“Ever pick up any hookers in Massachusetts?”
“No.”
“Worcester?”
“No.”
“Remember that conversation, we want to get over here and you did a hell of a good job getting over here,” Nowak said, referring to the fact that Mailhot decided to start telling the truth. “The sergeant did a hell of a job working with you to get over here, but we need to be one hundred percent certain that we’re here.”
“I keep telling you that I’ve told you everything.”
Nowak then asked Mailhot why he decided to start murdering people at that stage of his life.
“I don’t know,” Mailhot said.
“It doesn’t make sense. Do you know what I’m saying, now at thirty-three to wake up and have [the urge to kill]?” Nowak continued.
“I haven’t had urges to kill anybody,” Mailhot responded.
“When did you first start getting those urges?” Nowak asked, not really paying attention to Mailhot’s previous answer.
“Like, the first time that it happened with that first girl—I mean, it was an accident. I wasn’t out to really kill her. I wasn’t out to kill her. The second and third ones, yes. The first one, no. I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t intend to kill anybody.”
“Remember we talked about the girl found near where you used to live?” Nowak asked, still trying to determine if Mailhot had anything to do with the murders of any other women.
“Yes.”
“Did you ever hear about [her]?”
“No.”
“You never read about that in the newspaper or heard that on the TV or anything?”
“No, I never heard.”
“Don’t you live around a [gun] club area?” Lee asked.
“What?”
“Rod and gun club area?”
“No,” Mailhot said.
“You ever been up there?” Nowak asked.
“I’ve been to Lincoln Woods before, but I’m not familiar with the rod and gun club.”
“Have you ever gone out in the woods at all in Lincoln, besides Lincoln Woods?” Nowak asked.
“No. When I was a kid, I used to live in Lincoln, but the last couple of years, I haven’t been up there.”
“Do you go by there? Do you still have relatives that live up in Lincoln?”
“Yes, my stepmom lives there.”
“Where you used to live?”
“Yeah.”
“Same house?”
“Same house.”
“Okay. And how long did you go there?”
“Not too often, maybe once a month or so.”
“Are there any other girls?” Nowak asked, one more time.
“No, there are no other girls,” Mailhot said. “I’m being honest with you. There’s no other girls.”
“Nowhere? How about outside of Rhode Island?”
“No, besides those three, there is no other girls, period, period.”
“So, basically, you told us first it was an accident,” Nowak said. “Then you said, ‘Hey, this ain’t too bad’ and then [you killed] the others.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s pretty much what happened?”
“That’s it.”
“I’m not saying it would never have happened again,” Mailhot said. “It very well may have—the pattern I was on.”
“Absolutely, we talked about that,” Nowak said.
“I admit that, but there are no other girls.”
Nowak again asked Mailhot if he had ever killed anyone else.
“Like I told you, you’re a good guy,” Nowak said. “You’re a good guy at heart, because you’re coming out and you know what happened was wrong and you’re telling us about it and you’re trying to make amends. You’ve had thoughts for the families. If you’re not telling us something … that’s going to eat you up for the rest of your life.”
Mailhot again said he told them everything.
“There’s nothing else to confess—nothing else,” he said. “I’ve spilled my guts. I’ve told you everything there is to tell.”
“Okay,” Lee said. “What we’re going to do now is, I’m going to do one more consent if that’s okay with you? And that would be a swab of your mouth for DNA down the line. Is that okay with you?”
Mailhot said it was okay.
“How do you do that? You just take a sample of my mouth?”
“I don’t even know if they’re going to do it today,” Lee said.
“I’m telling you guys. I really appreciate you being professional and everything,” Mailhot said. “Like I said again, I’m sorry I started to lie to you in the beginning, but I’ve told you everything and I’ve never killed anybody else. Those three victims, those are mine. That’s it. I have choked other women, but I never killed another woman. Like I said, not to say that it would never happen again, because it probably would have. It probably would have. I’m really sorry you guys have to be in the presence of somebody like me. It’s got to make you sick to have to be with people like me all the time—deal with the worst of humanity.”
“Well, something good happened tonight,” Lee said. “It’s been a long night and I appreciate your honesty. Are you sure there is nothing else that you want to get off your chest?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, you guys were right. I’m glad I was able to talk about it.”
“What did I tell you?” Lee asked. “It’s going to be like the weight of the world taken off your shoulders.”
“I know I have a lot of consequences to deal with, but it did feel good to say it.”
“Okay, good. We appreciate that,” Lee said. “This will conclude the interview. It’s now [July 17]. It’s 0204 hours in the morning. That will conclude the interview.”
The cops then took Mailhot downstairs to process him into the system. Nowak then wrote up an affidavit for a search warrant for a judge to sign that would allow police to search Mailhot’s apartment for evidence that he murdered Audrey, Christine and Stacie.
In the affidavit Nowak explained that he and other members of the Woonsocket Police Department had been assigned to investigate several attacks on local prostitutes. He said that during the course of the investigation police interviewed several known prostitutes, including Jocilin Martel. He said Jocilin told police that sometime during the first week of June 2004, she was picked up by a clean-cut man who took her to a house on Cato Street. She said the house was lime green with dark green shutters. She said there was a wall in the front of the property, with stairs leading up to the front door.
