If she couldn’t transform her own case within the parameters of the law, Donna figured she could ensure that her suffering never happened to another sexual assault victim.
Knowing Dr. Henry Lee through an introduction by Pudgie Maia, and with Neil O’Leary having been a student of Lee’s some years ago, Donna saw a connection that could help affect positive change. But what if her attacker had been arrested in another state (or elsewhere in Connecticut) and his DNA was sitting somewhere, waiting to be matched up against a known source?
“It is my desire,” Donna wrote to Dr. Lee, “to donate the creation of a comprehensive website about DNA and your particular work on the subject.”
Donna wanted to publicize and advance the cause of DNA technology and the FBI’s national database of DNA samples, where “many assailants can be linked to unsolved crimes from evidence left at a crime scene.” She called DNA a “strong weapon” in the fight against rape and sexual assault.
The FBI system and database was formally known as the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (or CODIS). According to the FBI, CODIS began “as a pilot software project in 1990, serving fourteen state and local laboratories.” That changed in 1994, when the DNA Identification Act “formalized the FBI’s authority to establish a National DNA Index System (NDIS) for law enforcement purposes.” Well over 170 public law enforcement laboratories across the United States participated in NDIS as the program moved forward into the late 1990s. “Internationally,” the FBI said, “more than forty law enforcement laboratories in over twenty-five countries use the CODIS software for their own database initiatives.”
According to the FBI, CODIS (which would eventually become an important factor in Donna’s case) “generates investigative leads in cases where biological evidence is recovered from the crime scene. Matches made among profiles in the Forensic Index can link crime scenes together, possibly identifying serial offenders.”
Donna described her story in detail to Dr. Lee, capping off the narrative with the good news that there was plenty of DNA evidence left behind by her attacker, but no suspect or person of interest to match it up to. She explained to Lee how several suspects had already been ruled out through DNA testing.
“I continue on with my family and career,” Donna concluded sincerely, “but it is unsettling to know that the assailant is out there and could come back, or be attacking others. I have hope that someday he will be found through a DNA match.”
Donna had no idea, of course, that this letter truly foreshadowed the years ahead. The project of creating the website, she told Lee, was dear to her heart; it was, effectively, a way for Donna to take back her life and turn a negative into a positive. She had to act. She had to do something constructive. Donna Palomba could not sit around while the legal portion of her case—which now had nothing to do with the assault investigation—moved forward. Changing the way sexual assaults were investigated, locally if not nationally and globally, started right there in Connecticut, and she knew her letter to Dr. Lee was the beginning.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Evil Mayor
Events that led to a huge break in Donna’s case were set in motion back in January 1996, when Waterbury residents elected a new mayor, Philip A. Giordano. Mayor Giordano was thirty-three when he was sworn into office. Born to Italian parents in Caracas, Venezuela, having moved to the United States when he was two years old, Giordano was that seemingly genuine mix of personality and politician that won elections. Charming and good-looking, Giordano had the charisma to talk to the people of Waterbury like he was one of them, the toughness that came from being a former Marine (1981–85), and the experience of a former lawyer who had served as state representative. Although in the end all a smoke screen, Giordano came across as the real deal, an honest-to-goodness city man who knew the streets and understood the needs of Waterbury’s residents.
But almost immediately, as Giordano got comfortable behind the mayor’s desk, whispers of corruption and misconduct flowed through city political circles. This was still long before bloodhound reporters and angry residents acquired the same information.
One of the officers caught in the wake of the mess Giordano was creating was none other than Phil Post, the investigator who had sided with the Moran brothers, admitting to IA that he thought Donna had been lying. Post was fired for “allegedly offering to dispose of cocaine that turned up at Mayor Giordano’s post-inaugural celebration,” according to a report of the incident. The newly appointed police superintendent, Edward Flaherty, had recommended Post’s firing after an IA investigation and departmental hearing revealed he had violated several policies. This time the system seemed to work.
Giordano was keeping up appearances as the right man for the mayor’s job, having brought Post’s criminal behavior to the forefront himself. It was Giordano who said Post walked into his office on January 2, 1996, the day after the mayor was sworn in, and held a plastic baggie with a “golf ball–size amount of cocaine” over his desk. A man had brought the cocaine into the WPD, Post explained, when he was manning the front desk. The citizen said he had found it at the mayoral celebration the previous night and knew that it came from someone who worked for the mayor’s campaign. According to the mayor, Post told him “twice” during their impromptu meeting that next day how he could “misidentify the drugs so the evidence would be lost.” Post was, in other words, trying to show his loyalty to the mayor by covering up a crime.
By the end of 1996, Mayor Giordano had fired three high-ranking law enforcement officials, including the superintendent. It was as if the mayor was coming out of the box cleaning house, shouting to everyone around him that he would not tolerate corruption on any level, and would not play favorites. But looks can be deceiving. After four years of Giordano’s politics and before an almost certain reelection bid, facts would emerge proving that the mayor was perpetrating one image of himself and his office, while behind closed doors, managing another, utterly vile and sinister evil inside himself.
