Chicago Murder Trial Begins for Suicidal Blonde

Oct. 16, 2007 — -- They probably never saw her coming.

It was July 14, 2005. Lunch hour in Chicago.

Three local musicians who worked day jobs together at an audio electronics company were stopped at a traffic light in a Honda Civic in a suburb north of the city.

At a speed authorities estimated at 70 miles per hour, a former model who police said was trying to kill herself ran three red lights and slammed them from behind in her red Mustang convertible.

Both cars flew airborne on impact, witnesses said, each landing crushed upside down on the pavement.

The three young men died. The woman walked away with a broken ankle.

Today, more than two years later, her murder trial begins.

"Your mind is your worst enemy,'' Dave Meis, older brother of victim Douglas Meis, told ABC News Law & Justice unit Monday. "You hope and pray that they all died instantly but your mind just wonders how things all played out.''

"It was the worst day of my life,'' he said.

For a year after his brother's death, Meis said, every day felt "like a bad dream'' for him, his younger brother Scott and their parents, Ronald and Gail. The latter three traveled to Chicago this week for the trial. Also killed in the crash were Michael Dahlquist, 39, and John Glick, 35.

"For such a long time it felt like something you see on the evening news, but say, 'That could never happen to me,' '' Meis said.

"The one thing that would have brought this thing to closure would have been had she been successful in what she set out to do that day,'' Meis said, referring to the alleged suicide attempt by an ex-model named Jeanette Sliwinski, then 23, the daughter of Polish immigrants.

Sliwinski's lawyers have denied that she was attempting suicide. Her current attorney did not return a call seeking comment on the case.

"She left this big, open-ended, ironic twist, in that she took three wonderful, beautiful lives and walked away with a broken ankle," Meis said. He said that his father was a Navy pilot and the family moved often.