by Ann Rule
Another unsolved murder case in the Fall River–New Bedford area in 1988 has so many connections to Tavares that it is almost incomprehensible that he was not charged with murder.
On October 27, 1988, pretty, dark-eyed Gayle Botelho, thirty-two, vanished from her home. Hers was the kind of disappearance that couldn’t have happened—and yet it did.
Gayle lived at 114 Prospect Street in Fall River with her fiancé and one of her three children. At 4:30 p.m., she answered a knock on the door of their second-floor apartment and called back to her boyfriend that she was leaving to talk to someone (a man) and she’d be gone about five minutes.
She didn’t come back.
Seeing that she had left behind her purse, money, all of her sweaters and jackets, her fiancé was concerned. It was close to Halloween, and the weather was chilly at night. When she didn’t return for several hours, he called the police. Everyone in the Fall River area was jittery because of the Highway Killer’s victims, and although Gayle really didn’t fit the victim profile, her case was treated seriously from the beginning.
Gayle was the middle child among seven sisters and two brothers in a family that had lived in Fall River for generations, and they missed her dearly. Waiting year after year for Gayle or her body to be found was agonizing for them.
Danny Tavares had been in prison for nine years in early September 2000, when he sent a kite (a prison note) to the Massachusetts State Police telling them that he could locate Gayle Botelho’s body. It was probably a ruse, or possibly he was planning an escape once he got outside the walls.
Nevertheless, the state police paid attention.
In mid-October, Gayle’s onetime neighbors noticed police detectives going in and out of the basement of a large two-story house across from her old apartment. They were there for hours, and when they left quietly, they carried a number of articles. That didn’t seem like prime gossip, but what happened next did.
The residents on Prospect Street watched curiously as state troopers and deputies from the state medical examiner’s office erected a tent in the backyard of the two-story house at 314 June Street. Although the houses fronted on different streets, the tent where the troopers were digging was directly across the street from the apartment where Gayle Botelho had last been seen.
The crew from the state police had a dog with them—a necrosearch dog trained to sniff out human remains.
What no one knew at the time was the identity of the tipster who had told the troopers where to dig: Daniel Tavares. Furthermore, in 1988, the house on June Street had been the home of Ann and Danny Tavares, and Kristos Lilles. This was where they lived just before they bought the house with John Latsis in Somerset. Gayle vanished almost exactly three years before Danny stabbed his mother to death.
With the necrosearch dog’s signals, they focused their digging next to a brick outdoor barbecue that was built against a wall that separated the Tavareses’ former backyard from the driveway of the house next door.
They were extremely careful as they dug. It had been a dozen years, and they used small tools, their gloved hands, and brushes to remove soil. If Gayle lay near the outdoor hearth, her body would have long since gone back to earth, leaving only delicate bones. They hoped to find other items and artifacts in the ground, too—perhaps some they could connect to a killer.
She was there, not far at all below the surface. For all those icy Northeast winters and simmering summers, Gayle Botelho had lain within seventy feet of where her fiancé waited for her to come home.
An autopsy and X-rays officially identified her body. The cause of death? Stab wounds. There were enough defects on her bones to indicate where a knife had plunged in, even though her soft tissue had disappeared many years earlier.
At the time Gayle’s fate was discovered, Bristol County District Attorney Paul Walsh—the DA who had accepted Danny’s plea bargain to have his mother’s stabbing death lowered from murder to manslaughter—did not reveal who the tipster was.
Danny told investigators that he, Gayle, and two “acquaintances” of his had attended “some wild party.” He said the other two men had stabbed Gayle to death, while he was only an observer.
At the time, he would have been twenty-one or twenty-two, and he already had a history of drug use and theft.
Given his tendency to embroider the truth, most detectives would have suspected Tavares of Gayle’s murder, as well as those of the other nine victims of the Highway Killer and two subsequent suspicious deaths of similar female victims that had come to light.
