After the nine-minute drive, and parking up at a still undetermined location, Ross tore off April’s jeans, cutting them into strips which he used to bind his victims’ hand and feet. He shut Leslie into the truck of his car and then dragged April a few yards and forced her to her knees. There can be no doubt that the terrified Leslie overheard her friend arguing with Ross. April put up a spirited fight for her life before he raped her and strangled her to death.
Ross now turned his attention to Leslie. He said that the girl made a great impact on him:
She [Leslie Shelley] was delicate with wispy blonde hair. She was calm as I talked to her in the car. I told her that I didn’t want to kill her, and she cried when she found out that her friend was already dead. Yes, I suppose she started shaking and appeared resigned to her fate when I rolled her over. This is the murder that bothers me. I can’t remember how I strangled her, but her death was the most real and hardest to deny. With the others, it was like someone else did it, and I watched from afar through a fog of unreality. This was real but somehow not real. It was fantasy but not really fantasy. Her death? Leslie? It wasn’t someone else and for the first time I saw it was me. I watched myself do those things and I couldn’t stop. It was like an invisible barrier between us. I didn’t want to kill her.
At this point during his interview with me, Ross showed the first signs of stress and remorse. He stopped talking, lowered his head, and sucked in a lungful of stale prison air. His three burly prison guards almost stopped breathing. When he resumed his sickening account of the murder of Leslie Shelley, there were tears in his eyes – maybe crocodile tears.
I couldn’t do anything but watch as I murdered her, and you want to know something outrageous? Well, I cried afterwards. You know something else? Well, ah, I wanted to have sex with her straight after I raped and killed April, but I couldn’t get it up. So, I had to sit back with Leslie for an hour, just talkin’ and stuff. Then, because she started crying, saying that she would be in trouble for being late home, I had to kill her. But, I anally raped her, after death, to release the tension. You see, nobody has been told this before.
You know, they call me a serial killer, right? Well, I’ve only killed eight women. Big deal! There are a lot more guys you could meet and they’ve killed dozens more than me. An’ in that context, I’m a nice guy. I’m such a nice guy really.
With that, Ross burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, before explaining that he had dumped the bodies of April and Leslie at another location near Beach Pond, and over the state line into Rhode Island, occasionally revisiting the site to masturbate over their remains. ‘I’d just sit there, just to look at their decomposing bodies. Like my childhood fantasies, they were there for me and they gave me pleasure when I needed it.’
Ross took police to the bodies of April Brunais and Leslie Shelley shortly after his arrest on Tuesday, 28 June 1984, although the precise location of the murder scene was never established. This was put down as an ‘oversight’ by the Connecticut State Police, and later proved in court enquiry to be a deliberate attempt by them to avoid a jurisdictional boundary dispute between Connecticut and Rhode Island – the latter now having to pay millions of dollars to foot the bill for the murder enquiry. The issue of moving bodies over state, or county lines, or from one law enforcement jurisdiction into another, is endemic throughout the United States, especially in the poorer counties where the cost of a murder enquiry and the subsequent trial can all but bankrupt a local authority.
The enquiry judge gave several officers from the Connecticut State Police a severe roasting; the implication being that they had actually shifted the two bodies over the state line, into Rhode Island, leaving the RI police to pick up the tab. But the question was, however: if the CST had moved the bodies, how was it that Michael Ross knew where they were in Rhode Island? Ross had the answer. The police had found the bodies, and, working a deal with Rhode Island law enforcement, that he would not face further charges in that state for their murders, he would say that the Rhode Island police had described the place where they lay.
It was an awful mess, one that would take this author weeks to figure out, and the real truth came from Ross in correspondence:
I thought it would be great fun to play games with the police. I murdered the girls in Connecticut, then I moved their bodies into Rhode Island. Actually, I did tell the Connecticut police where I killed the girls, and they went there and found several strips of Brunais’s jeans, which I used to bind the girls. That, with other stuff, proved where I murdered them. I said that I left them in Connecticut, an’ the Rhode Island police claimed that the Connecticut State Police moved the bodies, and this kinda fucked everyone up. I think it was very funny.
