Just before 11.00pm, an attractive sixteen-year-old La Salle girl was walking along a road that threaded through a cluster of houses, when she noticed a car creeping slowly past her. She had noted the vehicle several times beforehand, and she was now becoming frightened for her safety.
Without warning, the teenager was suddenly grabbed from behind and a handkerchief was stuffed into her mouth. She was dragged into nearby woods where the attacker wrapped a belt around her neck and asked her for her money. She gave him the 22 cents she had and, when he loosened his belt, she screamed. She was now moments from a terrifying rape when salvation arrived. A woman living nearby had just switched off her television, with the intention of going to bed when she heard a noise that made her blood chill. Opening the kitchen window, she heard a gurgling sound and rustling in nearby bushes, so she called the police. Luck was on the teenager’s side, even more so because a patrol car was only 100 yards away, and it arrived on the scene in a flash. When Ross saw the beams of police Mag-Lites illuminating the woods, he hurried back to his car but, this time his luck deserted him.
Sergeant Lewis of the La Salle Police explained how Ross got himself arrested: ‘What happened is, when we took the girl home, Ross had his car parked on the same street where she lived on. And, on the way home, she saw the car, and said, “That’s the car, that’s the car.” And, so pretty soon we were looking at the car, and he comes up and says, “What’s the problem?”’
After Michael’s arrest, for ‘unlawful restraint’, Sergeant Lewis said that he was puzzled by the contradiction between Ross’s demeanour and what he had done:
He was real humble. He wouldn’t look you in the eyes when you talked to him. He was a very educated and a talented kid. He didn’t appear to be the kind of guy who would go out to other towns and do this kind of stuff. He more or less kept his mouth shut, and he was subdued and spiritless when we took him in.
The downside of the La Salle attack was that Ross was fined $500 after pleading guilty and, on Tuesday, 8 October, he was fired from his job. On the upside, and with no alternative, he returned to Brooklyn where he attempted reconciliation with Connie. Indeed, he was very pleased when she invited him to spend Christmas with her at her parents’ home in Vermont. He was even more delighted that they had also been invited to share the New Year with his mother in Brooklyn.
Unfortunately, the visit to Mrs Ross was an unmitigated disaster. His mother couldn’t stand the sight of such a beautiful young woman in her house, and Mike was very upset by the fact that his father had been reduced to living in a rundown shed nearby. The hoped-for rekindling of his relationship with Connie failed, for the second time, and she took off for Ithaca, New York, to visit a ‘friend’, and this proved to be the catalyst that precipitated Ross into rape and murder again.
* * *
Brunette, seventeen-year-old Tammy Lee Williams lived with her family in an expansive property on Prince Hill Road, Brooklyn, which was only a mile or so from the Rosses’ egg farm. That Christmas, among the presents she received from her parents, was a pocketbook. A free-spirited young woman, who had quit high school, she came and went more or less as she pleased, and it wasn’t unusual for her to walk east along Route 6, to visit her boyfriend who lived in Danielson, about three miles away.
At 10.15am, on Monday, 4 January 1982, Tammy left her boyfriend’s apartment and started to walk home, after first promising him that she would telephone him to let him know that she had arrived safely. She did not fulfil this promise because she encountered Michael Ross on her journey. He was surprised to see the young woman walking along a busy road on such a bitterly cold day. Seizing the moment, which distinguishes the opportunist serial killer, he parked his car and ran up to Tammy offering her a lift. When she declined, he dragged her screaming and struggling into nearby woods, where he forced her to strip and get to her knees. He raped and strangled her before hiding the body, under a pile of rocks, in a swamp. He said it took him all of eight minutes to throttle her to death, because he kept getting cramp in his hands. Each time this happened, he had to release his grip and massage his fingers before finally throttling the life out of her.
Tammy’s father reported his daughter as missing the next day and, on 6 January, a motorist found Tammy’s pocketbook, lying along Route 6, at the junction of Brickyard Road, and exactly one mile from Tammy’s home. He explained that he had thrown the item out of the car before arriving at his mother’s place shortly after the murder.