Nowak told the judge that Jocilin said when she and the man got inside the apartment, he started to choke her, but she stuck her thumb in his eye and was then able to escape. Nowak said police used cable company records, driver’s license records and vehicle identification records to identify the man who lived in the apartment as Jeffrey Mailhot. He said Jocilin was able to pick Mailhot out of a photo lineup.
In addition, Nowak explained to the judge that another local prostitute, Teese Morris, told police she was attacked in a similar manner on February 15, 2004. Nowak said Teese told police that she was also picked up by a clean-cut guy on High Street. She said the guy took her back to his house on Cato Street. When they were in the apartment, Teese said, the guy went up behind her and attempted to choke her, but after a violent struggle, Teese said, she was able to break free. However, the man grabbed her and once again started choking her.
Nowak told the judge that Teese begged for her life and the guy finally let her go, but she left some personal belongings in his apartment, including a medium-length brown wig, a blue sweater and a small black pocketbook containing personal papers and photographs. He said Teese then called the police to accompany her back to the apartment to retrieve her belongings, but they couldn’t get into the apartment. Like Jocilin, Teese also identified Jeffrey Mailhot as the man who choked her.
Additionally, Nowak told the judge that two other prostitutes also told police they w
ere attacked and choked by a man fitting Mailhot’s description. One of the women identified the house on Cato Street as the house where she was attacked, but she was unable to pick Mailhot out of a photo lineup. Nowak said the police weren’t able to find the other woman to show her the lineup.
As part of the warrant Nowak told the judge that on July 16, 2004, armed with a warrant to search Mailhot’s apartment for evidence of the attacks on Jocilin and Teese, he and Lee set up surveillance on Cato Street. He said when Mailhot got home from work, they arrested him and brought him back to the station, where he was given his Miranda rights and then confessed to murdering three women, cutting them up with a handsaw, putting them in trash bags and disposing of them in various Dumpsters in the area. Nowak told the judge that Mailhot said he flushed excess human tissue, fluids and bone down the bathtub drain or the toilet.
After reading the affidavit, the judge okayed the search warrant.
Chapter 14
Lee and Nowak knew the Mailhot case was one of the biggest cases Woonsocket had ever seen and they wanted to make sure the detectives worked together and did everything by the book. They didn’t want a repeat of what had happened some years earlier—a murder case that nearly brought the entire department to its knees. And a murder case that people were still talking about during the Mailhot investigation, Lee said.
“We were all talking about the Tempest case and saying we didn’t want a repeat of that,” Lee said later. “We wanted the people of Woonsocket to have faith in us. We wanted them to know we were going to do everything we could within the law to solve the murders of the three women.”
The case Lee was referring to that brought disgrace down on the department was the 1982 murder of twenty-two-year-old Doreen Picard. The case went unsolved for years. Almost immediately after Doreen was murdered, rumors began to circulate about a police cover-up.
In 1992, Raymond “Beaver” Tempest, Jr., nicknamed after the child star of Leave It to Beaver, was convicted of second-degree murder for killing Doreen with a metal pipe, ten years earlier. He was sentenced to eighty-five years in state prison.
At the time of the murder Beaver’s father, Raymond Tempest, Sr., was a high sheriff in Providence County, and the former second in command of the Woonsocket Police Department. Beaver’s brother, Gordon, was a police detective in Woonsocket in the 1980s and then promoted to lieutenant.
In 1993, Gordon was convicted of perjury for trying to cover up the murder and lying to the grand jury. And because of that conviction, Gordon was fired from the police department. Robert Monteiro, Raymond Tempest, Jr.’s brother-in-law, was also convicted of perjury for lying to the grand jury.
After the brothers were convicted, people realized that the rumors were true—some members of the police department had helped cover up the crime. At best, the theories went, the detectives messed up their investigation. At worst, people felt that the police deliberately covered up the evidence.
During the Mailhot investigation Woonsocket police learned that the New England Innocence Project, a Boston-based prisoner’s advocacy group, had asked the court for permission to test evidence from the Picard murder case for DNA. The advocacy group believed Tempest had been unjustly convicted. And a Rhode Island Superior Court judge ruled that there was enough evidence to warrant new DNA tests.
For Lee and Nowak, that meant that the police hadn’t done their jobs and they were determined to make sure they handled the Mailhot case the right way.
In late 2004, a prisoner’s advocacy group petitioned the court to test some of the evidence used in Tempest’s trial, contending he was unjustly convicted. In March 2005, superior court judge Daniel J. Procaccini ordered the DNA testing to take place at Orchid Cellmark Labs in Dallas, Texas. Tempest was the first prisoner in Rhode Island for whom DNA tests were ordered in his bid for a new trial.
In his order the judge, who noted that no eyewitnesses testified at Tempest’s trial, said, “This court cannot think of a case more appropriate for DNA testing than one relying mainly on circumstantial evidence.”
Under Rhode Island state law DNA tests can only be done in cases where someone was convicted based on weak circumstantial evidence and where DNA testing was not available during the original trial.