Massachusetts state detectives located the two men that Danny Tavares had named but refused to comment on what, if anything, they had learned from them.
Indeed, the public had no idea that a convicted killer had led troopers to Gayle Botelho’s body seven years before he murdered Brian and Beverly Mauck. When the Tavares connection to Gayle’s murder hit the media in Massachusetts, Washington, and the wire services and the Internet, her family was outraged. They had never heard of Danny Tavares and had known only that a “prisoner” had led police to their sister’s body. And now he was out of prison and he’d killed two more people.
Lori Fielding, one of Gayle’s sisters, spoke for her family. “I can tell you after nineteen years, it still hurts. A little healing is allowed to take place, and then it starts again. Gayle mattered, and she was somebody’s sister and daughter and mother in spite of the problems she might have had. But she didn’t seem to matter to anyone else.”
Ann Tavares’s fiancé, Kristos Lilles, had his doubts about Danny, and with the news that he had been charged with double murder in Washington, Lilles talked to the media, telling them he believed that the young man who was like a son to him for many years might very well be the Highway Killer.
“He kept talking about them,” Lilles told the Free Republic, “and saying, ‘I know that one.’ One was found buried in the yard.”
Lilles recalled the night in October 1988 when Gayle Botelho went missing, even though it had been nineteen years earlier. He and Ann had been at a party, and they came home to find Danny staring out the window at a police cruiser outside Gayle’s apartment.
“They’re looking for Gayle,” Danny said.
“I said, ‘How do you know? Did you talk to the police?’”
“No,” was all Danny said.
Lilles wondered how Danny would know that Gayle was missing if he hadn’t talked to the police. He himself hadn’t known the missing woman. The conclusions Kristos Lilles came to were too horrifying to deal with.
He never asked Danny about Gayle Botelho again. Shortly after that, he, Ann, and John Latsis had purchased their home in Somerset and left the June Street house. And twelve years later, Gayle’s remains were found in the backyard of their former home.
Three years later, corrections officers at Walpole Prison found a kite that Danny Tavares sent to an official regarding his inmate account. It was written on June 18, 2003, and it was one of his threatening letters:
Mrs. B.
I know you purposely made an issue out [of ] that punk $100. It never made it into my account. I’m getting sick of everybody trying to jack me over. Charlie said you told him you already sent it to me and to check with the treasurer’s office. I shouldn’t have to! I’m the last person you will ever jack over ’cause when I get out, I will do shit to you and your daughters that you can’t imagine! And trust me when I tell you that I have experience with women…just ask Nancy or Debbie or Mary or Sandy or Chris or a few others. Oh, we can’t forget about my favorite…Gayle. Oh ya, if you can bring them back to life, then ask them. I want my money!
He had blatantly listed the first names of some of the Highway Killer’s victims, and of Gayle Botelho. Was he lying or was he bragging? Ben Benson saw how vicious Tavares could be when he believed someone was holding money back from him. Tavares had first signed the kite but then scribbled over his name.
With the tragedy in Graham, Washington, Daniel Tavares suddenly became bad n
ews for a number of politicians, and Massachusetts voters wondered why a roving monster like Tavares had been released from prison at all.
Paul Walsh, who had just been unseated after sixteen years as district attorney, insisted there was not just cause to charge Tavares with Gayle Botelho’s murder: “The mere knowledge that this guy knew where she was buried can lead you to all sorts of conjecture, but at the end of the day, you need some evidence.”
Perhaps. Any prosecutor hopes for hard physical evidence. It is unwise for a prosecutor to go ahead with a case where there are no fingerprints, no blood or fluid DNA transfers, no suspicious hairs and fibers, no bullets or casings or a gun to compare them to, no tool marks, no car tire imprints, or other evidence to show to a jury. Most prosecutors who face election every four years try to keep their conviction percentages well over 90 percent and prefer not to risk not guilty verdicts. And if a homicide defendant is acquitted, double jeopardy will attach, and he cannot be tried again for that crime.
