After 25 years, girl's abduction still haunting

SOMONAUK – It's been 25 years since Sheree Ackerman lost her only child, but the horror of that summer still catches her unawares. "I can be driving and a song will come on the radio – not even any song in particular – and I break down crying," the Leland woman said. "Time eases the pain, but it never goes away."

In June of 1985, Sheree and her husband Michael were living in Somonauk with their daughter, an athletic, irrepressible 7-year-old named Melissa Love, who went by the nickname Missy. On June 2, 10 days before her eighth birthday, Melissa was abducted while she rode her bike with a friend. The abductor, Brian Dugan, tried to grab both girls, but Melissa's friend escaped and hid. After watching Dugan's car drive off, the girl ran to a teacher's house.

Hundreds of volunteers from all over the region flocked to Somonauk to help police, firefighters and the FBI to search. Police set up a headquarters in the parish center of the Catholic church, and Somonauk residents brought them thousands of meals.

The community response was heartwarming, said Dick Meyer, who was chief of the Somonauk Fire Department at the time.

But Meyer is haunted to this day by the specter of a job undone.

"As a firefighter, I was of the mind we get a call, we put out the fire, and when it's done we go home," Meyer said. "But this time, we couldn't do what we'd been asked to do. We couldn't find that little girl. That was hard for me to accept. ... I feel like I let that family down."

Sheree Ackerman said she can't imagine the pain of families whose children are never found, but as long as Melissa was missing, there had always been a glimmer of hope that the next police officer who came to the door would have her.

That hope vanished on June 17, when Melissa's body was found in a creek bed.

"You not only have to live with her being gone, you have to live with all the horrible thoughts of what she went through," Sheree said. "That never goes away."

"Closure is just a word," Michael Ackerman added. "It never closes."

Dugan is currently on death row, having been convicted of abducting, raping and murdering an adult and two children, including Melissa, between 1983 and 1985.

Over the years, Sheree Ackerman has been asked if she regrets letting Melissa go out that morning. Her reply is that a mother shouldn't have to regret letting her child ride a bike.

"We're supposed to live in the greatest country in the world, and children can't play safely outside," she said. "After she was taken, people said to me, 'You're moving, aren't you?' But if you aren't safe in Somonauk, where are you going to go?"

The summer of 1985 left an indelible impression on the rural communities that dot southern DeKalb and northern La Salle counties, said DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott and Chief Deputy Kevin Hickey. No longer did parents let their children out the door on a summer morning with a simple admonishment to be home before dark.

"That crime violated the innocence of that entire community," Hickey said. "Playgrounds were empty. Baseball fields were empty. You didn't see children outside playing at all that summer."

The innocence never returned, Meyer said, and now the children who grew up in that shadow of fear are parents themselves.

"Now when I see kids walking and a vehicle comes up slowly, I stop and watch very closely," he said. "My grandchildren are 13 and 8, and they live just a few blocks away. But when they get on their bikes and ride from my house to home, I worry about them. I follow them home."