Further into his report Moran focused on Donna’s interrogation, which he referred to as an interview. He claimed to not want to speak to Maria Cappella about Jeff Martinez, the reason Donna and Maria had gone to the station house that day, because he wanted to maintain a sense of anonymity for Donna and protect her confidentiality of being Jane Doe—as if her sister didn’t know about the sexual assault.
The reason he tape-recorded the interview, Moran wrote, was because policy dictated that whenever a cop interviewed a sexual assault complainant, he was supposed to either have another officer present during that interview or record it. He claimed Donna could not see the wheels of the tape spinning from her point of view sitting at the table, but that he had seen them turning slowly. He thought the recorder was “functioning properly. It was only later, when I went to play the tape back that I found it had apparently failed.”
He blamed himself for the blunder, having placed the microphone switch in the wrong position.
Moran rolled over the fact that he had read Donna her Miranda rights by calling it a stipulation “by the department’s standard operating procedures.”
What a policy, Donna later thought. She wondered if every potential rape victim was Mirandized whenever she sat down to talk about what had happened.
Then Moran moved on to Donna’s children. Moran said Donna had “steadfastly refused to allow any investigator” to interview the kids, a fact that was correct. According to Donna, what came out of the report next was not only a lie but also a piece of fiction that was, for Donna, the most intimidating moment of the interview.
“Following a neural linguistic interview, I attempted to explain to Ms. Doe that in certain cases we have asked the state Department of Children and Families to act as guardian of a child for purposes of an interview when the child may be a witness to a crime in which the parents are involved . . . I further explained that we were reluctant to pursue this as it places both parents and children in an embarrassing position, but there are times when we are left with no other choice.”
So this was Moran’s explanation for threatening Donna with taking away her children and formal arrest. He had, in Donna’s view, not only whitewashed that frightening part of the interrogation, but totally lied about how he had handled it and then wrote about it to IA as if he had done the right thing.
The document continued on and on, Moran giving his version of why he had acted the way he had toward Donna during the early part of the investigation. He had an answer, Donna could see after reviewing the report, for just about everything. Ironically, near the end of the report, when the subject of focusing more on Jeff Martinez as a prime suspect came back up, Moran mentioned how taxpayers deserved more for their money where police complaints were concerned and there was far too much crime in the city to be investigated. Rather than wasting time on Martinez, a suspect, according to Moran, that when “boiled down” was a person of interest based on “a hunch that she had,” the WPD owed it to its citizens to move on to more promising leads.
Moran had called a possible suspect brought to him by the victim a hunch. The victim of a sexual assault said she had a suspicion about the identity of the man who had raped her, and Moran blew it off as an instinct of the victim’s not worth following. The WPD had DNA available to them to rule the suspect in or out, but he wasn’t worth the trouble, according to Moran’s investigatory skills.
“In closing,” Moran wrote, “I can confirm that I have committed no infraction of Departmental Rules and Regulations, no offense against State Statutes, nor any breach of civility. I did everything in my power to provide a competent and thorough investigation despite various obstacles and influences.”
Reading this thing was an incredible lesson in humility for me. I wanted to explode. It was so far away from the truth of what happened. For example, according to Moran, it was somehow my fault that the perp used the word “pigs.” I remember distinctly feeling awful about relaying the fact that the perp said, “If you call the pigs, I’ll come back and kill you” to Detective Lou Cote. In fact, I thought about not saying it, but then I felt it was important to relay every single piece of information as I had recalled it.
No matter how much time goes by, I will never forget the way this report made me feel. As I think back on it, my stomach tightens, and I feel nauseous.
I believe you learn most from your greatest challenges. I have experienced prejudice and discrimination, and it has taught me to be very cautious about judging others—just one of the many lessons I have learned on this journey that truly started as I began to see how Lieutenant Moran and his brother were viewing the IA investigation and how they were going to fight me on this.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Speaking of Hunches
As Neil and Pudgie immersed themselves deeper into Donna’s life and the investigation, they were not as certain about Jeff Martinez being their guy as they might have shared with Donna and John.
“Look,” Neil said, “he was definitely sexually aggressive with Maria, Donna’s sister, but you must understand that we didn’t know what the foundation was for Maria’s relationship with Jeff. That was never discussed. I mean, how would Jeff Martinez find himself in that circumstance with Maria?”
Pudgie and Neil met two to three times a day inside Neil’s office at the WPD. Since Pudgie was an investigator for the SAO working on other cases, and a former WPD cop, he often found himself inside the WPD.
“What do you think?” Neil asked Pudgie one day as the trail seemed to be going cold. They truly had no new leads to follow.
“Jeff’s been cooperative, Neil.”
“Yeah. I know.”