The judge ordered DNA testing on the murder weapon—a twenty-eight-inch length of pipe—clumps of hair found in Picard’s hands, her fingernail clippings, as well as some bloodstained pillowcases and curtains found near the crime scene.
As of this writing, although the results of the tests were in the hands of prosecutors and defense lawyers, there was no indication of exactly what they were going to do with those results.
Before the Mailhot case, Lee said, the Tempest case was the most widely publicized case in Woonsocket, and it put the police department in a very bad light. In order to understand Lee’s concerns, you have to understand the case and its effect on the Woonsocket community. Things were so bad that one Woonsocket police officer told the Providence Journal that “officials are so scheming that the agency resembles the treacherous Italian house of Borgia of the Middle Ages.”
On February 19, 1982, Picard’s body was found brutally beaten in the basement laundry room of a Providence Street residence. Her landlady, Susan Laferte, was found next to her. She, too, had been viciously battered and was just barely hanging on.
Rumors ran rampant for years that Beaver Tempest was involved in Picard’s murder and that his police department connections were helping to keep him out of jail.
According to the Woonsocket police, Doreen’s murder may have been the result of a disagreement between Beaver Tempest and Susan Laferte over the pick of the litter of pit bull terriers.
In 1991, a key investigator in the case, Roger Remillard, who was then the police chief in North Smithfield, Rhode Island, told the Providence Journal that some people testified to a statewide grand jury that Beaver Tempest attacked Picard’s landlady because of a feud over the puppies.
According to Remillard, a former Woonsocket police captain, Tempest and Laferte had mated her beige female pit bull, Ginger, and his black male pit bull, Bullet. He said Tempest and Laferte disagreed over whether or not Tempest would get the pick of the litter.
So Tempest allegedly attacked Laferte in the basement laundry room of her house, and he repeatedly struck her with a two-foot section of pipe, known as an antenna mast, while Laferte’s dog nursed her puppies close by, Remillard said.
Picard accidentally came upon the attack when she went to the basement to do her laundry. Not wanting to leave any witnesses, Remillard said, Tempest then beat Picard to death with the pipe. Remillard told the Journal there were also other motives that led police to arrest Beaver Tempest and his brother, Gordon.
In 1990, the grand jury handed down indictments that finally led to the trial and conviction of Beaver Tempest for murder. The grand jury also charged Gordon Tempest, a seventeen-year police veteran, with perjury. Prosecutors said Gordon Tempest lied to the grand jury when he said he never interviewed a Woonsocket resident about the Picard case at the police station in 1983 or 1984. During the interview the resident disputed Beaver Tempest’s alibi for his whereabouts at the time of Picard’s murder.
During his trial several witnesses testified that Beaver told them that he had committed the crime and that because of his family connections to the Woonsocket Police Department, he’d get away with it. But there wasn’t any physical evidence connecting him to the crime. In addition, he had professed his innocence from day one.
Despite the fact that many people believed the Woonsocket police tried to cover up the crime, others said Beaver Tempest was arrested and convicted because corrupt police officers coerced witnesses, and prosecutors went out of their way to present evidence in such a manner as to convince jurors Tempest was guilty. In fact, some said the police and prosecutors knew Beaver Tempest was innocent because they knew who really murdered Doreen Picard, but they manipulated the evidence to get a conviction against Tempest.
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In either case, the Woonsocket Police Department didn’t come off looking so good, and Lee and Nowak wanted to make sure the department handled the Mailhot case the right way. And as they investigated the murders of Audrey, Christine and Stacie, the Raymond “Beaver” Tempest, Jr. case was in the back of their minds. During the Tempest case friends turned against friends, and police officers turned against police officers. Lee and Nowak didn’t want that to happen again.
According to Caught.net, a Web site that contains the public list of judicial misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, legal misconduct, ethics violations and civil rights violations in Rhode Island and elsewhere, the family of the real murderer—not Tempest, Jr.—was very wealthy and had strong political ties. And according to the Tempest family, police had zeroed in on another suspect on day two of the investigation.
The Beaver Tempest murder case began around 3:30 P.M. on February 19, 1982, when Woonsocket police were called to Picard’s apartment building after a fifteen-year-old tenant and her father discovered Picard and Laferte in the basement.
Doreen Picard was the oldest of the four children of Ronald and Simone Picard, who lived in Bellingham, Massachusetts. As a teenager Doreen was “girlish but tomboyish,” her mother told the Providence Journal. In high school she was on the varsity volleyball team. She also played basketball and softball and was on the cheerleading squad. When she was a senior, she was named most valuable student athlete and crowned prom queen.
After graduation Doreen worked at a company in Wrentham, Massachusetts, and at night she took courses in early-childhood development at a local college. Doreen wanted to be a teacher.
She had only lived in Laferte’s building for about ten months before she was murdered. In fact, she was in the process of packing her belongings to move to a larger apartment the next day.
Initially police thought both women had been shot in the head, but later after examining Picard’s body, the medical examiner said he thought they were bludgeoned with a weapon like a shingler’s ax. However, four days later police found the real murder weapon—the twenty-eight-inch pipe—in the first-floor entryway.
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