I'll Be Watching You

by M. William Phelps

  With the news spreading, neighbors began showing up. Friends of the family started calling the house. Crowley stood by as Norma and Edwin received one call after the next and had to explain to friends and family what was happening. At some point, their minister called after seeing a live shot of the house on television. Norma couldn’t handle it; she started crying over the phone, saying, “I can’t speak anymore.”

  During each call, Mr. or Mrs. Snelgrove would say: “They’re searching the house because they think Neddy had something to do with a body found in Rhode Island.” To one family member, Edwin added, “I’m not sure what Neddy knows about the body. But someone may have seen Neddy one of the times that he had lunch at the casino and thought that he may have known something.”

  Someone called late into the day, just as the search was winding down. Crowley stood by Edwin as he spoke in hushed tones at first, but then just came out with how he felt: “I don’t know what to think anymore,” Ned’s father said. He sounded tired. Like he had given up. Confused and upset. “Neddy’s a good salesman,” Edwin said to the caller, “he can look you right in the face and lie.”

  72

  I

  Kevin McDonald had participated in the search and seizure at Ned’s. There was some later confusion over whether Ned was driven to Troop H in Hartford by McDonald or another officer, but McDonald and his partner, Arthur Kershaw, were at Troop H after the search, preparing to ask Ned a few questions. McDonald advised Ned of his rights, but it was important to make him aware of the fact that he was not under arrest. McDonald had an easy manner about him. It was hard not to feel comfortable around the guy; he spoke softly, with poise and eloquence, and chose his words carefully. However, he seemed to exude an air of cockiness if you didn’t know him or his style.

  McDonald had to play it cool. One misstep, especially dealing with a suspect as smart as Ned, could be detrimental to the case. Ned wasn’t what McDonald had expected. There had been a lot of discussion among detectives about Ned over the past few weeks. “With his background,” McDonald told me, “I expected someone different. He didn’t look like a monster. He looked, well, he looked like a traveling salesman—quite harmless. Like he wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  McDonald approached Ned. “You ever been in Rhode Island?”

  Ned was sitting, drinking a glass of water. He appeared calm. He was appalled that they had, by his estimation, “dragged” him down to Troop H without charging him.

  “You don’t have to speak to us if you don’t want to,” McDonald added. “You can request an attorney, if you like. You can stop talking anytime.”

  “I’m not going to talk about anything to do with the investigation,” Ned said. (“You get to talking to Ned and you understand he fancies himself as someone who is very intelligent,” McDonald recalled later. “He likes to put himself over people.” It was that pompous arrogance Ned could turn on and off: I’m smarter than you…. You won’t get me for this murder. It was implicit, McDonald said, in his demeanor. “He would try to put his intelligence, in the way he spoke, over us, like we couldn’t understand his superior English skills. He looks down on us. The feeling we got was that Ned was saying to himself, ‘I did this—and you morons are never going to catch me.’”)

  McDonald was under the impression that since Ned had “agreed to come down to Troop H” he was willing to talk about the case. Otherwise, why would he agree to get into a police cruiser and ride downtown? He had never called his lawyer from the house.

  They talked for approximately two hours, McDonald later testified (and verified with me), and yet Ned revealed nothing about Carmen or the case.

  “He was confident,” McDonald said. “We talked about the Red Sox.”

  Arthur Kershaw asked a question about Rhode Island. The Hartford PD had a witness who claimed Ned had called Kenney’s one night after Carmen disappeared and said he was in Rhode Island. Kershaw mentioned Rhode Island again. He knew McDonald had already broached the subject with Ned, but he wanted to see how Ned would react.

  “You already asked me that,” Ned said haughtily. He smiled. “Do you really want me to answer that all over again?”

  Near the end of the conversation, Ned said, “Let’s do this again sometime, but over lunch, huh?”

  II

  McDonald and Kershaw left Troop H and walked a block away to a meeting that was going on at State’s Attorney James Thomas’s office. Within the past week, a woman had come forward and claimed Ned had tried to kidnap her outside Kenney’s somewhere around the same timeframe when Carmen disappeared. Christina Mallon said she had fought Ned off and then had thrown an empty beer bottle at his car.

