Killing Season

by Carlton Smith

  Meanwhile, Jose Gonsalves and Maryann Dill concentrated on a third suspect, a man Weld Square people had identified as a Tiverton, Rhode Island, diesel mechanic named James Baker. According to the Weld Square women, Baker was a frequent visitor to Weld Square, and was said to have had some contact with the victims. Some said Baker was a nice, pleasant man who was friendly and helpful to women in trouble, while others told of having been choked or harassed by him. Several said that Baker liked to preach to women about their drug habits; he would get angry at women who wouldn’t listen, they said. One woman even claimed she had seen identification papers for two of the victims at Baker’s house.

  Other troopers, backed up by the Saint and information from the city police assigned to Pina’s Bristol County Drug Task Force, concentrated on Kenny Ponte. In contrast to some of the troopers, Pina and the Saint remained convinced that the murders were the work of someone who had a personal relationship with the victims. That meant Ponte and his friends, as far as they were concerned. Pina and the Saint were also swayed by Kenny’s emotionally volatile behavior, and his steadfast refusal to cooperate with them.

  With all of these possibilities in mind, Pina wanted to bring enough witnesses before the jury to begin to sort through the lies and evasions that were making the investigation so difficult. By using the threat of perjury, Pina hoped to sift through the conflicting stories so that some clear direction might emerge, just as he had done years earlier in the Big Dan’s case.

  The witnesses called before the jury during this first session in March 1989 thus represented something of a grab bag: detectives to set the scenes of the murders, and the sort of evidence recovered there, followed by a variety of people familiar with Weld Square and some of the victims.

  A man who owned a restaurant called Pal’s on Acushnet Avenue in the north end identified several pictures of the victims, along with a photo of Kenny. He’d seen Kenny talking to women in the restaurant—including Robin Rhodes—and Kenny had once written a check to another person who owed the restaurant money, but the check bounced, he said.

  Several women who frequented Weld Square also testified, along with a man who operated a magazine store in Weld Square used as a hangout by some of the Square’s habitués. Donald Santos, the husband of Mary Rose, testified, telling the jury that he and his wife had hired Kenny Ponte to represent them on an accident claim.

  When Mary Rose disappeared, Donald Santos added, Kenny Ponte had photocopied flyers showing Mary Rose and helped distribute them at Faith Alameida’s taverns. Alameida also testified, saying she’d employed Nancy Paiva in 1986, and Debroh McConnell in 1987, but that she’d fired them because their boyfriends were abusive to other customers.

  Several women were shown pictures of a few men who were believed to have frequented the Weld Square area, including Kenny, and at least one told of being assaulted by a man who was identified as Tony DeGrazia. A photo of Neil Anderson was similarly identified. Significantly, however, the bail for Anderson was reduced just before the jury began taking testimony, which appeared to be a sign that Anderson had been cleared of involvement in the murders.

  The news from the most important witnesses, however, did not leak. By now, investigators had talked to a woman named Violet Farland, and Stephen Bobola, the self-admitted former drug dealer who claimed to have sold cocaine to Kenny Ponte.

  Farland contended that she had consumed cocaine with Kenny. Kenny had given her money to buy the drug, she said, and then had told her to inject him with the substance in hard to reach places such as his neck, behind his knee, or directly behind his scrotum.

  But Farland’s testimony seemed suspect: she asserted that Kenny had picked her up near Weld Square in December 1988. Of course, during that month, Kenny had already moved to Florida, and it seemed unlikely that he would return to New Bedford just to consume drugs even while St. Jean was conversing with him by telephone about the murders and trying to coax him into coming back.

  A taxi driver, Arthur Goldblatt, was similarly accused of furnishing cocaine to Kenny and the women. Before going in to testify, Goldblatt told reporters he would refuse to answer any questions. Pina was just on a fishing expedition, Goldblatt said, and the whole thing was a waste of time. He offered the opinion that the murders weren’t even connected.

