Ripper

by Linda Rosencrance

“Not that I can remember. I don’t believe she had any rings or anything like that.”

  “No wallet?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. But everything she had you threw away, or did you keep anything?”

  “Everything—I threw away.”

  “Do you remember her size?” Lee asked.

  “She was pretty petite, probably like my height. She probably weighed about a hundred and five, hundred and ten pounds, maybe.”

  “Okay, what color?”

  “She was black.”

  Nowak explained to Mailhot that some of the questions he and Lee were going to be asking were going to be redundant.

  “I am going to ask them over and over again—two reasons for that. One is I’ve been working all day and I’m not the brightest bulb around, to be honest with you, and two, I want to make sure I cover everything,” Nowak explained. “So it’s not that I am thinking you are lying or anything, I’m just asking you because I want to be sure, okay? And I want you to be sure. I don’t want you telling us anything that didn’t happen and I don’t want to write down or perceive something that didn’t happen, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, so we have her in the tub, she’s naked. You’ve disposed of everything she has—you take nothing from her.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t put anything in a drawer or anywhere or nothing.”

  “No.”

  “All right, she’s naked. You put her in the tub. What do you do then?”

  “Then probably about ten minutes later I passed out.”

  “From?”

  Mailhot was about to say from the alcohol, but he changed his mind.

  “Passed out or fell asleep—went to sleep.”

  “Where did you fall asleep?”

  “In my bed.”

  “So as soon as you put her in the tub, you walked out and laid down in bed?”

  “I was so drunk, I was about ready to pass out anyway,” Mailhot said. “I just went to bed.”

  “Okay, so you went to bed and you got right to sleep, you said. You kind of passed out right away?”

  “Yeah, I was so drunk, I pretty much had no choice. I was just that lit.”

  “Okay, so now you’re asleep, you wake up the next morning, which you believe is a Friday, and … ?”

  The next morning, Mailhot said, he woke up with no memory of what had happened the previous night. But when he went into the bathroom and saw Audrey’s body in his bathtub, it all came flooding back to him. Realizing he needed time to figure out what to do, he called his boss at Avery Dennison and said he was taking a sick day.

  He left Audrey in his bathtub and drove to Wal-Mart, where he bought a roll of heavy-duty plastic wrap and a roll of carpet. He brought the plastic wrap and carpet home, rolled Audrey’s body first in the plastic, and then in the carpet, and put her in his GMC Jimmy and drove around town trying to find a place to dump her.

  The cops wanted to know what happened to that truck, because it might contain evidence prosecutors could use to convict Mailhot.

  “Where is that now?” Lee asked, interrupting Mailhot.

  “I sold it,” he said. “I traded it in for the vehicle I have now.”

  “Do you know who you sold it to?”

  “I forget right now the name of the dealership, but the license plate holder on the back of my truck, I believe, has it,” Mailhot said. “I believe it’s something Hyundai—like Torres Hyundai or something like that. But it’s written on the license plate holder on the back of my current truck now. That’s where I traded it in.”

  After the interruption Mailhot continued his story and explained to the cops how he had cut up Audrey’s body and disposed of it in area Dumpsters.

  Fourteen months later, Mailhot picked up Christine Dumont, and two months after that, Stacie Goulet. Mailhot brought the women back to his apartment, presumably to have sex, then choked them, dismembered their bodies in his bathtub, put their body parts in plastic bags and tossed them away like trash in neighborhood Dumpsters. He also got rid of their clothes, and the saw he used to cut up Christine, but for some reason he kept the saw he used to dismember Stacie. In fact, he put that saw, which had a picture of a shark on its wooden handle, in the basement with some other tools behind his washer and dryer.

  As Mailhot spoke, Lee and Nowak peppered him with questions. They wanted to know how a seemingly normal guy—a guy who had never even had a speeding ticket—became a serial killer.

  “Were there any other girls?” Nowak asked.

  “No, that’s about it…. I have no reason to lie now.”

  “That’s right,” Lee said.

  “I have choked other girls.”

  “Any others die?” Nowak asked.

  “No, none have died.”

  “And have you ever disposed of a body other than cutting them up?” Lee asked.

  “No.”

  Mailhot explained that he cut up Audrey’s body so he could get rid of it. He said he was scared and didn’t want anyone to find out what he had done.

  “But then it happened again,” Lee said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did it happen again?”

  “Again I was drinking.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was drinking all three times when it happened.”

  “Okay, but you did the same thing with each of the girls?” Lee asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And they were all in the same locations—the Dumpsters?”

  Mailhot said he threw some of the bags in various Dumpsters in the area, including at the Plaza Village, the Brunswick bowling alley and Rock Ridge Apartments.

  “Did you hang on to anything—any part of their body?” Lee asked.

  “No.”

  “Any clothing or anything?” Nowak asked.

  “Got rid of all the clothing,” Mailhot said.

  “I’ll be right back. I’m glad you got this off your chest,” Lee said as he got up and walked out.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you guys.”

