The Man in the Monster

by Martha Elliott

  Three years later, however, when Judge Hendel unsealed the record, he said, “With the benefit of hindsight, I realized that the officers made a judgment call at the time based on information which was available to them, that it wasn’t important to go to the site of the killings, since they were looking to secure corroboration of the defendant’s confession and they felt that by going to the place where the bodies were, they would get that corroboration.” He had reflected on the matter, he said, and changed his views on their testimony. “I do believe that they testified truthfully during the hearing.” Malchik said that Hendel changed his mind because he believed Michael was a liar; Michael pointed to the hearing to prove that Malchik and Satti were liars and that the system was stacked against him. In a just system, he contended, those two murders would not have been tried in Connecticut, and Satti and Malchik would have been exposed for corruption.

  When I first started reporting on the case, in 1995, Michael was obsessed with the idea of exposing this cover-up. After reading the hearing transcript, I could understand his frustration with the system. It seemed that the judge believed that Malchik had lied about the directions that Michael had given him in order to “prove” that the murders happened in Connecticut. I wondered why the judge had changed his mind. It could have been because Michael was telling every journalist who would listen about the “faked crime scene.” I decided to try to follow both sets of directions. I found that Michael’s directions, which had been given when he sat in a jail cell, took me to the exact place where the defense said the murders took place, but Malchik’s directions made absolutely no sense. They did not lead to a secluded area where someone could have raped and murdered two girls. Just to be sure, I repeated the experiment, this time with someone else driving and me reading the two sets of directions. We came up with identical results.

  • • •

  The 1987 trial lasted almost six months. None of Michael’s family sat through the proceedings, but his father and sisters did testify during the penalty phase, primarily in the hope that describing Michael’s childhood would influence the jury to spare his life. Ed and Lera Shelley were among the victims’ families who faithfully attended every day, along with the Baribeaults and the Roodes. Lera could not sit in the courtroom because witnesses are not allowed to hear other witnesses’ testimony; instead she sat in the hallway conducting her own vigil while Ed sat inside the crowded courtroom.

  With Bob Satti at the helm, the courtroom was filled with theatrics and emotion. During his closing argument, Satti even got down on his knees and reenacted one of the murders. The state’s case was clear and simple—Michael Ross was a rapist who murdered to cover up his crimes. Each of the crimes was carefully documented using testimony from grieving family members and the investigating officers, as well as Michael’s confessions and the gruesome pictures of crime scenes and autopsies.

  What was missing was any psychiatric testimony from the prosecution to prove that Michael was not mentally ill. Satti had deliberately kept Dr. Miller’s letter, admitting that he thought Michael was mentally ill, from the defense until the guilt phase was almost over. When Dr. Miller took the stand, Satti deliberately didn’t ask him any questions about Michael Ross’s mental illness because he didn’t want the jury to know that his witness agreed with the defense’s contention that Michael’s illness was real and a mitigating factor that would preclude death. He asked him only general questions about sexual sadism, nothing about Michael’s pathology. This prevented the defense from questioning Miller about his evaluation of Michael in cross-examination because cross is limited to the topics discussed in direct examination.

  In contrast, defense had to prove that Michael’s mental illness was real. Because of his mental illness, his lawyers argued, he should either be found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect or be convicted of manslaughter because he suffered from extreme emotional distress. Dr. Cegalis and Dr. Borden were the chief witnesses for the defense. In trying to sum up his several days of testimony, Dr. Borden told the jury that Michael had a borderline personality disorder, which the DSM-IV defines as “a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.” He said that the borderline personality “feels like a helpless, weak little child” who has a lot of rage inside. What people with this disorder hate in themselves, they find in someone else. “If they hate their weakness, they will attack, as in Michael Ross’s case, what appears weak.” He also said that Michael was a sexual sadist, that he had a sadistic personality disorder (then a new diagnosis in the DSM-III but no longer recognized as a diagnosis), which was the “ultimate extreme of sadism. . . . It’s a homicidal maniac” who has “an intense drive to death, to kill, that is . . . a primitive, brutal death drive.” In effect, he was telling the jury that Michael’s sexual sadism was so extreme that it went well beyond the DSM guidelines. He not only got pleasure from sadistic behavior, but also did not achieve sexual release until he had murdered his victims.

