Jane Doe No More

by M. William Phelps

  Donna was shocked to hear the name, especially in the context of her case and if this person had an ax to grind. “What? Not that I know of.”

  It was 5:15 p.m. when Neil and Kathy arrived at Donna’s mother-in-law’s house. For the first time in the now nearly year-old investigation, Donna’s mother-in-law sat down for an interview with the police.

  Donna listened as Mrs. Palomba was questioned about the missing key and the particular family member. She had no idea why they were focusing on this person.

  “She’s a nice person who wouldn’t harm a soul,” Mrs. Palomba explained, referring to the relative. “She’s often confused and on medication.”

  Neil and Kathy shared a glance. Medication?

  What they weren’t telling Donna, or anyone else, was that this family member was supposedly the person behind that rumor convincing the Moran brothers that Donna’s story was “full of holes.” This person had told the confidential source’s mother about “the affair” and the kids waking up and catching Donna in the act of adultery.

  Donna was bewildered by these questions.

  The missing key was troubling. I could picture it hanging on a wood plaque with a row of hooks in the back entryway to the kitchen inside my mother-in-law’s house. I could see it in my mind as they talked about it. There was a small white label on the face of the key with the word “John” written in my mother-in-law’s handwriting.

  John’s family home was the gathering place at holidays. The house was a traditional two-story colonial with a large living room and a big fireplace that was always roaring on Christmas Eve. The smell of a wood fire and music filling the air were festive and nostalgic. The front foyer was large, and there was a stereo cabinet. John and his family were music buffs and my mother-in-law loved musicals, so there was always some type of music playing. The foyer turned into a dance floor when our kids were little. They were the first grandchildren, and everyone would line up waiting for their turn to dance with them. An abundance of love and warmth filled the air.

  Now, suddenly, as I sat there listening to Neil and Kathy Wilson question my mother-in-law, this magical house with its so many wonderful memories was the center of the case. Could someone have taken the key? People were in and out all the time. Sure, someone could have taken it, but who?

  I understood the significance of the key and why they were asking about it. As far as that relative they talked about was concerned, we really didn’t see her that often. She was a gentle woman, and I remember her sending me a novena card in the mail after the incident. She was quite religious, and I thought it was a nice gesture. I relayed this to Neil and Kathy Wilson.

  There was no reason to believe that she held any type of grudge against John or me—so that question Neil posed, as he could not divulge why at that time, had me asking myself more questions.

  The following day, Kathy Wilson called Donna.

  “Inspector Griffin wanted to know a little bit more about that oil leak in your home, Donna.”

  There had been an oil leak in the basement of Donna’s house at the time of the incident. Griffin thought that maybe when they had the oil tank serviced, the serviceman might have gotten the idea to return, after possibly hearing Donna talk on the phone or to John about him leaving.

  “We had the tank serviced, removed, and replaced, actually, a few days after the assault.”

  “Yeah, I suspected as much,” Wilson said, “and don’t think it has anything to do with the case, but Griffin wanted me to call anyway.”

  A day or so after this particular call, John attended a stag party in town. This was one of the problems with knowing everyone from the neighborhood: You got invited to everything. There were lots of people from the old neighborhood at the stag, including several cops John knew, and even a few who had worked on Donna’s case. As John stood in line for food, Detective Lou Cote walked up and shook his hand.

  “John . . . how’s Donna doing? I am so sorry about what happened to her.”

  “She’s good,” John said. He could tell Lou was sincere. He had a look in his eyes that John responded to. “Look, Lou, I know you were trying to do a good job. We have a lot of respect for you and have told everyone that you are a good guy.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “We know that you had nothing to do with what happened.”

  “All I can tell you, John, is that they [the Morans] are a couple of fucking assholes!”

  John appreciated Cote’s candor and honesty.

  Another police officer walked up to John after that and said, “If there’s ever a trial and I am called, I would nail the Morans, John.”

  The tide was turning, indeed. John Palomba could feel it.

  There is probably no other job within law enforcement hated more by officers than that of the Internal Affairs investigator. His or her job is to investigate wrongdoing by his or her colleagues, complaints against the department, and other uncomfortable situations that officers find themselves in throughout their working days. Cops, like firefighters and even nurses, often live by a code of silence and vow not to talk about one another’s shortcomings, guilt, or innocence. If there was ever a case, however, when IA investigators were needed, it was Donna’s. What Donna claimed to have gone through at the hands of two high-ranking officers within the WPD was nothing short of bullying and revictimization. These two cops, both of whom had decades of law enforcement experience between them, had viewed Donna as a liar from the moment she called 911—and nobody had a good reason why she was singled out like this and attacked in such an unprofessional, caustic manner.

  The two IA officers assigned to look into whether there had been a conspiracy between the Moran brothers to go after Donna and John met with the Palombas at Maureen Norris’s office on May 18, 1994.

  “We’re taking the case slowly,” one of them explained. “We’ll be speaking with all of the officers involved, and if you know any of them, please tell them to talk to us and help us to shed more light on what happened here.”

