Last Friday, Chicago native Renee DiCicco introduced a new friend in her life to co-workers at Southern Illinois University’s Touch of Nature outdoors center.
DiCicco, a 1999 SIU graduate, had invited Brett Janecke down from Chicago, where he lived with his brother. The two 22-year-olds were to spend the weekend camping and swimming in the woods that were DiCicco’s frequent playground.
But by daybreak Saturday, after what investigators described as a savage attack that they believe was borne of jealousy, DiCicco was dead and Janecke lay in the intensive-care unit of a St. Louis Hospital.
Authorities allege DiCicco’s former boyfriend, Donald Forcum, 28, broke into the one-story home they once shared about two miles from the SIU campus and brutally attacked the two victims just before 2 a.m.
Forcum, who is listed in SIU records as a senior studying nutrition, was arrested in Carbondale six hours after the attack. He is being held on a $1 million bond under preliminary charges of murder and home invasion. Those and other charges are expected to be formalized Monday, said Jackson County State’s Atty. Michael Wepsiec.
While Jackson County Sheriff William Kilquist would not release any details about the slaying–describing it only as an attack “by means of a violent manner”–he said that to his knowledge DiCicco had never complained of threats or harassment.
“No red flags,” Kilquist said. “Usually in these types of cases people try to deal with it themselves until it gets too far out of hand.”
But sources close to the family said DiCicco, a former Von Steuben Metropolitan High School student, told them Forcum had threatened her within the last two weeks.
“We begged her to come back up here [to the Chicago area]. But she felt her work was so important to her that she couldn’t leave,” a source said. “If anything comes of this, it’s don’t discount even the smallest threat.”
Authorities also declined to provide details on “the miracle resuscitation” of Janecke that his parents described in a statement released Sunday.
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“For three hours on Friday night, our son walked the line between life and death,” they wrote, expressing particular gratitude for a next-door neighbor “who courageously made the 911 call” and a deputy who arrived at the rural house in eight minutes.
Janecke, of the 1700 block of West Ainslie Street, was released from intensive care Sunday and was listed in serious but stable condition at St. Louis University Hospital.
DiCicco’s parents could not be reached for comment. Her father owns a concrete products firm in Chicago Heights.
A lifelong animal lover with a degree in zoology, DiCicco had grown increasingly fond of the outdoors in recent years and landed a job this summer co-leading a canoe trip for 6th to 8th graders, according to Curt Carter, her supervisor at the outdoor center.
Carter said he had met Forcum and knew the couple had been roommates at one point. The home they shared in the 0 to 99 block of England Heights Road–now a crime scene marked by red investigators tape sealing the door–sits in a rural cul de sac.
Police said they did not know how long Forcum lived at the house or when he moved out.
But it was to that house that authorities arrived early Saturday to find DiCicco dead and Janecke “with major injuries.”