I'll Be Watching You

by M. William Phelps

  He then began to make the claim that I was in cahoots with Bruno—that we were writing this book together and I was paying him.

  Ned knew I worked alone and paid no one. I had explained this to him.

  He then wrote I had a blockbuster bestseller on my hands. But without him, I had nothing. No one would buy my book because it would be all lies. When your book is done, he wrote to me on September 14, 2007, I would be very anxious to have you tell me if you’ve ever seen such clear-cut instances of prosecutors lying. Not “cutting corners” or “shading the facts a little.” Lying.

  It was things like that, that made me wonder, What in the world is he talking about? I had found no such thing.

  My bestseller, Ned suggested, would be based on a dishonest prosecutor, a flagrantly biased judge, on top of the many witness statements that don’t make sense. He encouraged me to expose Connecticut’s judicial system for what it is: arrogant, incompetent and dishonest. He said this type of book would make me a household name. I’d be a true investigative reporter then—and only then, he said.

  I sent Ned a blistering letter back, telling him, primarily, that I wouldn’t be bullied. That he could take a hike if he thought that I was going to jump aboard the Snelgrove train of lying and cheating and manipulation. I opened that letter, writing, Your last missive disturbs me. I thought we had an agreement. I thought you understood that I have a job to do and part of that job includes digging into every single aspect of your case in order to present the facts as I uncover them….

  But it wouldn’t be the last time we spoke.

  II

  The bottom line regarding Ned Snelgrove is that he will kill again if he is ever released. The jury knew it. The judge understood it. And everyone in that courtroom applauding on the day he was sentenced experienced it. Heck, even Ned Snelgrove—at forty-six years old, writing to me during the winter, spring, and summer of 2007, telling me that the state of Connecticut never proved he killed Carmen Rodriguez—knew it.

  I keep thinking back to his letters from Rahway during the 1990s when he warned everyone that he would kill again—a promise he, in fact, had kept.

  111

  I

  The thing about Ned is, just when you think he’s done, he invites you back into his sandbox, hoping you’ll continue to play. He had exhibited this aspect of his character throughout his trial. In the fall of 2007, as I was beginning to think about finishing my book, after not hearing from Ned for well over a month, I received a letter, which was once again written on Ned’s preferred stationery: the back side of a “religious articles” prison order form. Was he exposing his stinginess by not purchasing plain paper from the prison commissary? A bit of irony, however, had always been one of Ned’s trademarks. Was this Ned’s subtle idea of turning his nose to organized religion, or just a way to save a few bucks? Who knows? The guy is as unpredictable as a storm.

  In a short note I had sent to Ned two weeks prior, I had asked him, Are you done talking to me? I knew that my last letter, where I had prodded him a bit, made Ned salivate with fury. His gargantuan ego wouldn’t allow him to answer me right away. He had to give in, of course, because whether he admitted it, the book I was writing was something Ned had wanted for the past fifteen years.

  Ned wrote he still wanted to talk, but he had been busy working laboriously on his appeal, which was taking up all of [his] time. While reading this, I couldn’t help but think: What is there for Ned to do? Besides driving his new lawyer crazy, no doubt controlling every aspect of the appellate process, was there any work for him?

  The answer is no. His lawyer handled it all.

  He also said he was working on a chronology of his life that I had suggested in my first letter the previous winter.

  And so I waited.

  Ned’s history finally came in, which allowed me to add some minor detail throughout the book, beyond what I had found out on my own. Detail that makes little difference, mind you, to the grand scheme of his life. Ned spent ten pages, for example, outlining his work history, his love for the Boston Red Sox, and the most memorable baseball game he had ever watched on television. I was hoping he would come clean. You know, tell me what every law enforcement official I had spoken to about him suspects: there are unsolved murders with his name attached. I was looking to offer several families some closure. But Ned never extended me—or them—that courtesy.

