“The bodies of two well-nourished white females found in the walk-in freezer on the premises at 34 Randolph Street, Boston, have been identified from dental records and by relatives as those of Diana McKechnie, age 34, of 131 Hanover St., Boston, and Janet Iverson, age 36, of 1870 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. Death in each instance was attributable to multiple gunshot wounds (two) inflicted behind the left ear, victims kneeling at the time. Death occurred between 6:00 A.M. and 12:00 P.M. on May 4th, 1977.
“The bodies of two well-nourished white males, two well-nourished white females and one well-nourished black female found in the back room or office of 34 Randolph Street, Boston, on the morning of May 5, 1977, have been identified by dental records and by relatives as those of: Joseph Nichols, age 41, of 121 Williams Drive, Canton; Joseph Abbate, age 39, of 1030 Memorial Drive, Cambridge; Maureen Wilkerson, age 26, of 368 Hancock St., Quincy; Helena Gross, age 27, of 1238 North Main St., Randolph; and Doreen Alexander, age 24, of 28 West Newton St., Boston.
“Each of the persons found in the office or back room of the premises at 34 Randolph St. suffered death as the result of multiple gunshot wounds (two) inflicted behind the left ear. The wounds were caused by a .22 caliber weapon fired from behind the victims, who were kneeling. Lividity and other factors warrant the conclusion that death occurred between 10:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. on May 4, 1977.
“Each of the victims tested positively for traces of narcotics. The two females in the freezer had used heroin within the twenty-four hours preceding their deaths. The five persons found in the office had used cocaine within the twenty-four hours preceding death.”
Aware that Asst. Atty. Gen. Terrence Gleason was on annual leave to attend the funeral of his brother-in-law in Seattle, Detective Lieutenant Richards prepared his own report as a cover to the findings, “while my thinking is fresh,” and attached it to the documents from the medical examiners. It included these observations:
“There was no indication of forcible entry. The establishment was not open for business on Sunday. Keys found on the person of Janet Iverson included one fitting the lock on the door to the alley. The dogs, of course, knew Iverson. The coroner’s report fixes her time of death, and that of Diana McKechnie, approximately two hours before the deaths of the five persons found fatally shot in the back room or office. Informant JDR4 advises Iverson and McKechnie were promiscuous lesbians. ‘They liked each other best, but they also cruised around.’
“Nichols and Abbate maintained a checking account in the name of The Friary at the branch office of the Charter National Bank at 53 Broad Street. Their customary practice was to deposit receipts in the night deposit box at that branch. No deposit was received for the nights of Friday, May 2, or Saturday, May 3, the last night before the murders on which the establishment was open. I am confidentially advised that receipts for Friday nights customarily totaled in the neighborhood of $4,500, and those for Saturday nights approximately $2,800. A subpoena directed to the Keeper of the Records, Charter National Bank, will substantiate that advice.
“Informant JDR4 advises that one Michael Bendictson, a.k.a. Mickey the Dunce, a.k.a. Mickey Quiet, operated a handbook on said premises, specializing in sports booking. NCIC advises Michael Bendictson three times convicted setting up and promoting a lottery, served eighteen months, MCI Concord, on conviction 6/9/64. Subject missing from usual haunts, but Informant believes that he is all right and lying low.
“Informant JDR2 advises Nichols and Abbate heavily engaged in large-scale narcotics trafficking, and participated as well in ‘Mickey’s’ profits. Unable to substantiate. Informant JDR2 has in the past furnished information which subsequent investigation has not substantiated.
“No spent cartridges were found at the scene. At least eighteen bullets were fired. Preliminary results from autopsies and ballistics indicate that all were fired at extremely close range from the same weapon.