On a Saturday night in July 2000, a few months before the first proposed start date of the trial, Donna and John sat their kids down for a chat. Johnny was twelve; Sarah, fifteen. It was time to tell the kids what had happened. They were certain to have questions and had probably been wondering about the tension in the house and the partial conversations that didn’t make much sense to their adolescent ears.
After John and Donna finished explaining what had happened, the kids asked several questions. Sarah said she knew “something had happened” because she had seen a note once, adding, “I heard Daddy talking about it to the doctor one time, and I made noise to let him know I was there because I didn’t want to hear something I wasn’t supposed to.”
Donna wanted to cry. Her children were two more victims of the crimes committed against her.
The next night Sarah sat with Donna on the bed. She wanted to talk.
Johnny was there too. He said, “Mom, thanks for telling us what really happened. It’s important for me to know.”
Donna knew she had done the right thing.
Sarah took things a little harder. She was older. She understood more. After Johnny had left the room, Donna and Sarah discussed the incident in more detail. Donna felt Sarah deserved answers to her questions. At one point Sarah said, “Mom, I can’t stop thinking about him blindfolding you. And he had a gun? I cannot imagine.”
“Things are back to normal now,” Donna explained. “There is nothing to be worried about.”
“Were you scared after it happened?”
“Of course, honey.”
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t know about it because it’s like all I think about now,” Sarah said.
Donna thought about how to respond. Then she said, “Look honey, we cannot hide from the fact that bad things happen. We have to try to learn from them and make things better. That’s what Mom and Dad are in the process
of doing.”
“I asked Johnny if he was thinking about it and he said no,” Sarah explained. She had a look of worry about her. The situation was weighing heavily on the young girl. “Johnny said we were lucky . . . it happened long ago and now we have an alarm and a new house. Then he asked me if the perpetrator could have been a woman. I asked him why he thought that.”
Donna was intrigued, knowing how kids think so out of the box.
“What did he say, Sarah?”
“He said he thought maybe [a cousin of Donna and John’s was jealous] . . . and she found out he was getting married to someone else [meaning that wedding John had gone to in Colorado] . . . and she was angry and she robbed us.”
It didn’t make much sense, but from the mind of a child, it was a reason for the break-in: revenge.
“No,” Donna said.
“I won’t sleep at Granma’s anymore,” Sarah said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s in the same neighborhood!”
“Well, you don’t have to until you feel comfortable again, honey.”
It was August 2000. Donna’s day in court kept being put off for one reason or another. Now, Donna was told, another month—but it just seemed like forever. So John and Donna decided to get away. The kids needed a vacation, as did the two of them.
We knew the trial was coming up and wanted a last getaway while we could break free. Some friends we knew were living in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. They invited us out. Jay and Leslie are two free spirits who love nature and people and have traveled the world. They find places they want to see and explore, then find work locally at restaurants or ski slopes and truly enjoy life. Ironically, it was Jay and Leslie’s wedding that John was attending in Breckenridge, Colorado, on the day of the attack. Jay and Leslie had a small home in Kill Devil Hills with a vegetable garden and an outdoor shower. Along with some other friends, John and I rented a condo overlooking the ocean. Those friends got there first and insisted that we take the larger, master bedroom. It was a beautiful place with big windows overlooking the ocean. You could actually see dolphins jumping in the water from our condo! There were miles and miles of white sandy beaches and big waves. We spent most days sitting around, enjoying each other’s company, and cooling off by surfing the waves. We don’t have waves like that in Connecticut, so it was a real treat for all of us. Toward the end of the vacation we decided to do some sightseeing.
By now the thought of facing her accusers was intimidating, and yet comforting in so many different ways, mainly because Donna was embarking on a journey to put this part of her case behind her. It was such a strange twist of fate that she was preparing to face off against the police department (and the cops who were supposed to come to her rescue). In a just world, Donna figured by now she would be moving on with her life, her perpetrator in prison, healing being the only problem she had to deal with. But here she was, seven years after the attack, her children in their teen years, taking a vacation, and getting ready for the fight of her life.
After a fun-filled day of sightseeing toward the end of the vacation, Donna was winding down inside the beach condo she and John had rented with their friends. Donna was rinsing off in the shower. Clean off, freshen up, change clothes. Maybe then a barbecue with the others.
And suddenly, there it was—a lump on her breast.
I felt the lump. I tried to rationalize it. It was small, located at six o’clock on my left breast. My breasts have always been dense and cystic, so I thought, Maybe it’s just a cyst. I tried to shrug it off, but it nagged at me. I told John, who was reassuring, but I knew he was concerned. I decided to call my doctor in the morning and scheduled an appointment for the following Monday morning when we returned from our trip. I kept telling myself not to worry about it until I knew if I had something to be concerned about, but it didn’t relieve any of my fear. Our friends owned a Winnebago (RV), and we all piled in later that day to head to Cape Hatteras. We ended up climbing the lighthouse. It was a good distraction. I didn’t say anything to anyone else about the lump. Then we went to the Wright Brothers National Memorial and Museum. I remember taking a picture of John and Johnny by the monument. I remember thinking, How blessed I am to have such a great family and friends.
