Ted Bundy's Murderous Mysteries

by Kevin Sullivan

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  Other Ted Bundy Books From Kevin Sullivan and WildBlue Press

  The Trail of Ted Bundy: A look into the life of serial killer Ted Bundy, from those who knew him, to those who chased him, and from those who mourned his many victims. The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up the Untold Stories, is a journey back in time, to a world when Ted Bundy was killing young women and girls in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. You’ll hear all the revealing stories; many of them coming to light for the first time. wbp.bz/trailbundya

  The Bundy Secrets: The hidden files of the manhunt to find and stop Ted Bundy, as well as the investigations into his depredations, gathered from official and unofficial sources from Washington to Florida, as well as contemporary interviews and author commentary to flesh out the details. A must-read for true crime students of Ted Bundy. wbp.bz/bundysecetsa

  More Great Reads From Kevin Sullivan and WildBlue Press

  VAMPIRE: The Richard Chase Murders is the tale of a diabolical, homicidal madman running amok, mutilating and murdering the unsuspecting residents in the quiet neighborhoods of Sacramento, CA. His diabolical and unrelenting desires, not just to kill his victims but to drink their blood, unleashed a terror within the city unlike anything the residents had ever known. wbp.bz/vampirea

  Kentucky Bloodbath: An excursion into the weird and the bizarre: from a medieval-esque murder in a small town museum to the jilted boyfriend who decided that his former girlfriend needed to die on her twenty-first birthday. Then there’s the demented son who returns home to live with his mother and stepfather, and one night in their beautiful mansion sitting atop a high bluff overlooking the Ohio River, slaughters them. Each case will keep you on the edge of your seat. wbp.bz/kba

  AVAILABLE FROM CHRISTOPHER JOSSART AND WILDBLUE PRESS!

  RAILROADED by CHRISTOPHER JOSSART

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  1.

  Stolen in Suffolk

  Three men in sharp suits briskly walked toward Sam Sommer’s car. Sam looked down at the D on his automatic transmission console inside his Chevy station wagon, grabbed the door handle with his left hand, and poised his right hand atop the horn. His vehicle slowly coasted with one foot on the brake. He wasn’t sure whether to squeal out, park and run, lay on the horn, or just keep coasting and jittering.

  For someone who made a living making decisions that affected dozens of people each day, Sam couldn’t decide what to do in a flash for his own good. His 150-pound furry backseat driver did a better job on demonstrating some damn decisiveness than he did. Sam figured the hell with indecision; it felt better to freeze and hope they would go away. He parked the car—stopping just inside a driveway from a well-travelled street. The unorthodox position of the vehicle appeared foreign to structured rows of parking stalls that filled the lot.

  One of the men shouted, “Sommer!” This was all business whomever these good ole’ boys were, and the unfolding encounter made Sam realize it included a one-sided agenda. One guy looked familiar from a recent civil, yet macho-style encounter he experienced with a member of Suffolk County law enforcement almost a week ago.

  Sam quickly caught a glimpse of an unmarked car parked on the other side of the lot near Walter Court, which runs next to Long Island’s busy Jericho Turnpike. The observation of the car parked away from everything else made Sam’s already sweaty predicament even more of a salty horror.

  He pulled into a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot adjacent to the freeway in Commack, New York, with his big St. Bernard dog. The 2073 Jericho Turnpike establishment opened in 1964 and was a favorite destination for a blossoming community. It was within blocks of Sam’s house. The donut shop still stands today near the long-running Mayfair Shopping Center.

  Sargent started barking wildly at the sight of oncoming strangers. Sam squinted out the window in an attempt to muster some last-second negotiation to slow the men’s collective pace. The way the men marched spelled trouble.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” Sam contended. Nothing but steps for an answer, now a few feet from his car.

  The pleasant distraction of sweet dough aroma in the air moments earlier was now history. It was replaced with the stench of something dirty going down around 8:10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 22, 1968.

  Sargent’s momentous fit temporarily distracted the three intruders from their pursuit. The hiccup in an imminent showdown of three-against-one (plus canine) gave Sam an attempt to slide across the seat and exit the passenger side. It was too late for man and best friend. One of the three men had already swung around that side of the car to guard the passenger door.

  The man who was shouting “Sommer” identified himself as Detective Thomas Gill with Suffolk County Homicide. The officer, a bit older than Sam, commanded him to join his men in going to the homicide division fourth precinct in nearby Smithtown.

  The guy that Sam believed he met days earlier was another detective, Thomas Mansel, who piggybacked Gill’s command. “You heard him, Sommer, let’s go.” Mansel was with the County’s Homicide Squad as well.

  Sam boldly said he wasn’t going anywhere until he learned why.

  “Let’s go, Sommer,” Gill said. He and another man opened the door before Sam could roll up the window and lock his vehicle. They clutched him by the shoulders.

  Two men yanked Sam out of his idling station wagon head first in waning daylight at Dunkin’ Donuts. Sam thought for a second that the orchestrated grab-and-go was a bad joke somehow tied to a call he received around dinner time to meet someone at the donut shop. He winced in pain from the deep grabs that latched into his sunburned skin. The men rolled Sam to his side on the concrete and cuffed him.

