“No.”
“Jewelry?” Nowak asked.
“That never crossed your mind?” Lee asked, continuing where Nowak left off.
“Did any of them have any jewelry?” Nowak asked before Mailhot had a chance to respond to Lee’s question.
“Not that I recall—the only thing I can recall is Audrey had some type of braids in her hair.”
“What did you do with them?” Nowak asked.
“They’re still on her head.”
Lee next asked Mailhot to describe any tattoos or other distinguishing marks the women had on their bodies.
Mailhot said Christine Dumont had one or two little tattoos, but he didn’t remember what they were or where they were located, although he thought they could have been on her lower back or maybe her shoulder. He didn’t think Audrey Harris or Stacie Goulet had any tattoos.
“How about any other features that stand out? Anything about these girls that you fixated on or remember about them, their bodies, their breasts, anything?” Lee asked.
“No.”
“No, nothing? Feet, nail polish?”
“No, I never looked at details like that.”
“Even when you were cutting off their hand or foot, you didn’t notice anything like that, any nail polish or anything?”
“No, I was just trying to get through it. I was trying really not to look, as much as I could.”
“How long did it take to dismember Audrey?”
“From start to finish, probably, like, a few hours.”
“More than two hours?”
“Yeah.”
“Two or three?”
“Probably right around three.”
“Did you take any breaks?”
“Yeah. I would have a beer just to try and calm my nerves down.”
“How long were your breaks?”
“Probably, like, ten, fifteen minutes.”
“On all? Pretty much the same routine on all three?”
“Just about.”
“Did you get more proficient [each time]?” Lee asked.
“I didn’t, not really. I mean, I just kind of did the same thing for all three, you know, just walking away for a little while, you know what I mean?”
“When you cut off a limb, was there a certain spot that you would start on?”
“Yeah, I cut off, like, the arm at the shoulder, you know right below the shoulder.”
“Did you do all three the same way?” Nowak asked. “Did you cut them up the same way? I mean, as far as the process—did you start at the same place?”
“Ah, yeah.”
Nowak then asked Mailhot to describe exactly what he did and how he did it.
Mailhot explained that he put the dead women in the bathtub, but before he laid the heavy black plastic sheeting on the floor, he removed the little blue rugs that were around the toilet and near the sink. Next he grabbed a trash bag out of the box, opened it and placed it on the floor on top of the plastic wrap, so that when he was through cutting a body part, he would put it right in the bag and wrap it up so he wouldn’t mess up the floor.
“I didn’t want a mess that I’d have to, you know, have to clean up.”
“Okay, so where did you start on the body?” Nowak asked.
“I think with the first one I started with the head and the hands, then the legs, and then I cut the torso in half. It was pretty much the same for all of them, you know. I mean, I would start off with maybe a leg or arm, but the torso was always the last thing.”
“And the reason that you started with the head and hands?”
“There was no real particular reason.”
“What was the overall reason why you were cutting them up again?” Nowak asked. “Like I told you, things are going to get redundant. We’re going to go over it.”
“Just to, you know, get rid of them less conspicuously,” Mailhot responded.
“And the head was always first?” Lee asked.
“No, I never really picked anything to be first. I think I started with the head with the first one, and then the second one I think I started with the arms, and then I did the head and then the legs and torso…. If you’re asking me if it was like, you know, some kind of ritual I had or anything, there was nothing.”
Lee and Nowak wanted to know what Mailhot did to mask the smell as he was dismembering the women. The only thing he said he used was some bathroom air spray to cover up the smell from Audrey’s decomposing body.
“Did you have to cover your nose or anything like that?” Lee asked.
“Yeah, kind of, and that’s why I was using a lot of the spray.”
“What did you use to cover your nose?”
“Just my hand.”
“Did you vomit at all during this?” Nowak asked.
“No, I thought I was going to, but I came close.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”
Nowak wanted to know what was going through Mailhot’s mind after he finished cutting the women up and putting them in the trash bags.
“Did you already know where you were going to dump them?”
Mailhot said he just started driving around late at night, looking for places to dump the bags.
“Did you ever almost get caught dumping a bag? Anybody say something or ask you, ‘What are you doing in our Dumpster?’” Lee asked.
“No, no.”
“What was the certain time of night that you would do these dumpings?”
“Late, about ten or eleven at night—right around there.”
“Okay, was that for all three?”
“Times vary. I think the first one was probably, like, ten or eleven,” Mailhot said. “The other ones may have been a little sooner, maybe, like, nine o’clock. But it was always dark out. But it was never later than, like, eleven o’clock.”
“Any particular reason why that time of night?”
“I wanted to, you know, just wanted to throw ’em out while it was dark out.”
