Nicole took a breath, then laughed.
“I’m sorry to laugh,” she said before turning quite serious, adding, “but you’re making me sick.”
Ending what had amounted to three days of testimony, Garrity asked Nicole to read from a Christmas card she had sent to her grandparents, Jeanne’s father and stepmother, during the 2004 holiday season. In portions of the letter accompanying the card, Nicole spoke of how hard the holiday season was for her.
“Believe it or not,” she wrote, in a failed attempt to gain their sympathy, likely because no one from Jeanne’s side of the family had ever been up to the prison to visit her, “I miss her just as much as you.”
“It was only after you struck the deal [with prosecutors],” Garrity said in closing, “were you willing to take responsibility for your actions.”
The courtroom rustled a bit. It was a smart move on Garrity’s part to put some of the focus on Nicole and imply, in not as many words, that Jeanne Dominico would not have been murdered if his client had never met her daughter. And that Nicole was only willing to say she had taken part in her mother’s murder when her testimony served her own purpose—and afforded her the opportunity to receive a lighter sentence.
CHAPTER 77
Although few knew the impact her testimony was going to have, the state’s most anticipated witness, Tina Bell, spent the Fourth of July holiday thinking about what she was going to say on the stand. Tina was prepared to provide Will Delker and Kirsten Wilson with a version of manipulation, mind control and influence by Billy Sullivan that was stunningly similar to what Nicole had explained in brief while on the witness stand. Jurors would no doubt compare the two situations. More than that, Tina was going to offer a second confession of the murder Billy had made a year after his first.
Quite nervous, Tina walked into the courtroom on Tuesday, July 5, wearing a white blouse and black skirt. She looked as beautiful as ever. Her reddish hair flowed down past her shoulders and accented her perfectly tanned, bronze skin. Now sixteen years old, Tina lived with a friend and had, in many ways, become a woman, setting out in life on her own, which she had discussed at length with Billy in the dozens of letters they had shared throughout the summer and early fall of 2004.
Now Tina was taking back control of her life. She had allowed Billy to exploit her vulnerability and expose her weaknesses. Every promise he had made, every lie, every filthy sexual fantasy, were coming back to kick him. Tina was not about to withhold anything. Her testimony was going to be powerful. She was not a central part of the case in a sense that she was connected to Jeanne or Nicole. She was an outsider, someone who had allowed adolescence and ignorance to dictate the decisions she had made. An obviously disturbed man had trampled over Tina’s spirit. This was her chance to begin again. Right a wrong.
Wilson questioned Tina, leading her carefully through the details of her story. At first, Tina spoke of how she met Billy and became entrapped immediately in the lies he spun so well.
“He told me he was innocent and that he was going to get out soon. We started making these plans. He told me he wanted to get married.”
It all sounded so familiar.
Sometime later, Wilson had Tina read a letter Billy had written to her, where he had asked her to “contact Nicole.”
“‘If she doesn’t testify,’” Tina read aloud in her naive little voice, “‘we both walk. No joke. This is the break I need. My life is in your hands.’”
The jury paid close attention. It was the first time, essentially, the jury had an understanding of Billy’s concern over Nicole’s testimony. He was worried she might destroy his chances of being acquitted. If he was insane, some had to consider, how could he manage to come up with such a diabolical, concerted plot?
Sensing Tina’s obvious edginess, Wilson asked Tina if Billy ever mentioned the “idea of emancipating [you] from [your] parents?”
“We both threw the idea around, but I cannot recall who actually brought it up.”
Billy’s letters to Tina, which the jury was going to have access to during deliberations, proved he brought it up.
The plan, said Tina, was for her to take off to Rhode Island and go live with Billy’s aunt—until, of course, he was found not guilty. Then they could be together.
Tina explained how, over a period of days, she fell for the plan. Then, as if the state scripted the line, Tina offered, “He said, ‘No matter what my mother would say or do, nothing could keep us away from each other.’”
Those words shocked the gallery, and, no doubt, jurors. It was as if Nicole were back on the stand explaining the progress of her relationship with Billy.
“What type of questions did Mr. Sullivan ask when you first started writing to each other?”
Wilson was outlining a pattern of behavior, proving to jurors how Billy went from one young girl to the next, barely changing his shtick.
“He asked me normal stuff, like what I liked to do, the songs I listened to,” remarked Tina, who appeared more relaxed as her testimony carried forth.
But what about the charges he faced? Didn’t that worry you? Weren’t you at least curious as to why he was facing life behind bars?
“He said he was set up by the police—and by Nicole. He said Nicole had another boyfriend and that they killed Jeanne.”
Tina believed it all.
After several questions relating to how fast their relationship escalated, Wilson had Tina focus on the day she met Billy for the first time in person.
“His aunt brought me to the jail…. I used a fake name to sign in…. Billy’s aunt arranged it. She picked me up at a pharmacy.”
