Fatal Jealousy: The True Story of a Doomed Romance, a Singular Obsession, and a Quadruple Murder

by McEvoy, Colin

  What Riddick did not know was that, besides McClellan, most of the other inmates in the restricted housing unit were friendly with Ballard, and one of them let him know what Riddick was saying. After Ballard called down to Riddick’s cell and demanded his mail, Riddick came back at him with what Ballard described as “tough guy shit.”

  “Fine then, sign up for yard block,” Ballard responded. “We’ll trade on the fence.”

  “Trading on the fence” was, according to Ballard, a common way that inmates inside SCI–Frackville fought with each other. Two inmates looking to settle a score would request the same period of outdoor time in the prison yard. Once they got there, the inmates would go up to one of the chain-link fences and “trade shots,” according to Ballard.

  One would place his face against the fence, and the other would punch him as hard as he could. Then the other would place his face on the fence and allow the other inmate to punch him. This continued until one of them couldn’t take it anymore and gave up, and the other was declared the winner.

  According to Ballard, after he suggested trading on the fence, Riddick quickly reversed course and wanted to be friends with Ballard. The two didn’t talk much and Ballard claimed that, contrary to Riddick’s statements, they never exchanged letters with each other. But it didn’t surprise Ballard to learn that Riddick claimed they had.

  Riddick was only sent back in prison for a technical parole violation, but according to Ballard he was nervous because he had another parole board meeting coming up. Riddick knew they wouldn’t grant him parole if he was in the restricted housing unit for a prison misconduct.

  So, Ballard claimed, Riddick was looking to inform on anybody he could to get back into the general population. Ballard heard Riddick claim that he knew which prisoners were dealing drugs, and which prisoners were having affairs with prison staff, and that he’d give them all up. Now, it appeared, he was trying to give up Ballard as well.

  According to Ballard, all of Riddick’s knowledge of Ballard’s crimes came from the mail he read, and that the rest of it—including the two supposed murders in the Poconos—was pulled out of thin air.

  “He just pulled that out of his ass like a Cracker Jack toy,” Ballard later said.

  John Morganelli didn’t place much credence in Riddick’s statements, either, but for different reasons. First of all, the word of a convicted criminal wasn’t worth much, especially when he didn’t actually have Ballard’s supposed letters to back up what he was saying. But even if Riddick’s statements were true, and Ballard did say those things to him, that didn’t necessarily mean anything significant as far as Morganelli was concerned.

  To the district attorney it sounded like a lot of tough talk, just posturing on Ballard’s part to make himself more intimidating to the other inmates. It wasn’t very uncommon behavior among inmates. In fact, the district attorney surmised, perhaps the greatest value these comments had for Ballard was that they made pursuing an insanity defense that much more difficult because, if he’d really made those statements to Riddick, it proved he’d had an intent to kill. The claims about killing witnesses also gave Morganelli another aggravating factor with which to seek the death penalty, so he filed notice in court that he planned to seek that factor.

  But when it came to the claim that Ballard killed two people in the Poconos, Morganelli doubted there was any truth to it based on the simple fact that Ballard wouldn’t have had time to commit these murders.

  Ballard was only out of prison for just over a year after his first parole, and for almost that entire time he was under the supervision of the Allentown Community Corrections Center. Ballard’s movements were pretty well accounted for during that time, and there was no evidence he had gone anywhere near the Poconos.

  Nevertheless, Morganelli shared the information with authorities in Monroe County and elsewhere in the Poconos. They were investigated, according to the district attorney, but no evidence of any such murders was ever uncovered.

  CHAPTER 19

  Ballard appeared in court again on February 8 for a hearing on the various pre-trial motions that had been raised by the attorneys on both sides. Danielle Kaufman came out to support him, sitting in her usual spot: Ballard told her to always sit on the aisle of the second row on the right side, right behind Ballard, so he could easily turn his head and see her whenever he wanted.