Usually, after he threw the bags out, Mailhot drove around for a while, then drove back home. Although the night he tossed out the bags containing Audrey Harris, he went to a local bar and had a couple beers before going home. Mailhot told the cops he never talked to anyone about what he had done.
“Did you have the Internet during any of this?” Lee asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you talk or chat with anybody about it?” Lee was looking to find evidence of Mailhot’s crimes tucked away in his computer’s hard drive.
“No. I don’t go in any chat rooms or anything like that.”
“Any sites you’ve every looked up to assist you in dismembering or covering up smells or anything like that? You never looked that up.”
“No. I mean, I guess I kind of got the idea from an episode of The Sopranos.”
“What idea?” Lee asked.
“Of cutting up.”
“Which one?”
“There was an episode where they killed a guy and they got him in the bathtub and chopped him up a little bit before they got rid of him.”
“How long ago did you watch that episode?”
“Probably, like, a couple of years ago.”
“Been thinking about it since then?” Nowak asked.
“No. I hadn’t thought of doing it to anybody,” Mailhot said. “It was just a way of getting rid of what I had done.”
“So you realized what you did and you said, ‘Oh shit, I gotta get rid of it’ and—pow—that pops into your head and [you said], ‘Hey, I saw this [show] once’?” Nowak asked.
“Well, that was for the first one and that was after having her for a couple of days, and then, you know, thinking what can I do to make this go away, and then that popped into my head.”
“But you never got it on the Internet?” Nowak asked.
“No.”
“Do you want to know why we’re asking, to be honest with you?”
“Why?”
“Somebody around your
house just said what he did probably had something to do with the computer,” Nowak explained.
“Oh.”
“Did you ever do anything on your computer that would make somebody say that?”
“Say what?”
“Say the reason you were getting arrested was because of your computer? Any reason that anybody would come up with that?”
“No.”
“Ever do anything on your computer?”
“Look at porn with somebody on your computer or something like that?” Lee asked.
“No, I mean, I’ve downloaded some porn, you know normal stuff—lesbian porn, stuff like that. Nothing, nothing, nothing—no killing, no freaky stuff,” he said. “No.”
“I think you obviously know we can check you history—look at everything you ever looked at on the Internet,” Lee said.
“Yep.”
“I mean, it’s really—it’s not a big deal.”
“Right, no,” Maihot responded.
“Just curious,” Lee said.
“No, I never looked any of that up on the Internet. When I did it with the first one, I didn’t have any computer at the time,” Mailhot explained. “That happened last February 2003 and I bought my computer that summer. I think it was, like, July or August of 2003, I bought my computer.”
“Okay.”
“You got that Sopranos movie at your house?” Lee asked.
“No, it was an episode on HBO.”
“Okay, so the thought of cutting someone up never [occurred] to you until after?”
“Right.”
“This is going to sound like a messed-up question,” Nowak said. “[But] while these girls were there, did you ever tape, audio/video, or take pictures before or after anything?”
“No.”
“One of the things we noticed in your apartment was that you got a lot of pictures. They all have girls in them too—a lot of girls.”
“Yeah, well, a lot of those pictures—it’s just hanging out with friends and stuff like that.”
“Were any of those girls in any of those photographs—wherever you are—prostitutes?” Nowak asked.
Mailhot explained that he went on a Carnival Cruise to Cozumel and the Cayman Islands with his friend Scott, and the girls in the pictures were just girls they met from Tampa, Florida.
“Did you go with any prostitutes on the vacation?” Lee asked.
“No.”
“Down there, you didn’t get any sex?” Lee asked.
“Well, I got sex from the two girls we met.”
“How did everything go with them—no problems?”
“Yeah, no problems.”
“No choking?”
“No choking.”
“Did you think you got away with it?” Nowak asked. “Be honest with me.”
“Yeah.”
Mailhot said he didn’t even think the police were looking into the murders of the three women because none of the other prostitutes he talked to ever mentioned it.
“So, did you think when you’re ready to choke a girl, best do it with a prostitute because they wouldn’t be missed?”
“Yeah, I figured, you know, hey, they’re out on the street and they’re just doing a trick to get their next fix of crack or coke or whatever they do. I thought, you know, maybe they really wouldn’t be missed.”
“What did you think about a prostitute?”
“I just thought [a prostitute] was someone who really needed help and is kind of like—”
“Lower than a normal human being?” Lee asked before Mailhot finished his thought.
“Maybe, in a way, maybe—just like the world doesn’t need them as much, maybe.”
“Do you dislike them?”
“I don’t dislike them.”
“Did you ever have a problem with a prostitute?”
“No.”
“Did they ever give you a hard time or make fun of you?” Lee asked. “You said you had a problem one time performing.”
“No, I’ve had problems performing when I’ve been drinking, you know what I mean? I mean I can perform, but I can’t finish.”
“No one’s ever given you a hard time? Put any pressure on you?”
