Perfect Poison

by M. William Phelps

  On January 22 it was confirmed that the anklet showed “clear signs of an attempt of tampering, including a penny that had been taped to the inside of [it].”

  The only conclusion that could be made from the evidence was that Gilbert had tried to pry the anklet off and, worried she might have broken the copper wire that runs through the center of it keeping a continuous electrical current, taped a penny to the inside of it to try to maintain the current. The Uniondale, New York, office responsible for monitoring Gilbert while she was at her parents’ home, confirmed it had “frequent problems maintaining monitoring of the defendant . . .”

  This new problem, coupled with the fact that Gilbert’s “emotional fragility” was an issue throughout the entire trial, worried the judge, he said.

  “. . . I’m concerned that she receives proper evaluation and care pending sentencing and pending the commencement of what may even be an even more stressful period in her life.” Furthermore, Ponsor added, he worried what she might do now that her fate for the bomb threat had been sealed.

  Any thoughts?

  Welch argued that Gilbert’s crime was a crime of violence. She should be “mandatorily detained,” he said. “My argument is that she . . . [be] placed on suicide watch, and that she does receive [a] psychiatric evaluation . . .”

  Welch was frightened for the safety of his witnesses, particularly Samantha Harris and James Perrault. He was afraid of what Gilbert might do now that she had heard Perrault and Harris testify against her. Welch added that he had presented to the court a history of violence by Gilbert “towards ex-boyfriends.” He told the story of what Gilbert had said to Karen Abderhalden back in August 1996, regarding Perrault loving her cats more than her and how she would have them put to sleep and placed on his doorstep.

  “You had to spell it out as clearly as you possibly could that when you meant she would have no contact with anyone, that meant no telephone contact, that meant no contact by mail—that meant no contact with anyone,” Welch, raising his voice, insisted.

  Judge Ponsor, after hearing arguments from both sides, decided to detain Gilbert at the Hampshire County Jail while she awaited sentencing.

  Nearly a year and a half after she’d committed the bomb-threat crime, Gilbert was brought for sentencing before Judge Ponsor on April 20, 1998.

  For most of the day, Welch and Miles argued back and forth on many issues, ranging from Gilbert’s sanity at the time of the bomb threat to her mental decline throughout the entire ordeal.

  “Your Honor,” Miles interjected at one point, “Mr. Strickland requests permission to speak to the Court with the Court’s permission?”

  “All right,” Ponsor said. “Will we be hearing from the defendant, [too]?”

  “Yes, we will. Briefly,” Miles said.

  The room was abuzz. Gilbert, who had uttered publicly only two words since the day she was arrested—“Not guilty”—would finally say something.

  But it was Daddy’s turn first.

  Overweight and noticeably stressed, Richard Strickland stared at Bill Welch the entire time he got up and walked from his seat to the chair on the witness stand.

  “We’re law-abiding citizens,” Strickland said after offering his appreciation to the judge. “I don’t think anyone in our family has ever had anything more than a speeding ticket in forty or fifty years, so we don’t condone my daughter’s actions. . . .”

  Next he went through his family’s ties to government throughout the centuries, while Welch sat and wondered what the hell any of it had to do with Gilbert’s sentencing.

  Strickland then spoke of Tara, Gilbert’s sister, and her “aspirations” of joining the FBI.

  “I will say that the recent experience in the family has soured her on the federal justice system”—he was looking directly at Welch—“for a variety of reasons, and she’s taken another path in her career.”

  Strickland said his daughter’s behavior was “bizarre over a period . . . but [it started only when] she walked out and split with her husband. [H]e refused to participate in [marriage] counseling, and only after she walked out was he willing to change. We tried to get her to move into our home perhaps in late spring ’96 because we knew she was out of control.

  “There were a few other facts that never came into evidence during the course of [the] proceeding, and . . . I don’t know the rules of evidence, but I understand that there are rules, but the stresses were even more.”

  He was referring to the testimony of Dr. Ronald Winfield, the director of the Greater Lowell Psychiatric Services and a defense witness Miles had brought in earlier, during sentencing arguments. Dr. Winfield testified that Gilbert suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and committed the bomb threat under the influence of that disorder.

  After that, Strickland explained how Gilbert’s disability insurance had been suddenly cut off in the middle of July 1996, and she stopped receiving disability payments shortly thereafter.

  “. . . [S]he couldn’t get her disability attorney, and to this day can’t get the federal government to answer why. They won’t even answer her phone calls or letters. It seems suspicious, to be honest, and I think it was induced to put stress on her.”

  Welch was having a ball listening to Strickland blame him and his office for just about everything that had happened in Gilbert’s life. The fact of the matter was, Gilbert’s disability payments had been cut off because she could not return to work, and the VA was left with nowhere to place her.

  “I think a lot of this was circumstances beyond her control,” Strickland said shortly before he was finished. “I’m not saying that she was guiltless—certainly not. And I’m not trying to make an excuse for that. But the circumstances, unlike what Mr. Welch has said, that this is a lifelong history of behavior.... This person is anything but a lifelong criminal.”

