by R. G. Belsky
D’Nolfo set up the video equipment and began shooting. As Borrell said, she had a TV set in there that she turned on. Sure enough, there we were in a few minutes broadcasting live to millions of people on Live from New York. So far, so good.
“It’s showtime,” Borrell said to Wylie in a taunting voice.
Wylie just nodded his head.
“Now you can interview him for the show,” Borrell said to me.
“Interview him about what?”
“Why not start with Munson Lake?” she said. “Let’s let him tell you what really happened at Munson Lake. I think the whole audience out there should know the kind of man he really is.”
Then Wylie—slowly, almost mechanically—told the story of the long-ago date with Patty Tagliarini. Borrell had clearly drugged him and prepared him to do this bizarre presentation for the camera.
It was pretty much the same as I had already figured out. He took Patty Tagliarini to a place near Munson Lake, a good drive away from his hometown of Massillon, so that no one would recognize them and get word back to his girlfriend, Valerie. They ate, they danced, and then Tagliarini had a bottle that they shared while making out in her car. They both had too much to drink. On the way back, she lost control of the car and rolled down a hill into the lake.
“You were both able to get out of the car?” I asked Wylie, trying desperately to act as if this was a normal interview, even though I kept thinking about when D’Nolfo was going to go for his gun.
“Yes.”
“What happened then?”
“I was underwater. I didn’t think I’d make it to the surface.”
“But you did. . . .”
Wylie nodded.
“What about Patty Tagliarini?”
“I heard her screaming for help.”
“What did you do?”
“I wanted to save her. I really did.”
“But that’s when you saw a man in boat approaching, right?”
“He was just a short distance away.”
“And you couldn’t let him find out you were with Patty Tagliarini.”
“I thought he’d save her.”
“But he didn’t make it to her in time.”
“No, she couldn’t swim.”
“She drowned before he could get to her?”
“I didn’t want her to die. . . . I didn’t think she was going to die. . . . If I’d known, I would have . . . I would have . . .”
His voice had a pleading quality to it now.
“Patty Tagliarini left behind a one-year-old daughter,” Borrell said. “Named Melissa. Melissa was given up for adoption after her mother died. Eventually, she grew up to be a private investigator. And one day she decided to investigate who her biological parents were and why she’d been adopted. So she went back to Ohio and to Munson Lake. She talked to everyone there who still remembered what happened. Kept digging until she finally figured out that Wylie had been with her mother that night. Now everyone will know the truth. Do you think people will still elect him mayor now? I don’t. I think they’ll see him now for the coward he really is.”
Wylie seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness again. Moaning from pain and making unintelligible sounds.
“But why do you hate Wylie so much?” I asked. “That doesn’t make sense. Melissa Ross, I guess I could understand because of what happened with her mother at Munson Lake. But you only met him once, for a very short time sixteen years ago, when you were still a teenager back in Belleville.”
“Do you know what he did to me that day in Belleville?” she said as the cameras continued to roll.
She looked over at Wylie slumped down in the chair now.
“He laughed at me. He humiliated me. He rejected me. This was supposed to be my great victory day. I had killed my family, killed Bobby Jenkins, and now—after telling the police all that—I was going to walk out of their police station as my final moment of triumph. I knew I could do that because they were all men, and I could always get men to do what I wanted.
“It was all going according to plan until they brought Wylie in to talk to me. He was so arrogant, so full of himself. But he was a man, so I knew how to handle him. I flirted shamelessly with him after he came into the interrogation room. I unbuttoned the top of my blouse so he could get a glimpse of my breasts. I kept crossing and uncrossing my legs to give him a good show. Then I reached over, touched him, and moved closer to him. I whispered that he could have me if he wanted. I did all the things I’ve always done with men to get them to do what I want, to get them under my control. But nothing worked. Finally, I just leaned over the table where we were sitting and kissed him on the lips. That’s when it happened. The moment that sealed his fate forever.”