On Saturday, 30 June 1984, Ross guided police officers to the decomposed corpse of Tammy Williams, and said later that she had recognised him and that she pretended to enjoy the violent rape to avoid being killed. He also said that he returned to the corpse several times, during the weeks following the murder, in order to masturbate over the body.
During January and February, 1982, Ross’s thoughts continually returned to Connie. Acting on impulse, he decided to drive to Ithaca to visit her, without prior warning of his intentions. On arrival, he found Connie in bed with another man. He stormed out in a rage and headed south in search of a victim to kill.
May Day fell on a Monday in 1982 and Paula Perrera left Valley Central High School early because she didn’t feel well. With no money for a bus fare, she started hitchhiking, and she was last seen alive near Montgomery Auto Shop, on Route 211, during the early afternoon. Paula’s mother, Christine Canavan, reported her sixteen-year-old daughter as missing to the Crystal Run Police later than day.
Those in Orange County, New York, who knew Paula couldn’t help but like her. She had short, blonde hair, was a bubbly, confident, carefree girl who performed well in school, enjoyed the company of her tight-knit group of friends as much as a good book and was active in the church youth group. According to a November 2000 article in The Times Herald-Record by Oliver Mackson, Paula ‘never complained’ even though she was known to have had an unhappy home life.
Despite her normally cheerful demeanor, Paula’s problems at home peaked in 1981 leading to her unsuccessful attempt at suicide by overdosing on pills. From that moment on, while on the bus en route to school the kids mockingly called Paula ‘Tylenol’ but she refused to let the comments get to her. On many occasions she chose to bypass the school bus altogether and instead hitchhiked to classes, and even though Paula’s boyfriend begged her not to hitchhike because of the inherent dangers, she ignored his pleas claiming that ‘Only nice people pick me up.’
Although Ross had always been the prime suspect in Paula’s killing, there had never been enough evidence available to charge him with her murder, a situation exacerbated by the fact that Ross point-blank refused to be interviewed by police investigators while he was on Death Row. This changed when Ross was subsequently interviewed by the author, on camera, for a TV documentary and the chapter in this book. Confronted by me with police documents, he revealed information that only Paula’s killer would know. He made a full and frank confession, and the case is now classified as solved.
He said that he had seen her walking along Route 211, and had offered her a ride home. At a spot near a marshy wooded area, and close to a rest stop, he pulled over and raped his victim before strangling her. He hid her body near a low stone wall, and close to a large willow tree, and then drove home. Asked during the interview what Paula had been wearing, he said that he could not recall the details and tossed the documents to the floor, saying, ‘Well, it’s just another murder, isn’t it?’
* * *
Ross started work at Croton Egg Farms on Friday, 5 March 1982. The world’s largest poultry operation, based in the small town of Croton, north-east of Columbus, Ohio, hired him as a co-supervisor for thirty employees. He was also responsible for fourteen hen houses and over one million birds.
A fellow supervisor, Donald Harvey, remembered Ross, saying:
He was a disaster in the job, and we were planning to fire the guy pretty soon. He was very bossy. And he just didn’t relate to you in giving an order. He just didn’t know how to come acr
oss. He wanted everyone to know that his education was higher then theirs and they were hourly workers and high school drop outs.
On Sunday, 25 April 1982, Ross spotted Susan Aldrich in a laundromat in Johnstown, a small town six miles south of Croton, and followed her home. She was completely unaware that she was being stalked; he was completely unaware that she was an off-duty police officer. He knocked on her door and told her that his car had broken down and asked if he could use her telephone. As soon as Susan turned her back, he reached over her shoulder, cupped his hand over her mouth to prevent her screaming, and forced her to the floor. She struggled and managed to shout out, saying that her husband was a policeman, and that he would be home at any minute. After giving her a severe beating, Ross ran back to his car, ripped a parking ticket from the windscreen and drove off.
Ross’s car had been parked close to the laundromat, and it was there that he got the ticket. Police also found a witness who saw him running from the direction of Susan’s home towards his vehicle, so they put two and two together and traced the owner through the Vehicle Licensing Office. In an act of poetic justice, it was Susan’s husband who arrested her attacker.
