Chapter One
Dominican High School Football Game – Fall, 2019
On that early Friday evening, the brisk fall wind and crisp autumn air carried the sounds and scents of a high school football game. The odors of fast food from the concession stands were abundant, as students and parents got in line for soft drinks, hot dogs, burgers, pretzels, and slices of delicious pepperoni pizza.
It was the annual girl's powder puff football game at the Denby High School football field. The home team, Dominican High School, an all-girls school located on Detroit’s East Side, was playing their archrivals, Regina High School from Warren.
Seventeen-year-old Yvonne Basilisco was with three of her girlfriends on that Friday evening as they excitedly climbed up the steel bleachers to watch the powder-puff football game between her school and their infamous rival.
She had just gotten a car for her seventeenth birthday, a 2016 Nissan Rogue, and was excited to go out with her friends and experience one of the many activities she would enjoy as a senior in high school. Many of the Dominican football players were her friends from school, and the four girls sat on top of the bleachers and began to enjoy the game.
Yvonne was a very pretty high school senior with light brown hair, big blue eyes, and a smile that could make anyone take notice. She had a strong resemblance to Jennifer Aniston of ‘Friends’ fame and had a memorable giggle that one could only laugh along with. Yvonne was a straight-A student, always made the honor role, and was involved in volleyball and student government. Her parents were incredibly proud of her, and she was the model daughter, always looking after her two younger brothers. She had just applied to the University of Michigan and was planning on pursuing a pre-med program.
To say that Yvonne had a lot of boyfriends and high school admirers was an understatement, as boys from all of the surrounding high schools had been taking notice of the talented, intelligent Dominican senior. But she wasn’t in a relationship with any of them. They were all friends, she would say to her parents.
Yvonne had been raised in a very strict, Italian Catholic family, and she knew the rules. She wasn’t allowed to date and could only go out with her girlfriends when adults were around to watch and chaperone her and her friends. As a typical seventeen-year-old, she was looking forward to going away to college and pursuing her dreams without the constraints of her strict, old-school parents.
Being such a pretty, beautiful teenager, it was admirable that her parents and family wanted to protect her. Yvonne was such a bubbly, happy student and always had a joke or a smile for every one of her teachers and friends.
On that Friday night, Yvonne was wearing her black and yellow Dominican letter jacket that she earned from volleyball and stood out from the crowd of other young girls sitting together at the top of the bleachers. They were all laughing and joking, and the high school friends took turns going to the concession stand for fresh hot pizza slices, sodas, and other goodies.
After half-time, it was Yvonne’s turn to go to the concession stand. She collected five-dollar bills from each of her three other friends and ascended down the steel bleachers to the crowded concession stand near the edge of the football field. She walked over to the line of people waiting to be served, then realized that she needed to go to the restroom.
The ladies' bathroom located on the side of the concession stand was dark and without lights. As the autumn dusk was starting to turn black and murky, Yvonne was all alone as she went into the ladies’ bathroom. As she entered, she realized that no one else was in the girl's restroom, and she was all alone.
As soon as she exited the bathroom, someone approached her from behind. A large burly man with tattoos on each arm quickly put his hand over her mouth while tightly grabbing her left arm. He was a very stocky, older man in his late thirties, with a thick graying beard and earring.
“Don’t say a fucking word,” he sternly warned the teenager as he quickly escorted her towards the back of the bleachers from the back of the football field, where it was dark and desolate.
As he was manhandling her, he quickly handcuffed her hands behind her back and duct-taped her mouth. He incapacitated her within less than three minutes and threw her onto the barren, grassless ground underneath the stands. He then began to remove her clothing, pulling her blue jeans down to her ankles. He then began to rape and molest her, pushing himself onto her while the noise from the football field drowned out her muffled screams.
After five minutes of brutally molesting and raping the young teenager, the large, balding stranger went into his right pocket and pulled out his boxcutter switchblade.
Thirty minutes had passed, and the high school friends became curious about where Yvonne had gone and why she hadn’t returned from the concession stand. Her best friend, Susan D’Amico, began to get worried. She dialed Yvonne’s cell phone.
There was no answer.
Susan then convinced the other girls to accompany her and go looking for Yvonne together. They went to the concession stand and asked several other students if they had seen her, which they had not. They looked in the girl's bathroom and started to search around the parking lot, but there was no sign of her.
After another thirty minutes had passed, they informed a policeman sitting in a patrol car in the parking lot of Denby High School that their girlfriend was missing. He was with the Detroit Police Department, and he immediately called for backup patrol cars as he began to assist the girls in looking for their friend.
After another hour of searching for the young girl, one of the patrolmen began searching under the football stands, shining his flashlight on the ground.
Covered under some garbage and wood debris underneath the stands was the lifeless body of Yvonne Basilisco. Her clothing had been torn off, and her blue jeans had been pulled down to her ankles. There was blood splattered across her topless chest, exposing the knife lacerations on her breasts. The crimson red was still spewing from her neck wound. The teenager’s hands were still cuffed behind her back. Her neck had been slit open from the boxcutter blade that the rapist had savagely used, and the girl’s dead body was still warm.
By ten-thirty, two EMS trucks and several more Detroit patrol cars surrounded the football field. Several other students, including Yvonne’s girlfriends, were interrogated extensively by the detectives. But no one had seen Yvonne when she had left them in the football stands, and no one noticed anyone looking suspicious.
Later that Friday evening, at 11:50 pm, Detroit Police Detective Michael Palazzola made that dreaded phone call that no parent ever wishes to receive.