“What did he do?”
“He spit in my face. He just pulled away from me in surprise and then spit in my face. Like he was disgusted to touch me. Me? I mean look at me. I just sat there with his spittle dribbling down my face. He wouldn’t even let me wipe it off. He just kept laughing at me and the way I looked with that spit all over my beautiful face. He brought in some of the guards and other people in the station and they all laughed at me too.
“Then he told me that I was nothing—just a silly little girl—and how much smarter than me he was. He boasted all about his future and how he was headed for big things—and that I was going to help him do that with all the publicity he’d get from me and how I killed my family. He said I was going to be his ticket to fame and fortune—and that I would rot away in prison for the rest of my life. I could still feel his spit all over my face. I was so humiliated. No one had ever talked to me like that. No one had ever laughed at me before. No man had ever rejected me until him. And that’s when I vowed that I would get my revenge against Bob Wylie.”
I looked over at D’Nolfo. He was still manning the TV equipment as if this was just another normal video. I knew he had to look like he was only doing his job, to avoid tipping off Borrell that anything was wrong. But it still seemed bizarre. When was D’Nolfo going to make a move against her?
“Why did you wait so long?” I asked, just trying to keep her talking.
“Oh, I got my first revenge a long time ago. Not long after we met. With the fire that killed his family. You see, that fire was no accident. I did that. He was supposed to be there with his wife and children. They were all supposed to die. I thought I’d made sure of that. But Wylie didn’t. Just his wife and his family.”
There was a sobbing. It was coming from Wylie. He was crying as she talked about the fire that killed his family.
“When I read in the newspapers and heard on TV about all the pain and suffering I’d caused Wylie by losing his family in that fire, I decided that I’d ruined his life with a fate worse than death. So I moved on. And I forgot about Bob Wylie and that day in Belleville. Or almost forgot about him.
“Then one day I saw his picture on the cover of Time magazine. I realized then that I hadn’t destroyed his life at all. He was even more important now, just like he’d bragged to me he was going to be back in Belleville. I was so angry. I could have just killed him, of course. Like I did his family. But that would have been too easy. No, I wanted more. I wanted to dismantle his life. To take away everything that was important to him. I’d started that with his family. The next thing would be his future, the future greatness he boasted to me about.
“But I waited. I waited patiently for the right moment. I came to New York and began stalking his every move. Following him at public events and appearances. That’s when I first saw him with that woman, Victoria Issacs. I watched him coming on to her at a big concert in Central Park. Then I trailed both of them back to his apartment. I couldn’t understand it. He wasn’t interested in me, but he was interested in this woman? That made me so mad at both of them. I watched her come and go from other meetings at his apartment. I began to become obsessed with her too. I followed her to Philadelphia one day, where she went to see the psychiatrist Kate Lyon. I managed to
get a job with Lyon after that and read all of her files. That’s how I found out about Houston and all the rest. I killed Lyon and moved to New York. Still waiting for the right moment to get my revenge against Wylie. And now I wanted revenge against Houston too because he had picked her over me. But I still waited for just the right moment to act.”
“Then you heard about Wylie’s candidacy for mayor,” I said.
She nodded.
“I wanted him to get close. So tantalizingly close to his dreams. Then I would take it all away from him. Strip him of everything. His power. His reputation. His dignity. And now,” she said, gesturing toward the commissioner, “it will all be on television for everyone to see.
“I believe that all of these things—Melissa Ross, Houston, Wylie and the election, even you, Gil—came together for me at this moment for a reason. Like a series of seemingly random entities moving through the eddies of the universe until they joined in a confluence of fate and destiny and divine intervention to bring us to this very place today.
“Wylie thought he was smarter than me. He thought Houston was more beautiful than me. Now everyone will know who is the smartest and the most beautiful. Everyone will know who Claudia Borrell is. I’m going to be the greatest serial killer of all time. And a woman serial killer too. Just one more thing that women can do better than men.”
