Because You Loved Me

by M. William Phelps

  In a report later prepared by Billy’s lawyers, the suggestion was made that before Linehan and Sprankle entered the room, one of them turned the heat up in the interview suite in order to put pressure on Billy.

  “It was hot in the station house that night,” explained AG Will Delker. “The entire day had been hot and very humid and the air-conditioning at the NPD was broken. It wasn’t on. So, the entire building was hot and sticky—not just the room Billy was in.”

  Because the room was so small, cramped and stuffy, without ventilation, it seemed as if the temperature continued to rise. Not quite a conspiracy, but rather bad luck for Billy.

  As Sprankle and Linehan sat and questioned Billy about the day he spent with Nicole, his family background, mental health issues Billy claimed to have and the medication he was currently taking, Sprankle said, “It’s pretty hot in here. Do you want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “What’s going on here?” Linehan asked.

  “I have suffered throughout my life from stress anxiety and anger issues,” responded Billy. “I take medication for anxiety and bipolar disorder.”

  According to Billy, Sergeant Sprankle spoke next, saying, “Listen, Jeanne Dominico is dead. Her killer will be located as a result of prints found at the crime scene….” Again Billy bounced his legs and began to shake. “We can also get the surveillance tapes from the businesses located adjacent to Jeanne’s house.”

  “What am I going to do?” Billy then asked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Billy said, “I…I have a lot weighing on my conscience.”

  At that point, Linehan leaned over and activated the recording equipment. It was pushing 1:00 A.M. Later, Billy said he had “little to eat all day and was physically and emotionally weakened as a result of being in police custody” for four-plus hours. He didn’t know what to do, nor did he know what he was saying.

  A check of the visitor’s log on the main desk inside the lobby of the NPD revealed that Billy had signed in as a visitor and received a visitor’s pass. He could have left at any time he wanted.

  Nonetheless, as the wheels of the videotape and audio-tape squealed, Linehan announced for the record who he and Sprankle were, where they were, and then, “You’re William Sullivan. Is that right?”

  “Yup.”

  “And, William, you don’t have a problem with us calling you Billy?”

  “Nope.”

  Linehan asked Billy if he knew they were going to record the interview.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No.”

  “How far did you go in school—eleventh grade?”

  “Eleventh, yes.”

  “OK, so you can read and understand English, then?”

  “Uh-hum.”

  With that, Linehan read Billy his rights. It was standard procedure. They felt Billy had information about the murder.

  Billy said he understood.

  Then Linehan had Billy sign a Miranda rights waiver indicating as much.

  “Are you willing to waive your rights and speak with us, Billy?”

  “Yup.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Amanda Kane was sleeping when Chris McGowan knocked on her door. He knew she would be. For a few moments, Chris banged and rang the buzzer.

  “Amanda,” he yelled. “Open the door.”

  The ride over to Amanda’s was quiet and reflective. Chris didn’t say much to his family. He put no thought whatsoever into Drew’s claim that Billy had killed Jeanne.

  “There was absolutely no way I believed that—not for one minute,” recalled Chris. It was an intruder, he thought as they drove. A burglary. Something went wrong. But Billy? No way.

  By the time they pulled into Amanda’s driveway, Chris had also abandoned what had been in hindsight a gossamer notion that Jeanne’s ex-husband had something to do with her death. Anthony might have been a lot of things, but killer wasn’t one of them. Moreover, if cops had even the slightest hint or feeling that Anthony could have been involved, they surely wouldn’t have allowed him to stand around the entrance to the police department and then take Drew home. In fact, Chris didn’t know it, but Anthony had been thoroughly checked out and found to have a solid alibi. He’d had nothing to do with Jeanne’s death.

  Amanda was not fully awake as she approached the door.

  “If it’s those kids again,” she said to herself, “I’m going to kill them.”

  Chris could see her image through the curtains. She was moving slow.