  “Jeff, listen, we deal with this stuff a lot, okay? We understand that these things happen, okay? We understand that … things like this happen. Now you’ve come this far, okay? And, again, I really do appreciate what you’re doing and I hope you feel a little better that it’s off your chest, because it must have been horrible eating at you,” Nowak said.

  “I know you guys have a lot of work to do. I know there’s a lot of questions to ask,” Mailhot said.

  “There’s other girls that haven’t turned up,” Nowak said.

  “Hm-hmm.”

  “Are there more?”

  “No there’s not. I’m not going to confess to three and not confess anymore, okay?”

  “I understand. I just want to let you know where I’m coming from. We had one, well actually her body was found down the street from where you used to live.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you know nothing about that?” Nowak asked.

  “Those are the three right there,” Mailhot said, pointing to the photos of Audrey, Christine and Stacie on the table.

  “When you disposed of them, like, did you do it all? Did you just throw all the body parts in and just drive around the city?” Nowak wanted to know.

  “Yes.”

  “Or did you take two [trash bags] and then go back to the house?”

  “No, I did them all at once.”

  “You did them all at once? How long would it take you to make the whole round?”

  “Probably like half an hour maybe.”

  “Half an hour?”

  “Just driving around the city—like all of them were in Woonsocket.”

  “During that time, did anybody ever stop to ask you what you were doing?” Nowak asked. “Did you ever come close to getting caught or anything? Nobody? Never saw a cruiser roll up and say, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Nothing like that? Never saw a civilian say, ‘Hey, get out of our Dumpster’ or whatever?”<
br />
  “No.”

  “Did you ever see anybody walking around?”

  “No.”

  “What time of night was this?” Nowak asked.

  “They were all around, like, eleven at night—eleven to midnightish.”

  “The first—the first one, you said you waited until the next day to do it—the other two, how long did they stay with you?”

  “Well, the first one stayed with me for a couple days…. The last two stayed with me for a day. I did it during the night and then I disposed of them the next day.”

  “Okay, and when did you actually start to dismember them?” Lee asked.

  “It was probably, like, five or six o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Lee asked Mailhot if he had been reading about the disappearances of the women in the newspapers or watching it on television. Mailhot said he hadn’t heard anything about the women because he wasn’t really a “news person. I mean, I turn on the news, here and there, but I’ve never seen or heard of them mentioned.”

  “Did you ever fear the police [were going to find out] that they were missing? So you never checked the newspapers or anything, knowing where they were?” Lee asked.

  “Did any of the other girls ever bring it up?” Nowak asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Did any of the prostitutes that you picked up ever bring it up?” Nowak repeated.

  “No, no.”

  “You had no idea that people were looking for these girls?” Nowak asked.

  “I had a feeling. I mean, they must have known, had family and stuff that was looking for them, but I didn’t know. I never heard or seen anything on the news about it, and I had never heard from any of the other prostitutes about these girls being missing.”

  “That’s surprising, surprising,” Nowak said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you think about that?”

  Mailhot said he figured something might be up when he tried to pick up another prostitute and she ran away from him.

  “Well, I knew there was one prostitute that I tried to pick up once and she, like, ran away from me, so I figured that might have something to do with it,” he said. “I figured she might have heard something.”

  The detectives wanted to know if Mailhot had murdered any other women that he hadn’t yet told them about.

  “But you’re absolutely sure there were no other girls,” Nowak said.

  “Those are the three.”

  “Any down in Lincoln, any of the stuff happen when you lived out there?” Lee asked.

  “No.”

  “Would you agree that it’s kind of an odd coincidence that we’re in this situation today and one of the [missing] girls is from out in your neck of the woods up there in Lincoln?” Nowak asked.

  “Yeah, but like I said to him, I’m confessing to three murders right now,” Mailhot responded. “I’m not going to not confess to a fourth one. I understand exactly what you said about families and friends needing closure. I know.”

  Mailhot said he wasn’t going to admit to killing just three women if there were others.

  “No, we’re not asking you or want you to admit to anything that you didn’t do,” Nowak said. “Absolutely not.”

  “No,” Mailhot said, agreeing with Nowak.

  “I mean, that would be a cruel thing, right? To give the families of these three some final closure, but not close the door on any of the—” Lee said as Nowak finished his sentence.

  “Rest of them,” Nowak said.

  “Yes, yes,” Mailhot agreed.

  “Are the other missing girls—any idea, you know, where they are?” Lee asked. “Their families are entitled to the same closure.”

  “Yes, I understand. I’m not gonna hide that at all. It’s just these three right here,” Mailhot said, pointing to the pictures of the dead women. “Those are the only three I’ve ever killed.”

  “Did you ever consider coming to the police after the first one?” Nowak wanted to know.

  “Yes. [But] I was too afraid. Like right now, my life is over, you know?”

  “Did you take any steps to tell anybody?” Nowak asked.

  “No.”

  “Nobody then?”

