Mom goes undercover as 'sexy cougar' to take down juror who convicted her son of murder
This mother's love for her son knows no bounds after she transformed herself from homemaker to a cougar all to get her boy out of prison.
Doreen Giuliano’s remarkable story is featured on ABC’s "20/20"Friday night.
She calls herself “a mom who just won’t quit” after her son, John Giuca, was convicted in the 2003 murder of New Jersey college student Mark Fisher.
Fisher was attending a party at Doreen Giuliano’s house in Brooklyn while she was away on vacation. A dispute broke out and Fisher was fatally shot on the sidewalk. The moments leading up to the shooting remain murky.
The district attorney claimed that Giuca was the leader of a gang and ordered the hit on Fisher o get street cred. He was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2005.
His mom refused to believe he was behind the murder and decided to go undercover to investigate a juror, a construction worker named Jason Allo. She believed he had lied to the court.
"She heard whispers in the courtroom that this juror knew some of her son’s friends, which would be a violation of voir dire, which is an immediate disqualification of the jurors," ABC News' Juju Chang, who interviewed Giuliano, told Inside Edition.
She told ABC that she bought a new wardrobe that included low-cut blouses, push-up bras, high heels, all to attract Allo.
She also took on a fake persona — Dee Quinn — a free-wheeling, single woman who just moved to town from California.
Pictures of her transformation were taken for a 2009 feature in Vanity Fair magazine.
By day she lived in a Victorian home in Brooklyn, but by night, she rented a basement apartment with the hope of capturing Allo’s attention and ultimately proving he was guilty of juror misconduct. From there, she could get her son free.
Her husband knew all about it and he had just one rule: She could not have sex with Allo.
"She literally rode around in her short shorts and 6-inch heels and rode past him back and forth until finally his friends whistled at her. She said she took that as an opportunity to introduce herself," Chang told Inside Edition. "She said she was so nervous. That began months of wooing — essentially a seduction where she used wine, they smoked weed, and they had spaghetti and meatball dinners — all the while she had a recording device tucked in her blouse."
She learned that the juror had known her son in high school and he reportedly admitted on tape that his friends had persuaded him to find her son guilty.
She took her undercover tape recordings to a judge with the hope that he'd declare a mistrial, but after all she went through, the judge refused. The judge found that Allo had not intentionally lied and that no juror misconduct had occurred.
"She was laughed out of court," Chang told Inside Edition. "She was told she was being a vigilante, that she was being reckless. Every ruling after ruling went against her. Yet, she got back up. She threw another legal salvo and at the end of the day, her son’s conviction was overturned."
Earlier this month, Guica's conviction was indeed overturned because of prosecutorial error. He's still in prison awaiting retrial or release.
RELATED STORIES
'Palm Sunday Massacre' Gunman Released 34 Years After Killing 2 Mothers and 8 Children
Cops and Surgeon Who Tried to Save John Lennon’s Life Recall Night of ‘Bedlam'
40 Years After 'Son of Sam' Arrest, Detective Reveals How Cops Finally Ended His Reign of Terror