In talking with Jeff several times, Neil had come away with the impression of a man who had nothing to hide and was willing to give whatever was asked for. Jeff had consented to a blood test and said he’d be willing to take more. He had consented to a polygraph. He had consented to a total background check of his life. Every time they went to speak with him, he was eager to help. Not once did he ever rub either investigator the wrong way, or even invite a lawyer into the situation.
“He’s not our guy,” Pudgie said.
“I’m with you.”
“Back to square one.”
“Yup.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Bad News
Donna got word from family and friends, coworkers, and others she and John knew personally that the WPD was asking those close to her and John to come in and volunteer a blood sample. The SAO had given its consent to begin the testing. No doubt Donna’s case—and any potential lawsuit filed against the city, which she still had not yet decided to file—was becoming an infected sore in the city’s political body. If the news media got hold of what was going on behind the scenes, there would be a major meltdown, and Waterbury was a municipality that had already weathered its share of scandal throughout the decades.
For Neil O’Leary and Pudgie Maia, two investigators who were trying to stay neutral within the tumult of the internal investigation going on, the idea was to take a blood sample from anyone who might have known that John had gone away that weekend. One of the problems, of course, was that the person who knew this fact and was guilty of the crime would not come forward and admit he knew John was gone.
“We worried about that,” Neil said later. “But this was where we were—it was really all we had to go on. And if we ran into someone who showed us any type of objection, or someone who refused to volunteer a sample, honestly speaking, we would focus on that individual.”
Then there was that sticky issue of Jeff Martinez, the name that kept popping up as the go-to person of interest, at least where Donna was concerned. Donna had heard that Jeff’s DNA results were coming in any day now from Washington. With word going out requesting friends and family to provide blood samples, what was it that investigators knew abou
t Jeff that Donna and John didn’t?
“Donna, it’s Pudgie.” The call she had been waiting for—and maybe fearing most—came on June 30, 1994.
“Hi, Pudgie.”
Pudgie said the results were back. “Jeff’s not our guy, Donna. I’m sorry.”
In her frustration, the news made Donna think about how deep the conspiracy—a term she now firmly believed fit within her case—ran within the department, and how much control the Moran brothers had over the evidence back when they were in charge of her case. After all, it was Lieutenant Moran who had taken Jeff’s blood sample and offered to drive it from Waterbury to the state forensic lab in Meriden, a half hour east.
The questions Donna wrote out on a piece of yellow legal paper after hearing the results of Jeff’s blood test tell a story, and offer a glimpse into Donna’s mind on that day when she was told Jeff was not her attacker, but still had a suspicion that he might have been.
Why was the DNA sent to Washington and not done by Dr. Henry Lee?
Why did Lieutenant Moran have the blood drawn after such a long time and after he (Jeff) had been “ruled out”?
Why didn’t he [Moran] send someone else to do it?
Why was there a time lapse of two and a half hours from when the blood was drawn on December 3, 1993, at noon, till the time it was delivered at 2:30—what if it wasn’t refrigerated?
How did it track? Where did it go from there? I was told the FBI did not receive it till January 14, 1994?
What about a profile from the DNA—race . . . age, hair color?
Get [Jeff] in for questioning?
Why weren’t we alerted that Moran had taken the blood from the beginning—we could have had it drawn again immediately (we knew interviews were missing, notes, etc.)?
Some were legitimate questions. Donna had staked a lot of emotion and pent-up frustration on the results of Jeff’s DNA test. After all that she had been through, to have it come back negative with all those questionable variables surrounding it was worth the effort to speak up. If Moran had attacked her the way she had alleged, accusing Donna of lying, and then covered up the incompetence of the investigation and his bullying, why not go so far as to tamper with the DNA evidence?
There was nothing that Donna would not put past Douglas Moran and his supporters.
It was unnerving to me that Doug Moran was the guy that transported the blood sample. I felt that he knew it would make him look foolish if it came back a match to the DNA in my case, especially when they had “99 percent” ruled Jeff out.
At that point I didn’t trust anyone from the WPD completely—least of all Lieutenant Doug Moran.
Donna’s conclusion after sketching out all those questions? Take a new blood sample from Jeff and send one vial to a private lab and one vial to the state lab.
But that was not going to happen. Jeff Martinez had been ruled out. Donna needed to forget about Jeff and move on.
The anxiety was building as I waited for the DNA results on Jeff to come back. At that point, it was all we had, and I needed answers. I trembled listening to Pudgie tell me there was no match. I was torn. I . . . was glad it wasn’t him, but could the results be trusted? Are we really back to square one? Will the perpetrator ever be found? Will I ever know the truth?
Captain Robert Moran weighed in with his report to IA on June 24, 1994. Considerably shorter than his brother’s twelve-page explanation, the captain appeared to be standing proudly by the side of his officer, the WPD’s investigation up to that point, and the way in which Donna had been treated by the lieutenant. Yet it was how Captain Moran articulated his belief in his officer that hurt Donna most.