  “I saw Lou Cote the other night at a stag,” John said, explaining what was said. “Lou apologized for what happened.”

  The meeting was short, more of a formal way to announce that steps were being taken to get to the bottom of what Donna was calling harassment by the department, which had allowed her assailant to remain free and possibly continue to sexually assault other women—a fact that was easy to forget.

  On his way out, one of the IA investigators said, “To request a copy of the IA report, just file a Freedom of Information request.”

  Donna wrote that down in her notes. Maureen said not to worry about it. Of course she was going to do that.

  That report, in fact, would steer Donna and Maureen onto the road they would travel next. If the IA investigators did their jobs without bias, a true IA investigation would dig out wrongdoing. It was about justice at this point. The more Donna thought about it, the more she wondered how many other women the Moran brothers had done this to. How many more women would have to endure the trauma she had experienced if she did not stand up and fight?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Guilt by Omission

  Douglas Moran wasted little time in volunteering to help with the IA investigation any way he could, although “help” is probably not the correct way to characterize what the lieutenant did next. Although Donna and Maureen would have no idea what Moran (or anyone else IA investigated) wrote until years later, on May 18, 1994, he sat down and, in his own words, “took the liberty of preparing” a statement of what transpired “in anticipation of your [IA’s] request for one.” The entire document, which he addressed to the lieutenant in charge of the IA investigation, amounted to a strangely detailed, twelve-page report of the case from Doug Moran’s perspective. This statement would be Moran’s direct response to the affidavit Maureen had prepared in o
rder to initiate the IA investigation.

  She said—and now he said.

  At best, one could say Moran’s document was littered with exaggerations; at worst, untruths. For example, Moran wrote that according to Donna’s narrative of what transpired on the night of her attack, her attacker had “threatened” her “with a gun.”

  This was a true statement on Donna’s part. She believed her assailant had placed the barrel of a pistol to her lips and to her temple.

  Yet Moran then wrote that Donna had “repeatedly stated to numerous investigators that she was unaware of the specifics of any armament . . .” and “felt” her attacker had a “heavy, blunt instrument.”

  There were several instances—the 911 call, statements, and other pieces of documentation—supporting the fact that Donna clearly stated she thought her attacker had a gun. She had never said anything about a “heavy, blunt instrument” or if she was certain it was a gun—but that she thought it might be a firearm.

  To find fault in Donna’s account of what she believed had happened was alarming.

  The subject of where Donna fled when she left her house was where Moran focused his attention next. He took issue with Donna’s claiming to have run “to a neighbor’s house” and added that the act was inconsistent with what the victim of a brutal assault should have done. Moran wrote how, in order “to maintain accuracy necessary for the proper investigation of this case . . .”—an odd choice of words to begin with—“it should be pointed out that, in fact, Ms. Doe ran half a block down the street and around the corner to the home of a friend/relative . . .” To Moran the red flag was Donna’s running to a neighbor’s house that was actually not next door to her house. The idea that she chose the home of someone she knew was another indicator to Moran that she was setting up her story.

  The lieutenant went on to explain that this was a “significant” fact, “because through my training and experience, I know that complainants who falsely report a crime tend to make such reports through friends or relatives from whom they can anticipate a sympathetic, non-challenging response.” He called this part of Donna’s statement a “flag,” according to “texts on investigatory principles.”

  Further, Moran said Donna was “unarmed, wearing only panties and a tee shirt.” Point in fact: Donna wore a bathrobe, corroborated by several officers on the scene that night and by Cliff Warner, the man whose house she fled to—the first house she spotted with the lights on. Donna reasoned that at a house without the lights on, it would take a lot longer to get someone inside to understand what was happening. Donna was in a state of panic and fear, so she was running on pure adrenaline and not making decisions with a clear state of mind.

  “Cliff was somebody I did not know all that well,” Donna later told Maureen Norris, responding to the report. “He’s my husband’s second cousin.”

  Was Moran tweaking the facts to fit his side of the argument? Was he leaving out important information that did not support his side of the case?

  As Moran’s document continued, it brought a few things out into the open. For one, there had been complete agreement among several officers that Donna had falsified her rape claim. From Moran’s perspective, everyone he interviewed—“the first responding officer, the detective on the scene, and the Communications Sergeant”—believed that Donna’s claim of being sexually assaulted fell apart on the foundation of her own admissions. Moran found it odd that Donna armed herself with a knife “only after the police had arrived.” That she “adamantly refused to go to the hospital to be examined . . .” and kept those restraints on her wrist and neck “like stage props . . .” The sergeant she spoke to on the night of the assault—Rinaldi—told Moran, according to Moran’s report, that he “found it odd that, having fled her home in panic, Ms. Doe somehow knew that her phone lines had been ‘cut.’”

  Moran placed the onus for the WPD not securing the house or taking photographs on none other than Sergeant James Griffin, a cop Moran claimed “was the crime scene supervisor on the night in question . . . I was not working at the time . . .”

