Billy wrote to different young girls all over New England while incarcerated, yet none sustained his attention more than Tina. From almost the first moment Billy and Tina started communicating, Billy pushed it along at a rapid pace, just as his relationship with Nicole had. He essentially forced himself on Tina. Taking a friendship and turning it into profound emotional commitment, simply by asking personal questions and relating facts about his life, he told Tina he had never opened up to anyone else. He understood Tina’s vulnerability—that she was at odds with her mom and dad and lived away from home. Through his own source of pain, Billy made Tina feel important and necessary; in theory, he took on the role of her guardian.
From a clinical perspective, a pattern emerged. Billy met young girls, threw all sorts of compliments and affection their way, told them what they wanted to hear and then began to manipulate and shape them into what he wanted. Billy must have known that if Tina Bell was hanging around with a girl who dated a guy in jail, well, she was as fragile as a bubble.
All he needed to do now was find her weaknesses.
CHAPTER 58
Tina Bell had no idea she was falling in love with a cold-blooded murderer—a man who had admitted beating his girlfriend’s mother with a baseball bat before stabbing her to death. Nor had she any indication that what Billy was about to ask her to do might land her in a jail cell next to Nicole. Although they hadn’t yet met in person, Tina and Billy’s relationship, after Billy got a glimpse of Tina from the photographs she sent, was in high gear as the first anniversary of Jeanne’s death approached. Tina was now referring to Billy as “sweetie,” signing her letters, “Love you, baby.”
Exactly what Billy wanted.
Tina was not a sheltered adolescent by any means. Although she was young, she had street smarts. As Billy worked his charm, she conducted her own research online and learned all she could about the charges her new boyfriend faced. In his early letters, Billy repeatedly claimed he was innocent.
Tina believed him.
“He said he was set up by the police and Nicole.”
Nicole, Billy said, had been two-timing him and committed the murder with her “other boyfriend.” He’d had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
“I’m innocent,” Billy wrote one day. He explained that his trial was going to bear out the truth. “Just wait and see.”
Tina was infatuated, and began to develop stronger, more intimate feelings as each day passed. She wanted to help Billy. Believed he deserved better.
“I’m being set up,” continued Billy, laying it on with the absolute poise of a predator. “I’m getting out of here soon.”
From that day forward, Billy initiated an intense effort to keep Tina preoccupied, dropping subtle hints of what his case involved, but only from his position. He explained how his attorneys had visited him one day and brought “good news.” He was going to write out the “details” in a letter, he said, but “I won’t bore you now.”
“He told me he was innocent…. We started making these plans. He told me he wanted to get married.”
As they began discussing their future, Billy compared Tina to his mother, saying, “You have a lot of the same qualities…. Family,” he insisted, was the “most important” part of his life. He worried about Pat because he couldn’t get hold of her. He sensed something was wrong. It was “abnormal” for her not to be around when he called.
Be it the chaotic childhood Billy had been exposed to, or an absolute, calculated, conscious effort, if there was one thing Billy Sullivan mastered in his short life, it was an innate ability for inexplicably convincing young girls to trust him. His daily letters soon turned into nightly collect telephone calls to Tina’s house (she had been moving back and forth, between Danielle’s and her parents’). She was under the impression, she later admitted, that her parents’ telephone bill was not to be charged for the calls, so she didn’t worry about it.
In what seemed to have the earmarks of a repeat performance, the first telephone bill Tina got into trouble for with her parents was in the neighborhood of $500. A tongue-lashing by Mom and Dad did nothing to curb Tina’s desire to continue the relationship. She now wanted to meet Billy face-to-face, sit next to him and feel that energy and passion he so elegantly displayed in his writing.
“I love you,” Billy wrote before presenting his feelings in the form of adolescent poetry, which only heightened Tina’s fascination with him. Tina had come from an abusive relationship and Billy seemed to take every thought and feeling she had into the context of his writing. In one breath, he commended Tina for her strong virtues, positive outlook on life and utter refusal to allow her past to pave the way of her future. But then, perhaps in an uncontrolled purge of self-indulgence, Billy used his confinement as a means to draw sympathy.
“Why does the world play tricks on me?” he asked.
He feared what was next for him, “facing life” behind bars. However, it didn’t matter, he said, because he now had Tina to lean on and support him. Anything was possible because “God” had once again placed an “angel” in “my” life.
Age made no difference to Billy. It didn’t matter that Tina was fifteen and he was nineteen. Neither, he said, did the distance between them. When he was released, they’d find a way to work out how to see each other, he promised, regardless of what her parents or anyone else thought.
Tina expressed interest in any court dates Billy had, so she could sit in the courtroom and show her unyielding support for him. He told her he’d definitely let her know when and where.
On August 2, 2004, Billy pressed the relationship to another level. He asked Tina about her sexual desires, her fantasies.
“What are you good at?” she wrote back innocently, meaning building things, drawing, poetry.
Billy took the question as an invitation to explain how well he performed in the bedroom. Then, “Let’s plan our wedding.”