  “Who is it?” Amanda mumbled, inching her way toward the door. “Chris,” she added, squinting, trying to look through the window, “is that you?”

  “Open the door, Amanda.”

  Chris and Jeanne’s best friend had always gotten along well. Chris knew Jeanne and Amanda had been as close as sisters and had respect and love for each other he had rarely seen two friends share. This was going to be tough. Here he was showing up at her door in the middle of the night to tell her that Jeanne was gone. What could he say? How was he going articulate such a tragedy? Was there a way?

  Amanda had trouble unlocking the door because she was still groggy from being woken out of a dead sleep.

  “Come on, Amanda,” urged Chris, pushing on the door, “it’s me. You gotta let me in.”

  Opening the door, Amanda said, “Darn it all, Chris, I thought it was those two kids again.”

  Chris had no idea Billy and Nicole had stopped by earlier.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nicole and Billy,” Amanda said, running a hand through her hair. “Come on in. I thought you were those kids. They were here earlier. I need to go to bed. What is going on now?”

  With difficulty, Chris walked in, and they were headed to the dining room. Chris wished he could spend more time with Amanda, but his family was outside waiting for him in the car. On top of that, he needed to get home so he could begin to figure out what to do next.

  “It had been a long night,” he remembered. “I regret not spending more time with Amanda that night. But I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Listen,” Chris said with as much courage as he could muster, “sit down, Amanda.”

  “What, Chris? What’s going on?” She sensed something was terribly wrong.

  “She’s gone,” Chris said simply through tears.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jeannie…she was killed.”

  Amanda started crying. Softly at first. But then it hit her and she wept openly. Shock. Disbelief. Then anger.

  “I’m so sorry, Amanda,” offered Chris. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “How? An accident?”

  “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Billy Sullivan was in an interview suite unloading what he referred to as a “weighty conscience.” Detectives Denis Linehan and Richard Sprankle had just started a recorded interrogation. They felt Billy knew more than he had been sharing. Additionally, Billy and Nicole’s stories were crumbling.

  While Billy spoke to Linehan and Sprankle, Nicole began opening up in a second room down the hall. One of the first details pertaining to her mother’s murder she brought forward stunned Detective Mark Schaaf. On its surface, it was a story that seemed too incredible to be true. In stark detail, amid sobs and deep breaths, Nicole claimed that over the past week she and Billy had tried to murder her mother. Not one or two times. But four.

  “We tried to kill my mother three other times,” Nicole offered Schaaf. “It didn’t work.”

  According to Nicole, the three previous attempts took place inside four days leading up to Jeanne’s murder, each with its own devious and experimental plot attached. Yet, as Schaaf soon learned, it was the first attempt that had actually started working as the first week of August moved forward. Jeanne used creamer for her coffee every morning. Nicole said Billy believed that if they laced the creamer with Dimetapp, Benadryl and ibuprofen, and Jeanne ingested
enough of the store-bought medicine, she’d die.

  “What will this do, Billy?” Nicole asked, quite curious, when Billy brought up the idea for the first time early that week.

  “The mixture of pills will, like, you know, go against each other and it will kill her,” answered Billy.

  Over a period of time, Billy explained, Jeanne would become sick and drop dead from an overdose. Although it was Billy’s idea and he put the over-the-counter medication into Jeanne’s creamer by himself, Nicole stood by him and watched, or so she claimed. She admitted being culpable because she hadn’t tried to stop him.

  After Billy put the medication into Jeanne’s creamer, “We better get rid of all the milk in the fridge,” he suggested, “so she uses the creamer.”

  It was the middle of the day. Jeanne and Chris were at work. Drew was out with his friends.

  “It’s not working,” Nicole told Billy that night. Jeanne felt dizzy, Chris admitted later, and got sick, but she was able to go to work and function.

  “Let’s try something else,” Billy suggested the following day.

  “What?”

  That night, when Jeanne and Chris were sleeping, Nicole and Billy stood in the kitchen with the lights off while Billy added bleach to Jeanne’s creamer.

