Neil was personally keeping an eye on things. He called the lab and told them to put a rush on the DNA sample from Rocky. Donna had waited long enough. There was no sense, if it was negative, that she should be put through any additional agony.
“It was odd for me to be involved in this case,” Neil later said, “so inherently, yes, because I was chief of police; but, on the other hand, no, it was not so surprising because this had been my case since 1994.”
In early October 2004, a few months after Regan’s DNA sample had been submitted, Neil took a call from the lab.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Reality Check
Neil contacted Donna at her office on October 20, 2004, a Wednesday.
Donna was busy. She had a lot on her mind. After being on the board of the Business Women’s Forum for a few years, Donna had taken on the position of chairwoman. When Neil called, Donna was rereading a speech she had written for a conference the following day. It was slated to be a large-scale event, with famed money woman Suzy Orman scheduled to give the keynote address. Donna explained to Neil that now was probably not the best time to talk.
Neil sounded passive on the phone. It was a surreal feeling for the seasoned investigator: here he was delivering good news and bad news at the same time.
“I have some news I need to share with you and John.”
Donna’s “head started to spin,” she later recalled.
“Neil, could it wait another day? Like can we meet on Friday?”
Neil hesitated. He thought about it.
“Sure, Donna.”
I couldn’t go there, not then. We made arrangements for John and me to meet Neil in his office on Friday morning. I got through the conference. It was a busy, exciting day, and I had a lot to do. Still, I had flashes of what was ahead. It was as if my two worlds were colliding. Chairing this annual conference with hundreds of attendees was now competing with the news I had been waiting for all these years. The business executive in me had to hold it together for one more day. I knew that Neil wouldn’t be calling me into his office, telling me to bring John, if he did not have new information. Those DNA results, we both knew without saying, had come in.
Friends and family had given John Regan the nickname “Rocky” because he broke a lot of windows at Kingsbury Grammar School in Waterbury, where he had what a former friend called “a bit of a disciplinary problem, but nothing major.” Regan was a kid who liked to cause mischief, like scores of kids that age who toss rocks or instigate problems on school grounds.
Rocky Regan was a powerfully built man, wiry, agile, with a somewhat devious appearance that people always thought to be compassion. Rocky was scrappy. John Palomba and Rocky went all the way back to kindergarten. Along with other neighborhood kids, they grew up playing stickball and punchball in the school yard and spent most of their youth in the Overlook area of Waterbury. They attended each other’s birthday parties. They played baseball in the spring and, both being bigger than other kids, went on to play football.
“It was mostly a Catholic neighborhood, and everybody knew everybody,” John Palomba later said. “I used to go to the New York Giants game every year with Rocky’s dad and my dad—and Rocky.”
When it came time for high school, John and Rocky went to Holy Cross, a rather renowned Connecticut school, especially when you’re talking about football. Both made the varsity team. Rocky was “an average” outside linebacker who had a tough time excelling in a more competitive arena with kids his own size. Former teammates called Rocky a “good athlete . . . very talented . . . a tough kid.” John stood out as an outstanding defensive back, among a litany of other positions, including punter and kicker; he was named all-state and most valuable player of the Naugatuck Valley League. The connections between John and Rocky were such that not only were their fathers good friends, but John’s godmother’s husband and Rocky’s father—both dentists—also covered for each other during family vacations.
The divide came when John went to the University of Connecticut and Rocky went to Norwich Academy. They stayed in close touch and visited each other on their respective campuses, keeping the friendship alive, but they were now apart for the first time. After college John asked Rocky to play softball with him in a men’s league, and they played together on a slow-pitch team for years. Rocky, John, and a bunch of old friends even got together and rented a neighborhood gym to play basketball once a week. These were guys who helped each other out, covered for one another.
John and Rocky both got married in 1981, right around the same time, and went to each other’s weddings. After they started families, they played poker together at a different house each month—before and even after Donna was sexually assaulted. John used to like taking walks around the neighborhood with Rocky, especially when it snowed. After Donna was raped, the walks became a place for John to sort out his thoughts and emotions. After the assault, John would call Rocky repeatedly but not get a response, and ended up walking alone or with another friend.
“Other guys told me that Rocky wasn’t returning their calls either,” John said.
Regan had distanced himself from the entire group.
Donna now had a sinking feeling, as she thought about why Neil wanted to see them, as to why Rocky had become so standoffish.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Betrayal
Donna Palomba had been functioning on very little sleep prior to the meeting with Neil. Her adrenaline, from simply thinking about the possibilities Neil had to share, pumped hot and fast, feeding an already ramped-up well of anxiety. The conference with Suzy Orman had gone off without a hitch; everything turned out the way Donna had envisioned. But now it was time to see Neil and face the fact that after all this time, the big break in the case had arrived.
