by Kelly, Kevin
But he couldn’t live that way for long.
Desperate, Dempsey visited a Canadian cemetery and found the grave of a baby who’d died in 1953 at the age of eleven months. He then visited a local library, looked up the baby’s obituary, and discovered which parish had performed the child’s baptism: Saint Mary of the Angels. He then filed for a new birth certificate, which allowed him to apply for a driver’s license, which in turn made him eligible for legitimate employment in Canada.
In this way, Dempsey began creating a new life for himself and, for the next nine years, he worked as a successful real estate agent. He even fell in love with a woman named Sylvia Vaughan and, after seven years, became engaged to her—all under the name of Ronald Mior. Dempsey knew he had only one chance to start a new life, and that required him leaving Boston and the murder behind him.
Turning on the “good” Dempsey was easy for him. He could be kind, funny, and very generous with both his time and money. It was easy to like Dempsey―this guy with the thick, square glasses and his seemingly non-threatening personality.
But that didn’t mean Dempsey’s murder case was filed away and vanished in some back room filing cabinet at Police headquarters. After the Boston Police Department’s thorough investigation and tireless search for Dempsey in the Boston area, the consensus among the investigative team was that Dempsey had skipped town and was on the run. After three years and no leads, Dempsey’s case was transferred to the “cold case” files.
State trooper Frank Matthews got a lucky break when he was invited to work on the Massachusetts State Police’s Violent Fugitive Arrest Squad (VFAS). The VFAS worked closely with the Boston PD on its cold cases.
It would be by chance that Frank and I would meet. It was the result of the typical “what a small world it is” situation. My former boss’s son purchased a home next to a good friend of Frank and, because a friend of the friend had obtained a preliminary copy of this book, they found themselves discussing Dempsey. Two weeks later, Frank and I were talking on the phone, and instantly I was excited to meet the guy. To “talk Dempsey,” Frank and I met in September of 2015 on the Mass Pike at a pull-over service station in Westborough.
Over the next four hours, we looked at each other in disbelief as one connection after another was established.
“Frank, where did your dad grow up?”
“He moved to the Old Colony projects in Southie in 1960, and I was born there.”
“You’re kidding. That’s where my dad grew up as well.”
“What did your dad do for living?”
“He was a State Police captain.”
“My dad was a Boston cop―43 years of service.”
“Frank,” I said, “my father thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he moved out of the Southie projects and purchased his home in Hyde Park in 1953. He couldn’t get over the fact that he had a front lawn and a back yard, though both were tiny.”
“Kev, when we were kids and in the family car getting ready to head home after a night out, my father would turn to my mother and say: “Hon, time to head back to the castle.”
“I have a feeling my dad and your dad would have been great friends! Where did you attend high school?”
“I went to CM and played football for the legendary Coach O’Connor.”
“Stop it! No way!”
“What? Why? What school did you go to?”
“Bosco.”
“Don’t tell me you were on that ’74 team?”
“I was. The ’74 game against CM, to this day, is the number one athletic highlight of my high school career and the greatest football game in Bosco’s history. I will say, however, that Coach O’Connor was one of the most respected coaches in the Boston area. Nothing but class. Great coach!”
“Kev, he was all that and more.”
“Frank, tell me how special was it to work at the same place as your dad?
“You don’t know the half of it. My older brother Stevie was on the force as well. I got on the force right after high school at the young age of 19. Stevie and I are only two years apart. Not only are we close, but I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for him, personally and professionally. He was an exceptional investigator. We both recently retired from the State Police as lieutenant colonels. For my dad, it was a dream come true. He loved being a ‘Statee.’ It was his whole life, but having his two boys on the force was an indescribable joy for him. I learned more from my dad and brother about the force, investigation work, life, being a husband, being a parent, and how to treat others than from anyone else.”
“So tell me, how did you get involved with the Dempsey case?”
“I picked up the file in 1984. By that time, there were all types of rumors going around about Dempsey’s whereabouts. We were hearing that he was hiding in Ireland. We also heard he’d often been in and out of Boston. Another rumor had Dempsey sneaking in and out of Boston dressed as a woman, which would have been something to see―he was 5’-7”, weighed over two hundred pounds, and was built like a fire hydrant.”
“I’m curious: Where do you even begin to investigate after a case has gone cold for so many years?”
“Actually, there’s quite a bit we can do. First, we do good ole, tried and true, police work. My job is not to see if Boston PD missed something. We have a great relationship with the Boston PD, and we’re not going to rock the boat. My job is to simply grab the file and start from scratch. We start with Dempsey’s inner circle and interview everyone. I met with friends and relatives, fellow coaches, childhood friends, peers from work. I also met with Dempsey’s mother, but I walked gently with her. She’d already been through enough and my few conversations with her were always short and respectful. I eventually stopped visiting her.