  It’s important to understand that not only was the jury hearing about new pathologies at the time, but also that the term serial killer was new to many people in 1987. After all, it didn’t enter the lexicon until the mid-1980s. Perhaps that’s one reason why the Bridgeport jury didn’t believe the psychiatric testimony. Or perhaps it was because Michael Ross looked too “normal.” He smiled and joked with his attorneys. “I wasn’t foaming at the mouth,” Michael explained to me.

  Whatever their reason, it took the jury less than eighty-seven minutes to decide that Michael Ross was guilty and less than a day to decide that his penalty should be death. Judge G. Sarsfield Ford set an execution date of thirty days after his sentencing—July 4, 1987, the same day that Ed and Lera Shelley had buried their daughter three years earlier.

  During the trial, Michael wrote to Ann Cole, one of the few people he considered a friend. His letters explain how he perceived his first trial—and himself. He was scared and confused and full of self-loathing. He was lonely, but, perhaps most important, even during his first trial he was ready to give up and accept execution.

  After sitting through eight days of psychiatric testimony, Michael was distraught from listening to psychiatrists tell the world what he both hoped for and feared the most—that he was mentally ill. Although he wanted to know why he had committed the murders, he did not want anyone to say he was a sexual sadist—at least not at that point—because of his cultural belief that mental illness was a weakness and an excuse for bad behavior. How could he now use it as an excuse? On the other hand, if he wasn’t suffering from a psychiatric disorder, he was nothing more than a cold-blooded killer. While the court was recessed over the Memorial Day holiday, he spent his time writing to Ann to thank her for her support because his family wouldn’t attend the trial. “They would be too ashamed to come to court. They once told me that if they did come to court, it would be a slap in the face of the victims’ families. I always thought it ironic that they had more concern for the victims’ families than for me.”

  He poured out his feelings to her. “I have to keep up my damn facade. I’m beginning to hate that outward face. I’m a lie, a phony. The person who I thought I was doesn’t exist. I’ve lived with the lie so long that I don’t really know who or what I am. I’m also afraid of who I really am.” It was clear that listening to Dr. Borden was excruciatingly painful, and he wrote that he didn’t “like the glimpses [Dr.] Borden has given me, but how can I deny them? He has no reason to lie but I have every reason not to want to believe him.” He was of two minds. He wanted to prove that he was not responsible for what he had done because of his illness, but he didn’t want to be a sexual sadist, because that disorder disgusted him.

  Dr. Walter Borden had painted a picture of a very sick man who was the extreme of sadism—a lustful murderer. Michael wrote Ann, “I am evil pure and simple. You can’t
deny that. I am evil in its purest form, lustful and murderous. How can I accept that? I am everything that I hate and despise. The more I see, the more I hate.” Michael wrote that he was like “a rabid dog that should be taken out behind the barn and shot. The jury should sentence me to death not for what I’ve done, but rather out of mercy—to put me out of my misery, to stop the suffering.” He was full of self-loathing. “I’m facing this hateful murderous monster that is me, and I hate me. Everything of redeeming value, everything that I thought was good about myself is falsehood.”

  As articulate and aware as he was, Michael did not grasp his own pathology in 1987, and neither did the court or the jury. During the penalty phase of the trial, the jury had to decide whether he would receive several hundred years in jail or death. Dr. Berlin was the chief witness during that part of the trial, but family members, neighbors, and even prison guards were also called to testify. If they had believed that he was mentally ill, as Dr. Berlin testified, a death sentence could not have been given. But once again the jury was not swayed by the psychiatric testimony and sentenced Michael to death in less than a day of deliberation. “It took them longer to come back with a decision than the guilt phase,” said Michael. “But I think they just hung out in there for a while because they didn’t want anyone to think they hadn’t considered the evidence.”