After Tina’s friends went to her parents and told them about Billy, Tina explained to the jury, she lied to Billy and told him she was pregnant. Tina said she was frightened of him by that point. Even terrified. He was a murderer. He had killed a woman in a savage fashion.
When Wilson concluded her questioning, Richard Monteith stood up and shook his head. In the grand scope of it all, Monteith had to know there wasn’t much he could do to impeach Tina’s testimony. It was powerful evidence, painful, for sure, to listen to. The best way to approach Tina might be to ask a few unimportant questions and get her off the stand.
Monteith’s main theme was obvious as he began his questioning. Billy had lied throughout their relationship, right?
Yes.
So why would Tina believe him when he admitted killing Jeanne? Couldn’t that statement also have been another one of his lies?
Tina said it sent her running to the Internet to look up his case again.
“And you do a word search for William Sullivan, right?”
“Yes.”
“And articles pop up in that word search, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall how many articles popped up?”
“I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.”
A few more questions later: “OK. Now, in these articles, you did find out that he was in jail for murder, right?”
“Yes.”
“You learn that he tried to or is charged with trying to blow up the house, right?”
“Yes.”
From there, Monteith talked about the other ways in which Nicole and Billy tried to kill Jeanne. He wondered if Tina knew about those, too.
She said she knew of the bleach episode, but not the attempt with cold medicine.
But that was also readily available information online. How could she not know?
Billy’s defense was trying to back Tina into a corner and show the jury that she knew she was corresponding with a potentially dangerous person, yet continued the relationship, anyway. Now feeling scorned, she was perhaps getting back at him. It wasn’t such a stretch to think that instead of Billy explaining all those details, that she went online and read up on the case herself so she could stick it to him good.
“But at that point he was telling me that it was all a big setup,” explained Tina, resolutely defending her actions
.
Monteith ignored the comment. Instead, he kept working toward an obvious agenda.
“Now, in September 2004, you receive a letter that scares you, right?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s this letter,” he said, then stopped to change the subject and make a point: “You saved a lot of his letters. Is that fair to say?”
“Yes.”
“[But] this letter we don’t have, right?”
“No.”
“This letter, the letter we don’t have, is where Billy supposedly tells you that he tried to set the bed on fire, right?”
“Yes.”
“And the other two acts, too. He tried to blow up the house by putting a rope in the oil tank, right?”
Tina thought about it for a moment. She sensed the lawyer was trying to confuse her, or worse, imply that the information in the letters Tina claimed Billy wrote to her—in which he admitted killing Jeanne—was accessible to her on the Internet. She could be making it all up.
“I didn’t know about the rope, either, but yeah.”
“Would you agree with me that all that information that was supposedly in these letters is also on the Internet?”
It was a tenable route to go down; however, it would have worked better if Billy had denied any part in the murder whatsoever. Here, Billy admitted killing Jeanne, but was trying to prove he was insane at the time. Why try to make Tina out to be a liar if her testimony could actually bolster Billy’s core argument? To many, Monteith’s questioning made very little sense. He came across as a bully.
“Not all of the information,” Tina answered firmly, with confidence.
Next came a few of the letters Tina saved. Monteith had her read portions of them. He kept trying to get Tina to confess that the admission letter Billy wrote to her could have been an object of her imagination and never actually existed.
But Tina held tough. She stood by her words and contention.
Ending his questioning, Monteith provided a document to the court that showed a list of visitors to the jail on the day Tina said she went to see Billy with his aunt. The list did not include Tina’s given name, or the alias she claimed she used to trick the jail into thinking she was related to Billy. Tina couldn’t explain it, but for some reason her made-up name never made it on the list.
“As much as I did testify against Billy,” Tina summed up later, speaking of the relationship she had with him, “he couldn’t, overall, help what happened to him and how his life turned out. The type of person that he is, I wouldn’t want it to look like he is a complete bad guy. He did not completely manipulate me…and I never felt that way about him. He never really had a chance. He should be punished for what he did—and what he did was a horrible crime—but he had it rough at home growing up. The story of him is completely different. If we took pity on people like that, the world would be chaotic. But it’s sad that he is a ‘good person’ and he is in jail. But I felt that testifying was the right thing to do. I needed to do it.”
Tina Bell was Will Delker and Kirsten Wilson’s final witness.
CHAPTER 78
Patricia Sullivan appeared in court sheepish and distressed. Her teenage daughters, one of whom was obviously pregnant, were there, too, in full support of Billy. The family had been torn apart by Billy’s arrest. One could say he had been the Sullivan family anchor. He kept everyone grounded and partly supported them. Now Billy was facing the rest of his life behind bars. What could Pat say to a jury to change any of it?
Pat’s job on the stand was to explain how tortured Billy’s young life had been. Part of her testimony was going to expose her own flaws, maybe even at risk of alienating certain jurors. But Pat surely understood her presence on the witness stand wasn’t about her; it was about helping her son, whom she believed in and stood behind, despite how his life had turned out.
