Killing Season

by Carlton Smith

  The Strangler was said to have been responsible for the murders of 11 women in the Boston area from 1962 to early 1964. Eventually, a convicted rapist named Albert DeSalvo confessed to the murders. But DeSalvo was never tried for the crimes, and many police officers who investigated the murders remained unconvinced that DeSalvo was the killer. They thought DeSalvo might have heard the details of the crimes from another man, and then confessed to ensure that his wife and children could get money from the sale of the Strangler story to the movies.

  Having obtained a confession, the next stage was to get the authorities to accept the self-proclaimed Strangler’s admissions as valid. While the police weren’t so sure, several political figures in Massachusetts, notably Attorney General Edward Brooke—then about to be a candidate for the U.S. Senate—gratefully seized on the confession as the answer to a murder series which had terrorized the state. Clearing the cases, whatever else it might be, was good politics.

  Ultimately, DeSalvo’s confession was accepted; still, numerous people continued to insist for years afterward that DeSalvo had never killed anyone, and that the crimes were “solved” for reasons of political expediency.

  Now, in early 1990, another lurid murder series was unsolved; and the person who “solved” them might have every expectation for reaping the rewards for finding the solution.

  Whether it was revealed in Diane’s notes, or whether Diane simply told the private eye—or instead, as Diane later insisted, the private eye simply made it up—the story soon circulated that while Diane was in MCI Framingham, she had been told that Kenny Ponte had confessed to the murders!

  As it evolved, the story was that a prison dorm mate of Diane’s, a woman named Leslie Mello, had supposedly told her that one night in New Bedford, Kenny Ponte had broken down, weeping at Leslie’s kitchen table, and had confessed to killing six women in New Bedford. Somehow, it evolved that Diane and her daughter had also been present when Kenny made the confession.

  However this information came into his possession, the private eye apparently relayed the substance of Diane’s story to the retired trooper, who in turn passed it on to others in the state police. Thus, in January 1990, Diane Doherty was issued a subpoena to appear before the Bristol County special grand jury.

  Even on the surface, the story was hardly credible. For one thing, Diane and her daughter had never been in New Bedford, although the private eye had no way of knowing that. For another, the “fact” that Kenny confessed to killing six women seemed clearly reflective of the influence of the news stories at the time Diane had been in prison, not real information. A casual reader or viewer at the time Diane was in jail in the first part of 1989 would have known only of six victims, not the 11 who now seemed to be dead or missing.

  Since the crimes were all linked, why would a confessing Kenny admit to only six? Why not all of the murders? The use of the number six was a red flag that the confession story was baloney.

  The state troopers heard of Diane’s story and quickly dismissed it as more wild prison talk. They located Leslie Mello—one of those who had also been said to have been raped by Flat Nose—and she denied the story about the weeping Kenny from top to bottom. Moreover, she barely remembered Diane Doherty; Diane and Diane’s daughter certainly had never been in her kitchen.

  After getting her subpoena, Diane told Troopers Gonsalves and Dill that she’d never met Kenny Ponte in her life, and the subpoena was rescinded.

  Still, the incident had its lasting effect on the Highway Murder investigation. Eventually, Diane was to contend that the private eye began pestering her to sign an affidavit about Kenny’s supposed confession. Diane said she refused to sign. The private eye eventually testified before the jury himself, and offered a written statement about the confession that was said to have been signed by Diane, although Diane later repudiated it. But the main effect of these events was that Diane’s interest in Ponte continued unabated, and in the end, Diane was able to insert herself into Kenny’s life very deeply, indeed.

  By the time the grand jury resumed in January, Tony DeGrazia was finally out of jail. Eddie Harrington had been able to have Tony’s bail reduced to $37,500, and Lorraine Scanlon’s uncle, one of Tony’s former employers, put up the money.

  Still, Pina wasn’t happy about Tony’s prospective release. Just before the doors clanged open, Pina brought another charge against Tony: making threats on Pina’s life.