  • • •

  Fred DeCaprio, one of the defense lawyers at the first trial, has worked for decades as a public defender. When I met him in 1996, he was working in a cramped, dumpy office. Small of stature, balding, with scruffs of hair ringing his pate, DeCaprio spoke softly, sometimes almost inaudibly, but became emotional when I asked him if Michael had gotten a fair trial. “No, not at all,” he said. I asked why not. “Oh God, there were a lot of factors. I think that the jury we—I want to say were stuck with—the jury we selected was not a very good jury for us. That may be the luck of the draw or a by-product of the location of the trial. But it wasn’t a very good jury for us, to be able to understand or at least emphasize [with] some things we were trying to tell them. I thought that the trial judge was tremendously offended, wounded by the crimes,” he said, adding that he thought that the nature of the crimes had tilted Judge Ford against Michael. “It was very subtle. He was very smart. So there are a lot of times that there is nothing on the record. It’s done with inflection, gesture. It’s devastating . . . I thought we had a pretty compelling case, but we never got heard.”

  In all his years of practice, DeCaprio said he had never had a judge take such an active role in trying to influence the outcome of a trial. DeCaprio mentioned the way Ford treated the psychiatric expert. “It was outrageous. . . . Dr. Berlin’s a nice man and an excellent witness. It was tragic. I was appalled . . . because this guy didn’t deserve it. He was just trying to do his job.” After the trial, Dr. Berlin filed a complaint with the state commission on judicial conduct about the way he was treated by Judge Ford. He was later told that there was no evidence of misconduct, and no action was taken to censure the judge.

  Others, including Karen Clarke, a reporter who covered the trial for the New London Day, later confirmed DeCaprio’s characterization of the trial judge. She said he took a demeaning tone with the defense attorneys, pronouncing their names incorrectly, for instance. Another reporter who covered the trial, but did not want to be identified, concurred with Clark’s observations, as had Ann when I first met her.

  DeCaprio felt that the jury was not open to the psychiatric testimony. “It was absurd. They didn’t take time. . . . How can you make that kind of decision with the amount of evidence they had before them in less than ninety minutes?”

  18

  DEATH ROW, SOMERS, CONNECTICUT

  JULY 1987

  Michael was tired yet happy when the first trial was finally over. “It was strange, and I doubt if anyone can truly understand, but my lawyers were more upset about my being sentenced to death than I was. What devastated me was the guilty verdict itself. It still bothers me that no one seems to understand this—even you don’t understand it, do you, Martha? Everyone focused on saving my life. Yet I didn’t give a damn about my life. I would have been ecstatic with a verdict of ‘insane but fry the bastard anyway.’ Freedom didn’t interest me. Life didn’t interest me. All that was really important to me was to prove that I wasn’t the cold-blooded animal that everyone portrayed me to be. That is all I ever cared about.”

  After sentencing, Michael was brought back to the Bridgeport Correctional Center and placed in an isolated holding cell. He was stripped and given a pair of flip-flops, a T-shirt, a pair of pants several sizes too big with no belt—so he had to hold the waist of the pants to keep them from falling to his ankles—and no underwear. A few hours later, a lieutenant and correctional officer escorted him to Somers, where he arrived just after 11:00 P.M. Two or three guards with shotguns, as well as two K-9 officers and their dogs, surrounded the van. Two officers, a captain and one of the K-9 officers, escorted him into the prison, which was locked down, meaning all inmates were locked in their cells. “Their faces were pressed up to the windows, jostling each other to get a better look, but I ignored them.”

  • • •

  This was all new. Michael was the first person to be on death row since the last execution in 1960. He was taken to G-basement where he was processed, fingerprinted, photographed, and given his prison uniform. Then he was put in the deathwatch cell, F-36, at the end of the row, isolated by a door at the end of what was to be death row. This is the cell that condemned men are now put into just prior to execution. The cell’s furnishings consisted of a bunk, a sink, and a toilet, unlike other cells on death row that also have shelves and desks. About five feet from the cell was a small wooden desk at which a guard was posted 24/7 whose sole responsibility was to watch Michael and log anything he did into a logbook. “I was pretty wound up. I hadn’t slept at all the night before and I wouldn’t sleep for another twelve hours.”

