An Illinois State Police master sergeant is being held on allegations he sexually assaulted a bartender from a suburban restaurant he regularly visited, according to prosecutors.
Douglas Lee, 59, went to the Tinley Park restaurant and bar on August 1 of last year, where the woman was working an all-day shift. The two were acquaintances who had occasionally crossed paths at bars in the area over the previous 18 months, prosecutors said.
The woman told investigators she had about three shots during her shift, which ran from 10 a.m. to midnight. Afterward, she stayed and continued drinking with other employees and regulars, having roughly three more shots.
The woman and four or five other women eventually walked down the street to another bar. Lee asked if he could join them, making him the only man in the group, according to prosecutors.
The woman told investigators she remembered Lee buying her a seltzer and a shot at the second bar. She also remembered going to the dance floor with another woman from the group.
That was the last thing she remembered before waking up at 10:45 a.m. the next morning in her car, which was parked outside the restaurant where she had worked the night before, prosecutors said.
She was confused and did not remember how she got there. She went inside the restaurant and soon became concerned that she had been intimate with someone while she was unable to remember what had happened. She immediately told a coworker and the woman she had been dancing with, who told investigators she had seen the woman with Lee, according to prosecutors.
Surveillance video showed the woman and Lee interacting at the bar before leaving together around 1:30 a.m., prosecutors said. The video shows them walking toward a fountain, where the woman fell while trying to sit down and Lee helped her up.
About 20 minutes later, they were seen getting into a Range Rover registered to Lee, according to prosecutors.
License plate reader data showed the vehicle traveled to the Aura hotel in Midlothian, where Lee used his credit card to pay for a room, prosecutors said.
The woman later called Lee and asked what had happened. He told her she had left a vape pen in his vehicle and that he would return it to her at the restaurant. When they met, the woman told Lee she did not remember what had happened. Lee allegedly told her that everything had been “consensual.”
The woman asked whether he had put something in her drink because she could not account for what had happened. Lee told her he had taken her to a hotel and later left her in her car because she was unable to drive, according to prosecutors.
A toxicology report came back positive for THC, barbiturates and cocaine. The woman told investigators she uses a cannabis vape pen but did not know how cocaine or barbiturates came into her system, prosecutors said.
Male DNA recovered from the waistband of the woman’s leggings produced a “likelihood ratio” of 1.38 trillion that Lee was the contributor, prosecutors said.