Donna had agreed to meet with Neil on Friday (October 22, 2004), but she waited to tell John about it until Thursday night, which was just after the conference. She hadn’t wanted to talk or think about John’s reaction or the meeting before then.
The elevator ride up to Neil’s second-story office inside the WPD was incredibly tense. Donna’s nerves were shot. She trembled as though out in the cold without a jacket. The most nerve-racking question was: How was John going to react?
“I have a feeling Neil is going to tell us that Rocky has been ruled out, but they’re onto something else,” John said, just as the elevator arrived at Neil’s floor.
Donna looked at her husband, confident that wasn’t the case, but she didn’t say anything.
As they walked through the door into Neil’s office, John said, “No way. It cannot be Rocky. Don’t worry, Donna, Neil is going to tell us that it’s not Rocky. That they have another suspect.”
Donna kept quiet.
Neil’s spacious office was split into two rooms—a front reception area and a back interior office space. There was a door—now closed—separating the two.
“Come in, sit down,” Neil said, walking up to them.
“What is it, Neil?” Donna asked pointedly.
“Well,” Neil said, “I have something to tell you. We got a hit on the DNA in your case. John Regan’s DNA matches that of the man who raped you, Donna. I’m so very sorry.”
Donna looked at John. The color in his face, she recalled later, drained out, rage and disbelief wrapped up in John’s expression. A lifelong friend had betrayed him. It was as though they had all been living in some sort of alternate reality. Had he heard Neil right?
“We finally know!” Donna said excitedly, crying, staring at John, trying to bring the best to what could be a dangerous situation. “Oh, my goodness. We know, Neil!”
John sat shell-shocked.
“John, listen, we’re going to take care of this,” Neil said. “You gotta promise me that you won’t go after this guy.” There had always been that underlying
possibility of John taking matters into his own hands.
John looked as though he might explode right there.
“John, listen,” Donna said comfortingly. She put her arm around her husband’s shoulders. “You have to listen to Neil. You’re a spiritual person. Think about the outcome. What good is it going to do if you take this into your own hands? You’ll be behind bars. It’ll be a nightmare for us.”
While staring at her husband of more than two decades, Donna said later, “My heart broke.”
I quivered uncontrollably, crying, as my emotions went from shock to gratitude, betrayal to anger, relief to fear. Then the melancholy set in.
I am about to be vindicated. After eleven years, we now know—unquestionably—who committed the crime. It was an incredible feeling. It proved Moran and his boys were wrong about me. My husband, obviously, was devastated. John sat and thought, How could I have brought this animal into our lives? He immediately felt guilty and angry and blamed himself. He felt betrayed, obviously. An enormous betrayal. A friend. A best friend. Someone from the neighborhood. Someone he trusted and cared about had done the unthinkable. I knew then that John would want to kill John Regan—for not only tormenting and raping me, but allowing this to go on for so long.
The door separating Neil’s two office spaces was behind Donna and John. Neil got up from behind his desk and sat down next to the two of them. He said, “I know this is emotional for you two, and I wanted to tell you first. But I have some people in the next room waiting for you.”
Donna and John walked into the adjacent room and saw SA John Connelly with Maureen Norris and Pudgie Maia, along with a few other investigators.
Neil opened the door to the second section of his office. Maureen Norris stepped forward, nearly in tears. Then the state’s attorney and several others followed. Here were all these people involved in solving my case over the years waiting to comfort us. Neil knew what I had been through. He understood how I felt. His compassion was a grace, a blessing. Maureen hugged me. My husband stayed standing next to me, shaken to his core; he was overcome with emotion.
“Eleven years of trauma washed away from Donna on that day,” Maureen said later, “and this marvelous peace came over her.”
Donna could celebrate a triumph. Her life was coming back into focus.
Neil explained that John Regan, who was awaiting trial on the “unlawful restraint” case involving his twenty-one-year-old coworker, would be arrested at his place of employment that day on kidnapping charges.
Kidnapping?
Disappointingly to Donna and John, the statute of limitations on sexual assault had run out in Donna’s case; Regan could not be charged with raping Donna.
Once news broke that Regan had been arrested in Donna’s case, a community already in disbelief again rallied around the man. There was no way, those who knew Regan best were saying, that he could have broken into the Palomba house and assaulted Donna. And then, just like that, gossip and rumor reared their heads again, with “whispers,” as one newspaper reporter later put it, “of an affair” between Donna and Rocky. It was the only answer for some people: Donna was covering up an affair with Regan by claiming he had assaulted her.
Regan pleaded not guilty during his arraignment a few days later and was set free after posting a $350,000 bond. This move—allowing his bond to be low enough to meet—would prove to be a costly and dangerous decision, because, despite what friends and family said of the man, Regan was not yet finished committing violent sexual crimes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Face-to-face
Over the next year, John Regan was in and out of court, attending pretrial hearings related to his attack of Donna Palomba. Numerous legal specifications had to be sorted out before the state could actually try Regan—chiefly, what the specific charges would be. Could they get him on stalking, first- and second-degree kidnapping, and/or sexual assault under some sort of grandfather clause? It was a legal mess. Nobody in law enforcement wanted to see Regan walk with only a few years.