  It was just the break they needed: arrest Ned on a kidnapping charge—unrelated to Carmen’s disappearance—and get him off the street so they could seriously investigate Carmen’s murder without Ned meddling.

  Perfect.

  With all the detectives working the case sitting in the room, Thomas said, “I suggest you prepare an arrest warrant.”

  With that settled, McDonald and Kershaw were asked to take a ride to the Berlin Turnpike. The idea was to ask around, show a photograph of Carmen and Ned, and see if maybe Ned had taken Carmen to a motel and killed her there. Ned lived with parents at the end of the Berlin Turnpike.

  There was no doubt Carmen was in Ned’s car, he had admitted it. Yet, detectives found nothing to prove Ned’s own admission. Ned had cleaned his car. If he had killed her in a motel room, evidence would have been almost impossible to gather at this late stage. However, if a motel employee could place Ned in a room with Carmen, it would prove he was not being totally honest. But after an afternoon combing motels and asking about Ned and Carmen, investigators couldn’t find anyone who recognized either.

  III

  When McDonald and Kershaw returned to Troop H, Detective Kevin Hopkins, an RISP investigator who had met up with Kershaw and McDonald in Hartford that day, explained he found something important in the items seized at Ned’s.

  “The receipts,” Hopkins said. “Ned’s gas receipts.”

  McDonald and Kershaw were interested.

  “He filled up his gas tank on September twentieth, the day before Carmen went missing.” Hopkins had sat and dug through the enormous pile of even more gas and mileage receipts Ned had kept. Ned had written his mileage down on yellow legal pads—every mile carefully accounted for. He logged where he went on a specific day, the times, the mileage, how much fuel he used, and—to investigators’ surprise and delight—the time he purchased the fuel. For example, in the days before Carmen disappeared, Ned kept records down to the tenth of a mile and tenth of a tank of gas. Went to the Miller residence today; in other words, filled up at 7:30 A.M., arrived at Miller residence for appointment at 8:15 A.M. This sort of spotless record keeping went on and on for days and months. Every tank of gas and hour and minute of Ned’s life was accounted for. But in going through the records, Hopkins figured out that for a stretch of time when Carmen went missing—an entire day—Ned’s record keeping didn’t add up.

  It seemed he had tried to fudge it.

  73

  I

  CSP sergeant Patrick Gaffney knew he was dealing with a twisted individual in Ned Snelgrove. Ned’s past record indicated as much. Beyond that, Gaffney knew the smell of evil, had seen it during his years on the job—but he also understood that the best way to capture a madman was to beat him at his own game. Gaffney was a veteran homicide cop, involved in some of the CSP’s most high-profile cases over his fifteen-year career as a member of the MCU, out of Bethany, Connecticut. At the Snelgrove residence during the search, Gaffney hadn’t seen or spoken to Ned. “I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself to him,” Gaffney said later. “Just that there was a bit of commotion and stuff, people in and out….”

  Gaffney stayed out of the way and focused on overseeing his investigators and delegating jobs during the search. Back at Troop H now, Ned was in the interview suite sitting alone, stewing, wondering what t
he CSP was going to do with him.

  The CSP couldn’t hold him. It was getting late. According to Ned, he had been at Troop H for eleven hours already, confined like a prisoner of war.

  (“I wanted to make myself known to him,” Gaffney said, recalling that moment before he went in to talk to Ned, “so I introduced myself.”) “Were you at the house?” Ned asked when Gaffney, a large man, sat down across from him.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I was.”

  “You were?”

  “Hey,” Gaffney said, “we’re done here. I’m heading to Meriden”—a town just south of Berlin—“you want a ride home?”

  Ned smiled. “Sure.”

  As they headed down Interstate 91 from Hartford, Gaffney began, as he later explained, building a rapport with Ned. “We’re about the same age, huh, Ned?”

  “Probably.” Ned seemed more relaxed.