  Another important point for Moran, upon which he founded much of his suspicion, revolved around what transpired during the sexual acts Donna had described in her statement. Regarding this facet of the crime, it was clear that Moran never once looked at the accusations by Donna as being truthful, but began with prejudice, looking for holes to support a theory he had developed and would not waver from: “Ms. Doe had reported that, despite several attempts, the perpetrator was unable to achieve an erection and that no penile penetration occurred, that digital fondling/penetration were the extent of the sexual assault.” Moran went on to say that in speaking to the forensic lab, he learned “a large quantity of sperm/semen had been found on the vaginal swab taken as evidence from Ms. Doe . . . When I asked if the presence of sperm/semen could be accounted for in any other manner, such as premature ejaculation, [the lab tech] stated she did not see how the sample could have been obtained unless penile penetration had occurred.”

  Every time Moran examined Donna’s statement, he claimed in his report, he found another reason not to believe her, based mostly on that “text” law enforcement used to weed out false rape allegations. He wrote that he had asked Donna to undergo hypnosis under direction from his brother, Captain Moran, not because they wanted to find out what had happened, but because they hoped “Ms. Doe’s subconscious . . . would serve to clear up some inconsistencies and ‘flags’ which continued to mount as the investigation progressed.”

  Moran said he was “puzzled . . . that she instead apparently found the suggestion offensive in some way.”

  Then Jeff Martinez came up, as Moran explained his role in that end of the investigation, leaving out several specific, significant details. He said he found Jeff to be believable because he did not have a blemish on his record and had worked at the same company and lived in town for a long time. (But apparently Moran did not believe Donna, for whom the same could be said.) In addition, Jeff had been interviewed by Moran over the telephone on the day Donna brought Jeff to the WPD’s attention. Then Jeff “used his lunch hour to come to police headquarters,” Moran wrote, as if he had inconvenienced Jeff, four days later, on October 19, 1993, where Moran and his brother, the captain, sat down and interviewed him.

  “He was later asked for a sample of blood and voluntarily responded to the City Health Department, again on his lunch hour,” Moran concluded, “accompanied by his wife. I transported the blood sample to the State of Connecticut Forensic Lab.”

  What Moran left out of this portion of his statement was that the WPD had not asked Jeff for a blood sample until December 3, 1993, after the SAO became involved and not until Donna and her attorney had lodged a complaint, demanding an IA investigation.

  In reading Moran’s lofty report, you would have to assume that both Robert and Douglas Moran believed Jeff, essentially, after speaking with him and his wife four days after the assault, even after knowing that Donna’s sister had allegedly been the victim herself of Jeff’s sexually aggressive advances.

  Jeff said he didn’t do it. The Moran brothers said okay, great. Donna’s a liar. Let’s move on.

  My blood was boiling when I read the report. It was filled with lies, and it sickened me. This wasn’t just a strongly worded report; it was an attack on my character, and everything I stood for. I was astounded at the length Moran went to try to discredit me and the incredulous things he wrote. He wasn’t there that night, yet he wrote how I ran out into the night with only a T-shirt and panties. How could he get away with that? There were officers that saw me in my bathrobe, which I never took off. The line about me “wearing the nylons like a stage prop” shook me to my core. I was in such a state of shock when I ran for help that I didn’t even realize the nylons were still attached. Then I am instructed by the officer on the phone not to wash, not to remove anything, and I obey. And this is what I get
for following directions?

  Donna’s frustration would not stop there. As Moran’s report continued, so did the insults to Donna’s standing and integrity. Next Moran talked about that now-controversial “known, confidential source.”

  “I interviewed the source,” Moran wrote, “at his place of business. He told me he had come forward because he hated to see the police waste their energy and manpower, and that he had ‘heard a rumor among family,’ to the effect that Ms. Doe had been engaged in an affair and the oldest of her children had interrupted her and her lover; further, that after putting the child back to sleep, Ms. Doe concocted a false rape complaint in the event that the child remembered and repeated what she had seen, that Ms. Doe waited until the children were sleeping soundly, and that she then cut her telephone line, [ran] to a friend’s house where she could call the police away from the children. This information could not be corroborated. I advised my supervisor, Capt. Moran, of this new twist.”

  For Donna this was “a complete lie,” as she later wrote as a note along the margin of the report filed by Moran. The wording Moran chose, it should be noted, was interesting in the context of a police report, especially the phrase “this new twist,” as if Moran was writing for a cop show audience.

  Would any cop who had studied the texts of law enforcement as much as Moran stated he had in this report, relay or use as a final nail a “rumor among family” as gospel to condemn a rape victim—especially without checking with the person who had been the source of the rumor? On top of that, what was standard behavior from a victim of a brutal sexual assault? What were the protocols in place by the WPD to handle such a case? Kathy Wilson had not even been consulted during those important hours immediately after the 911 call. Wilson herself would have told Moran that every rape victim experiences different feelings, has a different way of acting. Why hadn’t a female police officer—one who had been at the scene of the alleged crime—been consulted on this immediately?