb said Casciaro was a drug dealer and Carrick owed Casciaro money. After the trial, Lamb said that he lied when he testified against Casciaro and claimed that “prosecutors coached him on what to say, something they have denied.” In an unrelated case, in March 2015, Lamb was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated possession of a stolen firearm in an unrelated case.
