Because You Loved Me

by M. William Phelps

  Jeanne Dominico was being attacked savagely with a knife and Billy Sullivan felt frightened.

  Billy later claimed that when Jeanne raised her voice at him, it triggered the attack. Once they started arguing and Jeanne yelled, he said, he felt he couldn’t stop himself from going after her. He even fantasized for a brief moment that “there was something [he] could [do to] make Jeanne lose her memory,” so she could forget about what had just happened. There was a moment while they fought when Billy said he considered, If I would have just hit her in the back of the head, she would not have seen me.

  At some point, while Billy struck Jeanne with a second knife, he dropped it on the floor. Jeanne got up off the ground, picked the knife up and ran at him. But as she tried to stab him, she slipped on her own blood, bumped into Billy’s side and went headfirst into the Plexiglas portion of the door, pushing the middle window out in a weblike crack.

  From there, Billy grabbed a third knife and let loose in a flurry of motions, stabbing Jeanne anywhere he could get in a blow. In a quick burst of forward thrusts, he kept going and going until Jeanne stopped fighting. As this happened, Billy later told a friend, “I felt as if I was watching the entire scene on a television screen—looking at it all through someone else’s eyes.”

  “What was going through my mind,” Billy explained to police, “is, no matter what you do, if she’s…If I leave now, she’ll bleed and call 911 and the cops will be at your door in an hour. If you finish it, you have at least that little chance of getting out of there.”

  Billy remembered stabbing Jeanne “eight times.” In truth, the medical examiner counted forty stab wounds: two in Jeanne’s back, one on her wrist, seven to her chest and throat, six to her face, thirteen on the right side of her head, two on the left and nine in the back of her neck and head.

  When Billy finally stopped stabbing Jeanne, he went straight for the door. What he didn’t notice then was that he had left bloody prints on the knives he had used, the baseball bat, a palm print on the refrigerator, which authorities believed happened as he and Jeanne fought, and a large print of his hand on the carpet in the living room, notwithstanding several bloody footprints throughout the living room.

  As he grabbed the door handle to leave, Billy looked down. He noticed blood all over his clothes, face, hands.

  He was covered.

  With a punctured lung, Jeanne struggled to breathe.

  “S- - -,” Billy said, looking at himself, “what do I do now?”

  “OK,” he remembered hearing Jeanne say as she took her last breath, “I’m done.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Billy Sullivan was a control freak. He was jealous beyond anything Nicole had experienced before meeting him. Nicole rarely left her house. It wasn’t, she explained later, that she didn’t want to, but Billy “thought I was always out with some guy, having sex with some guy.” So she decided that to avoid any snappish, accusatory jabs from Billy, it was better to just stay home.

  A prisoner.

  Nicole had given her telephone number to another boy she met online near the same time she hooked up with Billy. Adam was a nice kid, she explained. Just a friend she could confide in and talk to like a girlfriend. Billy got the kid’s name from Nicole one night as they talked (he was an expert at getting things out of Nicole without her knowledge of his manipulative ways). After that day, Nicole recalled, “Every time I wanted to do anything, Billy’s like, ‘I know you’re out with Adam. I know you’re screwing Adam.’”

  The thought of cheating on Billy was so far removed from Nicole’s mind that whenever Billy mentioned it, she felt “awful.” It got to the point that when Nicole did leave the house, she had to telephone Billy and tell him where she was going and when she’d be back.

  “And if I wasn’t there when he called, it was like there would be hell to pay.”

  As the months of their relationship progressed, Nicole said she fell under Billy’s complete spell. What was once a normal mother-daughter relationship she had with Jeanne turned into a festering hatred—mostly, Nicole insisted, because of Billy’s constant mind control. School became secondary to Billy. Work slacked. Extracurricular activities were no longer an option. Even sleep, Nicole admitted, was a chore.

  “…Because I wanted to talk to him so much.”