Michael was now nearing the end of his run; he was mentally out of control, and his work at the Prudential Insurance Company was suffering as a result. Faced with the prospect of dismissal, as he was failing to bring in new business, Mike was also coping with his turbulent relationship with Debbie Wallace which had taken a more active turn. Her father had died while she and Michael were on vacation and, after the funeral, on the return journey home, they had argued. A major rift followed and, once again, he felt alone and rejected.
* * *
For seventeen-year-old Wendy, the daughter of Roger and Cindy Baribeault, Wednesday, 13 June 1984 was the final day of examinations at Norwich Free University where she was a junior student. She was well liked by her fellow students and friends, who described her as ‘a caring and sensitive person who enjoyed life’. She liked going to the movies and hanging out at the beach. She loved music and would sit in jam sessions with a local band that played some of her favourite tunes. She had stopped at her parents’ home, in Lisbon, after studies; leaving a note to say that she was catching a bus back the 2.3 miles to Jewett City to visit a convenience store. It was a fine afternoon, so she decided to walk back and, at around 4.30pm, she was seen, by a passing motorist, walking along the fairly busy Route 12. But she was not alone, for other witnesses later came forward to say that she was being followed rapidly by a man on foot. He was about 6ft tall, white, clean-shaven, of medium build and had dark hair. Other witnesses saw this man get out of a blue, compact car with a rear window wiper, and they recalled that he walked briskly off in the direction of the young woman who answered Wendy’s description.
When Wendy failed to return home, Cindy reported her as missing the following day. Hundreds of police and local residents launched an immediate search of the area, and, two days later, her body was found by a fireman. The corpse was about 100 yards from the road – just a quarter of a mile from her home – in dense woods, and an attempt to hide the body in an ancient stone wall was evident. She had been raped and strangled.
Ross later told me that he had intended to go to work that day, but had cut himself while shaving and blood seeped on to the collar of his only clean shirt. After phoning in with the excuse that he was ill, he dressed himself in smart, casual clothes, and hung around his apartment, reading pornographic material and masturbating. At around 2.00pm, he went for a drive, and later on he saw Wendy walking along the road towards her home.
After swinging his car around and parking up at the entrance of a gravel track, he dashed across the road and asked Wendy if she would like to go to a barbecue that night. When she turned him down, Ross dragged her into a clearing in the woodland bordering the highway. Here, in a dappled, sunlit clearing, he rolled her over on to her stomach before strangling her. He said that he ejaculated almost immediately, so he throttled her again. She struggled and kicked, and her body twitched. Michael had cramp in his hands as he fought to strangle the life out of his victim. When he stopped to massage his hands, she heaved and squirmed under him until he re-applied his grip. Finally, a kick of her legs told him she was dead.
* * *
Known for disarming suspected criminals with his boyish smile and supportive ‘good-cop’ manner, Connecticut State Police Detective Mike Malchik has used his inves
tigative skills to crack even the toughest of homicide enquiries, including 40 or more which were considered ‘unsolvable’ by his colleagues. A legendary figure in Connecticut law enforcement, the fair-haired, blue-eyed cop often worked alone and unpaid on these jobs, such was his dedication to policing. The case of Wendy Baribeault was no exception.
The Ross investigation is obviously one of the high points of Mike Malchik’s career, and this becomes all too apparent when one visits his spacious, up scale home, set in lush, green grounds. Photos of him, with Ross, hang on the wall, and, despite the horrific nature of Ross’s crimes, Mike Malchik still refers to Ross as ‘Michael’.
Most US cops seem to love being in front of a camera, and Mike Malchik is no exception. Wearing a tight, white T-shirt, and stone-washed blue jeans and white running shoes, he accompanied me, and my film crew, to several of the most important locations in the Ross story. He explained that he had already formed solid links between the murders of Debra Smith Taylor and Tammy Williams, and when he placed Robin Stavinsky and Wendy Baribeault into the equation, he knew that he was hunting a sexual psychopathic serial killer who would not stop murdering until he was arrested and brought to justice.