  With that, Gilbert stood and bowed her head. Crying, she said, “I’d just like to say that I’m very sorry for what happened. And as Dr. Winfield testified, I really don’t have a very clear memory of that particular time period and, actually, that’s sort of growing over time.

  “I don’t really have a very clear memory except bits and pieces of really that whole summer, patches here and there. It was a very stressful, hectic time of my life. Sometimes, it seems the mind chooses to block out things we don’t want to remember. A lot of what I remember is what people have told me about my own behavior, and my own behavior was very erratic and whatever.

  “I would never intentionally hurt anyone. And I have no animosity towards anybody that testified here or anybody involved in the case at all.

  “I would really just like to move on with my life and see my children, and remind the court that in addition to my fifteen-month confinement, that you had also ordered therapy during that time, and I went every week. I never missed an appointment, and I utilized it.

  “I think it’s . . . you know—” She stopped talking to catch her breath. “I’m a little nervous right now, but I think it’s certainly helped me deal with everything that was happening at that time, and I just hope you take all that into consideration.”

  “Thank you,” Judge Ponsor said. “If you have any final words, Mr. Welch, I will hear from you now?”

  “I do not.”

  So it was: Richard Strickland’s accusations that the government had had it out for his daughter from the start, Gilbert’s own testimony that she was under such severe emotional distress at the time of the bomb threat that she had no idea what she was doing, nor Harry Miles’s weak argument that Welch and his bandits had railroaded his client did little to sway Judge Ponsor—because he imposed a sentence of fifteen months.

  “It is customary to stand during sentencing, but I’m going to make a couple of remarks, and then I’m going to formally impose the sentence,” Ponsor said.

  Now it was the judge’s turn to speak.

  Ponsor first told the court that he didn’t “consider this in any sense a light sentence at all.” He recommend
ed that Gilbert be placed in the Bureau of Prisons mental health program. It would allow her to, he said, continue “to make progress” with the therapeutic work she had been doing ever since she became part of the justice system back in 1996.

  “There are aspects of this case which, frankly, from the beginning have mystified me more than any case I could think of. There are certain parts of the case that I simply don’t understand. A judge is always riding along the tip of an iceberg and never is completely sure of what’s going on underneath the water. But in this case there seems to have been more going on beneath the water than I could acknowledge.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on in Ms. Gilbert’s background or what happened here. I do know that the defendant was proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and that the evidence at trial was overwhelming on that point.

  “Only one or two realities is possible, and one is that the defendant is, despite having been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the victim of the most extraordinary series of coincidences that I’ve ever heard of in my life or in fiction because the evidence was certainly there.”

  That line received a few laughs from the packed courtroom.

  “The other possibility is that the defendant is, in fact, guilty and did make those phone calls. And if the defendant is, in fact, guilty . . . it absolutely mystifies me that there was no plea or formal acceptance of responsibility and the possibility of a better shot at showing aberrant behavior which would have lowered the potential sentence. So there’s an aspect of this case which is an utter mystery to me.

  “I do not understand how the case ended up in the format that it did, but in any event, it did. And I’m very satisfied in my own mind that the defendant committed the crimes that she’s charged with and was certainly properly found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of those crimes.”

  The first phase of Gilbert’s criminal life was over. The second phase, however, was just heating up.

  Yet as Welch, Murphy and Plante would find out in the coming months, Gilbert would be hard-pressed to stay out of trouble—even while confined to her cell at the Danbury, Connecticut, Federal Prison that would be her home for the next fifteen months.

  CHAPTER 77

  The long list of indictments the US Attorney’s Office was putting together against Gilbert was beginning to overwhelm Bill Welch, who had been on the case since June 1996.

  As Gilbert did her time for the bomb threat, the murder investigation moved forward. In reaction to the growing number of witnesses and new evidence, including the Kenny Cutting and Stanley Jagodowski exhumations, Welch went to his boss, supervising US attorney Kevin O’Regan, and said he wanted another prosecutor who could share equally in the workload.

  The court had already appointed defense attorney David Hoose back in December 1997 to represent Gilbert in any future matters. Hoose had been recommended by trial judge David Bruck, who was in charge of coordinating public defenders for federal defendants in capital cases.

  At forty-five, Hoose was a Northampton resident and partner in Katz, Sasson, Hoose and Turnbull, with offices in Springfield and Northampton. Welch had seen Hoose in court and he knew the tall, slick and bald defense attorney was going to be tough to go up against. Hoose had a reputation for being a hard hitter, both on and off the field. Shortly before taking the Gilbert case, Hoose had defended Alex Rankin, who was later convicted of killing a South Hadley dentist, Robert D’Amour, in 1993.

  Under federal law, a person accused of capital felony murder is entitled to two lawyers, and one of them must have death penalty case experience. Hoose had worked on appeals in capital punishment cases before. Since Harry Miles had already been dealing with Gilbert for a number of years, Hoose quickly announced Miles would act as his co-counsel.

  After some prudent thought, Miles and Hoose decided to ask the court if they could bring in another attorney. Judge Ponsor heard their argument and agreed.

