SCRAP opposes Dresberg’s PCB incinerator and receives death threats

SCRAP’s opposition to Steve Dresberg’s PCB incinerator became more than a dispute over a proposed industrial project: Caroline Djiak and Nancy Cleghorn testified that their resistance had brought death threats. The episode returned to view during the investigation of Nancy’s death, when Caroline reluctantly disclosed that the two women had reported their earlier problems with Dresberg to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Background and Political Context

The conflict centered on Dresberg’s PCB incinerator and an alleged sweetheart deal with the Sanitary District. V. I. Warshawski remembered the trial over the incinerator but had not realized that Caroline and Nancy had been involved. Caroline described the public dispute as one in which, in her view, Dresberg had influence at the Sanitary District and SCRAP had too little power to make its opposition count.

Dresberg was also identified in the conversation as a local Mob figure involved in garbage disposal. That association gives the threats a context beyond a single planning dispute, but the account does not establish who made them or prove that Dresberg personally ordered them. The alleged deal, like Caroline’s explanation of why their testimony seemed ineffective, remains part of her account of the conflict rather than a finding independently confirmed in this episode.

Testimony and Earlier Reports

Caroline said that she and Nancy testified to receiving death threats because they opposed the incinerator. Their participation in the trial made the threats part of a public legal proceeding, even though Caroline believed their testimony had not changed the outcome. Her description links the women’s environmental opposition to a direct threat against their safety.

The two women had also given statements to Hugh McInerney about their problems with Dresberg eighteen months earlier. Caroline did not know whom Nancy had seen at the State’s Attorney’s Office when she recently sought help; she thought it might have been McInerney, because he had dealt with them on other matters. The earlier statements therefore provided a possible record of threats preceding Nancy’s death, although Caroline could not say what Nancy had most recently reported.

Return of the Threats in the Murder Investigation

The episode becomes newly consequential when Caroline’s account is set beside Nancy’s death. Caroline had not told the police about the women’s earlier testimony and threats. V. I. Warshawski urged her to make an amended statement to Sergeant McGonnigal and to direct investigators toward people known to have threatened Nancy before. The old incinerator dispute thus re-entered the present as a line of inquiry, not a solved explanation of the murder.

Caroline’s disclosure also exposed the cost of her earlier silence: information connecting Nancy to a documented history of threats had been left out of the police account. Warshawski said she would report the conversation herself and warned Caroline against lying again. Caroline answered angrily that she was no longer a child who had to obey. The exchange ends not with the threats resolved, but with their relevance newly recognized and trust between the women under strain.