  As Tony was preparing for his freedom, a psychiatrist told him that he should be happy, that now he could get his life back together. Tony, embittered, rejected that idea. “I’m not getting my life back together,” Tony shot back at the shrink. “Why should I? Pina’s made my life miserable. Now I’m going to make his life miserable. Then I’m going to end it.” The psychiatrist interpreted Tony’s remark to mean that Tony intended to kill the district attorney.

  It took almost a week, but when Tony showed up at the district court to appear on the long-ago drunk driving charge, he was arrested again, jailed, and charged with attempting to commit a crime. Eddie Harrington was disgusted with Pina. To him, the new charge seemed like nothing more than a transparent attempt to keep Tony locked up, despite the reduction in bail. A judge agreed with Harrington, and shortly before Christmas, Tony was released again.

  Then in January, while Pina and the grand jury were hearing from Jeanne, Gayle, Boudreau, Ryley, and the alleged pornographer, Father Harrison took Tony with him on a pilgrimage to Yugoslavia.

  In Harrison’s view, Tony desperately needed a new perspective, after having been in solitary confinement for almost eight months, and after having been accused of being a serial murderer. His spirits were low, and the bitterness remained. Tony told everyone that the cases against him had been fabricated by Pina and the investigators in an effort to find someone, anyone, to take the rap for the murders and the rapes.

  Fulfilling a pledge he’d made to Tony while he was in jail, the priest and his parishioner traveled to the mountainous Balkan country, and made their way to a place where enormous crowds were gathering, after word had spread of a visitation by the Blessed Virgin Mary. Tony had always been deeply religious, and Harrison hoped that some of the faith of the multitudes might help restore Tony’s spirits. And when the pair climbed the mountain, an amazing thing happened: a woman Tony had never met before, a Yugoslavian who was said to have seen the apparition, parted the crowds and touched Tony lightly on the shoulder … whether in unconscious sympathy, or as a prophecy, no one could say.

  Meanwhile, back in New Bedford, Pina was feeling a shoulder touch himself. Looking at the newspaper on February 10, Pina read that a very well-connected New Bedford lawyer, Paul Walsh, was thinking about running for district attorney.

  This was real trouble. For one thing, Walsh was the lawyer who represented the Standard-Times newspaper. For another, Walsh’s father was a former member of the city’s school committee, and a politically powerful person who happened to be very close to the one remaining political bloc Pina thought he could count on: the suburban Irish and Italian forces aligned with State Senator Biff McLean. If McLean bailed out on Pina, the incumbent district attorney’s political career would be in severe jeopardy.

  47

  Presumptions

  Late in February 1990, one of the most important underpinnings of the case Pina hoped to develop against Ponte and Ryley was severely damaged.

  Paul Boudreau, the detective who had pieced together the complicated theory Pina was pursuing, was accused of improper conduct involving a second drug case involving Whispers Pub. That establishment, of course, was the place police had alleged was the headquarters of a ring that sold nearly $5.2 million a year in cocaine. It was also the place where many of the victims had been known to congregate, and the next-to-last place Nancy Paiva had been seen.

  The allegations involving Boudreau were murky, but it appeared that an informant recruited by Boudreau in September 1989—after the first arrest earlier in the same year—may have lied about find
ing drugs in the Whispers’ proprietor’s house; instead, the informant may have planted the drugs there. Even worse, it appeared that the informant had stolen a substantial amount of money, nearly $40,000, from the man’s house, just before Boudreau had conducted his raid that had been based on the informant’s story. The police had seized an additional amount of money that went a long way toward replenishing the drug task force’s cash larder for additional investigations. This was a major stinker.

  Boudreau claimed that he’d had a second informant as well, but no one seemed to be listening. It seemed certain that both Whispers’ cases—including 41 indictments returned in the first part of 1989—would have to be dismissed. There was no way to prove that the informant who had taken the money hadn’t also planted the drugs Boudreau found—either the first or the second time.