A number of convictions have been won, however, where there was overwhelming circumstantial evidence and where crimes were committed in a similar pattern.
Despite all the “good time” he lost, Daniel Tavares became eligible for parole in the summer of 2007, after serving over sixteen years in Walpole. However, he had two charges pending—one for spitting on a corrections officer, and the second for smashing another guard with a heavy cast that had been applied after Tavares had wrist surgery. Bail on those attacks was $50,000 apiece, and he faced ten more years in prison if he was convicted.
Tavares had sent letters threatening the lives of Governor Mitt Romney and Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly. His father in Florida considered him “pure evil,” although he had tried to get his son off drugs when he was a teenager. The elder Daniel Tavares was even more terrified when he allegedly received a phone call from Jennifer Lynn, his future daughter-in-law, telling him that Daniel would soon be on his way to break his legs and kill him. Daniel’s father was sleeping with a gun under his pillow.
In the summer of 2007, Mitt Romney was no longer the governor of Massachusetts; he was among the top candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. One of the appointments Romney had made during his governorship was that of Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman. Critics said he had named Tuttman for purely political reasons—to appeal to female voters. She was among a quartet of women appointed to the judiciary in April 2006. Until then, out of forty-two judicial appointments made by Governor Romney, only thirteen had been female.
Tuttman had a good reputation as a former assistant district attorney and as a strong advocate for victims’ rights. She had been awarded many honors as head of the Essex County District Attorney’s Family Crime and Sexual Assault Unit. Many sources called her a “brilliant lawyer.”
On the advice of others, Mitt Romney gave Kathe Tuttman a judgeship. He would live to regret it.
As fate would have it, Daniel Tavares and Judge Tuttman met for the first time on July 16, 2007, at the Worcester Superior Court. She knew little of his past beyond the fact that he had served his complete sentence for the manslaughter charges, and that this was a bail hearing on the two assault charges involving the corrections officers in Walpole Prison—one in 2005 and one in 2006.
Tavares’s attorney, Barry Dynice, pooh-poohed the charges of any attacks on guards. He pointed out that the Massachusetts Department of Corrections had waited until the very last moment—when his client had been practically walking out of prison—to bring up those charges. He argued that Daniel Tavares had paid the price for his crimes and deserved to be released on his own personal recognizance.
Dynice said Daniel wasn’t a flight risk. He had a twenty-four-year-old daughter, he’d worked hard to earn his GED (high school equivalency), and he was totally amenable to pretrial probation. “He has requested that he be placed on some kind of monitoring system,” Dynice said, “if there’s any concern about this.” (Tavares’s “son” wasn’t mentioned.)
Daniel Tavares was fully capable of putting on a good face and a calm attitude to get what he wanted. He was no longer a wild-eyed, muscular man in his twenties. His hair was gray, and his physique was portly. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and the pasty greenish-yellow prison pallor.
He didn’t look dangerous.
Prosecutor William Loughin tried his best to point out Tavares’s long history. All of his crimes had involved violence, and he had even “committed crimes of violence while he was serving time for a crime of violence.”
But this was only a bail hearing, not a murder trial.
Judge Tuttman looked at the man she’d just met and mistook him for someone who had paid for the horrible crime he’d committed, who wanted only the chance for a new life, someone who was safe to let out on the streets. Although his fiancée was in Washington, she didn’t think he would leave Massachusetts. She didn’t even think it was necessary to have him wear an electronic bracelet or anklet so he could be tracked if he left the jurisdiction.
And he promised to show up for all of his scheduled three-times-a-week probation appointments, to live with one of his sisters, and to find a job.
Judge Tuttman released him on his personal recognizance. He showed up for two of his probation appointments, but he failed to appear on July 23.
And then he was gone. He was on his way to Washington.