  “What the fuck?” cried the thirty-one-year-old family man and business pro in feeble resistance to a kidnapping. Sam’s five foot, eight inch frame fell prey to two taller kidnappers. “Stop!” A chorus line of pleas continued during the out-of-the-blue confrontation. While resisting he received a kick in the back of his knee from one of the detectives while being prone on his side for the wide open target. The men quickly dragged Sam across the parking lot toward the unmarked car.

  “All right, all right,” Sam yelped. Mansel and the other detective following Gill let go of Sam. They lifted him up and let him walk on his own toward their vehicle after a hard shove from Mansel. Sam resumed the journey to the police car voluntarily.

  It was still bright enough to notice a man being dragged against his will. Some teenagers had been hanging out in the store for quite some time. Less than a minute before the men left their car from across the lot, Sam entered the Dunkin’ Donuts property to meet another man for a meeting concerning one of his business associates, a family relative. The man had not yet arrived, but Sam arrived expecting to wait for him.

  Sam slowed his pace toward the car and glanced at the men, expressing concern for Sargent. The dog was left alone in a running car with the driver’s side door partially opened. A response came in the form of another shove forward. Sam looked back again toward his station wagon without breaking his stride to catch a glimpse of Sargent. The car bounced like a modern-day pimp mobile from Sargent’s display of protection toward his master.

  Within feet from the unmarked vehicle, Sam switched his cadence from a defensive tone to one of cooperation. “What’s this all about? Please, stop.”

  Gill opened the back seat door and the other men chucked Sam into the car. After avoiding a brush with his head against the far side door, Sam tried to roll on his back. He was instantly lifted up to a sitting position and buckled. While vehicles zoomed next to one of New York’s busiest thoroughf
ares, a group of men allegedly sworn to serve and protect were stealing a man’s freedom amidst the roaring engines.

  The door closed to the back seat while Sam realized there were no inside handles. His capturers were in a hurry. The car instantly hit the turnpike and in no time it merged with traffic.

  Sam was shaking too much to play eye games with Mansel and Gill, who were seated on each side of him. He just closed his eyes and prayed for the best—whatever that meant. The car quickly exited the turnpike and within a few blocks ended up parked in what seemed like a bumpy lot right next to a main road. That made Sam breathe a little better knowing he wasn’t going somewhere far—a self-fulfilling means of fabricating hope.

  The driver got out, and Sam asked Gill what this ordeal was about. Gill said he’d find out soon enough and told him to shut up. The driver came back and in less than five minutes the journey to purgatory resumed. No more freeway. Sam arrived in what appeared to be an alley by the narrowing of a street between two lit buildings. He then realized he was at the police station in Hauppauge, a suburb of Smithtown to the south.

  It was dusk when the three men placed Sam to his feet in the parking lot of the back entrance to the Suffolk County Fourth Precinct. The whole thing about being around cops suddenly didn’t feel right. Sam was supposed to find comfort at a police station; yet, he felt increasingly scared while the three men assertively escorted him toward the back entrance. Once inside, they led Sam down a long hallway to a room on the right.

  The average-sized room, about twelve by twelve, was filled with some office equipment, a stool, a couple of chairs, and a square table. It resembled an interrogation room but with a more office-like feel to it. The men immediately shoved Sam against the table and then dropped his fumbling body onto a hard wooden stool and removed his cuffs. They seemed to be setting a tone of play along or it’s gonna get physical. The three men convened with a fourth badge from the station outside the room while the door remained open. Sam mulled the connection of a few dots.

  How in the world does one go from hooking up with someone in a parking lot to finding a home in a Suffolk County police station in the snap of a finger?

  He tried to link learning about the sudden death of his business partner and relative, Irving Silver, to the current madness. Sam flew home last Wednesday, May 15, from Florida by himself while his family remained vacationing with both sets of in-laws. Sam had to deal with a dilemma Silver was having with Sommer’s businesses, in particular a man named Harold Goberman.

  Goberman was the one who called Sam around dinner time to meet at Dunkin’ Donuts regarding Silver’s death. Sam recently hired Goberman, who went with an alias of a Harold Masterson, to do some work at his deli in Commack, the Deli-Queen. His hiring was the result of a recommendation from Silver to help Goberman get reacclimated into society. He retained a vast criminal record and was out of prison on parole. Sam wanted to give the man another chance at life.

  Detective Mansel rather forcefully asked Sam to help Suffolk County police identify Silver’s body on the afternoon of Friday, May 17. Silver was apparently killed during the early morning on the same day. His body was found on Wheatley Road, a rather unfrequented rural artery off the Jericho Turnpike southeast of Commack.

  “You’re going to confess, Sommer, right now,” instructed Gill in the interrogation room. No identification given of the other men. No reading of any rights concerning a kidnapping called an arrest. The door slammed from the hallway and the same two men who nabbed him plus another stood behind Gill in the crowded room.

  “About what?” Sam inquired, still cuffed.