Ross was sacked from Croton Egg Farms on 3 May, and bailed to his mother’s home before sentencing. While there, he visited a psychiatrist at the Learning Clinic at 473 Pomfret Road, Brooklyn. He was trying to win a little sympathy from the doctor, who might have influence with the Ohio court.
The following month was another disaster for Michael Ross, for, although he had returned a number of photographs to Connie, she still had his engagement ring and he wanted it back. However, the day before he turned up to collect it, she set off across country to marry her new boyfriend. When Ross learned of this, he went crazy with anger. But, if that slap across the face was hard to take, a family development enraged him even further.
Financially, his mother’s divorce had paid off handsomely. When Patricia flaunted her new lover before speeding off in her flashy new Cadillac, it was too much for Michael. These emotional setbacks coming so close together were sufficient to set him off on the murder trail again.
* * *
The last time anyone could recollect seeing 23-year-old Debra Smith Taylor alive was around midnight on Tuesday, 15 June 1982. The vivacious, dark-haired brunette was driving home with her husband when their car ran out of fuel on Highway 6, near Hampton, just 6.5 miles east of Mrs Ross’s home. A State Trooper came across the stationary car and drove the couple to a service station in Danielson, where the boyfriend of one of Ross’s earlier victims, Tammy Williams, had lived. The Trooper recalled that the Taylors were arguing, and that Debra was so annoyed that she said that she would find her own way home. After leaving her husband to his own devices, she walked across Danielson Town Green, to the bandstand, where she gratefully accepted the offer of a ride home from a bespectacled young man who had walked up and spoken to her.
Two hunters discovered Debra’s skeleton on Saturday, 30 October, in one of the largest tracts of woodland east of Route 169, in Canterbury, ten miles south of Danielson. The body was so decomposed that identification was only possible by means of dental records and items of jewellery.
During the first week of August 1982, Ross returned to Ohio for sentencing over the assault he had committed four months previously. The psychiatrist who had examined him earlier said that Mike was an ‘over-achiever’, and had ‘too much spare time on his hands’. In his report, the psychiatrist also suggested that he should find a hobby, such as learning how to fly an aeroplane. The judge nevertheless packed Ross off to the Licking County Jail, Newark, where he would serve a six-month jail term for the attack on Susan Aldrich. He was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Daniel Ross collected his son from prison on Wednesday, 22 December, drove him back to Connecticut, where he offered him a place to stay.
Michael Ross had misrepresented when he applied for work with Croton Egg Farms by declaring that he had never been in trouble with the police, and he did exactly the same thing again in May 1983, when he applied for a job with the Prudential Insurance Company of America. He would become one of the 40 agents selling health, life, automotive, property, casualty insurance and securities, from the company’s office, at 115 Lafayette Street, Norwich. With steady money in his pocket, Ross rented a ground-floor apartment at 58 North Main Street, in Jewett City, some nine miles south-east of Norwich. He settled in, and his former landlady remembers him as a ‘decent, smart and extremely affable young man’, whom she enjoyed having around her large, Victorian-style, white-painted house.
Ross’s female work colleagues also took an immediate liking to him. They thought of him as, ‘kinda sweet, and inexperienced in romance’. He dated when the opportunity arose, and when he met recently divorced Debbie Wallace, while out canvassing for business, he reasoned that his past problems were well behind him.
During this relationship, Ross said that he spent a great deal of time masturbating, fantasising and stalking women. Some he followed at random. With others he set out to learn their daily schedules. He slipped into apartments, just to watch women undress and get into bed. On one of these occasions, he raped a 21-year-old Plainfield woman called Vivian Dobson, but allowed her to run away. In later years, the compassionate and devoutly Christian Vivian became a vocal opponent of the death penalty in an effort to save his life – despite a 22-year ordeal of psychiatric wards, medical bills, and emotional trauma following her rape. However, the Plainfield police rejected the possibility that Ross had been Vivian Dobson’s rapist. They did not press charges and Ross made no confession.