  Danielle found the six-hour hearing to be a pretty grueling process. She had always enjoyed watching court scenes on television, but after attending a few in real life, she was quickly learning they weren’t as interesting as they are on Law & Order. But still, she loved any opportunity she got to see Ballard.

  “It’s hard for me to even tell you how happy you can make me in such a short amount of time,” Danielle once wrote in a letter describing how she felt watching Ballard get brought into the courtroom for a hearing. “Seeing you, for me, is like getting a B12 injection. Instant euphoria.”

  Various pieces of evidence were discussed during the hearing, including Ballard’s alleged statements to Wilfredo Riddick, his various confessions at St. Luke’s Hospital, and whether his 1991 murder of Donald Richard should be admitted into evidence. Raymond Judge testified about Ballard’s purchase of a Ruko military-style knife, upon which the blood of both Ballard and Steven Zernhelt was found.

  Little new information came out of the hearing except that Judge Smith formally responded to the prosecution’s request that the trial be held in another county. The trial would remain in Northampton County, Smith ruled, but a jury would be brought in from outside to hear the case. It would later be decided that the jury would come from Wayne County, a rural area located about two hours north of the Easton courthouse.

  Ballard, as usual, remained calm for most of the proceedings, except when John Morganelli mentioned a copy of a letter Ballard had written from prison that might be submitted into evidence. Upon hearing this, Ballard jolted upright, a look of shock on his face, and he turned around to face the audience.

  “Fuck!” Ballard said. “Fuck!”

  Danielle cringed. Ballard wasn’t looking at her when he muttered those expletives, and it was far from clear whether he was directing them at her or somebody else. But she felt horrible nevertheless. She remained desperately conflicted about cooperating with the police, feeling as if she had betrayed Michael, and she knew the statements Ballard had made in her letters were damaging to his case.

  Throughout the hearing, Danielle had tried to get Ballard’s attention, leaning over and smiling at him whenever he looked her way. But every time she tried, the guards surrounding him would step in her way and shake their heads. She was growing more and more upset as the hearing went on.

  It breaks my heart that we live in a world where smiling at someone warrants you be treated like a terrorist, she thought.

  During a recess, after Ballard was temporarily escorted from the courtroom, one of Ballard’s lawyers—she couldn’t remember this one’s name—approached her.

  “Do me a favor and move back a row and sit all the way over next to the wall,” he said. “Michael wants to see you but he can’t because of the cops.”

  Danielle frowned. She did not like the idea of being put in a corner, out of the way. But, she thought, Michael wants me to sit there, so here I will sit.

  A few moments later, Ballard was brought back into the courtroom and seated back at the defense table. Before the proceedings started again, he turned his head to the left and glanced at the audience behind him. Watching him intently, Danielle was horrified: She believed that Ballard was looking for her where she had been sitting earlier.

  Her jaw dropped in shock. Danielle was absolutely convinced that Ballard hadn’t asked her to move at all, and that his attorney had simply wanted her out of the way, perhaps so the guards would no longer be bothered by her. Her mind was racing. She was so upset she could no longer even hear what was going on or see anyone else around her besides Ballard. Everything else looked like a blur.

&n
bsp; Micahel probably thinks I left him! she thought. DO something, Danielle!

  She started focusing her eyes intently on the back of Ballard’s head. As she later described it, she was “hoping that I stumble on the right channel” and that Ballard would somehow sense her and turn to look back at her. He didn’t. Tears started to form in her eyes, and she started pinching her hand and arm, a nervous habit she falls back on whenever she starts feeling like she might lose control of herself.

  At one point, Ballard started to turn his head slightly. He’s going to look at me! she thought. But then he just glanced at his lawyer, the same lawyer who had made her move! Danielle tried to slide over slightly in her bench, trying to get Ballard’s attention, but the two guards standing over him started making signals to each other. She was sure they were on to her. She just knew it.

