He told police that Charlotte didn’t like him and blamed him for all of Katrina’s problems. He said Katrina was a drug addict who was living all over the place. The last he heard, Katrina was a “coke whore.”
Police never found Katrina.
Now fifteen years later, Katrina’s mother, who lives in Mississippi, wants to know why the case still hasn’t been solved.
Katrina’s mother, who had been following the case of another missing Woonsocket woman, took police to task for never finding out what happened to her daughter. As far as Charlotte was concerned, police never located her daughter’s body, even though the family believed she had been murdered by someone who was close to her and buried on the banks of the Blackstone River. Katrina’s family claimed that the person they thought was responsible for her disappearance recently got out of jail and was back in Woonsocket.
Charlotte has always believed that Katrina was murdered after a long and abusive relationship. She has also believed that the Woonsocket Police Department was never really interested in investigating her daughter’s disappearance.
“Every time we go up there asking about it, they say, ‘Oh, there is nothing new. We’re working on it. It’s an open case,’” Charlotte told the Woonsocket Call in November 2007.
Charlotte said she asked to see the police reports on Katrina’s disappearance, but she was told they were not on file in the department’s computer records. Charlotte was told Katrina’s case wasn’t in the system because when she disappeared, the police only kept paper files and those files hadn’t yet been put into the computer system.
“I don’t think the Woonsocket police could find the end of their noses,” Charlotte told the Woonsocket Call.
Charlotte and her husband tried to meet with the detective working her daughter’s case in May 2007 when they were in Woonsocket for the funeral of Katrina’s grandmother. But Charlotte told the newspaper that they were left waiting in the lobby of the police station for over an hour before they were told that the detective wasn’t working that day.
Katrina’s stepbrother, a police officer in Lake, Mississippi, has also tried unsuccessfully to get information about her case by sending e-mails to the station. However, department officials claimed her case was still active and said they still hoped to solve it.
But after fifteen years, the case was considered a cold case and a new break would be needed to close it, according to police. But police said after recently finding a woman who had been missing for two months, they were again taking a look at all their old cases. The police said even in a case as cold as McVeigh’s, there was still the chance that someone would come forward with the information needed to solve it.
But Charlotte is still afraid her daughter will never be found.
“The picture I have in my mind all the time is of my daughter in the landfill with trash all over her,” she told the Woonsocket Call. “I would like to know where she is. If she is still there by the river, I would like to have her removed. I have a grave for her.”
Unfortunately, what happened to all those missing and murdered women wasn’t enough to make women like Audrey, Christine and Stacie think twice about their lives as prostitutes. And it wasn’t enough for thirty-one-year-old Cindy Roberts either.
Cindy, who had a history of prostitution and substance abuse, was reported missing on July 4, 2001. Cindy’s mother, Margaret, called Woonsocket police and told them no one had seen her daughter for about a week. Margaret said she had been having problems with Cindy because of her drug habit. The last time she talked to Cindy was on June 14 just after Cindy had been arrested. Margaret had helped Cindy pay her fines so she could stay out of jail. Margaret also said it wasn’t uncommon for her not to talk to Cindy for more than a week.
The police listed Cindy in their computer systems as an “endangered missing person” and launched an investigation. During their investigation they learned that none of the people who usually had contact with her had seen her around.
A woman named Joan told police the last time she saw Cindy was on June 27 when Cindy tried to sell her a bicycle, which she didn’t buy. The woman said Cindy told her she was with some Hispanic men, but the woman never saw them. As Cindy was leaving, she told the woman she would call her later because she wanted the woman to do her nails. But the woman never heard from Cindy again.
A man named Kevin told police he had met up with Cindy late Saturday, June 23. He said they got high together, but then went their separate ways. He said he saw Cindy again early Sunday morning when he was sitting on the steps of an Arnold Street dwelling. He said Cindy was with another guy, named Steve. He said the three talked for about twenty minutes when another guy they knew, Joe, came by and Cindy and Steve got in his truck and left. Kevin said he never saw Cindy again.
The police then questioned Steve, who wasn’t very cooperative. He said he was with Cindy and Joe that Sunday, but they later split up. He said he had no idea what happened to Cindy after that. When police caught up with Joe, he confirmed that he had given Cindy and Steve a ride on Sunday morning. He said they went to a local coffee shop and later he dropped them off in the area, although he wasn’t sure exactly where. Joe said he saw Cindy the next day, Monday, using a pay phone next to the Donut Express on Front Street. He said she was with an African-American male called Boo.
When police tracked Boo down, he said Cindy had stayed with him at one point over that weekend and had left a leather coat and a bag in his apartment. He turned those items over to the police. He said the last time he saw Cindy was probably around lunchtime on Monday, June 25. Boo said she was with a short Hispanic man with a pockmarked face. Boo didn’t know who the guy was, but said he had seen him around the city. Boo told Cindy he was on his way to work and he would see her later. But he never did.