  “You like living at home?”

  “Sure. Saves me some money.”

  While in Ned’s house earlier, Gaffney noticed several board games Ned had stored away. Seeing the games brought back memories for Gaffney. “I saw that game,” Gaffney said to Ned.

  “Oh yeah, you saw that,” Ned answered.

  After some small talk about childhood memories and sports, Gaffney asked, “What’s up with the suicide attempt, your demeanor, you know, why’d you do it?”

  Ned winced. “You know about those?”

  “Of course,” Gaffney said. “We’re human beings. I understand tough times.”

  “It’s part of my sickness,” Ned said. “Let’s change the subject, OK?”

  “Sure,” Gaffney said.

  “Hey, what kind of things did you guys take from my house?” Ned asked. He was more assertive now. It wasn’t so much a question as a demand.

  “I spoke to your dad about it. I gave him a copy of a receipt for everything.”

  Ned shook his head. “Thanks.”

  Pulling into Ned’s driveway, Gaffney said, “Take it easy now, huh.”

  “You too,” Ned said, closing the door.

  II

  Ned and his old high-school classmate George Recck had teamed up together while Ned was in prison and decided they’d someday write a book about Ned’s life. Ned didn’t want Recck to think in the “short term” regarding the commerciality of his story. One of the reasons Ned wanted Recck to wait was that Ned considered his postrelease to be a time to gather more salacious material for the book. Wouldn’t it be a great story when I pick up right where I left off…, Ned wrote to Recck. Perhaps Ned figured the added body count could help sell his story and also add an additional layer, as Ned put it, of great characters and anecdotes. Ned had written the letter on Thursday, August 25, 1988, not long after he was incarcerated.

  III

  Detective Gaffney grew up (and lived) just north of New Haven, Connecticut, in Hamden. A first-generation Gaffney from ancestors in Ireland, he didn’t base his desire to become a cop on a family tradition or an inner calling of some sort. It was, more or less, a challenge. “It basically came down to one night when me and a friend of mine were out discussing our futures and I challenged him to take the naval exam and he challenged me to take the state police exam,” Gaffney said. “He scored one of the highest scores ever, but went no further, and I ended up…with the Connecticut State Police.”

  Gaffney spent the early part of his career in Westbrook and Bethany, which he knew well from having grown up in the area. By 1989, he was working for the Major Crimes Unit. Gaffney learned throughout the years to be open to any situation. Any conclusion. Any possible outcome. And to always think outside the box. Generally, killers don’t hang around their crime scenes. Yet, killers with a certain amount of hubris like to be involved. They like to become part of the investigation—part of the story. It feeds the ego, supplying to the killer that additional, after-the-crime high.

  From being briefed about Ned by his fellow investigators, Gaffney knew Ned wanted desperately to be involved in the investigation. Gaffney felt there was a part of Ned that wanted to dangle a carrot in front of investigators. Because of that, and the decade or more of experience Gaffney brought to the investigation, he couldn’t just allow Ned to sit at home and stew. He had to reach out to him.

  IV

  It was 2:30 P.M., on January 16, a day after the search, when Gaffney showed up at Ned’s. The ruse for Gaffney to stop by was that he said he wanted to drop off a receipt for some items they had seized that might not have been on the original receipt. So Gaffney handed Ned the document, saying, “How are things, Ned?”

  “Hey,” he said, “why did you guys seize my maps of Rhode Island? I need those back. How can I get them back?”

  “Well,” Gaffney said, “those are regarded as evidence. Sorry, Ned, but you’ll have to get a court order at this point if you want them back.”

  At one time, Ned’s parents had a vacation home in Rhode Island. Gaffney knew Ned had already said he had never been in the state. Yet, he had maps and now wanted them back.

  Looking at the list, Ned appeared a bit shaken. “You took a postal receipt. Why?”

  “The name ‘Carmen’ was written on the receipt,” Gaffney said.