  By now, Danielle’s hand and arms were bruised from all the pinching, but she was finding it harder and harder to keep from crying. She felt as if everybody in the courtroom—the audience, the lawyers, the judge—was staring at her. Everybody was looking at her. Everybody but Michael Ballard.

  They don’t see a person, she thought. They see a piece of trash.

  Danielle finally couldn’t take it anymore. She slipped out of the courtroom and, unable to fight back her emotions, ran back to her car in tears. She sobbed all the way from the courthouse back to her home in Allen Township. Once she arrived, she took a razor blade and cut eight slits across her arm until she was bleeding. They weren’t deep cuts, and she wasn’t trying to kill herself. She was just trying to numb the anguish in her mind. It was, she called it, one of the worst days of her life.

  Danielle wrote several letters to Ballard in the days following that court hearing, and visited him twice over the next two weeks. If Ballard had been mad at her for having cooperated with the police and giving them the letters he had written to her, he didn’t show it in his most recent letters and during her first prison visit with him. In fact, Ballard sang to her during that visit, and the sound of his voice had a soothing effect on Danielle.

  But the second visit, on February 17, was totally different. By now Danielle was more than familiar with Ballard’s shifts in mood, but this time his manner was completely cold. As she sat down and looked at him through the Plexiglas wall, he was absolutely silent. Instead of speaking, he handed a letter to the nearest guard, who passed it through the booth over to Danielle.

  It was written by Ballard, but didn’t at all resemble his usual way of writing or speaking. Instead, in a very technical tone, it stated that Danielle could no longer speak about him or their previous letters to each other, or he would take legal action against her.

  Although it was written in legalese terms and Ballard was obviously trying to make it sound like an official document, Danielle knew there was nothing legally binding about it. Nevertheless, she felt simultaneously hurt, surprised, and annoyed.

  “Michael, are you serious?” she said in an exasperated tone, holding the letter up.

  “Visit’s over,” Ballard said, then walked away.

  * * *

  But if Ballard was really cutting off communications with Danielle Kaufman, it didn’t last very long.

  Within a matter of days, the two were again exchanging letters and phone calls. Danielle learned that on Sunday, March 6, Ballard would be brought in to Northampton County Prison from Frackville so he could later be transported to Philadelphia for a brain scan.

  As always when Ballard was back in Easton, Danielle had arranged to visit with him. Wanting to look her best for him, Danielle dressed up in some of her nicest clothes, let her hair down, and wore her high heels for the visit. It was pouring rain when she drove over to the prison that evening.

  Danielle knew there was a chance she wouldn’t be allowed to see him. Sundays were always tricky because the prison was usually understaffed, and a lot of corrections officers had to be on hand for in-person visits. That was especially the case for Ballard, who was being kept in the isolation cell and—as always—was under very close watch by the guards.

  When Danielle finally reached the prison doors and identified herself to the guards, her fear was confirmed.

  “It’s not going to happen today,” one guard said. They just didn’t have the staff.

  Danielle was extremely disappointed. But when Ballard received the news, he was downright livid.

  Ballard was always upset when he was denied something he felt entitled to at the prison—when he didn’t have control. But in this case it was worse, Danielle later said. He felt that, by having this visit denied for him, it was as if a promise had been broken.

  “He said he was tired of being made promises that weren’t ever being kept,” Danielle later said. “It was the same way with Denise Merhi, too. If you make a promise to Michael, it has to be kept.”

  From Ballard’s perspective, his anger had little to do with getting to see Danielle and everything to do with his feelings that the prison staff were harassing and disrespecting him.

  Ballard called out to one of the lieutenants—a man named Jason—and pointed at an imaginary watch on his wrist, indicating he had a visit coming. But Jason told him Michael Bateman, the deputy warden, had not approved any visits for Ballard that day.

  Ballard was frustrated. It was a direct violation of what he believed was an unspoken truce with the prison staff: You give me two visits, I don’t turn your prison into a war zone. But Jason called Bateman at home and the deputy warden confirmed that Ballard had not been approved for any visits because he had just had one Saturday. Ballard thought this was unfair because the schedule for visits restarted on Sundays.

