Lawyer says Lemak likely upset about French TV documentary - Joliet Herald News

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BY BILL BIRD wbird@stmedianetwork.com March 26, 2012 8:56PM

Marilyn Lemak | Courtesy Photo~Illinois Department of Corrections

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Updated: March 26, 2012 9:22PM

The attorney who defended Marilyn Lemak said Monday his onetime client is almost certainly angry with and resentful toward the makers of a French television documentary, and their profile of the woman convicted of the 1999 murders of her three young children in their Naperville home.

Prior to being interviewed, Lemak “was told this would be a documentary that would be disseminated in Europe and not in the United States,” Naperville attorney John F. “Jack” Donahue said in the wake of Sunday’s European broadcast of the film “Mal de Mere” and a lengthy, tandem article published in the Chicago Tribune. Donahue said Lemak had expressly told him “she didn’t want any (local) publicity in that vein.”

Donahue said he hasn’t talked to Lemak in several weeks, and based his remarks on prior conversations.

Lemak agreed to be interviewed on camera with the understanding “that the focus of the documentary would be on mental health and postpartum depression, along with other aspects of depression and mental health,” Donahue said. Donahue, during Lemak’s trial, unsuccessfully argued she was insane on March 4, 1999, when she poisoned and suffocated her daughter Emily, 6, and sons Nicholas, 7, and Thomas, 3.

Donahue said Lemak, prior to the interview, pointedly asked the documentary makers, “‘Is this going to be shown only in Europe,’ and they said, ‘Well, we’re not sure.’” Lemak “looked askance” on that reply, Donahue said.

Still, she consented to the interview, telling Donahue words to the effect of, “The only reason I’m doing this is because it’s only going to be shown in Europe and limited to the issue of mental health,” Donahue said.

The hourlong documentary featured Lemak and several other women who have killed or injured their children. The title “Mal de Mere” translates as “Mother’s Sickness.”

Reporters for Sun-Times Media have repeatedly sought interviews with the now-54-year-old Lemak since her imprisonment on April 9, 2002. Lemak, through Donahue, declined all of those requests.

A Naperville Sun reporter who has written extensively about the Lemak case was contacted Aug. 23 via e-mail by Noemie Cece, who identified herself as a French journalist acting on behalf of a female colleague.

The colleague in August was “working on a long-term documentary ... on postpartum depression and infanticides,” Cece wrote in the e-mail. “She has just obtained the authorization from Marylin (sic) Lemak and her attorney to meet her and realise (sic) an interview in jail on what she did in 1999.”

Cece sought The Sun reporter’s help in locating and contacting David Lemak, Marilyn Lemak’s former husband and the father of the slain children. David Lemak, a physician who now lives in Michigan with his second family, has also declined all requests for interviews since Marilyn Lemak was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.

The Sun reporter did not reply to Cece’s e-mail and instead sought an interview with Marilyn Lemak. That request, like the others, was denied.

Donahue said it was his understanding Tribune officials gave the filmmakers access to the newspaper’s archives on the Lemak case and reporters who wrote about it. The documentary makers, in return, provided the Tribune with an unedited copy of their interview, which Sunday’s Tribune story cited at length.

The second paragraph of that article stated Lemak “says she needs the public to understand how sick she was” when she killed her children. “She wants people to know that she was a good mother, that she has not forgiven herself and that she wishes she were dead,” the story stated.

Lemak, in the documentary, “describes how she laced her children’s peanut butter sandwiches with prescription medication (and) then sang to them as they lost consciousness,” according to the Tribune article. She then slit one of her own wrists with a knife and swallowed a handful of pills.

“I was stunned to see that in the Tribune,” Donahue said of the documentary-based story. He added the filmmakers had promised to send him a copy of “Mal de Mere” upon its completion, but that as of Monday, they had not done so.

“I don’t think she’s going to be too pleased that this was disseminated locally, because her specific request of me was that this would not happen,” Donahue said of Lemak. “I think she’s piqued by it ,,, and I’m sure she’s going to be very upset about it.”

Cece did not immediately respond to an e-mail that sought comment on the documentary, the Tribune article and Donahue’s statements.

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