  Other questions swirled about the case as well: had Boudreau known about the theft? The alleged planting? What assistance had Boudreau and others rendered to the informant to get him out of town after the raid? The bottom line was, Boudreau’s credibility in the Highway Murders was now at risk, and any defense lawyer in the murder case would be foolish not to zero in on the allegations that the detective’s information was not to be trusted, just as the Whispers’ defense lawyers were doing.

  Boudreau was furious over the fiasco. His integrity had been questioned and his usefulness as a police detective had been shattered. He was sure the proprietor of Whispers had been dealing drugs. The bad informant, he claimed, had been foisted on him by the state troopers. Later, Boudreau was to speculate that the troopers were getting even with him for his work on the Highway Murder case.

  And in one other development, Kenny Ponte decided to replace Joe Harrington as his lawyer with another attorney, Kevin Reddington of Brockton, Massachusetts.

  It wasn’t that Kenny was unhappy with Harrington’s work, but it was clear that he and Harrington had a difference of opinion on the best way to proceed.

  For months, Ponte had been the target of leaks, swipes, and innuendo from Pina and various other investigators, most of which wound up on the air, or in print. He resolutely kept quiet throughout, on Joe Harrington’s advice. But Kenny couldn’t stand it anymore. He wanted to hit back, badly.

  Joe Harrington was a lawyer of the old school. Making statements out of court was, in Harrington’s view, bad form, even if other lawyers—read Pina—did it. When Kenny told Harrington he wanted to go public with his side of the story, Harrington strongly advised him not to do it. In the end, Harrington withdrew from the case, and Reddington stepped in.

  Reddington was a lawyer from a different era. Thirty-nine years old and the father of four children, Reddington had never been a prosecutor. In fact, he had been an antiwar radical. He believed that everyone was innocent, and he hated it when it looked like someone was being bullied.

  “You know we have a presumption of innocence,” Reddington said later, “but yet, all you have to do is level the finger at somebody, and even if they’re acquitted, their reputation is pretty well damaged.” Kenny Ponte, Reddington believed, was “a specific case in point.

  “Here’s a guy, who, in my opinion, is stone-cold innocent … he was an attorney prior to these accusations … and I really question whether somebody would want him to represent them on anything right now.”

  Reddington was also experienced in defending murder cases. By his own count, he’d handled nearly 40 of them. And he was aggressive. He was not at all adverse to Ponte’s desire to counterattack Pina in the news media, but only after an effort was first made to get a court to order Pina to keep quiet about the case. Failing that, Reddington was willing to publicly throw rocks at Pina all day long, or at least until Pina retreated.

  Ponte called Reddington and asked if he would take the case. Reddington told Ponte to come in and talk to him first.

  “After 16 years in a very active criminal trial practice,” Reddington recalled, “you tend to get a little cynical and, of course, everybody’s ‘innocent’ anyway.

  “So the first thing I said was, ‘So you’re being accused of this serial killing,’ and he gets somewhat histrionic and says, ‘I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it.’ And I said, ‘I understand you didn’t do it, I just want to understand where you stand and what your exposure is right now.’”

  Reddington proceeded to tell Ponte how he saw the situation.

  “Okay, you’ve got a D.A. who says you did it,” Reddington said. “And you’ve got a D.A. who’s leaking things to the press. And you’ve got this other conspiracy of drug cases kicking around there. You got a criminal charge on an assault with a gun, and one of the missing victims was the person who was supposedly your witness on this case.”

  That was the situation, Kenny agreed.

  “Okay,” Reddington said. “The first thing is, I want you to take a polygraph test.”

  Ponte agreed to take the test. “And he did,” Reddington recalled later. “I’m a firm believer in polygraphs, so I had that scheduled.” Had Kenny killed the women? The test came back completely negative for deception; according to the lie detector, Kenny hadn’t killed the women.

  That convinced Reddington that Ponte was innocent.

  Now, Reddington decided, he needed to get Pina to shut up. If that didn’t work, then Pina would have to take the consequences.