  “It’s not the same pattern,” he said. “Some of the girls are being killed because they’re ratting on the drug dealers, some of the others because there’s some nut on the street.” The following day, however, Goldblatt spent 30 minutes in front of the jury, and then was issued a subpoena to come back later. “I just want to go home,” he said when he emerged, clearly unhappy.

  What wasn’t immediately apparent to the grand jury or the newspeople, however, was that Pina had already embarked on a program that would inexorably range ever closer to Kenny Ponte. It may have been that in March 1989, not even Pina or the Saint knew how this investigation was going to come out, but it is evident from the witnesses who were called that even at that early stage Kenny was definitely a target.

  Indeed, the testimony from Bobola and the women were the first planks in a case that Pina hoped to eventually build against Ponte.

  Pina, in fact, had gradually begun to form an idea about the crimes.

  Sitting up late at night at home, thinking about the murders, making notes to himself on a legal pad, Pina kept coming back to the fact that all of the victims seemed to be connected. The killer, he had already reasoned, had to be someone who knew or who had contact with the interconnected victims. In Pina’s mind, the name that kept coming up was Kenny Ponte. But why?

  Slowly, Pina came to believe that Ponte—the former heroin addict who had received a pardon—was so paranoid about the prospect of being revealed as a drug user once again that he would do anything, even murder, to keep his latest addiction secret.

  After all, Pina reasoned, being unmasked as a drug addict would probably cost Kenny his law license, and his very livelihood. Even more, Pina believed, the revelation of Kenny’s return to drug addiction would destroy his public image, and that was something Kenny, for emotional and psychological reasons, simply could not allow. So Kenny was driven to murder the women with whom he had shared illegal drugs.

  In the cold light of reality, however, Pina’s idea hardly seems like a viable motive for murder.

  Every day, somewhere in America, lawyers are referred for treatment of drug or alcohol dependency by their own bar associations, or even more frequently, by their own families. Most, after treatment, are returned to practice in good standing. Almost certainty similar treatment would have been available to Kenny Ponte, even if he did have a drug addiction, which was far short of being proved.

  Moreover—even if all of the dead women had once or more times sold cocaine to Kenny, and thereby provided Kenny with a murder motive to keep them quiet, how would one explain why Kenny hadn’t murdered Violet Farland, or any of the several other women who would later testify that they too obtained drugs for Kenny? Why wasn’t Bobola dead, for that matter, or Goldblatt, or any of several other men who supposedly knew the secret?

  This was the major flaw in Pina’s theory of the murders: as a motive for killing, it simply didn’t stand up. As a result, over the next 18 months, a hybrid motive of sorts emerged, at least among those (like Pina) who believed that Kenny Ponte was responsible for the murders: that Kenny was the killer, and that he had first killed Rochelle Clifford to keep her quiet about the drug use. This murder supposedly became necessary when Detective Dextradeur insisted on interviewing Rochelle about her activities with Kenny (an interview Pina believed Kenny was desperate to prevent), followed by a more traditional psychosexual murder series in which Kenny, having once killed, discovered how enjoyable it really was, and so began working down the list of the other victims, one by one over the next five months, perhaps in concert with one or two others.

  To that end, Pina became particularly interested in tales about Kenny’s alleged sexual perversity. And, as th
e investigation unfolded, there seemed to be a large supply of imprisoned women who were eager to supply Pina with such lurid details.

  But Pina had poisoned this well. To begin with, he assured everyone who agreed to provide testimony that his office would not prosecute if the witness admitted illegal activity. And, for some, special favors were granted: a dropping or delay of other charges, or help getting into drug treatment programs or halfway houses. These arrangements, while effective in getting cooperation of reluctant witnesses, also served to undermine the witnesses’ credibility. It was like bribing a witness to provide information that the witness knew full well was exactly what the district attorney wanted to hear.

  Pina’s only useful cudgel for keeping the witnesses honest was his power to charge them with perjury. But for many women, being safe in prison on a perjury charge was infinitely preferable to the perils of drugs and beatings on the street, and it was hardly an effective deterrent to giving false testimony.