“Today, technology is frequently a blessing to criminal investigators. You can’t believe how many criminals use social media. They use an alias or delete what they write or post, but the truth is, there’s no such thing as a fully deleted message or posting. But back in the mid-80s, we were all using landline phones and postal mail to connect with one another.
“We asked the Post Office’s Mail Cover unit to monitor mail with the people Dempsey was most close to. Mail coming in from overseas, out of state, or from over the border would be pulled. Once a week, we would collect any pulled mail to see if it was coming from Dempsey.
“Court orders to allow phone taps are extremely difficult to obtain. It’s not like in the movies where tapping someone’s phone is approved in hours. In real life, your liberty rights are fully protected under the law, and unless we have evidence that a phone is being used in a criminal enterprise, a wiretap is impossible to obtain. However, it doesn’t mean we couldn’t pull phone records. We had legal access to all phone records, and if Dempsey made a call from out of state or outside the country, we would have tracked him down. We were convinced that Dempsey would slip up. Truth be told, most criminals eventually do.
“But year after year went by and we had nothing. I even started to believe that perhaps he was indeed hiding out in Ireland. Dempsey became an obsession to me. As I continued with my career and worked on some high profile cases, Dempsey never left me. My mother, who had a tremendous sense of humor, would send me a Christmas card each year, and each one would read something like this:
Dear Frank,
Merry Christmas! Enjoying my time in Paris! Hope to see you soon!
―Jack Dempsey
“Your mother sounds like a gem! Frank, let me ask you this: What drove you not to give up on the case?”
“Kev, in the fugitive unit, there’s a sign for everyone to see, It says: ‘We work for God.’”
“I don’t get it. What does that mean?”
“It means we work for those who no longer can work for themselves. It’s our commitment to the victim and to the victim’s family never to quit on a case.
In the Dempsey case, our last best hope arrived when we were approached by ‘America’s Most Wanted.’ We knew they had a strong track record identifying criminals, what with millions of viewers exposed to the original show and then a re-run of the show. For them, we rented a bar in Boston to reenact the crime. There, and on the televised episode, they did a terrific job portraying the crime accurately. We waited, and fourteen months later, all our (and their) hard work paid off!”
One fateful evening in December of 1990, while relaxing with a group of friends, an episode of America’s Most Wanted came on. To the surprise of the group and to the shock of Dempsey, he was one of the evening’s featured fugitives.
But even this wasn’t enough to overturn Dempsey’s new life, for he’d inspired the same type of loyalty in his new friends and family as he’d always managed to inspire in his friends and students back in Boston. However, a few weeks after the show aired, the police conducted a large drug bust that involved a member of Dempsey’s social group—a member who’d seen the broadcast, who knew Dempsey’s secret, and whose girlfriend ultimately turned in Dempsey in exchange for a lesser charge for her boyfriend.
On February 28, 1992, Sid Millin was in his eighth year as a detective for the Hamilton-Wentworth police department in Ontario, Canada. That day, Millin drove up to South Hamilton and knocked on an apartment door.
“Excuse me, I’m Detective Millin from the Hamilton-Wentworth Police. I’d like to ask you for your I.D. please.”
Wordlessly, Dempsey produced his driver’s license.
“Any additional I.D.? How about a birth certificate?”
Without the slightest hesitation, Dempsey opened his briefcase and, from its upper left-hand pocket, pulled out “his” birth certificate.
“I was shocked,” said Millin. “I have never in my life seen anyone who could put their finger on their birth certificate so quickly. It was my first inkling that maybe Dempsey was not who he said he was.”
“Mr. Mior, have you ever been to America?”
“No, I’m a Canadian.”
“Where were you born?”
Dempsey wasn’t giving up. “Toronto,” he said calmly.
Millin must’ve sensed Dempsey’s toughness, so he cut to the chase: “Are you Clyde Dempsey?”
“No, I’m Ronald Mior. I’m Canadian. I’ve never been to America.”
“We think you’re Clyde Dempsey. We’d like to take your fingerprints.”
Maintaining his claim of innocence as well as his identity as Mior, Dempsey willingly complied with the fingerprint request. After a few hours, the police came back into Dempsey’s room and informed him that the prints were a match. The jig was up. Dempsey had gone to the police station willingly. He knew that the game was over and signed voluntary deportation papers. On March 30, 1992, Dempsey found himself en route back to Boston.
Before Dempsey’s trial, Dempsey’s lawyer informed the judge that Edward White’s father had verbally threatened to shoot Dempsey in the courtroom. The lawyer was not only concerned for Dempsey’s safety, but for his own as well. He didn’t want to be sitting too close to Dempsey if White’s father was going to be seeking revenge.