  Early in March, Reddington asked for a court order forbidding Pina to discuss the case with anyone from the news media. The order was denied. Immediately thereafter, Ponte issued his first public statement about the case. He denied he was the murderer, and threatened to sue Pina if he didn’t apologize.

  “No evidence exists connecting me to this crime,” Kenny told everyone, “because I have nothing at all to do with this crime.”

  From that point forward, as the spring and summer now unfolded, Ponte and Pina were on a collision course, charted through the increasingly turbulent waters of Bristol County’s politics.

  SUMMER 1990

  “More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known to turn round suddenly, and bearing down upon them, either stave their boats to splinters, or …”

  —Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  48

  No Smoking Gun

  On March 29, 1990, Ponte and three others—Jeanne Kaloshis, Adele Leeks, and the taxi driver, Arthur “Goldie” Goldblatt—were indicted by a regular grand jury on charges they had conspired to possess cocaine.

  “Goldie” Goldblatt’s indictment was intriguing for the simple reason that Paul Walsh—the same man who had announced his intention to run against Pina for the district attorney’s job—was Goldblatt’s attorney. Walsh had made his official announcement in mid-March by going to Weld Square and holding a press conference to lambaste Pina for his failure to suppress crime and drugs in the area.

  Using Weld Square as a photo backdrop, after all the publicity over the preceding months, was a stroke of political imagery that couldn’t be missed.

  And after “Goldie” the taxi driver was charged in the alleged conspiracy, Walsh weighed in again: “I wonder if there are any motivations, other than solid investigative work here,” he said.

  “I think, maybe, the D.A. feels he has to bring some type of indictment involving this situation,” Walsh continued. “Maybe it will make some more headlines in the serial murder case, and this is a left-handed way of doing this.”

  Walsh had just made it clear: Pina’s conduct of the investigation of the Highway Murders—and the attendant publicity he was reaping—was about to become a big-time issue in the election for the Bristol County district attorney.

  For his part, Ponte contended Pina had only indicted him because Kenny had criticized Pina publicly when he had denied being the murderer. In fact, Kenny had sent a letter to the Standard-Times, accusing Pina of having a great deal in common with the Emperor who had no clothes.
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  Four days later, Reddington fired off a new barrage: he asked Pina to recuse himself—declare himself too personally involved—and therefore withdraw from the murder case; Reddington instead asked that a special prosecutor be appointed in Pina’s stead.

  “Mr. Ponte is finished with being harassed,” Reddington told assembled reporters at a news conference. “He is done being pushed around by Mr. Pina.” And Ponte gave plaintive support to his lawyer’s claim:

  “I feel completely victimized by the system,” Ponte said after being arraigned on the drug conspiracy charges, to which he said he was not guilty. Reddington supported his client: “After all the passage of time, the investigation is really breaking down,” Reddington said. “I think it’s time for Mr. Pina to step aside, and an independent prosecutor to take over.” At his arraignment on the drug charges Ponte was given a new grand jury subpoena—this one for the special panel investigating the murders.

  Walsh, Goldblatt’s lawyer, and now Pina’s erstwhile opponent as district attorney, piped up as well.

  “This is a waste of court’s resources,” Walsh told everyone. The case, he said, was so thin—after all, a conspiracy to possess drugs?—that it would probably be dismissed without further ado in the district court. There just wasn’t enough specificity as to the date, time, place, and other particulars necessary to effectively prosecute and defend a charge.

  “There must be something else to it,” Walsh added. “What it is, I don’t know. I don’t let politics affect my representation of clients, and I hope the opposite isn’t true on the opposition side.”

  But lashing out at the authorities can bring penalties, as Ponte was to discover later that same afternoon.

  After Reddington had left New Bedford to return to his Brockton office, Ponte set out for the airport to return to Florida. He was riding in a car being driven by his friend Daniel Branco when state troopers pulled Branco over. They arrested Branco for driving with a suspended license. They put Branco into the back of a police car and impounded his car. That left Kenny with no way to get to the airport, so Kenny set off on foot, carrying his suitcases in each hand.