It was a preposterous motive for murder.
But then so was the killing of her family for no reason.
She was a psychopath—a dangerous, brilliant psychopath—who somehow got off on the idea of killing.
“If you’re so smart, what happens now?” I asked. “You’re trapped. No matter what you do, there’s no way out for you. I might have thought someone as smart as you say you are would have taken that little fact into consideration before you pulled this whole stunt for the TV cameras. All for your silly little game.”
“You really don’t understand, do you? The game’s over, Gil.”
She turned and pointed the gun at Bob Wylie’s head.
I knew D’Nolfo had to make his move now. I wasn’t sure how he was going to do it. But he had to take the chance. And then something unexpected happened.
“Hello in there,” someone outside the front door was saying now. “This is Lieutenant Frank Wohlers. We have a hostage negotiator here. We can talk about this. We . . .”
Borrell’s head swiveled around in surprise. For just a second, she was startled.
D’Nolfo had his opening, and he took it. He went for his gun. Reached into the bag of equipment for it. Borrell turned her head back at that moment. She saw the gun in D’Nolfo’s hand and fired. She was in a hurry though. The shot hit him in the right arm and knocked the gun out of his hand. His gun clattered noisily to the floor. I watched it skitter across the floor next to where I was standing.
Reacting instinctively, I picked up the gun. In that blink of a moment, I could hear D’Nolfo’s voice in my head that day on the gun range when he tried to teach me how to shoot: Aim. Steady. Squeeze. I fired at Borrell. I wasn’t sure whether or not I hit her. But—either from the force of the blast or maybe just the shock of being shot at by me—Borrell fell backward against a door of the room. She somehow quickly got to her feet and tried to get out the door.
I fired the gun again. Emptied it at the fleeing woman. Some of the bullets hit the wall and the door, sending pieces of wood and plaster flying around the room. But Borrell made it out the door into another part of the apartment.
Suddenly the front door burst open and Wohlers and SWAT team members were there. I pointed toward the direction where Borrell had gone. The cops went after her, their guns drawn and ready to finish the job. One of the bedroom doors was locked. She had to be in there. They began smashing it down.
Wohlers stopped briefly to make sure D’Nolfo was all right. He was holding his arm, but gave a thumbs-up sign. Wohlers then raced into the next room, to be there when they finally caught Borrell.
I ran after the cops to see what had happened. It was my story. No matter what, I had to get the story.
The cops were still banging on the locked door of the room.
But, when they finally burst their way in, the bedroom was empty.
Claudia Borrell wasn’t there.
Just broken glass.
And an open window.
“It looks like she broke the window and jumped,” one of the cops said.
“Damn,” Wohlers said.
“At least she’s dead,” someone said.
“I just hope it was a painful death for her,” Wohlers said, as he looked down at the water far below, where she had plummeted.
CHAPTER 53
IT was chaos inside the apartment. Cops everywhere. Guns drawn, but without anyone to shoot. Medical people there. Everyone trying to sort out everything that had just happened, not quite really believing yet that it was finally all over.
Wohlers and I knelt at D’Nolfo’s side. There was blood coming from his shoulder, but he was conscious and alert.
“How does it look?” Wohlers asked the medic working on him.
“Not too bad,” the medic replied as he worked. “Clean wound. Just hit the fleshy part of the shoulder. No bones, no organs involved. He’s going to make it, Lieutenant.”
There was a stretcher there now. The EMS guys lifted D’Nolfo gently onto it. One of them kept pressing on his wound to stop the bleeding.
“You take good care of this guy,” Wohlers said. “He’s a cop.”
I reached down to clasp D’Nolfo’s good hand. He squeezed it tightly. “We got her, Vincent.”
D’Nolfo smiled weakly.
