Not long after, Sullivan called Mrs. Palomba back. “They say Donna’s story is full of holes,” Sullivan told her. “That’s about all I can say.”
Sullivan advised her to tell Donna and John to set up a meeting with Lieutenant Moran’s superior, the Vice and Intelligence Division’s captain.
John and Donna decided that John would call to demand a meeting. They needed to know what evidence the WPD had against Donna and confront it. Maybe there was a major misunderstanding that Lieutenant Moran had taken completely out of context. Or maybe he had what anyone would consider a good reason to accuse Donna. It would not, however, excuse his behavior during the interrogation, but the shining of a spotlight in Donna’s face and interrogating her like a terrorist could be dealt with at a later time. What Donna and John needed to do was get the WPD back to investigating her case. There was, after all, a rapist running around the community.
John called the captain—Captain Robert Moran—the lieutenant’s own brother.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Something’s Missing
John spoke to Captain Robert Moran, Lieutenant Douglas Moran’s brother, and the captain, as John would later recall, “reluctantly” agreed to meet with them, while again repeating what his brother had said about “holes” in Donna’s story.
It was the morning of Monday, October 18, when John and Donna arrived at the WPD. Donna had barely been able to sleep or eat since Douglas Moran had interrogated her. Her world had become what she later described as an “unsafe” place.
My healing, for which I was working hard, came to an abrupt halt. I had considered the police station a safe place, where good people who could help me resided. My bedroom used to be a comforting place to unwind and relax and sleep and read and play with the kids. Both of these places were now horrifying for me to even think about. They had become danger zones. Just seeing a police car drive by gave me such a profound sense of pain and fear that I was losing control of myself and those emotions I had spent so much time over the past several weeks coming to grips with. I was constantly praying now . . . and even that was losing its power.
Greeting John and Donna at the WPD’s entrance was another lieutenant, Harold P. Post, whom people called Phil. He was there, along with Captain Robert Moran, to hear what Donna and John had to say. The Palombas had heard that Phil Post was part of Lieutenant Moran’s team investigating the case. Post had been with the WPD since 1973. When John and Donna met him that day, Post was with the Vice and Intelligence Division. He seemed pleasant and quiet and didn’t say much.
After they sat down in Captain Moran’s office, John turned to the captain and said, “Thank you for meeting with us.” Then he jumped right into it: “I . . . I don’t know if you’re aware of the line of [questioning when] . . . my wife came in Friday. I’m sure you’re aware of the case and what’s going on.”
Donna interrupted, saying, “I can tell him myself, John. Do you have the tape of the interview between me and Lieutenant Moran?”
Captain Moran seemed unemotional, difficult to read, and monotone. Moran was the head of the WPD’s Vice unit and his brother Douglas Moran’s boss. He had assigned Douglas to Donna’s case. A University of Connecticut graduate, he had wispy white hair, parted to one side, with noticeable strands of black, a pale complexion, and big tortoiseshell glasses. He wore a white shirt, dark tie, blue slacks, and a stoic gaze of indifference. Moran had been on the Waterbury force since 1970: He had started like everyone else, as a patrol officer, moved on to patrol sergeant, then became a sergeant in the Detective Bureau (1981–84), a lieutenant (1984–86) in that same division, and finally captain of Vice and Intelligence. According to Moran, when asked later under oath, he had not a blemish to his record.
The tape, Donna knew, would tell its own story. It was futile for her to try to explain the degrading way in which Lieutenant Moran had spoken to her and the trauma she had endured while being subjected to his accusations. She had seen Douglas Moran record the interrogation. If they all could just sit and listen to the tape, Captain Moran would see that his brother had taken things too far by threatening to have Donna arrested.
“Did you listen to [the tape] at all?” John asked.
Captain Moran said, “No.”
“Can we listen to it together?” Donna said.
“No,” Moran snapped. “No.”
John said he would appreciate it if they could play the tape. “I’m totally disgusted by what [Lieutenant Moran] said. My wife, I know where she is at all times because I worry about, you know the way things are today, and I worry about where she is and I know where she is and she’s out with business and stuff at times.” John was getting himself worked up already. He wanted to clearly make the point that he trusted his wife, had no reason not to, and was appalled that she would be accused of stepping out on him and then making up a story to cover up an affair. Furthermore, hadn’t anyone from the WPD conducted a background check on Donna and John? Had they interviewed friends, family, people from her past? How could she be judged without a dogged investigation of her character?
“I don’t know that much about the conversation the other day,” Captain Moran said to Donna and John’s utter amazement. The captain sounded smug, as if he was going through the motions because he had to, but had already made up his mind, same as his brother. He made a comment that he was busy and indicated that he had had to move some appointments around to accommodate the meeting with John and Donna. The longer the conversation went on, the more Donna felt that she was being ignored and Captain Moran was talking to John, giving him more attention.
“I know a little bit about it,” Moran said, “but . . . but what things specific, uh . . .”