“In conjunction with Det. Sgt. Maurice Hogan, BPD Homicide, I am proceeding on hypothesis as follows:
“1. Victims Iverson and McKechnie entered the premises before Victims Nichols, Abbate, Wilkerson, Gross and Alexander, and either admitted or had previously provided duplicate keys to Tibbetts’s molls, Fentress and Franklin. They were put into the freezer and killed. While informant JDR2 alleges Nichols was ‘violent,’ ‘quick-tempered,’ and ‘hated queers,’ and suspects Nichols killed the two women in the freezer after he found them on the premises, he is probably wrong. Nichols would not have shot his dogs. The killer or killers of the two women murdered them and the dogs, and then either hid on the premises or left them temporarily, until Nichols and party showed up.
“2. The body of Nichols when found was clad only in undershorts. The other four victims found in the back room or office were nude. Clothing found folded and piled on the sofa in the back room or office suggests that it was removed voluntarily by the owners. Informant JDR2 advises that Nichols and Abbate ‘had orgies after hours there when no one was around.’ Informant JDR2 uncertain whether Nichols and Abbate habitually used the premises on Sunday mornings for such purposes, but believes they may have done so. Victims Wilkerson, Gross and Alexander have criminal records including several apprehensions for solicitation.
“3. The back room or office furniture included two lockable steel four-drawer filing cabinets. One of them was found locked and secure. The other had been forced open. The bottom drawer was pulled out and empty. Informant JDR2 alleges Victims Nichols and Abbate ‘put their cash in that drawer that they didn’t give the bank.’ JDR2 alleges further that said receipts greatly exceeded sales at the bar. The contents of the locked cabinet have been inspected. They consist solely of records. The person or persons who forced the first cabinet either knew, or obtained by threat, the information that caused them to select it.
“4. What JDR2 knows is known on the street. It seems evident that neither Nichols and/or Abbate voluntarily admitted a person or persons unknown, whom he or they were expecting, and that said person or persons, having gained admission, murdered those present and stole the cash and the drugs. It seems likely that said person or persons unknown are not now and have never been active in the Boston underworld.
“5. Unidentified male caller employed hotline number morning of press reports. Agitated voice. Inquired whether armored-car reward still in effect. Said I didn’t know. Asked for number to reach him. He said he’d get back to me P.M. Checked with Foster: Still in force. Payment okayed if Friary killers identified though not convicted of robberies. Unidentified male caller checked in P.M. Information conveyed. Said he would ‘think about it.’
“6. These are the same guys, Terry. This is the same band of brigands that’s been robbing the armored cars. They’re branching out from their old tricks, and that is why they haven’t hit the shopping center banks again. Somehow they got wind of the fact that we’d identified Simone, Handley and Fentress from the fast-food joints, and Walker from the tire store. My guess is that Fentress made a friend of like mind down in the Warwick lunch spot, and the friend tipped her off. My guess is also that either Franklin or Fentress, or maybe both of them, were getting it on in round-robins with McKechnie and Iverson, and that’s how Tibbetts and the rest of them found out about the coke and cash. If we could only find these bastards, we could hang them high. See me soon as you get back.”
MAY 3, 1978
9
At 10:40 on the morning of May 3, 1978, the regular grand jury impaneled for Suffolk County concluded its thirty days of service. Accompanied by Asst. Atty. Gen. Terrence Gleason, the grand jury delivered its last batch of indictments into the dim courtroom of the otherwise idle Second Criminal Session on the eighth floor of the New Courthouse at Pemberton Square in Boston. The only people in the room were the judge, the clerk, the stenographer, the prosecutor, and the twenty-three grand jurors overcrowding the sixteen-seat jury box and occupying chairs inside the bar normally used by counsel and defendants. A court officer stood outside the doors to turn away any buffs or
reporters who might arrive.
Assistant Clerk Michael Fournier accepted a thin sheaf of papers from the foreman and handed them up to Judge Donald Kittles. The judge inspected the seven papers folded twice and noted that they were marked “Secret.” He glanced inquiringly at the foreman, frowned, looked back at the papers and unfolded the one on top. As he read he pursed his lips. He put it down and took up the other six in turn, his frown remaining. When he finished reading the last of them, he nodded. Groping for an elastic band at the front of the blotter on his bench, he peered over his half-frame eyeglasses at the prosecutor. “Mister Gleason,” he said.