Tina went along with it and referred to herself after that day as “Tina Sullivan.” They set a date for August 1 the following year, only because Billy said he didn’t know when, exactly, he’d be getting out of jail. But it would be “soon,” he assured.
Tina was itching to go up to the prison and meet the man she had, by her own admission, fallen madly in love with. Billy explained how his aunt in Rhode Island could help.
“Use a different name,” he encouraged. “She’ll pick you up.”
If Tina did that, Billy was going to lie to his mother and tell her he had lost his next visit “so she won’t be here.” He didn’t want Tina and his mother to run into each other.
In almost the same set of words he had written to Nicole two years prior, Billy explained next how he hoped Tina wouldn’t be shocked by his expressions of love.
“It may seem sudden, but time is time, love is an emotion…”
He felt bad about saying he loved Tina, then thanked her for sending him money and telephone cards, explaining how good it made him feel when his mother and sisters sent him cash.
“I supported them and in here they support me.”
Without mentioning her by name, Billy talked about his “longest relationship,” for which he dated “May 13, 2002, to August 6, 2003,” the day, of course, he murdered Jeanne. Love, he went on, was an “untouchable and unbreakable” bond that “only gets stronger.” He warned Tina that if she was going to get involved in his life, she’d have to agree with his plans for the future, once he was vindicated and released from prison. Kids and marriage, Billy suggested, were on the top of his list of priorities.
“Passionate nights, not f- - - fests.” A career. College. And, most important, he wanted to “take care of [his] mom because she’s sick….” Quite ironically, he didn’t see the predicament he was in as all that bad, adding, “If it weren’t for [my mother], I would be in real trouble.”
Tina Bell was smitten. Like a GI’s girlfriend, she lapped up every word Billy wrote and believed, unquestionably, she had found the love of her life.
“Ninety-nine percent of all females outside,” the inmate said to Billy in the chow hall, “with a husband or boyfriend inside, cheat on their men.”
“The f- - - they do,” Billy shot back. “That’s a stereotype. All girls are not like that.”
“You’ll see, man. You ain’t been here long enough to know better.”
Billy’s letter was full of insecurity and gratuitous speculation. It might be the case in other relationships, he had convinced himself, but not with him and Tina.
“It’s forever,” he reluctantly asked of their romance. “Right?”
Tina had been writing and telling Billy how much better her life had been since she met him. She had a focus now, if not purpose, on living a healthier lifestyle. She promised Billy she wasn’t going to dabble with alcohol anymore. She was proud of herself for refusing it at a friend’s party earlier that week.
“I will never break your heart, Tina,” Billy told her on the telephone that night. He said the “only tears” she’d ever cry would be “happy ones.”
“I love you, too, Billy. My God, do I love you.”
“Get hold of my aunt so you can come up here and see me.”
“I will. Yes. Tomorrow.”
With the incident apparently behind them, Billy and Tina decided to get back on track. After all, they had a life together to plan.
CHAPTER 59
Although Billy wrote to Tina (or telephoned her) every day since the first week of their relationship, the only day he failed to make contact was on August 6, the first anniversary of Jeanne Dominico’s death. He never gave a reason for it, or mentioned the significance of the day in his letters, but it was a safe bet to assume the day had brought it all back for Billy.
For Chris McGowan, Jeanne’s friends and family, it was obviously a day of mourning. Jeanne had been gone a year, but it seemed like forever. Back in February, Birch Hill Elementary School, where Jeanne had made such an immeasurable mark on students and teachers as a paraprofessional, volunteer and PTO member, honored Jeanne by hosting a memorial service in the auditorium. Some two hundred people attended. Many read poems and told stories of the good times Jeanne had brought to their lives.
The main purpose of the night, according to Chris McGowan, was to “thank” Jeanne for her contributions to the community and to the kids in the school she loved so dearly. When Jeanne left the school to pursue other vocational opportunities, some of the first-grade kids she “assisted,” reported the Nashua Telegraph, “cried and refused to go to school.” They were overwhelmed that Jeanne wouldn’t be bringing her lust for life and glowing personality to the classroom again. It wasn’t going to be the same without her.
One woman, a friend of Jeanne’s, stood at the lectern, which was decorated with flowers, crying through her tribute.
“Jeanne’s warmth, enthusiasm and love for life was contagious and you felt good to be in her company. She was always ready and willing to help others…. She gave unconditionally, without looking for something in return because that”—the woman paused for a moment to collect herself—“is who she was.”
Nicole’s brother, Drew, sat in the front row among family and friends. What a year could do to a teenage kid. Drew had grown so much. He looked different. More mature. A bit more personable. He was noticeably distraught and still struggling with the permanent pain of losing his mother, his friend, the role model for life he had looked up to. After the principal of the school led Drew up to the stage, the boy shook his head, cried and rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t handle it. In back of him on a large video screen was a photograph of Jeanne and Drew at a Little League game. They were smiling, loving life.