  And really, why should he? Part of knowing he is the only person who can close the book on those cases must feed Ned’s ego, and certainly falls in line with what Ned’s so-called mentor, Ted Bundy, believed: if you tell law enforcement anything, lie just enough to throw off the scent.

  112

  I

  I received a letter from Ned in late September 2007, which sparked a rather straightforward, finger-in-the-chest response from me. This latest letter from Ned was four pages long; but was accompanied by a half-inch-thick “stack of notes,” to which Ned titled: “Common Sense Replies to the State’s Brief as Was Submitted by Harry Weller [the state’s attorney handling the appeal].”

  Common sense. Perhaps an ode to Thomas Paine, but more likely Ned’s sarcastic, belligerent way of once again addressing his grounds for appeal.

  Back to square one: I didn’t kill Carmen Rodriguez.

  Some of it, or maybe a majority of it, Ned wrote to me, will illuminate some new points if you consistently refer to the specific transcript pages I cite throughout…. Ned opens his “Common Sense” rebuttal with: [T]he “packaging,” as described here [in the state’s brief], has nothing to do with anything Ted Bundy ever did. By “packaging,” Ned is referring to how Carmen Rodriguez’s body was bound and found. Somehow, however, he continues, the State still maintains that the Carmen Rodriguez homicide is a manifestation of a Ted Bundy “wannabe.” Ned then asks the justices, those appellate judges reviewing his case, to have a look at the actual dummy heads, those two Styrofoam heads Ned had dolled up, according to Zagaja, and used in a pinch when a real victim wasn’t available. Ned wrote to me, Not only did the police make sure not to test the mannequin heads for fingerprints (finding fingerprints of someone other than the Defendant would have ruined this opportunity to use them for their melodramatic effect), but there is nothing in the Defendant’s previous convictions, nor is there anything in his writings…that involves this ridiculous idea of rehearsing with props or using mannequins as a substitute for an actual woman.

  This is an important statement from Ned. He likes to use his previous convictions and behavior as a means to prove how different his previous crimes were from the Rodriguez homicide. But when the state uses those same cases to prove its case, to show intent and a developing serial killer in action, Ned claims it’s all irrelevant.

  In his rebuttal, Ned goes on for page after page, describing each of his points where he believes the state’s experts either lied during his trial or the prosecutor failed to prove his case with evidence. The problem Ned runs into, however, is that he doesn’t offer an antidote, any refuting evidence, other than his opinion, to back up his claims.

  Reading this, I thought, As if I hadn’t heard all this BS before. Like Ned hadn’t told me—time and again—that the plot against him was all there in the trial transcripts. As if he hadn’t told me ten times already that all the lies law enforcement and the prosecution had told stood out, if only I could see them through the sociopathic lens he had been looking through himself for the past twenty-five years. Regarding the state’s argument on appeal, for example, Ned asked me: I would really be interested to know if you are as dumbfounded as I am that the prosecutor who wrote it (Harry Weller) can so easily lie about what was said at the trial, and/or simply go against the prosecution’s own witnesses? Obviously, David Zagaja is no longer Ned’s target; now it’s Weller. Am I just imagining all of this? Ned asked me. Am I just stamping my foot, crying “foul” for no good reason? Please tell me what you think.

  People who know me will agree that I rarely hold back when the conversation per
tains to certain issues—that I sometimes say too much. In any event, with Ned asking me for my direct opinion, I couldn’t resist. So I read his comments two or three times, over the course of a few hours on the night I received the letter. I sat and thought about things before sleeping on it (something my manager and my father have always encouraged me to do). The next morning, I sat down to finish up work on this book and began writing Ned a letter. I’d had it with his back-and-forth, “beating around the bush,” “blame everyone else for his crimes” diatribes and rants. His arguments were weak and unsubstantiated. He had been convicted of Carmen Rodriguez’s murder. The state proved its case. This fact was never in dispute. Calling the case against him a conspiracy (my word, Ned never went that far) was, at least to me, the same as calling Ted Bundy a considerate human being for sitting down and explaining (lying, actually) some of the details behind his crimes before he was executed. Like so many other serial killers, Ned Snelgrove thinks the world revolves around him. That by telling a lie long enough, it becomes a truth.