  Hoose and Miles chose Paul Weinberg, who, in over twenty years of practicing law, had never tried a criminal case. Weinberg was a malpractice attorney. Hoose and Miles had chosen him because of his obvious expertise in medical records. Later, Weinberg told a reporter for the Hampshire Gazette he was “reluctant to get aboard” what he called “the train from hell.... Because once you buy your ticket, the doors close . . . and you’re off, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  Welch’s first choice for co-counsel was Ariane Vuono, a former Northwestern assistant district attorney who had been sworn in as a US Attorney in July 1995. Not only did Vuono have trial experience, but she could bring a female perspective to the case, something Welch was looking for.

  She was the “perfect fit,” Welch later said. “Extremely talented.” She could bring to the team insight they didn’t have, and, hopefully, answer the one question Plante, Murphy and Welch had been asking themselves for well over two years now: What made Gilbert tick?

  Back in 1995, Vuono went to work under Jeffrey Kinder, the assistant US attorney in charge of the Springfield office at the time. She had been brought in by Kinder to take on the large-scale drug-dealing cases and corruption cases the Springfield US Attorney’s Office prosecuted. She was chosen, Kinder later said, because of her trial experience and appellate work in Northampton.

  Around the office, the soft-spoken Vuono came across to most of her new colleagues as laid-back and nonthreatening. Strikingly attractive, rather small and petite, just under five feet, maybe one hundred pounds, an avid runner, at forty-one Vuono was in the incredible shape of a healthy twenty-year-old.

  Prior to her appointment as a US Attorney, Vuono had worked as an A.D.A. in the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office for seven years. She graduated from Yale University, received a master’s degree in Italian Language and Literature from Middlebury College, and a law degree from the University of Connecticut.

  She was married to a well-respected chair of the Italian Literature department at Smith College, Alfonse Procaccini. Only months before Vuono had been sworn in as an assistant US attorney, she prosecuted Sandra Dotsie, a twenty-eight-year-old nurse who had smothered her stepson to death over resentment of child-support payments and the time her husband had spent with the child. With a child of her own from a previous relationship and two stepchildren, Vuono had a unique point of view to bring to the Dotsie case, for which she ultimately obtained a conviction.

  One day shortly before the bomb-threat trial concluded, Welch walked about twenty yards from his corner office, sat down in Vuono’s office, and just stared at her.

  “What is it, Bill?”

  “I need you to come aboard,” Welch said. “Would you be willing to do the murder investigation and prosecute Gilbert?”

  There had been another prosecutor working with Welch at the time, David Gier, and Vuono wanted to know where she fit in. Three prosecutors? She didn’t like the sound of it.

  “In what capacity would you need me, Bill, if you already have David?”

  “Just you and me, Ariane. David won’t be part of this.”

  Gier was certainly a competent attorney in his own right. He was working for the Northampton DA’s office, and he had just taken on more responsibility in the office. Welch knew he wasn’t going to have the time. Plus, it was a federal case. Local law enforcement would be helping, sure, but it was a government case all the way.

  Vuono was still a bit skeptical, however.

  “Is it going to be fifty-fifty, Bill?”

  “I heard David is withdrawing from the case, anyway,” Welch said. Vuono could tell by the look in Welch’s eyes he was serious. “Yes, of course. Fifty-fifty. You and me!”

  Vuono turned out to be exactly what Welch needed. Not only was she talented, but Vuono was the only attorney in the US Attorney’s Office at the time to have tried a murder case.

  As the evidence continued to pour in, the case against Gilbert was amounting to the biggest thing to roll through Western Massachusetts in decades. Bill Welch needed the best. By his estima
tion, he now had it.

  CHAPTER 78

  The first few months of the new year, 1998, had been difficult for Special Agent Steve Plante. With pressure mounting to secure an indictment, Plante and Murphy had been meeting with one family member after the next to inform them of the bad news: there was a good chance their son, brother, father or husband had not died of natural causes as they had once believed, but Kristen Gilbert had murdered them. In the midst of breaking the dreadful news to family members, Plante had just gotten word that his father had been diagnosed with cancer and had only six months left to live, which made it only that much more difficult for Plante to face each family member.

  On the first warm spring afternoon in May 1998, Plante was exactly where he wanted to be: at home, in Bedford, taking a stress-relieving jog through the neighborhood where he lived. He had just visited with his father, who wasn’t doing so well. Running helped Plante deal with what was turning out to be one of the worst years he could recall. In addition to watching his father die a slow and painful death, Plante had been involved in the Gilbert investigation now for nearly two years, and they still hadn’t secured enough evidence, Welch kept telling him, to indict her.

  That, of course, could all change when the toxicology results from Ed Skwira’s exhumation came in. But, like any good cop, Plante knew they couldn’t depend on it.

  As he came up on a hill about a mile from his house, Plante’s pager went off.

  “George Jackson?” he said to himself looking down at the number. “Why the hell is George calling?”

  A forensic toxicologist, Jackson was employed by National Medical Services, one of the leading toxicology companies in the private sector. The IGO had retained the services of NMS to test the tissue samples from Ed Skwira and Henry Hudon. Hudon’s body had been cremated, but because the medical examiner couldn’t find a natural cause of death at the time he conducted an autopsy, he saved tissue samples.