It seemed so darn long ago.
“She was a wonderful person,” said Drew, “even though she was my mom,” which brought about a few muffled, forced laughs.
He talked about disappointing his mother during her final days, and how he was feeling regret over it. It was pain that was going to be around for a lifetime, Drew knew, and he had to learn to overcome it. Jeanne wasn’t bouncing through heaven feeling good about him suffering. She’d want him to carry on.
Before he left the stage, Drew thanked his mother for always being there for him, then exited the stage in tears.
Nicole reached out to Drew in a letter a few months before the ceremony. She expressed her sorrow for what she had done and admitted that “what happened deserves no forgiveness,” asking Drew to understand she was “truly sorry” for everything. She called her crimes “selfish and sick.”
There was some concern on Nicole’s part for her little brother because of the “position” she felt she had put him in with her behavior. Nicole was older now—if only by a year. In the letter, she was perhaps pitying herself. She came across as awestruck over her crimes, as if someone else had committed them. It was a subtle indication of how the ripple effect of tragedy and murder directly (and indirectly) influenced different members of the same family. Nicole promised she was “doing her best” to look out for Drew, even though she was behind bars. Borrowing a slogan from Alcoholics Anonymous, she encouraged Drew to take life “one day at a time,” same as she was now doing. She said she never understood the phrase until “all this shit began.”
The girl had conspired to murder her mother and referred to the crime as “shit.” It was enough to enrage Chris McGowan, who saw a copy of the letter.
“I’m sorry I can’t be there,” Nicole wrote near the end of the letter. She said she loved her brother. Then, regarding her mother, “I miss her too.”
According to one source close to him at that time, Drew never responded to Nicole’s letter. He viewed the letter as it appeared: a feeble, almost patronizing, attempt by Nicole at taking responsibility for her crimes. The only thing she seemed sorry about was getting caught and ending up in jail.
CHAPTER 60
On the night of August 7, 2004, Billy Sullivan was in his cell, belly to the floor, using the light protruding underneath a tiny gap between the bottom of the door and the floor to illuminate the piece of paper he was writing on. He couldn’t sleep. Another inmate had stolen his pillow and “the dumbass c/o” (corrections officer) had refused to get him another one. The lights in his ward had been turned out for the night. He considered “pulling a sprinkler,” he wrote, which would sound an alarm and create chaos in the ward, but feared getting sent to maximum security, or put in the hole, would have ruined any chance of seeing Tina anytime soon.
For the past few days, Billy was at odds with his cellmate, the same guy who had introduced him to Tina. He explained to Tina in a series of letters how he was avoiding the guy because, “I want to kick the shit out of him.” He called the guy a “bitch,” someone who depended on tougher people out on the street to do his dirty work for him. He was appalled by his breath, especially, and wondered if he had ever brushed his teeth (“I’ve never seen him do it…”). He was amazed also that Tina’s girlfriend could get close to the guy because of his body odor. Billy called him “nasty” and “filthy.”
Here was Billy, a scrawny little man with a big mouth, speaking of fellow inmates behind their backs as if they were somehow below him. Although some of what he said may have been true, Billy was, more than anything else, trying to impress Tina and show her how “tough” he was—that he didn’t need to depend on anyone but himself. He could “take care” of himself in jail. This was important to Billy. He wanted respect and believed, beyond anyone else, he deserved it.
Billy’s life was centered around every word Tina whispered to him over the telephone or wrote to him in her cutesy, feminine handwriting. He wallowed in re-reading, over and over, the letters she had written. He said it “im
proved his day.” He was bowled over by the idea that Tina considered him to be a “good-looking guy.” He complimented Tina on her people skills and the “good deeds” she had done in her life. A lot of Billy’s sentences began, “When I get out of here,” which, in some respect, kept Tina hanging, anticipating a release date. There was always a pot of gold hidden somewhere within the text of Billy’s missives. And Tina fell into it like a sheepskin coat on a winter’s day. Billy made her feel certain that he wasn’t filling her heart with unrealistic promises that were never going to materialize. She had read a few articles online about Billy’s case and had questions, but Billy talked his way out of any doubt Tina was now bringing up.
“How do you know what I look like?” Billy wondered one night while they were talking. It was a few days before their first scheduled visit. He was curious (but he undoubtedly knew) how Tina had seen a photograph of him. He hadn’t sent her one.
“I went online and saw your picture in the newspaper.”
“Oh,” responded Billy.
One thing kept coming up in Billy’s letters and conversations with Tina. How were they going to, in Billy’s words, “work out the distance between Willimantic, CT, and Manchester, NH” after his release? This bothered Billy. There was no way he could live in New Hampshire, he said. He wanted to “remain free” from the state. People would look at him. Point. Judge him. He was a marked man now. People talked about him as though he were some sort of a sadistic killer. “Prejudice,” Billy explained. He was thinking that although his case was likely to be “dismissed w/o trial,” he could still be retried at any time.
Because You Loved Me Page 23