It was during Regan’s fifth pretrial hearing that Donna and John showed up in the courtroom for the first time. It was time for Donna, she knew, to face her attacker, her husband’s former best friend. She needed to send Rocky Regan a message that she wasn’t going away. John, too, wanted to face this man who had claimed to be a friend all these years.
It was Monday, April 25, 2005, a typical spring day in New England. John and Donna entered the courthouse at 10:30 a.m. John’s office was only a few blocks away, so Donna had met him there and they walked up together.
“John and I had given it a lot of thought beforehand,” Donna said later. “We both wanted to be there. It was time I faced Rocky.”
John Palomba remained composed. He was ready for this. Those images of finding Rocky and ending his life had somewhat faded. That rage had been, apparently, part of the healing process—although, Donna said later, “John still dreams of killing Rocky nearly every day.”
“I’m kind of looking forward to this,” John told Donna as they walked into the courthouse. “It’s about time to make Rocky squirm.”
After going through security, they waited for Maureen Norris to arrive, sitting on a bench near the courtroom entrance. It was interesting to watch different people walk by, Donna thought, as she interlocked her arm with John’s, holding him close.
Maureen arrived and got busy figuring out which courtroom—there were several—Regan’s pretrial would be held in.
“It’s there,” she said, pointing to a room to the left of where they sat. “Wait here, though, until you guys are called.”
Maureen walked away. As she did, Donna spied a man walking quickly by the front of the courtroom doors. He had just exited from the courtroom on their right.
That’s Rocky, Donna realized. He must have seen them before John and Donna noticed him.
Rocky appeared nervous and anxious to get out of their line of vision. He entered the second courtroom, but within a few minutes came back out, walked quickly to the exit door, and actually left the courthouse.
I think he was scared to death. I had heard he had always been with someone at the other pretrials (wife, sister, friend). This time he was all alone, and I think he freaked out when he saw us.
As they stood waiting, a tall woman with long, straight, strawberry blonde hair walked by. John and Donna didn’t know it then, but she was Hope Seeley, Rocky’s high-powered, high-priced attorney from the office of (Hubert) Santos and Seeley, in Hartford, Connecticut. Santos and Seeley had been the defense attorneys on record for some of Connecticut’s most notorious and famous cases, including the appeal portion for Michael Skakel, who, nearly thirty years after the fact, was convicted in the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, one of his Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbors.
Seeley recognized Maureen Norris immediately as everyone got situated to go into the courtroom. According to Donna, Seeley “gave John and I the once-over.”
Before they went in, SA John Connelly came out and said hello. “Is there something you wanted to say to the judge, Donna?”
“Sure,” Donna said. “Something along the lines of, ‘Your honor, the reason why my case was solved after over eleven years is because of the actions of the defendant this past summer with regard to another case. I ask that you strongly consider allowing the evidence from each case into the other. It is pertinent and valid information for the juries to hear, and it is important to help establish the character of the defendant.’ ”
“That’s okay to say, but now is not the appropriate time. The judge today is just moving the cases along, and it wouldn’t be the same judge hearing the case.”
Donna understood. She was more or less merely voicing a concern. “What about the DNA?” Donna asked Connelly. There had been some talk of the DNA being tossed out of the case.
Co
nnelly said everything would be done by the book, adding, “But I should tell you that the defense is going to try to get it knocked out just the same. And, although you’re not going to speak today, Donna, I will let the judge know that you are here.”
They walked into the courtroom together. After sitting through a few cases, John and Donna watched as Hope Seeley walked in with Rocky and pointed toward the back of the room, where she wanted him to sit and wait for his case to be called.
After some time, the judge called Rocky’s case.
Neither John nor Donna had seen Rocky in years. As he walked toward the front of the room, Donna noticed how different he looked from the way she remembered him. The all-star wrestler, football player, genuinely healthy-looking man with an always-friendly disposition now had a large bald spot in the back of his graying head, glasses, noticeable weight gain, and a bit of a beer belly. As Rocky walked up to the defendant’s table, he was greeted by Seeley and another of his attorneys, Marty Minnella, who stood and put his arm around Rocky in a gesture that disgusted Donna and John.
The judge asked if everyone had had a chance to review the case thoroughly and if everything was in order.
After the matter of a missing document was settled, the judge said, “I understand that you are trying this case personally, Mr. Connelly, is that right?”
“That is correct,” Connelly said. “Your honor, I mentioned to you before that the victim may have some questions today. I want to let you know that I have spoken with her and answered those questions, so she will not be speaking. But I do want to let you know that she is present in the courtroom here today.”
“Thank you,” the judge said. “I am putting this case on the trial list.”
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