Another of Cindy’s friends, Ron, told police he had tried to help her and get her off drugs and off the street. He said he didn’t do drugs, but he had seen Cindy do drugs in his apartment. Ron admitted to having sex with Cindy on several occasions. He said he picked Cindy up outside of the Heritage Coffee Shop on Main Street on the morning of Saturday, June 23. They went back to his house, where Cindy ate, slept and cleaned up. He said he gave her a pair of white sneakers.
Later that night Cindy wanted to go back out on the street, so he dropped her off on Ascension Street, where she hooked up with an African-American woman, whose name he didn’t know. He said he stopped the car for a few minutes and the woman asked him if he wanted a date. He turned her down, but he gave her a cigarette. At that point Cindy started yelling up at someone in one of the nearby apartments, asking if she could stay over. She took her leather coat and other things out of Ron’s car, including two bags of random stuff like soap, shampoo, a hair dryer and food, and left. Ron agreed to let police search his apartment, but they didn’t find anything suspicious.
Police also tried to track down the three men who had fathered Cindy’s three children—the kids lived with their respective dads—but Cindy’s sister was only able to give police the name of one of the men. She didn’t know who the other guys were.
In their reports police noted that everyone they talked to was vague about times and events because most of them were drug addicts. That was a problem police always had when they tried to investigate the disappearances of known prostitutes. It wasn’t that they didn’t try hard, because they did. It was just hard trying to get any information from the people they hung out with.
Woonsocket police continued their investigation into Cindy’s disappearance, but they didn’t turn up anything. They continued talking to people in the Arnold Street area, where Cindy often went to pick up johns. They worked with a state police K-9 unit, combing the woods next to the Providence-Worcester rail line. They even drained a portion of the Blackstone River, behind the South Main Street Dam. They never stopped searching for her.
Then on October 27, 2002, a year and four months after she disappeared, a man riding a four-wheeler came across a human
skull and other bones in a wooded area of Lincoln, Rhode Island. The state medical examiner said it was Cindy. Her bones were found just about four miles from the Arnold Street area of Woonsocket, where she was last seen. The case has never been solved.
Chapter 6
After Stacie disappeared, Edward Lee, Jr., then a sergeant, was called by his superior, who told him there was a case involving a missing prostitute named Stacie Goulet. Lee, who was in charge of detectives that weekend, would ultimately become the lead investigator on the case of the three missing women. Steve Nowak, also a sergeant at the time, would become the second in command on the case. Before Stacie disappeared, Nowak had been investigating Christine Dumont’s disappearance.
Lee, who was born in Woonsocket, grew up in nearby Blackstone, Massachusetts. At twenty-four, his father, Edward Lee, Sr., was the youngest chief of police in Massachusetts. His mom, Maryjane Lee, was a housewife who worked in social services. She was a social worker, now retired. His dad passed away at fifty-three of multiple myeloma.
“He was military police and a patrol officer before he became chief,” Lee said. “He was considered a real tough guy in Blackstone. Back in the day he used to get in fights behind bars. But he also had a reputation for being a nice guy.”
Edward junior’s dad would regale him with great stories of his work on the force. As he went through high school, there was no doubt in Ed Lee, Jr.’s mind that he, too, was going to work in law enforcement.
“The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” he said, recalling the father he still loves so much. “I didn’t understand why other people wouldn’t want to do it. It’s a job filled with excitement and it’s lived up to every expectation I thought it would. Of course, it’s dangerous as well, but there are certain personalities that are drawn to that life. While other people are running away from trouble, cops are running toward it. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline rush or what.”
Lee graduated from Blackstone-Millville Regional High School, then enrolled in the law enforcement program at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. About a year later, Lee asked his dad if he had to complete four years of college before he could apply to become a police officer. The answer was no. After his dad talked to a friend, who was the Woonsocket chief of police at the time, Lee applied to join the force, took the requisite test, did well and was called in for an interview.
“And I even sold it to my dad,” Lee recalled. “He wanted me to stay in school and get a degree. But I think he was proud of the fact that I wanted to follow in his footsteps, although he was a little hesitant too. But I sold him on the fact that they paid for college. So I figured why not become a police [officer] and have college paid for. And that’s what I did. I finished up my associate’s degree in criminal justice and now I’m working toward my bachelor’s degree.”
Lee was only nineteen when he joined the Woonsocket Police Department in 1988. He got married in 1993 and he and his wife, Cheri, had two children, Wyatt, six, and Tatum, five, at press time.
As a patrol officer Lee had a pretty good reputation for making a lot of arrests and being able to physically take down the big guys. However, he always remembered that his father said being physical was good, but a police officer had to use his brains—a piece of advice Lee remembered when he was investigating the disappearances of Audrey, Christine and Stacie.
Lee got his big break when he was able to get into the narcotics division—an assignment he truly loved.
“Before I got on the cases of the missing women, I had a lot of good cases in narcotics,” he said. “I was pretty good undercover. You have to be a quick thinker and cover your tracks. You have to sell yourself to people and convince them you’re not a police officer and you have to have the gift of gab, and I was pretty good at both those things.”