  On the first day of the session, Kenny waited in the courthouse for his turn, trying to keep out of sight of the reporters. It proved to be impossible, especially at the end of the day when the jury adjourned without calling him. A swarm of newspeople descended on Kenny, pushing microphones in his face and shouting questions at him.

  “Just get away from me, just get away,” Kenny told the reporters, his hostility apparent. When that didn’t work, Kenny turned to a friend who had accompanied him, Daniel Branco. “Let’s get away from these maggots,” Kenny said angrily, as he and Branco began walking rapidly toward their parked car, followed by reporters and camera crews. When a few got in his way Kenny elbowed them aside. As a public relations man, Kenny was a disaster. It was a media mob scene that was repeated twice more during the first week of testimony.

  Finally, on March 7, the final day of the grand jury’s “phase one,” as Pina called it, Kenny was called to testify. Once he was seated in front of the jury, according to legal papers filed later, Pina asked him whether he knew any of the six victims, showed him some photographs, and asked whether Kenny was familiar with any of the names on a list of witnesses, some of whom had already testified. Kenny refused to answer any questions, citing his privilege against self-incrimination.

  Kenny’s decision to take the Fifth was not a surprise to Pina, nor did it surprise anyone else in the courthouse. Previously, in fact, Pina had been asked by reporters what he might do if a witness took the Fifth. Answering obliquely, Pina said that a Fifth Amendment privilege could be countered by a grant of immunity. Would he grant Kenny immunity? Again, Pina declined to answer. But then he told reporters that if they saw him emerge from the jury room and go into the judge’s lobby, reporters would probably not be wrong if they concluded he was seeking immunity for a witness. As to whether that meant a witness had claimed the Fifth Amendment, Pina left that to the reporters to conclude for themselves.

  Ten minutes after Kenny went before the jury, Pina emerged to go into the judge’s lobby, accompanied by Kenny’s lawyer, Joe Harrington. Behind closed doors, Pina argued that because he wasn’t asking Kenny whether he had killed the women, only whether he knew them (not a crime) Kenny had no right to claim the Fifth. Harrington said Pina’s argument was poppycock. Any answers Kenny might make that would “furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute” was covered by the Fifth, Harrington said. The judge agreed with Harrington. Pina did not ask that Ponte be granted immunity.

  The consequences of this maneuvering, however, were fourfold:

  First, Ponte’s claim of the Fifth gave Pina new grounds to be suspicious of Kenny.

  Second, in deciding not to immunize Ponte, Pina essentially deprived the jury of whatever information Ponte might have actually had about the victims, whether worthwhile or not.

  Third, the jury was allowed to believe that Ponte did know something of value, and was made suspicious by his refusal to provide it, whatever it was.

  And fourth, by his public behavior suggesting that Kenny had in fact taken the Fifth, Pina in effect told the whole world that Kenny had something to hide.

  That in turn made Kenny look guilty, at least in the public eye, which in turn further fueled Ponte’s determination not to cooperate with Pina.

  The day after Ponte’s appearance, Pina drove this latter point home even further by telling reporters that the investigation was “targeting”—Pina’s word—two suspects. “We’re closer than we were before,” he said. “There are two suspects in particular that need a lot of work …

  “It doesn’t look like a stranger may have grabbed somebody,” he added, an obvious reference to Ponte’s supposed relationship with the victims. The Standard-Times’s Boyle followed up that remark with the observation that Ponte knew three of the victims, connections that were also pointed out by every other news outlet, and indeed had already been made clear by Pina himself. Pina also made statements that implied Kenny Ponte was a user of illegal drugs—just like the victims. Thus, by the end of winter 1988–89, Kenny Ponte had been publicly identified as a suspect in the most notorious serial murder case in Massachusetts since the time of the Boston Strangler.

  SPRING 1989

  “Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into still some subtler form …”

  —Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  32

  A Letter

  With the coming of warmer weather, the grim search for more skeletons resumed. Josie the German shepherd from the Connecticut State Police returned. Soon she and Syros were out sniffing along the highways. The police refused to say where the searches were being conducted to keep the media away.