Indeed, Mike Malchik’s experience in homicide cases was such that he didn’t need to consult the FBI for advice, but, to confirm his belief, he did speak to a colleague at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Quantico, Virginia. Malchik already knew what type of suspect he was looking for. ‘He would be a young, dark-haired Caucasian male in his later twenties or early thirties. He would be of the “white-collar” type, who worked in Norwich, yet lived further south, and this man would frequently travel along Route 12, between his place of work and his home.’ To Malchik, Griswold seemed a good bet for the suspect’s locus and now there was the extra bonus knowing that the man drove a blue, foreign make of car.
Using what Malchik calls ‘basic common sense’, he reasoned that whoever murdered Wendy who would want to flee the crime scene as quickly as possible, and he reasoned that his target was a local man. He telephoned the Vehicle Licensing Department and asked them for a print-out of all vehicles, and their owners, in the locality. For this service, the VLD charged the Connecticut State Police $12 per car, which, as it turned out, proved to be a cheap investigative tool. When the list rolled out of his teleprinter, Malchik started looking for a blue, foreign make of car. At number 27 on the list was a vehicle owned by one Michael Bruce Ross who lived in Jewett City.
Ross seemed intrigued when Malchik arrived on his doorstep on Thursday, 28 June, to question him. He invited the detective in for a cup of coffee and enjoyed the attention of the police. For his part, Mike Malchik actually felt that the personable Ross could not have been a serial killer. As he was about to leave to rejoin his colleague, Detective Fran Griffen, outside in their car, Malchik was asked a question. Ross wondered if such a murderer would be declared insane, and escape the electric chair, if he was convicted. It was such a pointed question that it prompted Malchik to return to Ross’s sitting room. As Keith Hunter Jesperson observes: ‘Ross must have been questioning his own sanity ever since he started his perversions. Now he wanted a professional’s opinion from a detective looking into one of his murders…not a very smart move.’
The sleuth knew that the description of a blue car didn’t exactly match that of Ross’s vehicle, which was parked outside. The cop was looking for a hatchback with rear wipers and, while Ross certainly had a blue Toyota, it was a sedan and had no rear wiper blade. After a few more minutes of general conversation, Malchik got up to leave, for the second time. He had only walked a few yards before a gut instinct prompted him to turn around and ask Ross a question of his own.
In the manner of Peter Falk in his role as Columbo, Malchik asked, ‘What were your movements on Wednesday, 13 June, the day Miss Baribeault went missing?’
Amazingly, thought Malchik, Ross immediately reeled off his movements for that day almost to the minute, with the exception of the hour encompassing 4.30pm. This was the time when the witnesses had seen Wendy walking along the road, with a man answering Ross’s description following her. The detective thought it remarkable that anyone could so rapidly recall his or her exact whereabouts, along with solid timings, two weeks after an event, without at least considerable thought, or reference to a well-kept diary, so he reckoned that 13 June must have been a special day for Ross. Malchik them asked him what he had been doing on the two days either side of this crucial date. Ross couldn’t remember a thing and the detective was stunned, for the implication was now obvious. Ross had tried to alibi himself for the day of the murder and in doing so had been too clever for his own good.
Malchik then asked his suspect to accompany him to the murder incident room, which had been set up in the nearby Lisbon Town Hall on Newent Road. Ross thought that a ride in an unmarked police car would be ‘fun’, so he changed into a white, short-sleeved shirt, and dark, lightweight slacks for the five-minute journey, the very same clothes that he had worn when he killed Wendy Baribeault.
Once seated in the police interview room, Ross was soon rambling about his life to the amiable cop. By now, Malchik had learned about Ross’s criminal history, and he was privately convinced that he had a serial killer sitting in front of him. But in the bustling confines of the command post, obtaining a full confession was another matter entirely. At one point, just as Ross was about to make some serious admissions, a cleaner burst into the room and started to mop the floor. This unexpected intrusion broke the spell and Malchik had to begin coaxing his suspect again.
