CrimeReporter
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2018
- Messages
- 62
- Reaction score
- 466
She was found in a pond in 1974, tied to a concrete block. Her stepfather, a cop, was the only suspect.
BY HEIDI WIECHERT
July 11, 2018 02:01 PM
BELLEVILLE, IL
This is another installment of “Into the Archives,” a series that looks back on stories from the Belleville News-Democrat archives.
In 1974, an 18-year-old woman from Belleville was shot in the back of the head, chest and arm. Her murderer tied her hands behind her back and a concrete block to her waist before throwing her body into a pond in Stookey Township.
Whoever murdered Sabrina Jean Cain has never been held responsible for the crime.
Prior to the discovery of her body, Sabrina had been missing from her Belleville home for almost two months. She disappeared in February 1974 and her body was discovered in April.
The only person indicted for the murder was Sabrina's stepfather, Fred Roark, a Belleville police officer. A jury found Roark not-guilty in a trial at the Adams County Courthouse in Quincy.
Though the crime probably occurred in St. Clair County, a judge ordered the change of venue to Adams County because of the extensive media coverage the murder had received in Belleville.
Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request about Sabrina's murder investigation from the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department have multiple witnesses stating Sabrina hated her stepfather for his controlling and allegedly violent behavior, according to police reports. He has since died.
The day she disappeared, Sabrina told her friends, coworkers and boyfriend, she was leaving home because she couldn't stand to be under the same roof as Roark any longer, according to police reports.
Roark was called to identify Sabrina's remains and aided investigators in the early stages of the murder investigation, but lost his job as a police officer after he refused to take a lie detector test about the killing.
Roark died in a traffic accident in St. Louis in November 1978, four years after Sabrina died. He is buried next to Sabrina at Lake View Memorial Gardens in Fairview Heights.
Three roses for Sabrina
Sabrina's half-sister, Kimberly Cain, was 7 years old when her sister was killed. They had the same father, Cork Cain, and different mothers.
At the time, Kimberly lived with her parents in Arcola, an Illinois town about 150 miles northeast of Belleville. Sabrina lived in Belleville with her mother and stepfather, Lorene and Fred Roark.
Even though she always wondered what happened to her sister, Kimberly didn't begin searching for information until her father, Cork, passed away in October 2013.
Kimberly said, "It was too painful for him. His way to deal with it was to just not talk about it."
They lived in different towns and had a 12-year age difference, but Kimberly regrets she didn't know Sabrina better. Kimberly had the opportunity to visit with Sabrina only three times before she was murdered.
"I know she always thought about me and wanted to be in my life," Kimberly said. "But it just wasn’t meant to be."
Kimberly said Lorene and Fred Roark never called her father to tell him his daughter, Sabrina, was missing. She said her father learned Sabrina was missing when a family member called to say her body had been discovered.
Until this month, Kimberly had never viewed her sister's grave. In the 44 years since Sabrina's death, no one informed her where it was.
Kimberly purchased three roses and placed them at Sabrina's headstone during her visit to the grave.
"That's for you, Dad," Kimberly said.
'She was all I had.'
The last day Sabrina was seen alive was Feb. 5, 1974. She worked days at Midwest Home Savings and Loan and evenings at K-Mart Grocery, both in Belleville.
Roark told police he talked to Sabrina around 1 p.m. on Feb. 5, then she walked away from home, angry at him. According to investigation reports, Roark was most likely the last person to see Sabrina alive.
The family didn't formally report Sabrina as missing until March 22. The reason for the delay, Roark told police, was because Sabrina had left before but always returned.
Two men were target shooting when they found Sabrina's body on April 20, 1974, in a 3-acre pond off of Town Hall Road. She was bound, wearing the same clothing she had on when she disappeared on Feb. 5, and decomposing.
Investigators recovered four rings from her body. One of them, a Belleville West High School class ring, had the initials S.J.C. on it. Roark was called to identify the rings and he said the class ring was definitely Sabrina's.
Roark identified all of the clothing recovered from the body, including underwear, as belonging to his stepdaughter. According to police documents, "He also made the statement that it hadn't been long since (Sabrina) had purchased the panties."
Then, Roark asked to see Sabrina's body. The report said, "His reaction to seeing the body seemed normal for any person. His only reply was that she didn't have a face." Her scalp was found floating beneath the rest of the body, according to reports.
The investigating officer, Delbert Jackson, wrote in a report that he asked Roark why anyone would want to kill Sabrina.
Jackson wrote: "At one point in our interview, I had asked Mr. Roark of knowledge of anyone having a reason for killing Miss Cain, and some kind of way, the interpretation he got from my question was that I was asking if she was pregnant. His statement was, 'You think she was pregnant.' My answer was that I didn't insinuate that. At that point, Mr. Roark started crying and swearing and made the statement, 'She was all I had.'"
St. Clair County Coroner C.C. Kane determined the three bullets pulled from Sabrina's body were fired from a .38-caliber weapon.
Roark was a member of the Belleville Police Department for about five years prior to the murder of Sabrina. He owned a .38-caliber gun, but told investigators he lost it around the time Sabrina's body was discovered.
The Belleville News-Democrat reported a coroner's inquest held on May 4, 1974, determined Sabrina was murdered at the "hands of a party or parties unknown."
The rest of the story, with original police reports, is here: She was found in a pond in 1974, tied to a concrete block. Her stepfather, a cop, was the only suspect.