Captain Moran highlighted the fact that the Vice Squad did not hear about Donna’s assault until September 13 (two days after the assault, that Monday). He made it clear that the officers at the scene “were not members of the Vice and Intelligence Division.”
The captain had passed the buck.
Next Moran focused on how Donna had repeatedly asked him to listen to the tape of the interview his brother had conducted with her. His reason for not listening to that tape, which had not existed anyway, was fairly simple: “I felt that Ms. Doe and Lieutenant Moran basically concurred as to what was said during the interview in question, making review of the tape a futile, time-consuming exercise. I feel that it is unfortunate that the tape does not exist, but that it is a moot point.”
Donna being victimized for a second time and threatened with jail, as well as having her kids taken away, was now a moot point. It didn’t matter to the captain.
As far as reprimanding Lieutenant Moran for what he had allegedly done to Donna, Captain Moran said he had never been asked to do anything to the lieutenant and, in fact, “Mr. Doe [requested] that Lieutenant Moran remain on the case . . . indicating that they were not seeking any disciplinary action.”
This comment from Captain Moran was absurd. It was a clear indication to us that even the captain had no regard for the emotional damage that I may have incurred during the interview by his brother, nor did he, as a leader, have any desire to find out if his brother acted inappropriately. Here was an audio recording of the whole interview, and he could not be bothered to listen to it!
As for John’s comment, well, it was taken totally out of context. John didn’t want Lieutenant Moran taken off the case simply because he wanted the case solved and the perpetrator found. He wanted Moran to get back to work and get on the right track. This was just one more ridiculous distortion of the truth. They were hiding behind lies.
No matter what Donna, John, or Maureen thought about the Morans, IA was going to have the last word. It would take some time, Maureen was told, for the IA investigation to be completed, but as soon as IA issued a report of its findings, she would be informed.
Maybe Donna could have some closure to one part of her case, which would, by the process of justice, open the door for the most important aspect to move forward.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
All Apologies
The infamous missing key turned up. John’s mother, Dorothy, was reinterviewed on May 11, 1994, after she informed the WPD that she had located the lost key to John and Donna’s house.
“I don’t think the key ever left my house,” Dorothy said.
Apparently the key wound up inside the pocket of a raincoat hanging inside Dorothy’s house.
Dorothy explained: “My son [John’s brother] said he used the key to get into John’s house and then left it inside the rain slicker. He used the key in the beginning of July. It is not unusual for the boys to go into John’s house and vice versa to borrow things.”
By this time, Neil had tracked down John’s friends and family, working on the theory that whoever attacked Donna knew that she would be home alone. It was Neil’s only course of action at this point. He had nothing else to go on.
The WPD had taken samples of blood from John Palomba and his brothers, all of whom had been ruled out as suspects.
John’s brother James said he had no idea about the key being missing, and on the night of Donna’s attack, he was with his fiancée.
Neil figured maybe James had inadvertently told someone that John was going away without Donna.
“I doubt I would have told anyone John was away in Colorado and Donna was home alone,” James explained to Neil. “I have no idea who could have committed the crime.”
As June turned into July, Neil and Pudgie met with several men who could have had access to the Palomba house and knew that Donna was alone—sheetrock workers, painters, maintenance men, friends, and family—to obtain a blood sample.
Neil was particularly interested in the stag party John had missed on the Friday night of Donna’s attack. Neil was confident Donna’s assailant had been at the party. The quest then became to track down everyone who had be
en there and obtain a voluntary blood sample.
“One of the things we learned early on—after Pudgie and I took over—was that John Palomba’s mother’s house,” Neil said later, “was like this place where all their friends and family hung out and came and went. They had big families. This guy had to know Donna. Just by looking at the evidence: her attacker covered his face and her face; he disguised his voice; he threatened to kill her; there was no forced entry. This led us to consider the question: Was the perpetrator familiar with Donna’s house? But even beyond all that, it was the very first time John Palomba had ever been away from his wife since they had been married. To me, this was a significant fact that could not be overlooked any longer. So we focused our investigation directly on it.”
Stag parties were a staple in Waterbury then, much the same as they are today. You had a stag, and everybody went—even people the groom did not know. It was almost an affront not to go if you knew the groom-to-be. Neil felt strongly that someone at that stag party had heard (while at the party) about Donna being alone simply by keeping his ears open. When Neil looked at the timeline of the night, he realized that Donna had been attacked hours after the stag ended.
“All of John’s brothers were there, as well as many of his friends. I could picture people asking, ‘Where’s John? Have you seen John?’ And his brothers and friends saying, without thinking about it because they were among friends, ‘Oh, he’s out in Colorado . . . he couldn’t make it.’ The guy we were looking for had definitely heard someone say this—and knew Donna was at home by herself.”
Jane Doe No More Page 15