After narcotics Lee made detective and then became a sergeant. Before catching the case of the three missing women, he had been involved in four other homicides, as well as a couple high-profile cases involving the kidnapping and attempted murders of several prostitutes. He said it was too bad that none of those incidents had any effect on the working girls in Woonsocket. If they had had some effect, he said, maybe Audrey, Christine and Stacie would still be alive.
The first case involved a woman named Gloria, who ultimately escaped her abductor, but never quite got over the trauma of her experience.
As Lee told it, he was driving down Center Street on December 21, 1997. It was just about 2:30 A.M. As he approached the intersection of Sayles and Center Streets, Lee noticed a man driving an older-model gray Dodge. The man was exiting Sayles Street, which was a dead end, and he was speeding.
The guy sped through the intersection, heading east on Sayles Street. Lee followed the driver, caught up with him and pulled him over. Before Lee could get out of his cruiser, the guy got out of his car and started walking toward Lee. For his own safety Lee called for backup, then quickly got out of his vehicle and ordered the guy to put his hands on the back of his car.
As Lee approached the man, he noticed he was sweating profusely, even though it was December. He also noticed that the guy’s pants were soaking wet from the knees down, his hair was messed up and there were leaves stuck to his sweater. As Lee got closer, he saw what looked like smeared blood on the guy’s jacket and hands.
Lee asked the guy for identification and quizzed him about what he was doing in the area. The man, Ronald Guertin, told Lee that he had once lived at the end of Sayles Street and, feeling nostalgic, decided to visit.
As he was talking to Guertin, another officer, Patrolman David Hopkins, arrived to help. Lee told Hopkins that he was suspicious of Guertin’s behavior and his appearance and he wanted to go check out the end of Sayles Street, where Guertin had just come from. As Lee started to head to that location, he heard the police dispatcher send two patrol cars to nearby Oak Street, on a report of a woman screaming.
Lee rushed to the Oak Street address and arrived at the same time as the two other officers. When they got out of their patrol cars, they heard screams coming from a wooded area and raced to the scene. The officers located the woman on Olo Street, near the railroad tracks, which was less than a quarter mile from the end of Sayles Street. She was naked and covered with blood from the waist down. She told police she had been raped, but because she was so distraught, she wasn’t able to tell them exactly what had happened. Police tried to calm her down, but she just kept screaming and yelling that she had been raped. The officers immediately called for an ambulance to take her to the Landmark Medical Center and began searching for the woman’s clothes, as well as any evidence of an assault.
Because Lee had told the other officers that he had stopped a man driving on Sayles Street who was all wet and had blood on him, they searched along the banks of a small river from Olo Street toward Sayles Street. Lee also told the other officers that the man had a piece of tinsel on his shoe.
One of the officers located a multicolored bra on a branch of a tree and noticed that it had a frozen drop of water mixed with blood on it. Police also found the woman’s panties, overalls and shoes on the side of a building at the end of Sayles Street, near the Blackstone River. They also located an old Christmas tree with tinsel on it near the building. And they found some bloodstains on the ground in the same area. They collected the items as evidence and brought them back to the police station, where they were processed. Lee had already arrested Guertin and transported him back to the station, where his clothes were seized and processed for evidence.
Lee said later that day he sent the police to the medical center to talk to the woman, but at that point she was so drunk, she wasn’t able to give them much information. Although she didn’t remember where she had been attacked or what had happened to her clothes, she was able to tell police that she had been raped vaginally by a man who was choking her while he was raping her. She said she tried to get away but he was too strong.
Several times during the interview, Gloria b
egan having seizures. The doctor who was treating her said it was probably because she was suffering from hypothermia. The detectives then took pictures of her wounds and scratches and took the photos, as well as the rape kit done at the hospital, back to the station. Police tried to get a judge to sign a warrant to search Guertin’s car, but the judge refused, saying there wasn’t any evidence to link the woman to the car.
So later that day the police went back to the medical center to talk to the woman one more time. When they arrived, they learned she had been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and was heavily medicated. Although they were allowed to speak with her, she still wasn’t in any condition to give them much information. The only information they were able to get from her was that she had been at the Hillside Café on Arnold Street—the same area where Audrey, Christine and Stacie met up with their killer.
The detectives went to the bar and talked to Gary, one of the regular bartenders, who told them that the woman, named Gloria, had definitely been at the bar around 12:45 A.M. Gary said Gloria was so drunk that he refused to serve her any drinks. Gary also said he remembered there was a heavyset guy with a beard who tried to get Gloria to leave with him. Gary said he kept watching the guy, who left the bar and came back several times, because he kept bothering Gloria.
Finally Gary told Gloria to stay in the bar and he would give her a ride home, but the other man walked up to Gloria again and started talking to her. That time Gloria left the bar with the guy. Police showed Gary a photo lineup and he was able to pick Guertin out as the person who had been bothering Gloria.
Police talked to a woman who said she saw Gloria and Guertin together at Buddy’s Café on Arnold Street at about 12:30 that morning. However, the woman said Gloria, who was very intoxicated, and Guertin left the bar separately.
Ripper Page 5