  It was “all about Billy. I didn’t want to do anything other than talk to him. And the way I felt about him was so strong that I cared about everything he thought, that he felt, that he did. And if he was telling me something, well, I believed it one hundred percent.”

  Near the end of Jeanne’s life, she, Nicole and Drew argued almost daily. Because Nicole was on the telephone with Billy for most of her waking hours, Billy was privy to the different points of view, listening on the other end of the line as they went at it. No matter what the quarrel was about, who was right or wrong, Billy spun the result of it into a way to make Nicole believe no one cared about her.

  “See,” Billy said one night after Nicole and Jeanne screamed at each other for five minutes while he listened, “they don’t care about you. They don’t want to see you happy. Look what they’re doing to you. They’re making you miserable.”

  Nicole had a tough time, she claimed, listening to, or believing, anyone else but Billy.

  “I mean, after you hear that one time, it will probably go in one ear and out the other. But Billy said it so often that I just ended up starting to believe it. And that changed everything.”

  So when it came time for Nicole to play a part in her mother’s murder and help Billy, he knew damn well she was going to do what he said, no questions asked.

  CHAPTER 52

  Nicole was getting nervous. Sitting in Billy’s car at 7-Eleven, waiting for him to return, she wondered what was going on inside the house. Looking in all directions, fidgeting with Billy’s cell phone, Nicole wondered why he hadn’t returned yet.

  What is taking so damn long?

  Meanwhile, Billy was “panicking” as he stood by the door wondering what to do next. He had just taken Jeanne’s life. He was covered with blood. He needed to change clothes, get back to the car and get the hell out of town.

  “So what I did was…the second I was done…it, you know, turned into a wrestling match. God, it did. So after the thing was done,” Billy said, he then walked over Jeanne’s body and ran up the stairs.

  “Stupid me,” he added, “running with my bloody shoes up the stairs.”

  He left a bloody trail of footprints throughout the house without realizing it.

  When he got upstairs, Billy grabbed the first jacket he saw. Ran back downstairs. Threw it on the floor next to Jeanne and spread it out. Then he stripped down to his underwear, placed all his clothes in the jacket, folded it up and went into the bathroom to wash the blood off his hands and arms before putting on a fresh set of clothes.

  After getting dressed, he ran out the door and headed for 7-Eleven. At that moment, Nicole was leaning against the back of the hood “reading a magazine.”

  “It’s done…. Let’s go,” said Billy, startling Nicole, slapping the hood of his car.

  “What…what’s happening?”

  “Son of a bitch, I left my inhaler in the house. I need a towel. You gotta go back in there and get it.”

  They got into the car. Billy’s eyes, Nicole said, “were bulging out of his head.” He looked stressed beyond belief. He couldn’t keep still.

  Manic.

  “Why are you wearing different clothes?” asked Nicole.

  “S- - -, s- - -, s- - -. I had to change clothes in the house because there was so much blood.”

  Nicole took a closer look. Billy still had blood on his shirt and face.

  “Oh my God, Billy,” she said.

  “Give me that Mountain Dew,” Billy said, pointing to a bottle of soda lying on the floorboard.

  Nicole watched Billy take a good slug of the soda. And when he came up for air, he looked at her and said, “You have to go back into the house.”


  “What?”

  Billy started the car.

  “I need a wet towel to clean myself off. You have to see if I left anything behind.”

  “No way. There’s no way I can do that.”

  Nicole was now crying uncontrollably. It was the first time she could recall where she had ever said no to a request Billy had made. “I never said no to him, ever. I always did what he wanted me to do.”

  “You have to do your part! Come on, Nicole. I just did this huge thing and…you…you have to help me.”

  Taking a left out of 7-Eleven, Billy hit the gas and traveled about sixty miles per hour down Deerwood, making a sharp right onto Dumaine. He then flew around the corner, barreling his way toward Jeanne’s house.

  “You’re going in the house, Nicole.”