  The next morning, after Jeanne and Chris left for work, Billy got up and walked into the kitchen, Nicole right behind him.

  “Look,” said Billy, pointing to the garbage.

  “Shit.”

  Jeanne had thrown the creamer out, figuring it went bad.

  The next day, Billy came up with another plan.

  “Let’s set her room on fire.”

  “How’s that going to work?”

  “When the fire breaks out, she’ll be inside the room. I’ll make sure that the door is locked and she dies.”

  They were standing in Jeanne’s room. Billy looked around, trying to figure out the best place to leave a burning candle, so as to make it look, Nicole said, like an accident.

  While Billy searched for the right spot, he asked Nicole to go get him a lighter.

  “We want to make sure her blanket is flammable.”

  “OK,” said Nicole, who returned with a twelve-inch disposable lighter with a handle and trigger. She snapped the trigger and held the flame up to Jeanne’s blanket—but it wouldn’t ignite.

  “It’s probably flame-retardant,” she said.

  “You’re probably right,” said Billy. “F- - - this. Let’s think of something else.”

  A day later, Billy came up with a master plan; however, at face value, one might wonder if he had concocted the idea while watching a Road Runner cartoon that day. It perfectly showed his stupidity and adolescence.

  “We’re going to Home Depot, Nicole, let’s get out of here.”

  “What’s going on, Billy? What do you mean?”

  “Get in the car.”

  Billy purchased two sections of rope one might use for a clothesline. On the way back to Jeanne’s, he explained what they were going to do.

  “You feed the rope into the oil tank out in back of the house while I keep your mother and Chris busy.”

  “OK, Billy.”

  “Then we’ll pour gasoline along the rope and light it. The house will blow up. But you need to first get everything out of your room that you want to keep.”

  “Why?”

  “The house isn’t going to be standing much longer.”

  When they got back, Nicole went up into her room and threw her diary and some clothes into a beach bag. Then she went outside. While Billy was inside the house talking to Jeanne and Chris, keeping them busy, Nicole fed the rope into the oil tank as planned and unraveled the remainder of it out into the backyard, heading toward the edge of the lawn by the bank parking lot. Billy promised the rope would act as a fuse, and once it burned down and touched the fuel, it would ignite the tank as if it were gunpowder.

  “The house will blow up.”

  As Nicole dragged the opposite end of the rope out to the edge of the yard, she heard Billy and Chris talking. They were in the front foyer on their way outside. Speaking to police about this, Nicole later recalled: “I didn’t want anybody to see me, so I just, I just ran. I ran back…. I ran to the back of the house with the rope in my hand, because I didn’t want to leave it out there.”

  Chris and Billy walked out of the foyer, where they talked for a moment before making their way into the driveway. Without Chris or Jeanne seeing her, Nicole gathered up the rope, tossed it in the garbage can and walked around the opposite side of the house into the driveway, where Chris and Billy were now standing.

  Chris never suspected a thing.

  A few hours later, Nicole and Billy sat in his car talking about what happened.

  “We’re not going to do that,” Nicole said. She was disappointed.

  “I know,” answered Billy. “It won’t work.”

  Nicole couldn’t recall who said it first, but after the “rope incident,” she and Billy decided against a plan that involved any type of destruction to the house.

  Why?

  “You know, it’s basically bad enough that, that this is going to happen to my mom, but never mind two people,” adding that she and Billy didn’t want to hurt Chris McGowan.

  Detective Mark Schaaf was no doubt amazed by the heartlessness Nicole displayed in the proposed planning and plotting of her mother’s murder. Sitting with Nicole, Schaaf tried to convince her to explain how things escalated to the point where, as Nicole now claimed, Billy walked into the house and murdered Jeanne. What was it that drove them to do it? Their motive. How had things at home gotten to the point where the only option Nicole felt she had left was murder?

  “Why did you guys want to hurt your mother?” Schaaf asked straight-up.