Paul Garrity started off slow, having Pat describe where she lived, her children, when she moved to Willimantic and the circumstances surrounding Billy’s birth.
Next he asked Pat what she was doing “in terms of behaviors” while she was pregnant with Billy.
Pat didn’t hesitate.
“I drank every day and smoked cigarettes.”
She seemed quite saddened by this, but what else could she say?
After describing—in rather eyebrow-raising detail—Billy’s troubled childhood, Garrity led Pat into a dialogue regarding the litany of medications Billy had been on throughout his life. It was sobering for some to sit and listen to a rapid-fire exchange between Pat and her son’s attorney, exposing a list of drugs that doctors experimented on with Billy. It was clear Billy was a guinea pig of sorts, allowing doctors to try different combinations of meds on him to see what worked best. Yet, as Pat told it, his behavior got worse—not better—as time went on. He became violent and unpleasant to be around. He acted out over the slightest change in environment. One of his sisters or Pat would say something and Billy was off on a tirade.
“While he was on these medications, was it having an effect?”
“Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t,” answered Pat in a stoic manner, flatly recalling what were some of the most trying times of her life. “Sometimes they (the medications) would, [and] if they had, say, put him on two or three meds and they weren’t working, then they would add another one and another one until at one point he was on seven or eight at one time.”
Kirsten Wilson didn’t have much for the heavyset, curly-haired mother of Billy Sullivan when she took a crack at cross-examining her. But she did make a point to bring up an interview Detective Denis Linehan had conducted with Pat three days after Jeanne was murdered. Reading from a police report, the state prosecutor implied Pat had told Linehan that Billy was “doing fine” the past couple of years.
“Fine” was a relative term. Wilson was curious how Pat defined the word.
As Wilson read from the report, Pat indicated several times she couldn’t recall saying some of the things Linehan claimed she had, and believed she might have been “in shock” when Linehan questioned her.
Beyond that, Pat exited the witness stand with some dignity left, thus paving the way for Garrity and Monteith’s psychological experts.
CHAPTER 79
Dr. Bernard Barile was a well-respected staff member of Riverview Children’s Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut, and had been for nearly two decades. When Billy became a part of the state of Connecticut’s psychiatric system, Barile was the doctor in charge of his case. Billy was thirteen the first time he and Barile met. Barile told jurors Billy was a “boy flooded with emotions…[and] out of touch with reality….”
Didn’t that describe millions of young boys?
Still, it was hard evidence. Billy had no reason to lie to Barile back in 1998, when Barile started treating him. He was a troubled boy who had grown up in an environment prone to producing emotional problems. In essence, Barile was saying it wasn’t Billy’s fault he had turned out the way he did.
Barile had given Billy several psychological tests and evaluated his condition over a period of twelve months. One of his methods was the infamous “inkblot,” clinically known as the Rorschach test, which, according to Barile, “showed that [Billy] is a seriously disturbed boy…with a peculiar way of seeing the world.”
Throughout his testimony, Barile seemed to back up the defense’s core argument—Billy was insane; he knew not what he did, couldn’t possibly be held accountable for his actions and needed to be locked up in an institution so he could get the help he should have gotten long ago.
There had been some question, however, whether Barile knew Billy (and, more important, his case) as well as he claimed.
“Now, in writing Billy Sullivan’s report, what documents did you read or rely on before writing your report?”
“Some of the reports from the Newington Children’s Hospital, the admission note, and I believe there’s a report from the Institute of Living. And they referenced other hospital settings that he
had been in.”
“OK. What did the Newington Children’s Hospital report indicate to you? What did you read in that report?”
“The pieces that were germane for my assessment was where they described Billy as feeling not normal and also where they pointed out at the end that he would need a structured environment because he lacked internal psychological structure.”
“OK. What did you rely on in that report?”
“Well, the descriptions of him having a lower frustration tolerance and descriptions of him as having been diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder.”
“What did that mean to you?”
“This was likely a boy who has poor controls. He can’t control his emotions, is susceptible to outbursts, becoming explosive. Things of that nature.”
Everything Barile said seemed to fit into Billy’s insanity defense.
Will Delker had a different view of Barile’s opinions, and was about to expose a few facts that weighed heavily on the doctor’s credibility.
Barile’s first evaluation of Billy was quite a bit different from the opinion he now held, for example, and Delker was quick to take the doctor to task for suggesting otherwise.
“You described Mr. Sullivan,” suggested Delker, reading from a report, “as oriented…organized [and] able to think things through.”
Discharging Billy from the hospital, doctors found Billy showed “no evidence of psychotic symptoms.” Surprisingly, Barile wasn’t one of the doctors to note Billy’s condition upon discharge.
Delker had made his point. The doctor answered several more questions on cross and redirect, and was asked to step down.
On Friday, July 8, Paul Garrity and Richard Monteith called Dr. Richard Barnum, a child adolescent psychiatrist with nearly thirty years of experience and a medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. They had hired Barnum to evaluate Billy.
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