“Okay, first of all, Captain,” Donna said. “I came in on my own . . . with my sister, because she had an incident occur with this person that we both know . . . When I came down I noticed that [Lieutenant Moran’s] behavior was very cold and very different than the nice man that I had dealt with earlier on when I was inquiring about the lab results and everything else.”
From there Donna went through the entire story of what had happened between her and the captain’s brother two days before. She left nothing out. Captain Moran listened, as did Post, but neither said much as Donna took the time she needed to go through the interrogation point by point. There were times when John would add something that Donna had left out.
After nearly fifteen minutes, the point Donna was trying to make became clear: There was no good reason why they were doing this to her. It was absurd to strong-arm interrogate the victim while a rapist was out running around the town.
“Let me explain to you, okay?” Captain Moran said. “In, ah, in certain cases, it is a legitimate line of questioning.”
John said he understood.
“And we have to follow every possible avenue . . .”
“Right,” John agreed.
Captain Moran then explained that after they had eliminated “all [the] other explanations” they could find (meaning those suspects the WPD had checked out), they had to “follow whatever other course that might be indicated.”
Again, John said he understood.
“It’s a . . . it’s an investigative method, okay.”
“So was there substantiation, 100 percent proof positive?” Donna asked. Why was Captain Moran talking in circles here, she wondered. Why not just reveal the alleged evidence they had? If they were so certain she had lied to them, where was the proof?
“As far as that sort of thing, uh, you know, there are statements that were made at different times.” Moran claimed, referring to the allegations made against Donna. “If we were to put ’em together and we were to put them in a warrant, would a judge sign it? Yeah, probably. Are we going to do that at this point? No.”
John stepped in and said, “But I mean, for something like this to happen
to her, I mean, for another man to try to violate her, it was just totally, it just . . . I mean, you must have women who make mistakes, you know, statements that are just so confusing, I mean.”
“We have women that make statements that are confusing,” Moran reiterated before coming down hard on John, adding, “We also have women who lie.”
Donna then made a very good point, saying, “To me, Captain, this could be used as a last resort. Nobody I know was interviewed. My [business] partners were not interviewed. My family—the males in my family—were not interviewed. None of my character was questioned . . .”
“No, we’ve been working very hard,” Moran said, defending the department’s investigation.
As they talked back and forth, getting nowhere, Moran said, “Listen . . . one of the things that we would like to do, okay, is interview the children. Uh, you feel they were sleeping?”
“I know they were!”
What was the captain implying, Donna asked herself. Later she would hear from a source that the WPD thought that she had perhaps drugged her kids so they would stay asleep during her supposed tryst.
“Well,” Moran said, “we’re also wondering if one didn’t wake up and wander around the house.”
“No,” Donna said. “I know for sure because they were right next to me.”
“I understand that. But when the incident happened, okay, who can verify that they were sleeping?” Moran asked.
“I can,” Donna said.
“Well . . .” Moran answered arrogantly. The only part he left out was, There you go!
They discussed possible suspects for a few moments, and then Donna told her story about Jeff Martinez. Moment by moment, she recounted exactly what Maria had described to her.
Captain Moran said nothing.
John and Donna continued to defend themselves and Donna’s story, but it seemed that Moran and Post were uninterested in the minutiae of it all. Post and Moran listened, apparently, but did not react. At one point Moran said, “I understand your frustrations, and I sympathize with them. If there were another, if there were some other way I could change them or solve this case, I certainly would . . . And, uh, sometimes we have to do things that even ourselves we don’t particularly like to do.”
John decided to call their bluff. “I’d like this cleared up,” John said. “I don’t want them [Lieutenant Moran and his boys] to waste their time going after this point of view. If he feels they have enough that the [judge] wants to sign the warrant . . .”
Donna piped in here, finishing for her husband, “Then let’s do it!”
I had been feeling grateful. I realized that there were people in the world a heck of a lot worse off than I was. I could overcome this. I was alive. My husband wasn’t buying into their “she had an affair” theory—which would have made my home life a hell I could not have dealt with. John’s trust and love were carrying me over this new hurdle. But the mention of a warrant set me back. I was just blown away by the fact that he said a judge would sign a warrant for my arrest. I was feeling frustrated, discriminated against, misunderstood, angry, sad, bewildered, helpless. It was clear they were not going to back down from this theory Lieutenant Douglas Moran had obviously come up with. It was the blue boys club—they were all standing behind their boy.
“Well, I’ll tell you, if you had come in the other day,” Captain Moran said next, “and you would have said [she lied], and if that happens, uh, we probably would have dropped this, washed this, whatever.”
John and Donna looked at each other. What was he saying? Was the captain now trying to talk Donna into making this all go away by simply admitting to an affair she never had?
After Moran talked about how the WPD was not in the business of breaking up families, but that there were cases where they could not control the outcome, Donna said something for the first time since the attack that was soon to become the pulsating, driving theme of her life: “I want to make sure this type of treatment never happens to anyone else.”
This evoked an eruption of heated emotion from Moran. He started to say something, but they all spoke over one another and nobody could be heard.
Donna needed an important fact verified. She wanted to know about the DNA. She was confused after speaking with Lieutenant Moran. He had called her at work regarding the DNA, but then referred to the DNA during the interrogation as a misinformation tactic he used when investigating crimes of this nature.