  “Jason, that’s not the deal,” Ballard said from behind his cell door.

  “Bateman made the call,” the lieutenant replied with a shrug.

  Fine, Ballard thought as Jason walked away. If you’re not going to abide by your end of the bargain, I’m not going to abide by mine. Let’s have a party.

  Ballard grabbed a pencil and one of the pieces of paper he usually used for his drawings. After a few seconds of furious scribbling, Ballard attached some of his toothpaste to the edges of the paper, then stuck it to the wall right outside his cell. The makeshift sign read:

  COSTUME PARTY

  BRING A FRIEND

  FUN FOR ALL

  HAVE A RIOT

  After that, Ballard wet one of his towels in the sink and shoved it against the lower crack of his cell door. He knew that, for what he was about to do, the prison staff would try to pump pepper spray into the cell. Ballard then lifted one of the two mattresses in his cell and shoved it against the door, essentially barricading himself inside.

  The corrections officers ordered Ballard to remove the mattress, but he refused. There were no other points where the guards could engage Ballard besides the entrance, as solid concrete walls encased the rest of the isolation cell.

  Ballard clogged the sink and toilet drains with the rest of his towels, then left the water running and kept running the sink and flushing the toilet until the cell was flooded with about two inches of water. As the guards continued knocking on the door outside and ordering Ballard to remove the mattress, he picked up his toothpaste tube and squeezed it into his mouth, hoping that when the guards finally did break in, he could spit the paste into their faces and perhaps temporarily blind one or two of them.

  By now, the prison was placed on lockdown, which meant inmates had to be kept in their cells and nonessential movement was strictly prohibited. The water was shut off once the guards realized Ballard was flooding his cell. Next, they called in the prison’s Corrections Emergency Response Team to perform what they called a “cell extraction.” They seldom had to call for such measures, so the process was new to several of the guards.

  Half a dozen CERT members got into position outside the cell door, but Ballard was ready for them, after the warnings shouted by inmates in the surrounding cells. Those “wannabes” that Ballard had so little respect for were yelling
out a play-by-play account of the guards’ movements for him.

  “Mike, there’s six of them out here!” one inmate shouted. “One’s got a battering ram!”

  As if on cue, the guard with the battering ram started shoving the heavy instrument against the door. Ballard pressed his arms against the mattress, and the battering ram only succeeded in pushing the mattress out slightly before Ballard pressed it back up against the door. After ten or fifteen attempts at this, Ballard rolled his eyes.

  Are you guys bored with this yet? he thought. Because I already am.

  The shouts from the inmates continued, most of which Ballard had tuned out, except for one particularly startling warning.

  “They’ve got a shotgun,” an inmate shouted.

  Ballard’s eyes widened … What?

  By now, the guards outside had cracked the door slightly, and indeed what appeared to be the long barrel of a shotgun came through the cell door. With the mattress still blocking the entranceway, the guards had no way of telling where they were pointing the weapon as they blindly worked it into the cell.

  But Ballard could tell: It was pointing right at his face.

  Ballard grabbed the barrel and shoved it against the wall, pointing it away from himself. As it hit the wall, the shotgun went off, making such a loud noise that Ballard staggered back, clasping his hands against his ears and letting out a moan, which was stifled by the toothpaste still in his mouth.

  Feels like I’m inside a bell…, he thought, his head feeling completely shattered, his equilibrium lost. The non-lethal shotgun had fired off a diversionary device, a flash-bang that made an extremely loud noise meant to incapacitate a subject without permanently harming him.

  As the CERT members finally knocked down the mattress and entered the cell, Ballard tried to regain his composure and squatted down in a position like a defensive lineman, ready for a fight. Two guards entered the room and split up, coming toward Ballard from opposite ends. They wore masks with plastic face guards and body armor from head to toe that reminded Ballard of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.