  Mailhot told Lee and Nowak that he never told anyone what he had done—not even when he was drunk. He said he wanted to, but he never did.

  “Did you ever lay hints to anyone?” Nowak asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Being in a drunken state, you never told anybody?” Lee asked.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I saw a lot of pictures from the bar—you know a lot of guys that you hang out with—you never told any of them? Anybody?”

  Mailhot said he never told anyone.

  “So it’s a secret that you’ve been keeping to yourself that’s been eating away at you,” Lee said.

  “What about the second girl? Did you consider coming to us? What were you thinking after the second girl—about coming to us?” Nowak asked. “Did you say like, ‘Holy shit, not again,’ or what was your reaction?”

  “Yeah, it was that.”

  “Did you consider coming to anybody or telling anybody about her?”

  “Yeah, I considered telling people about all three. I was considering going to see, like, a psychiatrist, or maybe just tell a couple of my friends that I really trust.”

  In the end Mailhot never told anybody about the murders.

  Chapter 10

  The detectives, however, were still not convinced that Mailhot had only killed three women. The way they figured it, he probably started off by just disposing of the bodies, and worked his way up to dismembering them.

  “Did it get easier each time to dispose of the bodies? Or harder each time, huh?” Nowak asked. “You figure we’re probably looking for others too. I mean, to be honest with you … there’s reasons why we asked you where you learned to start cutting them up to hide them,” Nowak explained. “’Cause usually it doesn’t start right off the bat like that. Usually people do what you said—roll them up in a rug and throw them somewhere, because they’re scared. They usually [think], ‘Holy shit. What the hell did I get myself into?’ It usually takes a while to progress to cutting them up.”

  Mailhot repeated that the reason he cut the women up was because he was afraid of getting caught. He wanted to get rid of the bodies before anyone found out he had killed them.

  “It’s over now, but do you feel this would have happened again?” Lee asked. “Do you think this would have happened again? You can’t help it. It’s not the alcohol either, is it? It’s something inside.”

  “I guess. I think the alcohol may trigger it, but it’s something inside me.”

  “Something inside of you?”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t tell you in words what it is, but I do have a big problem.”

  “Yeah,” Lee said.

  “I have a problem.”

  Mailhot admitted that although alcohol may have triggered his actions, it wasn’t the cause of them. He said whatever was inside him that made him kill had started during adulthood, not when he was a child.

  “Let’s face it, you said every time it’s because of drinking, but it’s not because of drinking, because the first time that this happened with Audrey, you [would] have dropped it,” Lee said. “You would have put down the bottle. You know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How often do you drink?”

  “I drink on weekends. I’m not an alcoholic.”

  “So it’s something else that’s driving you other than the alcohol. So let’s clarify that,” Lee told Mailhot.

  “I agree. I agree.”

  “So you agree that it’s not the alcohol.”

  “No, no, this is much deeper.”

  “It’s not your intoxicated state that would have you do this,” Lee said.

  “No.”

  “It’s—it’s you.”

  “When did this thing inside of you start?” Nowak asked.
<
br />   “I really don’t know.”

  “Since you were a kid?”

  “No, no.”

  “Has it grown stronger since then?”

  “No. It was at some point in my adult life.”

  “Did you ever have a problem with women before?” Lee asked.

  “I never had a serious problem with women. I’ve never actually been in a serious relationship. I’ve never lived with a woman. I’ve gone out. I’ve had girlfriends for, you know, months at a time and stuff, but never anything serious. I’ve always kind of, like, backed away, ’cause I always felt there was something about myself that I knew—I mean, I wasn’t worried about hurting them, but I knew, like, there was something about me that wasn’t normal.”

  “When did you first know that … something inside you wasn’t right? Twenties, thirties? How old are you now?” Nowak wanted to know.

  “Twenties, thirties. I’m thirty-three right now. Somewhere in, like, [my] twenties.”

  Lee and Nowak then began to question Mailhot about the murder of Audrey Harris. Mailhot told them he didn’t want to choke her, but once he realized what was happening, he was scared to death and knew he had to finish what he started.

  “Let’s talk about how they were getting choked,” Lee said. “What happens? You pick her up, bring her to the apartment and then let’s explain in detail what happens then.”

  “This is the [first one]?” Mailhot asked.

  “Audrey Harris,” Lee responded.

  “Yes, we were just going to have sex and then I just choked her.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I came up from behind her and I put my arm around her neck and wrestled her to the ground and choked her, and then she was still breathing and so I stuffed a pillow over her face until she died.”

  “Okay, so it wasn’t an accident,” Lee said.

  “No, no.”

  “You choked her.”

  “I mean, I didn’t want to do that.”

  “Okay.”

  “But then once I realized what was happening, I was just scared to death.”

  “You had to finish,” Lee said.

  “I had to, yes. I had to finish.”

  “Okay, and you put a pillow over her head until—” Lee didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence before Mailhot responded.

  “Until she died. Until she stopped breathing. Until she died.”