She wanted to know: Was there DNA available or not? More pointedly, “Was there, in fact, enough information from the lab so that if we find a suspect he can be either eliminated or—”
“There’s no way that we can tell that,” Captain Moran said.
“Well, he told me that once for sure. Was that one of his tactics?”
“I really don’t know,” Moran said. “I mean, usually DNA is not done locally. It has to be sent to the FBI laboratory. And it takes a long period of time. We have one [case] now where a fellow was doing a series of rapes . . . and, you know, uh, we, uh, as a matter of fact, DNA eliminated one suspect.”
“Right,” Donna said.
“But it took several months.”
Donna wanted to know, concretely, whether there ever had been DNA—semen—found on the back of her shirt and panties, as she had been told, or if it was just one more police “tactic” giving her false hope. She had no idea what to believe anymore.
Moran never gave them an answer. Instead he talked about how frustrating a case it had been for his men. He said one of the most disturbing factors of the case was that John had been away and the “fact that there was no forcible entry.”
John started to suggest a theory, but was interrupted by Moran, who said, “These are some of the things that we are finding very frustrating in our investigation and, uh, you know, quite frankly, uh, it certainly made us look at you a second time [referring to Donna], as you know it makes us look, as you say, that it’s gotta be a personal nature. Somebody that knew quite a bit about you people . . .”
John explained that he hadn’t told many people he was going away, and that he had also asked his brothers to drive by the house to make sure everything looked safe, adding, “I had another friend, uh, one of my best friends from years ago, I had him call and see if everything was all right.”
“Who was that?” Moran wondered.
John gave him the name, saying his friend was at least “260 pounds and, um, Donna would have known if it was him.”
Moran wanted the friend’s personal contact information so they could reach him and investigate whether he had the opportunity to commit the crime.
This request opened up a dialogue that included John mentioning other people the WPD should be talking to: friends and acquaintances of John and Donna’s that they had assumed the WPD had already checked out. Come to find out, they hadn’t.
Then Moran said, “We would also like to speak with your sister Maria about her contact with . . . [Jeff].”
It finally seemed like they were getting somewhere.
Moran said he needed to conclude the conversation because of an important meeting he had at the top of the hour, explaining, “. . . We’re going to pursue what we feel are the most productive lines of inquiry. Uh, as those terminate, then we’ll go to other lines that are, uh, perhaps, less promising.” Then he said someone from the WPD would be in touch soon.
And that was it. Meeting adjourned.
Lieutenant Post escorted Donna and John out of the building. Post had played good cop to Moran’s bad cop. Neither had taken many notes during the conversation, but Post had written a few things down, Donna suspected, to “make it look good.”
As they walked toward the exit, Donna told Post to listen to the tape Lieutenant Moran had made. “This is very important to me,” she said. “What is going to be done?”
“I’m very busy,” Post said. “But since the captain asked me to sit in, I am now involved. I assure you, I will listen to all the tapes this afternoon.”
Leaving the WPD, Donna and John believed Captain Moran was holding back a lot more than he had been willing to give up. But why?
To say the least, Donna left the WPD confused and shaken once again. What was going to happen next?
“I was right back to the night I was raped,” Donna said.
CHAPTER NINE
Jane Doe
Just five years before Donna’s attack, one of the most sensational false rape allegation cases in history began as fifteen-year-old Tawana Brawley went missing one day from her Wappinger, New York, home. Brawley was found behind an apartment complex four days later. She was covered in dog excrement and curled up in the fetal position inside a black plastic garbage bag. Her hair had been partially snipped off. Several racial epithets—including “nigger” and “KKK”—were written on her frail and bruised body. When authorities had the opportunity to speak with the terrified-looking fifteen-year-old, she claimed that six white men—one of whom had a badge and was presumably a cop—had raped her repeatedly in the backwoods of upstate New York. The case heightened racial tensions across America. Not long after Brawley came forward, outspoken African American rights advocate Reverend Al Sharpton took over her case, speaking as an advisor for Brawley and her family. Sharpton made several serious and shocking allegations himself. In one protest, which he staged outside the state building in Albany, New York, to show how disgusted he was with the state’s handling of the Brawley incident, Sharpton linked the treatment of Brawley to that of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying, “We come because twenty years after they mercilessly shot down a man of peace, we still have no justice.” Then Sharpton said that a New York prosecutor, Steven Pagones, “on thirty-three separate occasions . . . kidnapped, abused and raped” Brawley. A year after the accusations of rape and assault had been lodged by Brawley, a grand jury looking into the case concluded that the teenager had invented the entire story with her mother’s help. It turned out that Tawana Brawley “was not the victim of forcible sexual assault,” but a pathological liar. Brawley’s name soon became a punch line, as did Sharpton’s. Brawley’s was one of the most high-profile criminal cases of the 1980s. Police departments nationwide were miffed that a young girl, fueled by her mother’s greed, could invent such a deleterious story with the thought of destroying lives and careers by playing off issues of race.**
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