“No.”
“Make you resent prostitutes a little bit?”
Mailhot said it was just the opposite. In fact, the prostitutes he’d been with when he couldn’t reach orgasm were actually very understanding. They just told him they couldn’t stay with him all night until he finished, but they weren’t mean about it.
At that point Lee and Nowak were called out of the room for a short period of time. When Lee returned, he asked Mailhot how he was doing.
“You all right?”
“No, I’m not. I’m obviously not all right in the head. Someone who’s all right doesn’t do these things.”
“It’s over, all right,” Lee said.
“It’s over, but it’s just beginning too,” Mailhot said.
Again Lee left the room.
“Hey, Jeff, quick question, have you been with any other prostitutes since?” Lee asked when he came back in.
“No, that was the last one,” he said, referring to Stacie.
“That’s the last one? You haven’t picked anyone up? You haven’t had the urge to pick anyone up?”
“No.”
“No, but you probably were going to eventually?”
“There was probably a good chance I would. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What do you think is going to happen to me?”
“As far as what?” Lee asked.
“As far as this. I mean, what’s going to be the end result for me? ’Cause I’ll be honest with you right now, I really think I deserve to die, and I pretty much want to, and I’ve wanted to for a while now.”
“Have you tried to commit suicide?”
“No, I haven’t, but I’ve really thought about it.”
“Listen, let’s get through this now, okay? I know there’s a lot going through your [mind]. You’ve given us a lot of information and you’ve cleared your conscience,” Lee said.
“Yeah, but you know what? I’m not doing any good alive. I mean, really, especially now. I mean, everybody in my family, everybody is going to know this about me,” he said. “I’ve been sick of life for a while, and now there’s no reason for me to be around anymore.”
Lee told Mailhot that there was a reason for him to continue living—to bring closure to the families of the dead women.
“You know you’ve done some bad things, but here’s your opportunity to do some good things, okay? Try to make it all right, okay?”
“I want to help you guys makes this right for the families and everything, but after I do, I just want to die. I just want to be done with it, you know what I mean? And like I said, this isn’t something I’m thinking now because of all this. This is something I have been thinking about for a long time—for years now. I’d say, probably the last six, seven, eight years.”
“Why?”
“Not because of anything bad happening to me. I’ve had a very fortunate life. My parents got divorced when I was nine and they both died at a young age, but they both loved me.”
Mailhot said everyone in his family loved him and would do anything for him. The sad part, he said, was despite their love he had been slowly alienating himself from them.
“I just don’t want to go on anymore. I really, really don’t. I know I owe it to these families to do my part to help you guys do what you have to do.”
Lee told Mailhot he had to be strong and keep it together to help the families.
Mailhot said he told a good friend of his named Wendy Livingston how he felt inside and that he wanted to end his own life.
“Did you confide in her about the girls?”
“No.”
“Were you thinking about it?”
“Yes, I was thinking about it, but I didn’t want to.”
Mailhot said he’d felt like killi
ng himself for a long time and maybe in some way those feelings had something to do with why he killed Audrey, Christine and Stacie. Mailhot stressed that he never told Wendy anything about what he did to the three women.
“It really didn’t have anything to do with the girls,” he said. “I was just confiding in her how I felt on the inside.”
“Have you felt like this for a long time?”
“I’ve felt like this for a long time.”
“And you’ve only acted on it in the last year?”
Mailhot said that maybe in some way that he didn’t understand, the fact that he felt so bad inside might have had something to do with why he started killing prostitutes.
“But I’ve felt this way for a long time and I’ve never considered killing anybody else but myself,” he added. “I’ve never wanted to end another life but my own.”
“Okay,” Lee said.
“And Wendy can tell you about the conversation we had.”
“Did you ever tell her you did some bad things?”
“No. I never got into any of that. She doesn’t know any of this.”
“Why should I take you at your word?” Lee asked. “I know you’ve been great with us, but why should I take you at your word. I mean, how can you stress to me that there are no other women?”
“I don’t know any way that I can make you believe it. I really don’t. All I can tell you is there are no other women. Those are the three right women, right there,” Mailhot said, pointing to the pictures of the women on the table. “The only women I have ever murdered. The only people I’ve ever murdered. I’ve never murdered anybody else.”
Mailhot swore he never murdered any other women or men, for that matter. He said admitting to one or more murders at that point didn’t really matter.
“It’s not going to make my life any easier or harder, you know what I mean?”
“Okay,” Lee said.
“My life is already over, man, and I really want it to be over. I really do.”
“You know that’s for other people to decide, but that’s not something we’re going to do right now,” Lee said. “This is your chance to do something good, which you have been doing, okay.”
“And I will. I’ll do whatever you guys need me to do.”
“And I appreciate that and I’m sure the families will appreciate it,” Lee said.
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