  The new man on the scene from the precinct grabbed Sam under his arms and lifted him off of the stool. Gill then pushed Sam head first into the wall and proceeded to shove him onto the floor. Still cuffed, Sam was then harshly seated and punched across the left eye by another officer. His sunburned skin absorbed the beating with needlelike pain.

  Another greeting with the concrete floor. Picked up again and placed on the stool, Gill got in Sam’s face.

  “Want a lawyer, Sommer, or you gonna fess up?”

  “For what?” Sam shouted.

  “Killing your business buddy,” Mansel shouted. “We know you wacked him with a lead pipe and then ran him over. Son of a bitch.”

  Stunned by what he heard, Sam offered a left-to-right head nod that suggested a nonverbal “No” in reply to the men’s accusations. Bewildered with the name Harold Goberman taking over his mind as the centerpiece part of a jigsaw puzzle, Sam started to describe his phone call to Gill tied to a meeting at Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “A Harold Goberman is behind this” … stars—a galaxy of pain. A thump on the head by an undetected detective from behind with a telephone book while Sam was held down on the stool blurred his vision. Another whack on the neck from the phone directory ensued in what seemed to be a one-sided conversation. The Goberman mention obviously set off the detectives.

  More pounds from the phone book behind Sam’s head continued until his ability to sit upright in the stool gave way to the hard floor. Sam laid with his hands over his head and shook enough to trip a Richter scale. His fear couldn’t muster any words.

  The persuasive techniques used in the basement of Suffolk County’s Homicide Unit didn’t stop. The men of the badge kicked and yelled at Sam while he curled up on the floor. Realizing there was no other choice but to possibly die, Sam begged to tell the officers about the Goberman phone call. They would have nothing to do with the Goberman thing.

  The four men huddled together as if it was fourth-and-goal on the one-yard line and Sam was on defense all by himself. Too pissed off to think about a lawyer, Sam wanted to fight the assholes head on. It was evident there was no more hope for textbook interrogation procedures; it was now all about survival—in a damn police station.

  Further beating might have killed Sam. Why didn’t they just kill him? That question is still debated today by people who know and love him. God’s grace allowed for his story to be told for the benefit of others in the name of justice, Sam offered in retrospect.

  “Think about what comes out of your mouth before we come back, Sommer,” asserted Gill. The men then left the smoke-filled whipping chamber to the hallway with the door still open. In a cloud of chaos sat a man who a couple of hours earlier left home to learn something to aid in the case of a loved one.

  The origination of Sam Sommer’s fateful trip to Dunkin’ Donuts came with risks and uncertainties in dealing with Goberman. The disgruntled Goberman set Sam up, or so it appeared.

  To this day, dear friends Phil and Susan Cirrone from Long Island remember that day more than fifty years later. Philly, as Sam coined the nickname of his close friend, detailed the circumstances leading up to the kidnapping and subsequent aftermath.

  A personal recount of horror:

  I got a call around 8:00 from Elaine Sommer to come over earlier than planned the evening of the twenty-second of May. We were going to leave shortly anyway to see Elaine’s parents visiting from Florida, but Elaine said it was important. We heard earlier in the week that a family member died unexpectedly.

  Susan and I are the type of friends to Sammy and Elaine that wouldn’t question them in a time of need. We got a babysitter in light of the urgent development and headed to their house.

  Upon arrival, Elaine greeted us by the front door. We could tell something was up. She told us that Sam didn’t return yet from a meeting at Dunkin’ Donuts near the freeway. Elaine didn’t have time to go into detail. All she said was that Sam had been involved in trying to find out what happened to her uncle, Irving Silver. She was beside herself; Susan and I were barely inside the door.

  Sam was going to meet some guy who had information about Silver at a donut shop. She said Sam drove the station wagon to Dunkin’ Donuts with their dog and that something felt wrong.

  We didn’t know Irving Silver, but El
aine quickly filled us in about his connection to her family and that he was dead. Regardless, friends are friends, and there was no need to pry at the moment about what happened to him. Shocked and saddened by the news, we kept listening. Her parents hugged us and just remained silent the whole time.

  Elaine asked me to kindly take her to check on Sammy at Dunkin’ Donuts. Of course Susan and I agreed, but first I told Elaine to call the store. She did so and learned Sam wasn’t inside the establishment. We then left, determined to find out where he was. Her parents remained at the house for the kids.

  The three of us arrived at a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts off the turnpike and immediately saw the Sommer’s vehicle barely inside the lot from the road. We cautiously circled the car to get a pulse on the situation and noticed their dog going berserk in the back seat.

  Creepy shit, yet we remained calm for a horrified Elaine. The lot was well lit and a couple of cars were parked near the store’s entrance. Elaine jumped out of our car and yelled to us that Sam’s vehicle was still running. We could see, too, that the driver’s side door wasn’t closed all the way either.

  Unquestionably, this was a spine-chilling scene. The dog increased its barking likely from recognizing Elaine. Susan and I both hesitated to go near the car. We advised Elaine not to touch anything and told her that we were going inside the donut shop to see if anyone knew anything. Susan and I sped to the entrance of the donut shop and ran inside for answers.