  Almost immediately, however, Josie alerted at a spot along Route 140, this one heading southbound toward New Bedford, about midway between the two earlier victims found on the opposite side of the highway. The new skeleton was lodged inside the trees about 25 feet from the shoulder of the road. Syros had searched the area during the winter but had found nothing. Pina now had to admit that Syros had originally been trained to sniff drugs, but guessed that the reason Syros had missed finding the skeleton earlier was because of the cold weather. The skeleton was intact, and a full complement of teeth was recovered.

  The next day, the teeth told the tale: the victim was identified as Robin Rhodes.

  Hadn’t the New Bedford restaurant owner testified that Ponte had been seen with Rhodes? And wasn’t Rhodes friendly with Mary Rose and Donald Santos? And hadn’t Ponte represented the Santos couple? Pina declined comment, but Ponte’s name and his refusal to cooperate with Pina were reiterated in all the news media.

  Two days later, two children playing along the side of Route 88, an arterial highway in the southwestern part of the county, discovered an eighth skeleton. The new remains were miles away from either I-195 or Route 140, the places where the first seven victims had been found. But like the previous seven, the latest skeleton was found in brush some 20 or 25 feet off the side of the road. No clothing was recovered, and it certainly appeared that the newest discovery was related to the others.

  Pina was electrified by the news. Two weeks earlier he had received an anonymous letter suggesting that the police search the sides of Route 88. The letter writer said she had seen something unusual along that road in the summer of 1988, and believed that a body might be found there. The letter writer added that a copy of her letter was being kept between the pages of a family Bible to prove her authenticity.

  This, indeed, was good news: a possible eyewitness to one of the crimes. Pina immediately went public with the existence of the letter, while withholding its details, and asked that the writer come forward to be interviewed.

  It appeared that the letter writer had seen something suspicious. During the summer of 1988, she had been driving north late at night on Route 88, the writer told Pina and the investigators. As her vehicle accelerated up a long hill, she saw a white pickup truck stopped on the opposite side of the road. A
man appeared to be struggling with a woman near the truck. The writer sped past, and as she approached the junction with Highway 6 a few miles north, she saw headlights in the rearview mirror. It looked liked the truck was coming after her.

  Near the junction, the pickup overtook the writer; as he drew even on the left, the driver stared hard at her as he passed. The writer stared straight ahead, pretending not to notice the man staring at her. She was frightened, she said later; she didn’t want him to know she had seen anything. After a few seconds, the white pickup truck pulled ahead, and the letter writer soon lost sight of it.

  The letter, Pina said, was “right on the money.” The place where the writer had seen the man and woman struggling was almost exactly where the latest skeleton had been found. But bad news was, the letter writer never looked directly at the face of the driver, and thus was unable to provide a good description. Nor could she recall a license plate. Even more frustrating, the letter writer was unable to recall what the struggling woman looked like.

  But two days later, the skeleton found by the side of Route 88 was identified as that of Mary Rose Santos.

  Pina was meanwhile preparing for a new round of witnesses before the grand jury. He took time out to reflect on the identification of Mary Rose, and its possible significance. “This is getting to be a morbid ritual,” he said, as he opened a press conference to announce Mary Rose’s indentification.

  On reflection, Pina added, it now appeared that with Mary Rose the killer had shifted his pattern. The first three victims—Robin Rhodes, Deborah McConnell, and Debbie Medeiros—had been placed along Route 140 north toward Freetown, Taunton, and Boston, Pina said.

  Then, after Debbie Medeiros had been found on July 2 along Route 140, the killer shifted west to I-95 with Nancy Paiva, Deborah DeMello, Mary Rose on Route 88, and then Dawn Mendes back on I-95. Police, said Pina, were checking news reports to see whether Debbie Medeiros᾿s discovery had been publicized anywhere outside of the New Bedford vicinity. If only New Bedford residents had been made aware of the discovery of Debbie Madeiros, that might be inferential evidence that the killer had to be a local reader of the Standard-Times.