  That was Friday night. On Monday, he returned to G-basement, where his property was searched, and he was allowed to bring it to his cell. To get there he had to walk past the inmates on the tiers adjacent to the death cell; the cells were later to be used for death row inmates but at the time held men who had been put in segregation. Because he was such a high-profile inmate, the inmates peppered him with bars of soap and rolls of toilet paper as he walked by. “The guards, for the most [part,] always kept a couple of steps away from me so that they wouldn’t get hit.” While in G-basement, he also had a meeting with the deputy warden, during which he was told the rules. Michael brought up several issues. He asked for a desk and a shelf, which were granted and installed within a week.

  Michael knew there would be an automatic stay of execution until the state Supreme Court had reviewed his sentence, a mandatory appeal in all death penalty cases. But every time he left his cell “there were the ever present catcalls from both inmates and guards. Most common was the buzzing sound,” like the electric chair. Yet the hardest to deal with was his complete lack of privacy. No one has much privacy in prison, and Michael had learned to deal with it in his three years in county jail, but now a guard was posted directly in front of his cell, monitoring every movement every minute of every single day.

  When he first got to death row, Michael was consumed by anger. He felt that he didn’t get a fair trial and that Malchik and Satti were “twisting the evidence” to secure a death sentence, that the judge was against him, and that the jury ignored the evidence. It was a very personal feeling of injustice, not a critique of the entire justice system. He began to do legal research to keep busy. Eventually he was allowed to get books from the law library, but he also got lawyers to donate their outdated books for a death row library and even got the Law Tribune to provide a free subscription. He read articles that charged that the death penalty was meted out in a capricious manner. If one compares capital prosecutions state by state, prosecutor by prosecutor, or case by c
ase, it is impossible to see any logic in prosecutors’ decisions as to whether a death sentence is sought. After about a year, he realized that his case was not unique and that abuses occur in many capital cases. Seeing this, he started writing anti–death penalty articles. But instead of making Michael feel less persecuted, these activities made him feel hopeless. He had decided that the entire system was broken and corrupt.

  Michael slowly spiraled into a deep depression. Prozac helped, but his violent sexual fantasies became much worse. One of the cruel ironies of prison—with its lack of physical and mental activity—is that it’s the perfect place for mental illness to grow stronger. “On the outside, at least I had work and daily activities to keep my mind busy and drive away the thoughts. When there is nothing to do but sit in an empty cell, the thoughts of raping and murdering became a much larger part of my life. The hardest time for me was in the evening when it was time to relax and go to sleep. I couldn’t relax without the sexual imagery invading my mind and without feeling an immense compulsion to masturbate. If I fought the urge, I could never get to sleep, so daily masturbation just before bed became the norm. Once I gave in and satisfied the urges, I had no problem sleeping.”

  Even during the day, he felt the need to masturbate. Usually he masturbated when he woke up and before his usual afternoon nap. He said that his illness had cycles and seemed to ebb and flow. “There were periods when he [the monster] came on with a vengeance and I would masturbate several more times a day. During these periods I would masturbate myself raw—literally open raw spots on my penis. At these times, masturbation would often be painful as I rubbed the open sores.”

  Before the first trial began, Dr. Berlin told Michael about his clinic at Johns Hopkins and the success he’d had treating patients suffering from sexual sadism with Depo-Provera. Some refer to the controversial treatment as chemical castration, but Dr. Berlin objected to that term’s negative connotations and considered it misleading. “I prefer talking about medications that suppress sexual appetite,” he explained. “With an appetite suppressant, it would be easier for you to diet, but not impossible to eat.” Dr. Berlin pointed out that many of his patients with appropriate sex partners are able to continue functioning sexually without the temptation to act out in harmful ways. When the sex drive is diminished, a sexual sadist can control his behavior. Even if he has the thoughts about the abnormal behavior, it no longer overpowers him.