Another team of medical people was working on Wylie. Trying to determine how much damage had been done to him, how many injuries he’d suffered and the extent of those injuries. He was conscious too, but just barely. He had a blank, vacant stare in his eyes. They were open, but not really looking at anything.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” one of the medical people said, looking down at the red stains that covered the floor underneath him. “We’ll need transfusions right away. Not sure about the nature and extent of all the injuries yet. There’s a lot of bruises and scars all over his body. They look pretty severe.”
Once D’Nolfo and Wylie were in proper care, Wohlers went into the other bedroom where cops combed through the broken glass and the blood on the floor looking for evidence.
One of them talked to us about Borrell. “It looks like she made it into this room and then locked the door. Realized she had no way out and jumped out the window to make sure she died. She landed in the East River down there. Splashed down right next to a Circle Liner boat filled with tourists. Welcome to New York, huh?”
“And she’s definitely dead?” Wohlers asked.
“No one survives a twenty-three-floor fall, Lieutenant.”
* * *
Most of it had been broadcast live on TV. The dramatic confrontation when we first went into the apartment and met Borrell. Wylie talking about Patty Tagliarini and Munson Lake. Him crying and pleading. Then her turning the gun on him before D’Nolfo made his move. Even some of what happened afterward was captured, since D’Nolfo’s video equipment was still running. There was screaming, sounds of shots—it was pretty amazing TV. That video would be broadcast later on every network and local news station, would go viral on social media, and later could still be clicked on in countless variations on YouTube.
Stacy Albright was there to direct everything at the scene immediately afterward. This was the high point of her career. She was the one who came up with the idea of the Daily News appearing on Live from New York, and now it had paid off big-time. Forget about the print editions, this was live TV and social media happening in real time. And, along with me, she was the one who would get all the credit for it.
Her plan now was for me to get right back on Live from New York and do a remote update from the scene outside the building, where Claudia Borrell’s body had gone into the East River.
“Just tell your story when we get on the air. Exactly the way it happened. Don’t leave anything out. Your fears, your emotions. Everything you did. Everything you can remember.”
A few minutes later, Live from New York went to a special bulletin. Followed by a camera shot outside Wylie’s building. Then a live picture of me standing at the spot on the East River where the killer fell to her death.
I began to talk:
“I’m standing here outside Deputy Mayor Bob Wylie’s apartment house, where the Blonde Ice case today played out to a bloody and shocking conclusion. Wylie is in critical condition, but expected to survive, and a heroic police officer is wounded. But Claudia Borrell, the infamous woman serial killer, is finally dead.
“Here’s what happened. . . .”
They found Claudia Borrell’s body a few days later when it washed up near a Brooklyn pier. The obvious conclusion was that she was cornered with no way out and decided to commit suicide rather than be captured alive. It was pretty cut-and-dried. The twenty-three-floor fall into the water had done a lot of damage to her. Sea life had eaten away at much of her too before the body was recovered. You could tell from the remains they pulled out of the water that she was a woman and a blonde and that she’d probably been in her thirties. But that was about all.
Not that there was any doubt, but the authorities double-checked everything to make sure the body really was Claudia Borrell’s.
They were able to get dental records of her teeth as a teenager in Belleville to compare with the corpse. The same with fingerprints. They were still on file in Illinois from when she’d been arrested there. Everything came back a perfect match.
It was finally over, and cops could close the books on a serial murder case that had stretched over two decades and through countless cities and states.
In the days afterward, investigators filled in the missing pieces of the Claudia Borrell puzzle.
They found a room key she left behind in Wylie’s apartment, for a hotel on the West Side. That was where she had apparently been hiding after her cover as Kate Lyon was blown. In the room, there were scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings. All of them were about Bob Wylie. Covering his rise to fame and power and glory over the years. His days in St. Louis as police commissioner. His move to New York to set up a security consulting firm. His appointment as deputy mayor of New York City. And—most prominently of all—the picture of him on the cover of Time magazine that she said had convinced her to begin stalking him. She had the magazine cover posted on a wall. Along with all the more recent stories about him being the favorite candidate in the race for mayor.