  Crying, “I don’t want to see it.”

  “I don’t care. You’re going in to get that stuff.”

  “I know what you did. I don’t want to see it.”

  Nicole let out a gasp.

  “Shut up,” said Billy.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Nicole was losing it quickly. She couldn’t believe he had actually done it. What might have seemed like some sort of Dungeons & Dragons dare had turned into reality in a flash.

  At this point, Billy later claimed, Nicole said, “Well, now we’re going to be together.” She seemed happy it was over, he insisted.

  Regardless, Billy pulled into Jeanne’s driveway.

  “Get out. I’ll meet you in the bank parking lot. Go! Go! Now.”

  As Billy pulled out of the driveway, Nicole, trembling and crying, walked toward the house. After opening the breezeway door, she grabbed the screen-door handle, then tried to push open the solid door heading into the house.

  But it wouldn’t move. Something was blocking it from behind.

  Forcing it open a crack, Nicole looked in. It was Jeanne’s lifeless body.

  “At first,” recalled Nicole, “I only saw her left foot. And there was blood on half of it.”

  Realizing it was her mother’s body blocking the door, Nicole took a step back.

  “I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t know what to do. I was thinking, ‘What’s going on? What am I doing? Why do I have to do this?’”

  The influence Billy had over Nicole, however, was more empowering than her will. Standing there, Nicole realized Billy was counting on her. She felt she had to do what he said. No question about it. She feared his reaction if she didn’t.

  So Nicole built up a bit of courage and pushed the door open with all her might. Walking in, she saw the woman who had given her life lying dead on the kitchen floor. Blood was all over the room. Household items smashed and tossed about as if the place had been burgled. The countertop was a mess. Jeanne’s eyes were open.

  “Billy was depending on me.”

  For a moment, as Nicole walked through the kitchen, stepping over her mother’s body, she “lost track of what” she was supposed to do. After making her way into the bathroom, grabbing a towel and wetting it, she headed for the door. As she made her way through the kitchen, Nicole noticed the broken knife blade on the floor.

  “So I picked it up and I left.”

  Leaving the breezeway, she ran toward the bank parking lot. Billy was pulling into the parking lot as she came out of her backyard and approached the car. On the opposite side of Billy’s car, several yards away, was a sewer drain. Nicole tossed the knife blade into the drain and hopped into Billy’s car.

  CHAPTER 53

  Billy Sullivan was panicky and hyper. Watching Nicole run from the yard to the car, he stared at Jeanne’s house, then looked in all directions, anticipating someone watching them.

  When Nicole hopped into the front seat, she screamed.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. She’s dead, Billy!”

  Billy got angry. He banged on the steering wheel, then tried calming Nicole down, soothing her, telling her everything was going to be all right.

  Crying, she wasn’t listening.

  “I know you just saw the worst thing in the world,” Billy said after a moment, “but I just did the worst thing in the world.”

  Nicole didn’t respond.

  “I just looked at him and shut up.”

  She was terrified.

  Up the road from Jeanne’s house was the Pheasant Lane Mall. Billy parked near the Christmas Tree Shops after stopping by an ATM to withdraw some money.

  “Go in and get me clothes. I can’t wear these. There’s blood all over them.”

  Nicole was still crying, shaking her head.

  “OK,” she agreed.

  After purchasing a shirt—it was all she could find—Nicole ran out into the parking lot and jumped back into Billy’s car.

  They took off.

  Next Billy stopped at JCPenney just down the road. Nicole went in and bought a pair of pants and socks. She put the receipt in her front pocket.

  From JCPenney, Billy drove to the Tyngsboro AMC Movie Theatre so he could change clothes in the back parking lot. It was dark there by the pond.

  Perfect.

  Right here.

  “We can throw all the clothes in there,” Nicole mentioned, pointing to the water.

  “No, there’s too many people around.”

  When Billy finished getting dressed, they took off toward Massachusetts.