The prosecutor stood. “Your Honor,” he said.
“Yes,” Kittles said. “Warrants to issue?”
“If your Honor please,” Gleason said.
“Documents to be impounded?” the judge said.
“So moved, pending apprehension,” Gleason said.
The judge snapped the elastic band around the seven documents. He handed them over the rail of the bench to Fournier. Fournier opened the top fold of each of the papers in turn and copied the name typed in after the printed legend reciting that the grand jurors for the Commonwealth had alleged that person guilty of a crime. Then he put the papers in a white envelope which he sealed. He took a stamp from the top drawer of his desk and marked the front and back of the envelope in black ink: SECRET.
“Motion granted,” the judge said. He turned his gaze to the grand jury. “Mister Foreman, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, linking his hands on the blotter and hunching forward, “I understand you have completed your service.”
The foreman was a white man in his late fifties. “We have, your Honor,” he said.
“It is customary,” the judge said, “for the judge who accepts the final report of each grand jury to extend in turn the thanks of the Commonwealth for your devoted service. That is my function now. We are aware that your service comes at considerable personal cost and inconvenience to yourselves, and applaud you for your dedication to your civic duty. The foundation of our system of justice is that no person shall be called upon to answer to a charge of felony, or punished thereon, except that such charge shall have been presented by a grand jury of his peers. Who have determined there is probable cause to believe that such crime has been committed, and that he or she, the person named, is who committed it. This is a serious responsibility.
“You, as members of the grand jury, are the living barriers between citizens and tyranny. I am sure as you have come here for the past six weeks in the New England springtime, your thoughts and inclinations have often been elsewhere. With your work. With your families. With your daily concerns. With those blasted Red Sox.” The jurors smiled. “But nevertheless you have come; you have listened; you have deliberated.” His face creased in a grin. “And you have lost wages by the bucketful.”
The grand jurors beamed at him.
“Mister Gleason,” he said, nodding toward him, “is but one of the capable prosecutors who have depended upon you to, in effect, try his case before it is tried in court, before a petit jury. These are important matters you have reported on today, and all the other days when you have come into this session. Your impartiality in weighing the evidence they have presented to you is the ornament of our system at law. You have served well. You are dismissed. Go with our thanks, and God bless all of you.”
Gleason shook hands with each of the grand jurors as they left the courtroom. He waited in the corridor by the elevators as they entered the cars. Then he turned to his right and went into the stairwell opening beyond the men’s room. He descended the metal steps — enclosed on his left by cyclone fencing material installed after one desperate defendant attempted to escape returning to his holding cell by jumping to his death — and descended to the seventh floor. He emerged into an identical corridor outside the busy courtroom of the First Criminal Session, made his way through the crowd of lawyers, defendants and cops outside the doors of the courtroom on his left, and entered the internal corridor behind the northerly elevator banks. There were small offices along it, occupied by younger Assistant District Attorneys handling arraignments, bail hearings, defaults and other minor matters before the First Criminal Session.
The door to the third one on his right was open. He went in. The desk was cluttered with files, but the chair behind it was vacant. He went behind the desk and sat down. He picked up the phone. He dialed four numbers. He said: “Gleason. John there?” He waited. He drummed his fingers. He said: “John. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general over Ireland. You said you believe Mackenzie? They believe Mackenzie.”
He paused. He laughed. “Of course they went for it, John. How could anybody disbelieve you. We got ’em. Go get ’em.” He listened. He laughed again. He said: “Of course they were satisfied, for Christ sake, John. I told ’em when I came in. I said: ‘Awright. You folks, I dunno what you folks’ve heard about grand juries. Prolly that you’re rubber stamps for the prosecutors. Well if you have, it’s true. That’s what you’re supposed to be. You think I come in here looking for you to indict cases I can’t win in court, you’re nuts. You think I come in here wanting you to tell me I can’t win a winner? You’re wrong. When I come in here with the papers, what I have got in mind for you to do is sign the papers, and unless you think I’m clearly crazy, that’s what you should do. Because I do know my job, folks. I do know my job.’ So go and get the bastards.”