  Ned turned white. His eyes popped open. He looked down and away. (“He didn’t want to hear that name,” Gaffney commented later. “You could clearly see the wheels turning. That momentary pause, you could see that he was thinking…‘How do I explain this?’”)

  Ned had a revelation to make, however. “No,” he said. “That’s not the same Carmen you guys are investigating.”

  “No?”

  Ned changed the subject. “What about my maps—”

  “Who is this Carmen on the receipt, then?” Gaffney interrupted.

  Ned wouldn’t answer. As Gaffney began to ask another question, Ned’s parents stepped in and asked what was going on.

  “Listen,” Gaffney said, trying to avoid, as he later described it, negative contact among the four of them. “I have to get back to the office. If you have any problems, call me.” He handed Ned his business card.

  74

  I

  Ned viewed his ten years in prison as “downtime.” He wrote this to George Recck on August 25, 1988.

  Downtime. A vacation. Some years for Ned to sit back.

  Relax.

  Reflect.

  He sounded cocky and well-situated in his new role as an inmate—rather, a convicted, admitted killer and violent serial attacker of women. In his own words, he couldn’t get rid of those obsessive thoughts: seeing women in helpless positions, terribly vulnerable, ready for his ultimate judgment.

  George Recck had a tough time adjusting to his new way of life, he wrote to Ned. It was apparent in the way Ned addressed him that Recck had complained about not being able to find a wife. All of his friends, Recck apparently said, were pairing up. But Ned told Recck not to be in such a rush to get married. He wrote he expected that famous Recck sense of humor to return in no time.

  It was odd, a man who had killed the only girlfriend he’d ever had—a man who had issues with women—was handing out romantic advice.

  Recck had asked Ned for real estate advice. Ned agreed that the condo deal Recck had signed “sounds good.” As the letter continued, Ned counseled Recck on the advantages of owning property. After a paragraph regarding the state of the American League Eastern Division of Major League Baseball, Ned asked Recck to get hold of a few old schoolmates. They would all play a role in the life Ned was designing for himself postprison, he explained.

  Speaking to this relationship, ASA David Zagaja summed up Ned’s life quite cogently, making a point that the time Ned spent in prison fueled his desire to kill. That Ned wasn’t interested in rehabilitating himself or getting help. Every day he spent behind bars was an opportunity to hone his craft as a manipulator, chauvinist, sadistic serial attacker, and killer. “Does [Ned] have a continued obsession as to what he’s doing?” Zagaja asked, explaining Ned’s tenure in prison and how he sp
ent years thinking about his release. “He most certainly does. Over the years, George Recck established that he wrote, for some ten or eleven years, to him, continually talked about Ted Bundy, continually talked about a possible book deal for his prior crimes, his prior experiences. Continually talked about what went right, what went wrong….”

  More than that, Ned’s ability to compartmentalize his gloating while writing to Recck stood out most when one had a chance to read the letters in the context of Ned’s life. In his eleven-page sentencing letter to the judge, Ned explained how remorseful he was for his crimes. He talked about Karen Osmun being the “first time” anything like “that” had ever happened. He purported to need help. He couldn’t stop the thoughts in his mind or seeing women in such a violent manner. In a sense, Ned wanted the judge to believe he was crying out.

  Four months after writing that eleven-page letter, however, Ned started writing to George Recck, explaining his desire to pick up where [he] left off once he was released.

  II

  The receipt seized at Ned’s house with the name “Carmen” written on the top turned out to be exactly what Ned had said it was: a coincidence. Besides Carmen, Ned had scribbled a telephone number and room # 502 on the same receipt. When the CSP did a reverse search of the number, it turned out to be for a local YMCA in Hartford. At first, detectives thought maybe Carmen Rodriguez had stayed at the YMCA and Ned had been going to visit her. But the housing director explained that the room number was given to a woman by the name of Carmen Carrel (last name pseudonym). The phone number was for a pay phone in the lobby on the fifth floor. Carrel had been renting the room since May 2001.

  The situation became even more confusing when the CSP located Carrel later that day. She was at work. “I have a [cousin] named Carmen Rodriguez,” Carrel said.