Although he was often out until all hours of the morning, Debbie Wallace was totally ignorant of Michael’s perverted behaviour. She believed that he would make a good father for her three children; however, like Connie, Debbie was stubborn, independent and strong-willed. She was a spitfire, full of energy, and sex with Mike was excellent. Their relationship was volatile, too, and their frequent arguments often ended in physical violence. During Thanksgiving 1983, the couple had a furious fight over dinner arrangements.
From the outset, Patricia Ross had never liked Connie, and she didn’t approve of Debbie either, so she invited her son for a meal and refused to extend the invitation to Debbie. Ross did not know what to do. He felt torn between the two women, so he and Debbie fought and the outcome was that he spent the holiday alone.
Around the time Ross was learning the insurance business, nineteen-year-old Robin Dawn Stavinsky was moving from Columbia to Norwich, where the attractive blonde hoped to find a job that paid enough to allow her to go to college.
In August 1983, she had taken up employment as a switchboard operator at Direct Part Marketing Enterprises (DPM), a company that specialised in bar code technology. At 9.30pm on Wednesday, 16 November 1982, she disappeared after apparently arguing with her boss. Although it was cold and dark, Robin refused a ride from a workmate and, in what proved to be a fatal mistake, decided to walk to her boyfriend’s house.
That evening, Ross was driving along Route 52 between New London and Norwich, when he saw Robin storming along the roadside. He stopped, climbed out of his car and approached her with the offer of a lift. When she rebuffed him, he became angry and dragged her struggling into a patch of dense woodland just a few hundred yards from the office of the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad. Ross had started to strangle Robin as soon as he grabbed her, and by the time he was ready to rape the young woman, she was barely conscious. Ross recalled that by now he was no longer excited by the idea of sex, and his satisfaction came about only from the act of killing, and by reliving the moment, occasionally driving by the murder scene and masturbating, until the body was discovered eight days later.
A jogger, running through the grounds of the Uncas-on-Thames Hospital in Norwich, found the partially clothed corpse of Robin Stavinsky under a pile of leaves. Police retrieved the remainder of the dead woman’s clothing from the Thames River, after Michael’s arrest.
The brutal murde
r of Robin Stavinsky was to prove a dreadful watershed in Ross’s killing career. Previously, he had murdered out of the fear of recognition if his victims survived. However, he had always hoped that one day he would achieve his ultimate sexual thrill: that of ejaculation as his victim’s death supervened. So far, the murders had provided him with only part-realisation of this fantasy. The overwhelming emotions, topped up with feelings of power, domination and the act of murder were there, but he reasoned that Robin Stavinsky had short-changed him. She had provided him with none of the sickening criteria because she had collapsed limp and helpless as he dragged her into the scrub. Nevertheless, he strangled her and raped her after death. He told me later, ‘I was surprised, ya know. It was a pretty good thrill, but not the best.’
* * *
Two schoolchildren, both fourteen, and from Griswold, disappeared in eastern Connecticut on Easter Sunday 1984. Leslie Shelley and April Brunais, inseparable friends and neighbours, had decided to walk into Jewett City, 2.6 miles from where they lived. For the girls, it would have taken them around an hour to walk this distance, with stops and starts, at best. Both girls were aware that their parents would not have permitted them to walk back during the hours of darkness, so each said that the other’s parents had agreed to drive them home. It was a childish deception that would cost them their innocent lives.
As darkness fell, the girls phoned their parents; both were ordered to walk back as punishment. At 10.30pm, when neither girl had returned, their parents called the police who listed the kids as ‘runaways’.
The exact time Ross stopped and offered the girls a lift is unknown. It is known, however, that April, who was the more assertive of the two, climbed into the front passenger seat, while the petite and fragile Leslie sat behind. Both were understandably startled when Ross drove right past the end of their street, and despite their protests that he had missed their turning, he wouldn’t stop. April pulled out a small pocket knife with which to threaten their abductor, but Ross easily disarmed her. Driving east out on Highway 165, he headed for Voluntown, and nearby Beach Pond, a vast expanse of water holding back the Pachaus River, which separates the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Dead Men Talking Page 21