‘48 Hours’ Will Air Update on Melissa Calusinski Case Saturday

An update in the case of a former daycare worker convicted of killing a toddler will be aired on CBS’ “48 Hours” program this weekend.

Melissa Calusinski, a Carpentersville woman who was convicted of murder in a Lake County court in 2011 for the 2009 death of 16-month-old Benjamin Kingan of Deerfield and sentenced to spend 31 years in prison, is still seeking to have her conviction overturned.

The case made national headlines when 48 Hours first profiled it as a possible miscarriage of justice a few years back. While Calusinski confessed to throwing Kingan to the ground while frustrated as a worker at the Minee Subee daycare in Lincolnshire on Jan. 14, 2009, she has since recanted her confession and alleged it was coerced. Calusinski supporters have pointed out in numerous protests that she denied any wrongdoing at least 79 times and was left in a cold room for hours before admitting any guilt.

George Filenko - Calusinski's primary investigator during the interrogation - was criticized for his handling of this case and for assuming former Fox Lake Lt. Joe Gliniewicz was murdered before that was revealed as a suicide. He's also connected to a lawsuit stemming from police officers in Round Lake claiming they were secretly recorded.

A set of X-rays that showed up in the Lake County Coroner’s Office in 2015 suggested there was no skull fracture and that Kingan could have suffered from a pre-existing condition that led to his death. The new findings caused Lake County Coroner Thomas Rudd to switch the manner of death from “homicide” to “undetermined” and for Calusinski’s lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, to file a postconviction petition seeking the sentence be overturned.

That petition was denied by Judge Daniel Shanes, who presided over Calusinski’s original trial, but is likely to be appealed by Zellner and her defense team.

CBS’ Erin Moriarty has followed the case since it first aired on 48 Hours and will feature “the latest stunning twists” in the investigation, according to a CBS news release. The episode, “The Fight for Melissa,” will be broadcast on Saturday, Dec. 17 at 9 p.m. central time on CBS.

“Melissa Calusinski says she loves children and would never hurt them. But today she sits in prison serving a 31-year sentence for murdering a child under her watch at a suburban Chicago day care center,” reads a preview posted on the CBS website.” “Was she wrongfully convicted, as her powerhouse attorney Kathleen Zellner, maintains, or is she a murderer, as argued by the prosecution?"

The episode will update viewers with new developments and get viewers new to the case up to speed on what has taken place since 2009, including an admitted mistake from the original pathologist.

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