Suddenly, Ross asked: ‘Mike, do you think I killed Wendy?’
Malchik said that he believed so, and with that, Ross admitted eleven sexual assaults and six murders.
Recalling that first meeting, during a subsequent prison interview, Ross told me:
I remember the detective coming to the door. He was looking for a blue hatchback with wipers, and I didn’t have a blue hatchback. I had a blue sedan with no wipers. And, uh, he was getting ready to leave, and I told him something. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but something that made him pause. And he said he had better ask me a few more questions and then afterwards he was getting ready to go. An’ I said something else, so I guess I didn’t really want him to leave.
Remembering the interview with Mike Malchik, Ross explained:
You know, it’s not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do. You know, ‘Hello Mr Police Officer, I killed a load of people.’ You know, it was hard for me. If you actually listened to the audiotape confessions, ah, it was very difficult for me to admit that I did it, and then I had got one out. Then he would have to kinda get the next one out. Then I could talk about that one. Yes, it was hard at first saying I killed this one, or that one. I mean I told ’em about two they didn’t know about… I mean they didn’t even question me about them ’cos they thought they were runaways.
When I asked Ross why he had confessed to the murders of Leslie Shelley and April Brunais, when he hadn’t even been asked about them, the killer complained:
Well, the police said that there was something wrong with me, and there was a place at Whiting Corner for insane criminals. Yeah, I fell for that one, an’ I thought I was going to get the help I needed and that’s what I wanted to hear. ‘Hey, you know you have got something wrong with you and we are going to do something about it ’cos the murders have stopped.’ Yeah, Malchik said all the right things, so I thought, what the hell, and I gave ’em everything.
To be fair to Mike Malchik, he did honour his promise to Ross, for the murders did stop, and the law eventually did do something about Ross’s problem: they would execute him.
* * *
Wyndham County Prosecutor, Harry Gaucher, only charged Ross with the 1982 murders of Tammy Williams and Debra Smith Taylor. Whether it was because of lack of physical evidence to support the rape portion of an aggravated capital felony charge, which carried the death sentence, or Gaucher’s anxiety a
bout losing his case at trial, he allowed Ross to plead guilty solely to murder.
Sitting on Saturday, 13 December 1986, the trial judge sentenced Ross to two consecutive life terms. He would serve no less than 120 years behind bars. However, the murders of Wendy Baribeault, Robin Stavinsky, April Brunais and Leslie Shelley fell under the jurisdiction of a more tenacious prosecutor. New London County State’s Attorney, C Robert ‘Bulldog’ Satti, of the ‘hang ’em and flog ’em brigade’, wanted to be the first prosecutor for decades to send a murderer to Connecticut’s electric chair.
Satti also knew that he was up against a death penalty statute that tipped the balance in favour of life imprisonment. But the formidable counsel stuck to his guns, for he strongly believed that if ever there was a man worthy of the chair, it had to be Michael Bruce Ross. Apart from the morality of executing a man in the liberal ‘Nutmeg State’ of Connecticut, there was another cost to consider. ‘Old Sparky’ had not been used since Joseph ‘Mad Dog’ Taborsky had been electrocuted in it on Tuesday, 17 May 1960, since which time it had fallen into disrepair. If they wanted to kill Michael Ross, the state would have to fork out at least $30,000 to refurbish the old oak chair, upgrade the wiring, renew the restraints, redecorate the witness viewing area and death house suite.
For their part, the defence attorney had to convince a jury that Ross was not legally responsible for the crimes to which he had confessed. Making their job tougher was the fact that Ross didn’t qualify for an insanity defence. Moreover, the case had received so much pre-trial publicity that, in the summer of 1987, the venue was moved to Bridgeport, where the prosecution would argue that Ross was a rapist, a cold-blooded, calculating monster, who had planned his assaults and murdered his victims simply to stay out of prison.
Dead Men Talking Page 22