When Donna got home, she immediately went to see her OB/GYN.
The exam was nerve-racking. Donna’s OB/GYN sent her for an ultrasound and advised her to go to a breast doctor. If you believed that your luck hadn’t been the best lately, a lump could mean only one thing. How easy it was to think the worst. Donna was strong, yes; but when things are not going your way, the mind tends to favor tragedy over triumph.
“Listen,” the doctor said after looking at the preliminary test results. “I’m sure this is a fibroadenoma. Nothing to worry about.”
Fibroadenoma is a noncancerous (benign) tumor, a word that might not be a helpful or encouraging way to describe this condition, which is fairly common among females. It’s generally fibrous and glandular tissue that is balled up to form a small knob.
Scary, the doctor told Donna, but nothing to be concerned about.
“How sure are you?” Donna asked. She didn’t need this now. If it was cancer, she’d be fighting two monstrosities at the same time.
“I am as certain of this as I am of anything in my entire life,” the doctor assured Donna.
She walked out of the doctor’s office still a little on edge, but relieved about the diagnosis of the lump. She could put it behind her as a cancer scare. Many women have gone through the same thing. It was something to keep an eye on, but nothing to consider alarming.
As Donna’s trial date grew closer, word came from the mayor’s office that the city wanted to make an offer to avoid an ugly discourse and legal action in open court. Apparently City Hall wanted to settle. The city was willing to negotiate a deal. But Donna was skeptical of the city’s desire to enter into a dialogue about settling. Something didn’t seem right.
Sure enough, her instincts were spot-on. She’d had a meeting set for July 31, 2000, right before she left for vacation. Then the mayor’s office called only hours before to say that “the mayor went out of town suddenly and the meeting would have to be rescheduled.” So they agreed on Tuesday, September 12, at 11:00 a.m. The night before that meeting, the mayor’s representative called to say there was a scheduling conflict and they would have to, once again, reschedule. They asked if Donna was available on September 18 at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Donna “reluctantly agreed,” according to her notes of these conversations.
Then the office called that morning to ask if she could come in later that afternoon, at four o’clock.
“No,” Donna said. “I cannot do it.”
That day, Mayor Giordano called Maureen Norris himself. “Please, I apologize for this . . . but can your client come in at four?”
“I’ll ask her.”
It had been more than a year since mediation hearings had begun back in August 1999. To say that Donna was frustrated and running out of patience would not put into perspective how low her confidence level was with the mayor’s office, and her trust that the city would listen to her concerns and act on them. The mayor seemed to be running backward, unwilling to commit to anything. Donna wanted changes inside the police department—new policies and procedures. Screw the money—it was about the city doing the right thing. She was not backing down from that fight.
Donna decided that she should take the mayor up on his offer to meet that afternoon. Who knew when she would ever get another chance to sit down and hear what he had to say.
“Let’s do it,” Donna told Maureen.
By now, surrounding Mayor Giordano and his close staff were rumors of widespread corruption throughout his administration. There was talk that the mayor was involved in organized crime on an undetermined level. It was so comm
on in Connecticut politics during the 1980s and 1990s for certain politicians to receive kickbacks from construction companies in place of city contracts that it was almost expected in some jurisdictions. Giordano was running to unseat Senator Joseph I. Lieberman for a chair in the senate that fall (a long-shot bid he would ultimately lose). What’s more, Waterbury was “teetering on the edge of bankruptcy,” according to the New York Times, even as the mayor considered paying off Donna to avoid yet another pockmark on the face of city officials that a civil trial was sure to create. Things were out of control enough already. And it wasn’t the first time a mayor of Waterbury had run into potentially severe legal trouble within the preceding twenty years. Joseph J. Santopietro, elected in 1985, had been convicted the year before Donna’s attack (1992) on charges related to a bribery and kickback scheme. There was a common feeling among city (and some state) residents that Waterbury was experiencing the corrupt municipal leadership of the 1950s and 1960s all over again. The seat Giordano occupied while staring at Donna, Maureen Norris, Elena Ricci Palermo, and Cheryl Hricko, the two corporate lawyers representing the city, at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, September 18, 2000, was indeed dirty and well worn.
“Sit down, please, Mrs. Palomba,” the mayor said, showing Donna and Maureen in. “I apologize for the delays.” He seemed wired and shaky. There were other things on his mind.
The rumors of a corrupt mayoral office didn’t really matter much to Donna, of course. The mayor was considered innocent until proven guilty in her eyes. Donna knew better than most how it felt to have the brass pointing a finger in your face, or a growing populace calling you a liar. What mattered to Donna and Maureen was the city’s terms of a potential settlement. Nothing more. Did city officials want to play ball? Donna was less concerned about a monetary settlement, but would the city agree to the changes Donna wanted implemented within the police department? Those changes were absolutely nonnegotiable.
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