  I’d had it.

  With all this in mind, I began to write a final letter to Ned, thinking, It is about damn time he faces the truth. At least the truth as I had uncovered it throughout my research.

  113

  I

  Today, Ned is in what they call PC (protective custody), housed at the Cheshire Correctional Institution, on a segregated floor away from the general population. He is in an area of the prison that corrals some of the state’s most perverted, violent sexual predators, only because there are inmates throughout the prison system, I’m told, that want to see Ned pay for what he did to Carmen. In fact, one story I heard actually proves how small a community prison can be—especially for a guy with a target on his back. Ned was in Hartford for a court appearance. He was being held at a local prison that houses men coming and going through the system. Ned and several inmates were sitting around a common area watching television. Ned’s case was all the buzz around town. Top story on all the local television news stations. At some point, a story detailing Ned’s case popped up on the overhead television. There was a Puerto Rican guy, a large man, young, facing some serious time for a nonviolent crime, sitting next to Ned. At one point the guy looked at the television, then at Ned, and said, “That’s you!”

  Ned’s eyes bulged. He didn’t say anything.

  “You killed my cousin Carmen,” the guy raged.

  Ned froze. Everyone backed away. And the inmate proceeded to “pummel” Ned into a bloody pulp. “Lumped him up pretty good,” said a source of mine who saw Ned later that day.

  “Kicked his ass real good,” said an inmate with whom I spoke. “He f ***ing deserved it, too, what he did to that poor Rodriguez girl.”

  Among Ned’s jailhouse peers, there is no doubt that he murdered Carmen Rodriguez. In prison, it’s a given that Ned is a hideous serial killer with scores of “kills” under his belt. Indeed, Ned’s aloof bravado gets him nowhere behind bars.

  II

  I must admit that it felt good to write a serious letter to Ned. To sit down and say what I needed to say, without having to pander, so to speak, to his ego with the hope that he would open up to me. The time for all of that nonsense was behind us. I’ve interviewed many murderers throughout my career. I’ve sat in front of the most despicable human beings whom, I’m convinced, the Devil himself has put on this planet. I’ve been forced to refrain from sharing my personal feelings. I had done this with Ned throughout our correspondence. I needed to stay objective. I needed to play the role of the reporter. And I needed to allow Ned to speak his truth, whatever it might be. But there came a point when I needed to also stop playing devil’s advocate—literally speaking—and hit Ned with the facts of his case, along with those questions no one else would ask him.

  In his letter accompanying his “Common Sense” document, Ned had given me a ridiculous explanation regarding several lines he had written to George Recck. For example, Ned told me that “when I pick up right where I left off” quote he had written to Recck refers to [him] returning to the sales career [he] had at Hewlett-Packard before being arrested in 1987.

  Ned expected me to believe that the quote had nothing to do with him besting Ted Bundy, or returning to a life of murder so he and Recck could, as Ned himself said and Recck testified to, have more fodder for a book they would someday write together. Instead, Ned expected me to believe that it had to do with him going back to New Jersey and once again returning to work at Hewlett.

  The fact of the matter is, Ned didn’t do that. Leaving prison, he ran up to Connecticut and moved into a seedy motel room on the Berlin Turnpike, one of those weekly (or hourly) fleabags, next to drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and addicts—and, according to one of my sources, he murdered a prostitute not a month after he was released.

  In any event, I began my letter to Ned by stating the obvious: Well, Ned, since you asked for my opinion, it’s time, perhaps, that we stop this game between us. There’s a theme to your letters, I wrote, that I need to point out: I find that you say the same things over and over without offering much proof-positive evidence to support your claims. Just rhetoric, in other words. No substantial evidence. Calling someone a liar does not make that person a liar—evidence does. I have yet to see any evidence that proves any of your claims. I have studied police reports and trials for my entire career (tens of thousands of pages, dozens of cases)…. In none of the papers you’ve sent have I seen any evidence—just your “interpretation” of the facts.