A slight white man with wispy grey hair, a sallow complexion and stooped posture entered the cubicle as Gleason hung up the phone. He was carrying four thick brown cardboard accordion folios tied with faded red ribbons. He stared at Gleason. “Hey,” he said, “you’re not Harrington.”
Gleason sat back in the chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Got me there, Bill,” he said.
“You, you’re Gleason,” the man said.
“Got me again,” Gleason said.
The man frowned. “You’re supposed to be gone,” he said. “You were supposed to leave.”
“I did,” Gleason said. “I left four years ago.”
“So,” the man said, “how come you’re in here, then?”
“Using the phone,” Gleason said.
“You ask somebody?” the man said.
“No,” Gleason said. “I remembered how to do it.”
“Not supposed to do that,” the man said. “Guys in private practice, not supposed to come in here and use our telephones after they’re not with us anymore.”
“I’m not in private practice,” Gleason said. “Still a prosecutor. Different kind of prosecutor. But still a prosecutor.”
“That’s why you left?” the man said. “I never heard of that. Nobody ever leaves here, and when they do, they leave. You one those federal guys or something, did a thing like that? That isn’t very smart.”
Gleason stood up. He hitched up his pants. “I know it,” he said. “You got me again.”
Det. Lt. Insp. John D. Richards in his office at 20 Ashburton Place a block away put the handset down and sat back in his chair. He clasped his hands across his stomach and stared at the woman sitting in front of the desk. “Now you’re sure,” he said.
“I’m absolutely sure,” she said.
“Because this is a volunteer assignment,” he said. “You haven’t been a trooper that long. Things could get a little hinky out there, we go in on this.”
“I know,” she said.
“You’ve never shot a man,” he said. “The other five guys on this job’re all combat veterans. They have shot other guys. But you, you’ve never shot a man.”
“I hope I never do,” she said.
“But you wouldn’t hesitate to shoot one,” he said.
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said.
“One these sons of bitches comes busting out of there and starts making loud noises with a gun,” he said, “you’re not going to duck down and cover up now, are you?”
“Certainly am not,” she said. “If I’m the sixth
gun on this job, it’s because the job might need six shooters. I knew that when I came in.”
“And you still want to do it,” he said.
“Lieutenant,” she said, “the way I get it, three of the suspects are women.”
“That’s correct,” he said. “Well, we’re really not that sure. We think they may’ve replaced Handley, but they may not’ve. Gleason got a second Jane Doe indictment to be on the safe side.”
“And those women,” she said, “those women’ve been in on the robberies and in on The Friary killings right along with the men.”
“We’re not charging the robberies here,” Richards said. “Just The Friary. And, you want my honest opinion, we’re not all that fat on evidence even for that. What we’re basically hoping here, we’re hoping to get lucky, so that afterwards Gleason and I can turn one the bastards. Maybe then we get the robberies. But for now all we’re hoping is to immobilize the bastards. The Friary case’s thin, but it’s also all we’ve got.”
“Well,” she said, “but if Tibbetts and Walker and the John Doe trust them, trust the women enough to shoot, don’t you sort of have to trust me? Too?”
Richards grinned. “June,” he said, “no, I don’t. I don’t have to do a damned thing that I don’t want to do. What Miss Gloria Steinem and that gang say about how you got equal rights — none of that applies here. Doesn’t matter if it’s right. The reason you’re being considered is that I think if this thing works, it’s gonna work because those guys’ve been on the run so long, and succeeded at it, because they’re used to keeping their eyes peeled for guys in uniforms and guys that aren’t in uniform but wear suits like uniforms. They think they know what cops look like, and so far they’ve been right. Reason I want you in this patrol is that you don’t look like a cop to me, so I think you won’t to them. You do not look like a cop.”
Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Page 8