A warrant for his arrest was issued, although there was no promise that Massachusetts would extradite him from other states. And, despite the fact that Massachusetts authorities knew about Jennifer Lynn Freitas and had her address, there were no warnings or requests to locate sent to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. Ed Troyer, their media spokesman, commented on what an egregious oversight that had been. It was like letting a mad dog out of his cage while he frothed at the mouth and growled. If only the sheriff’s office in Washington had known who had sidled quietly into their midst, into a small town where nobody worried about locked doors.
“But they didn’t tell us—”
Granted, almost any state would have preferred to see a man like Tavares outside their jurisdiction. The Freitases, the Maucks, and anyone else who encountered him had no warning at all of who was headed their way.
Mitt Romney, with his rugged good looks, deep voice, and charisma, in the summer of 2007 became the center of a national media firestorm, his reputation sullied—perhaps fatally—by a vicious “punk” he’d never heard of before.
Chapter Seven
Ironically, Mitt Romney was in Washington State on the campaign trail when Brian and Beverly Mauck were murdered. Even while the Pierce County detectives continued their investigation, the word of Daniel Tavares’s latest act of violence had spread to Massachusetts—and to New York City.
Rudy Giuliani, then Romney’s chief rival for the presidential nomination, seized upon the story and used it to cast doubt on his leadership qualities. “The governor is going to have to explain his appointment,” Giuliani told the Associated Press, “and the judge is going to have to explain her decision—but it’s not an isolated situation. Governor Romney did not have a good record in dealing with violent crime.”
Mitt Romney called for Judge Tuttman to resign and attempted to put as much distance between himself and his appointee as he could. He said he’d never really known her.
Romney’s spokesman managed to put a spin on the devastating results of Daniel Tavares’s release. He cited the Tavares case as a reason for states that had abolished the death penalty to bring it back. “This is a dangerous man who killed his own mother,” Eric Fehrnstrom said. “He should have been held on bail, given his violent record, attacks on correction officers and a history of threats against public officials, including Governor Romney. It is because of monsters like Daniel Tavares that we need the death penalty.”
Fingers were pointing in every direction, and no one involved, even in the slightest way, let any blame stick to him or her. Kathe Tuttman perhaps got the most abuse—even th
ough she had been tough on violent criminals in the past. In a poll posted by the Boston Herald, asking if Judge Tuttman should resign, 85 percent of readers voted yes, 11 percent voted no, and only 4 percent were undecided.
Darrel Slater, Bev Mauck’s father, was bitter and blamed Mitt Romney: “He was the governor—he picked the judge. He should be answering for what happened.”
But Romney did not apologize or accept any blame. Either way, the kiss of political death marked his cheek. The killings in tiny Graham, Washington, may very well have been a deciding factor for the former governor to drop out of the presidential race.
He still, however, had a chance to be nominated for vice president, depending on whom the Republicans chose as their presidential nominee. Almost to the time of the convention in St. Paul, Romney’s name remained on the short list. In the end, he could not lose the specter of Daniel Tavares, who clung to his coattails like a burr.
John McCain bypassed Romney and chose Sarah Palin, a virtually unknown governor from the state of Alaska.
Nothing is less forgiven than political missteps.
Back in Pierce County, Sergeant Ben Benson and his team were tying up the ends of their tragic case. Daniel Tavares had confessed to murder, but Jennifer Lynn still insisted she had had nothing to do with the Maucks’ murders, before, during, or after. She had admitted that she suspected her husband of getting rid of a gun by throwing it off a cliff along Five Mile Drive and seemed willing to go with detectives to look for it.
On Monday morning, November 19, Detective Elizabeth Lindt and Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp visited Jennifer in the Pierce County Jail and asked her if she would show them where she believed Daniel had disposed of the gun used in the murders—somewhere in Point Defiance Park. She agreed to accompany them.
When they reached the park, Jennifer directed them to the area where she and Daniel had been married. It was gray November now, Thanksgiving week, and the sunshine of late July was long gone.