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Mom Crushed To Learn Police Destroyed Daughter's Suicide Notes

By Mina Bloom | June 13, 2016 6:22am
 Nicole Porter was 29 when she took her own life.
Nicole Porter was 29 when she took her own life.
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Courtesy/Terry Porter

LINCOLN PARK — Nicole Porter was "optimistic" and "vibrant," always considered the "go-getter" of her family, according to her mother and sisters.

One of five siblings, the 29-year-old was both the "life of the party" and driven, juggling full-time school at Truman College with a full-time job as an ER technician at Illinois Masonic Hospital.

That's why it was such a shock when she committed suicide in her Lincoln Park apartment in February 2015. Officials found suicide letters addressed to her family and determined she overdosed on insulin.

"It brought me to my knees," said her mother, Terry Porter, who lives in suburban Plainfield.

"When we lost her, it was like losing half of my heart. It's a feeling I can't describe. It's a void inside of me. No matter what I do it can't be filled."

For more than a year after Nicole Porter's death, her family fought to get those suicide letters from Chicago Police. They were given photocopies of the letters, but said having the originals in their possession was important to them. 

Not only was the process arduous, but their efforts ended up being unsuccessful. 

Chicago police detectives kept telling the Porter family that they would release the letters once the investigation closed. At one point, after months of exchanging phone calls, one detective told the family to come down to the station to pick them up.

But it was too late. Detectives had already destroyed the letters.

They told the Porter family that it's protocol to destroy both non-criminal and criminal evidence 60-90 days after an incident.

It was a devastating blow for the Porter family, especially after being told the letters would be released.

The detectives "should have had more feeling, more respect," Terry Porter said. "I feel like we were disrespected."

"It would have been very important to me to get those letters. That was the last time she said, 'I love you.' To other people, maybe it's just a piece of paper. To me, it's a part of her. I think [police] cheated me out of a part of her." 

Then, last week, after CBS reported on the Porter family's struggle, a Chicago Police spokesman said the letters should have, in fact, been saved, but were destroyed due to an "administrative error." 

The news report was the first time Terry Porter learned that the letters were destroyed due to an error, and not because of police policy. It was also the first time a Chicago Police officer had personally reached out to apologize.

"I didn't know it was an error until I saw the news clip," Terry Porter told DNAinfo Chicago. "It's frustrating."

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said both statements are true. 

"It is true that non-criminal evidence is destroyed, but if a family requests letters, there is a procedure. In this case, there was an administrative error," he said.

"It's unacceptable what happened. We certainly never want this to happen again."

When asked why the Porter family wasn't told about the error sooner, Guglielmi simply said, "I don't know."

Over the course of the last year and two months, the Porter family contacted detectives several times to find out when they could pick up the letters only to be denied because the investigation was ongoing. A few times the family reached out, detectives didn't even respond, according to Terry Porter.

Only when the family provided the detectives with a death certificate in May did they extend an invitation to the station to pick up the letters, she said.

That was when Terry Porter, along with her husband and four children, found out the letters had been destroyed at least a month earlier without warning.

Terry Porter acknowledged that the letters won't bring her daughter back. But the letters belonged to her family, she said.

"The letters would've provided me some closure," she said. "Having the letters is like having a part of her. I can hold them in my hand. I can relate to her in that way. That's the one thing I wanted to do." 

By sharing her story, Terry Porter hopes that no other family goes through what she has.

"I hope that this doesn't happen to anyone ... ever," she said.

"I think the suicide files should be separate. I don't think suicide victims should be mixed in with the criminal folders," she added.

As a result of the incident, Guglielmi said the department is adding an extra step in the process to make sure nothing like this happens again. 

"We've added another level of oversight in the process, a second step before evidence would be approved," he said. "We should've done better." 

Guglielmi mentioned that Supt. Eddie Johnson was briefed on the matter. 

Unfortunately for members of the Porter family, no new protocol will bring back the letters they were so desperately seeking.

"The people who have lost their children deserve to have that last piece of their children," Terry Porter said. 

"It has ripped my heart wide open. I feel like I'm almost back to where I was when I lost her."

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