Acknowledging the severity of the threat, the judge agreed that, even though people would already be passing through a metal detector on the first floor, everyone entering the courtroom would have to submit to a second search. They also agreed to meet with White’s father to make him aware that the court knew of his threat.
After all of the prosecution witnesses completed their testimonies, Dempsey took the stand in his own defense—a rarity in murder cases.
Dempsey was first asked questions aimed at establishing all of his most basic information: when he was born, where he was raised, the level of education he’d achieved, and what he did for work, including his time at Don Bosco.
The state’s prosecutor was Phyllis Broker. And she was tough.
“Mr. Dempsey, you told the Canadian officials your name was Ronald Angelo Mior. Is that right?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That was a lie, right?”
“At the time it was, yes.”
“It is not true today, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“You took the identity of an eleven-month-old child who had died,” Broker continued, unrelenting. “Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And that, too, was a lie. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Now, in July of ’81, did you carry a gun?”
“I carried it from time to time,” Dempsey conceded. “For my bar-tending duties.”
“And you carried it loaded?” she said.
“Yes, I did.”
“Fully loaded?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you have a license to carry a gun in 1981?”
“No, I didn’t,” Dempsey admitted.
“And you know it is illegal to carry a gun without a license?”
“Yes.”
“How many drinks did you have that evening?”
“Several.”
“What were you drinking?”
“White Russians.”
“Top shelf?”
“Yeah.”
“You weren’t drunk?”
“Well,” Dempsey said, “let’s say I had a glow on.”
Dempsey had gambled by putting himself on the stand, but he’d had to. There was no one to testify in his defense. However, Dempsey still had his personality and charisma on his side, a powerful and potentially persuasive combination. People took to Dempsey quickly; he could be charming, funny, likable, and very caring.
But Broker wouldn’t bite.
“You had no difficulty leaving the bar, did you?”
“No, I did not.”
“And you had no difficulty shooting Mr. White?”
“I was saving my life, Ms. Broker,” he said, agitated, sitting up straighter and crossing his arms defensively.
“You had no trouble shooting him, did you?”
“I tried to stop, but…”
“Did you have trouble shooting him, sir?”
“I was in fear of my life, Ms. Broker,” he said, leaning forward, refusing to back down.
“Did you have any trouble shooting him?”
“I fired the gun, and I saved my life,” he said, looking Broker straight in the eye.
“In fact, when you shot and killed Edward White, you had to take the gun from your right hip where you carried it. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Fully loaded, right?”
“Correct.”
“You first aimed the gun between his feet. Is that correct?”
“I fired a warning shot between his feet.”
“You aimed between his feet?”
“To tell him to get away from me.”
“Did you aim at him?”
“After he threatened to cut my throat, I put one [bullet] between his legs and told him to get away from me. Yes,” Dempsey said, raising up both of his hands as if to say, I had no other option.
The dialogue between Dempsey and Broker demonstrated a clear game of intellectual chess, with Dempsey fully aware of the road Broker was trying to take him down. She wanted to convince the jury that Dempsey was deliberate in his thinking and decision-making, while Dempsey wanted them to believe that his response had been instinctive, driven by fear and a need to survive.
But despite Dempsey’s testimony, each prosecution witness had painted a picture of White as non-aggressive the night of the killing. Bartenders, bouncers, and waitresses alike testified that White had been a customer there for six months and that he’d never created a problem at McNasty’s.
Broker broke down the case frame by frame, recreating every s
econd of Dempsey’s exchange with White. She brought Dempsey back to each shot he fired; what was he thinking, what was his intent, why didn’t he seek help, why wasn’t there an alternative way to deal with White? Most importantly, however, she exposed Dempsey as a liar, as a man who cared for no one but himself.
“After July of ’81, did you ever go home again?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“I never went back,” Dempsey said, growing irritated again.
“Have you ever had any contact with your mother since July 1st of 1981?”
“I didn’t want her to be harassed by the police any more than she has been. No, I did not.”
“Is your answer no?”
“No.”
“You never called her?”
“No,” Dempsey said, crossing his arms as he sat back in his seat, looking intently at Broker. Dempsey could handle any question pertaining to him, but when Broker brought up his mother, she was coming close to a line that no one would’ve ever crossed with Dempsey on the street. I thought back to our last evening together, when he’d at last opened up to me about his past and about the promise he’d made to his mother.
After my father’s death, I made a commitment to take care of my mother . . . I promised never to leave her.
Broker paused briefly, then went on to expose Dempsey’s life on the run, his stealing the identity of a dead child to become a successful businessman, a man who’d lived safely and comfortably in Canada.
“You knew there was a warrant out for you, did you not?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And that is why you fled to Canada, is it not?”
“Absolutely.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“From my friend, Mr. Sampson.”