  “My mom didn’t want Billy and me to see each other anymore. I wanted to go live with Billy in Connecticut. My mother would have never let me do that.”

  Schaaf asked Nicole to change out of the clothes she was wearing.

  “Someone will come in and give you something else to wear.”

  Before the night was over, Nicole was going to change the entire dynamic of the case with yet another shocking revelation. As the interview progressed into the early-morning hours of August 7, Nicole would admit that she had gone into the house, too.

  CHAPTER 27

  After he left Amanda Kane’s house and returned home, Chris McGowan managed to curl up on his sofa and, as he put it, “pass out. It wasn’t sleep.”

  When he awoke at 6:30 A.M., after an hour’s rest, Chris collected his thoughts as best he could. He tried to wrap his mind around what had happened the previous night. It still didn’t seem real. Had Jeanne actually been murdered? That’s it, he wondered, it’s over? I’ll never see her again? How could that be?

  Sitting on the couch, running his hands through his hair, Chris realized he had to call work and break the news to everyone. They were going to see it in the newspaper or hear it on the radio. It was better they heard it from him.

  In an individual way, Jeanne Dominico had touched every person she had ever worked with at Oxford Health Plans. Coworkers adored being around Jeanne’s positive outlook on work and life.

  “Jeanne could get angry,” recalled one coworker, “but you would never know it. If, for example, she was working something out with the principal at Nicole’s school and was upset about the way Nicole had been treated, Jeannie would never show how angry she was. She’d keep her cool and take care of whatever business was at hand.”

  People admired this about Jeanne, a woman who had, everyone seemed to agree, much to complain (and be angry) about. Somehow, though, she found it in her heart to forgo bitterness and hatred for love and understanding.

  Allegra Childs was fifteen years younger than Jeanne. They had shared the same cubicle and sat next to each other at Oxford for approximately five years. The mother of four children—two girls, ten and eleven, two boys, five and eight—like Jeanne, Allegra was
a working single parent whose ex-husband hadn’t been much help. Thus, as soon as the two women started a dialogue about life outside the confines of the cubicle farm they worked in, they hit it off.

  “I was divorced, trying to raise my kids, go to college and get my bachelor’s degree at night,” Allegra explained later. “At the same time, I was putting up with my ex-husband’s antics. Jeannie was in a similar position.”

  As they got to know each other better, Allegra and her kids were frequent guests at Jeanne’s house. Weather permitting, they had cookouts. At work, they showed up to a lot of the same functions together. The one thing that always stood out to Allegra as she got to know Chris, Jeanne and her children over the years was how close Nicole was to her mother. She envied the relationship.

  “Nicole was absolutely Jeanne’s princess. Her pride and joy. They had a special bond.”

  The relationship Allegra had with her oldest daughter had been rough. They quarreled most of the time. Allegra didn’t know what to do, where to turn. She’d watch Jeanne and Nicole together and yearn to have the same connection, even a fraction of it, with her own daughter.

  “There were emotional issues [with my daughter], and I had brought her to counseling,” Allegra said, “and Jeannie really stepped up and helped.”

  Her daughter’s main problem, Allegra said, was that “she wanted nothing to do with her mother.”

  Watching Jeanne and Nicole together, Allegra believed she was in the presence of the perfect mother-daughter relationship. In subtle ways, Jeanne and Nicole expressed an outwardly deep sense of love for each other. Nicole might give Jeanne a card just to say “I love you…thanks!” No special day. No purpose other than to articulate the love she had for her mom. Poetry became something Nicole took an interest in. She was able to put her feelings down in verse. Jeanne encouraged her. She wrote all the time. Or, Allegra might stop by the house and catch Jeanne plucking Nicole’s eyebrows. Nicole had thick, dark black hair. She was at an age then (thirteen), shortly before she met Billy, when image and appearance meant everything. She had the “perfect little body,” remembered Allegra, and Jeanne always wanted to make sure she felt good about herself.