Tag Archive for: Brian Carrick

Mario Casciaro Innocent?


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ABC featured the story of Brian Carrick, a grocery store clerk who went missing in the small town of Johnsburg, Illinois. The story takes a bunch of twists and turns, and eventually 12 years after Brian’s disappearance, the grocery store owner’s son, Mario Casciaro, gets charged with the murder and locked up for 26 years.

I will go through the list of characters to share with you who I believe and who I don’t.

I don’t believe what Shane Lamb told the truth to prosecutors the first time about Mario’s involvement. I believe Shane truly has remorse for telling that story.

With regards to Mario Casciaro, I don’t believe him when he says he was just selling his friends some of “his stash” and that it wasn’t a criminal enterprise. I do believe Mario was probably a small operation, but it seems clear from the testimony that he and Brian were selling pot, and that it was criminal. There is no evidence that Mario was involved in the murder, but the stakes in this case for Mario are no longer high.

What does it mean when the stakes are no longer high? With Mario, he is paying the ultimate price for whatever happened. If he was involved, let’s say, there is nothing to lose now by lying. Instead, he would have everything to gain. With that, there is no pressure on him if he does lie, which would cause the clues to leak. With that, I am extremely careful to say that I cannot judge a man behind bars for lying without testimony or video of him talking about it before he was locked up. This is critical because I have seen very guilty people speak from behind bars and sound innocent, because the pressure that caused clues to leak was gone!

However, there does not seem to be any evidence leading to Mario in this murder, and the evidence we do have, as Kathleen Zellner has pointed out, leads to Rob Render. Kathleen Zellner is an amazing attorney and I have full faith in her to get to the truth.

As for Rob Render, his interview was definitely odd and I did not believe him. He seemed to say anything in hopes of getting the police to leave him alone. He was extremely nervous, too, and I wonder if that came and went during the interview process, or was constant. That would reveal more information.

What I don’t understand from the show, however, is about the blood evidence. How could there be a lot of blood from a violent attack and no one see it that night when they closed up the store? Or early the next morning? Jerry Casciaro, Mario’s father, saw some reddish water and says he thought it was Hawaiian punch. Did the Casciaro’s call the police immediately? If not, why? I’m curious about this. We never heard.

I honestly need more information on this case to fully understand what happened, but I don’t believe Shane told the truth when Mario was convicted. And I’d like to see more of Mario, if there is any depositions or whatnot of him, prior to or during trial, to get to the truth in this matter. I am curious if the Casciaro’s knew that something went down, and wanted it to go away because it might be bad for business.