  Ned’s contention to me had always been that the state never proved its case. That he was convicted on evidence of his past crimes. In Ned’s view, every witness lied, while every piece of evidence was tainted in some respect. In his stack of notes, he goes on and on about Carmen’s murder being totally different from those “two cases” in New Jersey. He is fixated on the notion that he left Karen and Mary Ellen dressed from the waist down, but Carmen’s killer left her panties on, and this alone proves that he could not have been involved. Carmen Rodriguez, Ned wrote to me, is not “naked from the waist up”! She is completely naked, except for underwear! How many times throughout the [state’s] brief will the state claim that Carmen Rodriguez’s “circumstances of undress” are identical to the defendant’s New Jersey convictions?

  You see, Ned misses a major point here, one that, with a little help, a five-year-old could see clearly. He gives no explanation for the simple fact that most serial killers—himself included—change their behavior, if ever so slightly, each time they kill. Not to mention that Ned admitted he was studying—and learning from—one of the most famous, prolific serial killers of his time. Thus, to ask me to buy into your idea that there is no pattern, no “signature,” I wrote in my letter to Ned, surrounding the three victims…is quite a stretch on your part. This has always been, however, another theme of yours: that Carmen’s murder was “different” from those in NJ. The theory is…that, after studying Ted Bundy, you changed your signature…. (I often wondered why this was so hard for Ned to see. He had always given me the impression that he was an intelligent guy. Was he patronizing me?) Furthermore, to claim that the “pick up right where I left off” quote from the letters you wrote to Recck pertains to you going back to Hewlett is, to use your own term, “laughable.” Come on, Ned, do you expect me to believe that? Do you expect anyone to believe that after eleven years in prison…your goal, your dream, was to return to HP? And you didn’t move in with your parents right away (as you told me). You moved into a seedy Berlin Turnpike motel and, according to a source of mine, started killing again right away. You never went back to HP.

  I explained to Ned that I needed to ask him several questions in order to give him the opportunity to respond, adding, I think it’s only fair, since I’ve been interviewing you (through our correspondence) now for several months.

  My questions: 1.) Explain what you mean by “responding to questions” posed by George Recck?…Certainly you don’t expect me to believe that everythin
g you wrote to Recck was a response to a question he asked. I feel your were gloating, bragging, etc. 2.) Where do you think your thoughts of harming women and posing their bodies come from? You said it was there since the second and third grade. Explain that for me a bit more. 3.) One of my…sources tells me that you told him/her that you’re a breast man—which makes sense, seeing how your victims were attacked and left exposed from the waist up. How do [you] explain this behavior? Where is it rooted? Were you ever sexually abused? Why is it, you think, that in your mind you equate this type of violence with sexual gratification? 4.) How many other women—if any—have you murdered or harmed? Sources I’ve spoken to (many different sources, mind you) claim the number could be five, six, even ten more? Would you like to go on record as being one of the most prolific serial killers in the Northeast? Or do you deny all of this? 5.) A final statement from you: what is it you’d like to say? Give me a direct quote that you want printed—a sort of statement from Ned Snelgrove to all of his critics. 6.) Why did you never put me on your visitors or phone list?

  In closing, I asked Ned not to take offense to any of these questions. As a journalist I needed to ask them. I was obligated. Finally, you asked if I am “dumbfounded” that a prosecutor (in your words, the prosecutor in your case) could lie? No prosecutor lied in this case, Ned. I’ve studied all the data. I’ve spent a long time reviewing all of the documents and statements and interviewed scores of people connected to the case. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that you’re going to get someone to believe that there was a conspiracy against you. It’s simply not true…. If I don’t hear from you [within two weeks], I’ll consider your silence a refusal to respond to my questions.