  As they drove through the backcountry roads of Nashua, Billy kept repeating himself: “Let’s drop the stuff here,” motioning toward an area alongside the road. “What about here?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. No. No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want those things out in public, Billy.”

  Finally Billy came upon the entrance to Overlook Golf Course in Hollis, a few exits east of Nashua. He pulled into the driveway and found a dirt road heading into a wooded area.

  “We have to get all the stuff out of the trunk,” said Billy, “and throw it in the woods here.”

  “No, Billy.”

  Nicole stood up to him, she recalled later, for what had been the second time that night, forcefully saying she didn’t want any part of seeing the bat, knives, his clothes, anything.

  “You need to take care of this,” snapped Billy. “You need to do it. If I get out and do it, well, it’s gonna take too long. I’ll just pull up there and you run out and get it done.”

  Billy pulled into a somewhat secluded area. After looking in all directions, he popped the trunk from inside the car. Nicole jumped out without thinking, grabbed everything in the trunk she could find, the clothes on the backseat, and placed them into a bag. Not too far from the car, she found a tree and tossed the bag behind it.

  It had been a chaotic few hours for Billy and Nicole—but things were calming down now. As they drove away from Overlook, Billy suggested they go see Amanda, Jeanne’s best friend, to set some sort of alibi in play. On top of that, the trip would be worthwhile to see if Amanda knew anything about the crime that she might have heard from the news or someone they knew.

  Walking out of Amanda’s after a quick visit, Billy drove back to Nashua. He wanted to drive by the house first, to see what was going on. But as they got closer, he panicked and pulled into the Dunkin’ Donuts up the street.

  “I want you to check if there’s anything else in the trunk we might have missed.”

  Nicole got out of the car. Standing underneath the parking-lot lights so she could see, she noticed the handle of a knife standing out.

  “S- - -,” she said, looking around to see if anyone was watching.

  Certain no one was, Nicole picked up the knife handle and threw it in the bushes near the car.

  “You remember what we talked about?” Billy asked as he pulled out onto Amherst, heading toward Jeanne’s.

  Nicole nodded.

  “Here we go,” said Billy. “You need to promise me that you will never tell anybody what really happened—including the police.”

  “I promise, Billy. I promise.”

&
nbsp; Nicole stared out the window. She watched the lights of the cars and the dozens of restaurants and retail stores along Amherst in a blur as they passed her by. If they were going to pull this off, she had to collect herself before they returned to the house.

  CHAPTER 54

  Later that night and into the early-morning hours of Thursday, August 7, Nicole sat with Detective Mark Schaaf and described her role in her mother’s murder. Once detectives separated Billy and Nicole and asked pointed questions, Nicole realized there was no way out of it. When Schaaf spotted the receipt in her pocket and asked about it, Nicole felt police were close to figuring out what she and Billy had done. But then Schaaf, an experienced interrogator, said, “We’ve found blood in the car. You know, Nicole, manslaughter isn’t as bad a charge as homicide.”

  Was it true—that is, police finding blood in the car?

  “If they had really found blood in the car,” Nicole said later, “I didn’t think that there was any way to still be thought of as innocent. And he was…Billy told me to promise him that no matter what, that I wouldn’t tell them what really happened.”

  When Schaaf brought up the possibility of manslaughter charges, as opposed to first-degree murder, Nicole said she “stared at the floor for about twenty minutes” trying to come up with a story that might still get her out of it.

  “Me and my mom got into an argument,” she told Schaaf. “She hit me and pulled me back and told me not to leave the house.” Billy was there, Nicole explained. He got “really, really angry that she was putting her hands on me or whatever. And then he just went after her.”

  Schaaf looked into Nicole’s eyes. “No kidding,” he said condescendingly.

  Sometime later, Schaaf brought up the fact that Billy was in another room telling detectives a different story.

  “After,” Nicole recalled, “they told me that Billy was telling the truth.”