Brian James Dugan (born September 23, 1956)[3] is an American convicted rapist and serial killer active between 1983 and 1985 in Chicago's western suburbs.

He was known for having informally confessed in 1985 to the February 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville, Illinois, which was a highly publicized case.

Cruz was acquitted in 1995 after a witness recanted testimony, and new DNA evidence was introduced excluding him from that found at the crime scene.

In 2005, Dugan was indicted for Nicarico's murder based on DNA evidence; he pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to death.

After Illinois governor Patrick Quinn signed a new bill to abolish capital punishment in 2011, Dugan's sentence was commuted to life in prison.

The family claims that, in an effort to delay the infant's birth, a nurse and an intern pushed Brian's head back inside his mother and strapped her legs together.

[3] Relatives later questioned if this caused Brian to have brain damage; as a youth he suffered severe headaches followed by vomiting, for which he took medication until his teens.

[3] His brother Steven said that Dugan complained of being sexually abused while serving time in the Menard Correctional Center from 1979 until 1982.

[3] On February 25, 1983, 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico (born July 7, 1972) was abducted in broad daylight from her home in Naperville, Illinois.

[8] Soon, police charged Cruz, Alejandro Hernandez (who had accused two others) and Stephen Buckley, with the girl's rape and murder despite limited evidence.

[3] On June 2, 1985, Melissa Ackerman and her eight-year-old friend, Opal Horton, were riding their bikes in Somonauk, Illinois when they were confronted by Dugan.

To avoid risk of the death penalty at trial, Dugan made a plea deal, pleading guilty to murders of both Melissa Ackerman and Donna Schnorr.

In 1985, after being apprehended for the Ackerman and Schnorr murders, he gave an unofficial confession to the crime in what he said should be a deal to avoid risk of the death penalty if the case went to trial.

Dugan later claimed that he confessed in order to take responsibility for the crime and to clear Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, who had been indicted for it.

In 1996, seven DuPage County law enforcement officials: three prosecutors and four sheriff's deputies, were tried but acquitted of conspiring to frame Cruz and Hernandez.

[11][12] Following Illinois's passage in 2011 of a law to abolish the death penalty in the state, Dugan's sentence was commuted to life in prison.

In 2008, the Daily Herald reported that Dugan had claimed, since the 1980s, that in 1972, he had been molested as a juvenile by serial killer John Wayne Gacy.