Shallow Graves

by Maureen Boyle

  Frankie later credited the detective with being the first to take seriously Nancy’s disappearance, to believe she wasn’t an addict who just went off with junkie friends to get high. He would say John Dextradeur was the first to believe him, the first to suspect a deadly pattern might be emerging in the city. Frankie didn’t realize back then the detective also considered him a possible suspect. When Nancy went missing, city detectives and the state police homicide investigators assigned to the district attorney’s office were working on another case taxing resources: the drowning deaths of four people, including two children, after an overloaded boat with fifteen people capsized in the city’s harbor following the Fourth of July fireworks display. Investigators were building a manslaughter case against the man helming the boat. There was little time to spare on a city detective’s hunch.

  By the end of August, Judy would see the contents of her sister’s apartment piled outside in the trash. Friends would tell her they saw mail scattered on the ground. The apartment was emptied out, ready for a new tenant. Nancy was still gone. Judy feared any evidence that might have been inside the place was now gone too.

  2BODIES

  WITH TEMPERATURES HOVERING IN THE EIGHTIES, it was a perfect day for boating.

  It was July 3, a Sunday, and Alan Alves had waited weeks for this day when he could kick off the Fourth of July weekend cruising his spanking-new blue twenty-foot Bonito through the waters of Long Pond in Freetown, Massachusetts. He had been waiting years to finally buy this boat and, about a month earlier, he had convinced his wife, Donna, to let him spend the $18,000 to do it. They had three children, two still at home, and as a police sergeant in Freetown, population 8,500, he was earning just $38,000 if you included overtime and paid details. Alves grew up in Freetown and, as one of the few Cape Verdeans in town, was one of just a handful of people of color in the rural community sandwiched between the mill cities of New Bedford and Fall River. He knew every corner of the town. He could describe the dark corners of the expansive state forest where he believed a satanic cult worshiped in the early 1980s. He could rattle off the names of the families who had owned acres of land for generations. He loved the cool breezes across Long Pond, the shallow warm waterway nestled in one corner of town. His family, like others in town, went back generations in Freetown. Most of his extended family lived within walking distance from his house.

  He knew from age ten that he wanted to be a cop. He remembers at age seven seeing Superman on television and telling people he wanted to be a crime-fighting superhero. But he didn’t see any Cape Verdean cops in his hometown growing up. He didn’t see any cops of color anywhere. Go to technical school, he remembers a high school counselor telling him. Being a black cop just wasn’t going to happen.

  He started as an auxiliary officer at age twenty-three in 1971, a volunteer job he juggled with a full-time job as a union drywall carpenter. He thought he would land a full-time spot pretty quickly, like most auxiliary officers did. He was a townie through and through. Townies got the town jobs.

  He took the town’s police test and aced it, twice. He would later say he scored so high the first time—the highest of those vying for the Freetown slot—that someone accused him of cheating. A black guy couldn’t beat out all of those whites, he was told. So he took the test again—and again scored high. After two and a half years as an auxiliary, he was finally appointed a full-time cop. For his first assignment on the midnight-to-eight shift he said he was ordered to wash and wax the cruisers in between calls. He would drive a cruiser from the police station to the elementary school three miles away, clean it then drop it back off. None of the other new guys did that, he recalled.1 He would be assigned to the cruiser with the bald tires, with headlights that would heat up and short out. At first he complained privately to a friend who was a town official. He didn’t want to cause trouble. He just wanted to be a regular cop on his hometown force.

  Then he was passed over for promotion to sergeant, even though he had seniority. He filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the state board handling civil rights and discrimination cases. The town was forced to promote him. Then he was passed over for a second promotion. He filed another complaint and won. By 1988, Alves was known as a cop who wasn’t afraid of challenging the town. He would eventually win, years and a third complaint later, a total of $750,000 once it was all settled.

  But he didn’t have any of that money when he first spied that boat in Captain Bub’s Marine. When he went for a ride with his wife a month earlier, the first spot they went to, the only place he really wanted to bring her, was to Captain Bub’s.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” he told her. “Wouldn’t you just love being on it?”

  “We’re not getting a boat,” she said. “We don’t need a boat.”

  She made up her mind, he knew by her tone. So they hopped back into their fiberglass black two-seater Pontiac Fiero and headed home.

  Less than five minutes into the ride, she turned to him. “You really want that boat, don’t you?” she asked. “Turn around. Let’s get it.”

  Within an hour, Alan Alves was the proud owner of a brand-new blue-and-white inboard/outboard Bonito. Everything was special about the boat, from the two captain’s chairs in the front to the name on the side. It had an eight-foot-wide beam, a cuddy cabin, a porta-potty, and a canvas top. The registration ended with AA, his initials. He named it Mr. Meanor and painted a pair of handcuffs on the side. Some people dreamed of the perfect car. Alves dreamed of—and had—his perfect boat.

  He put it in the water at a buddy’s dock on Long Pond a week or so before the Fourth of July holiday and planned to spend a couple of days on it, tooling around the water there, making sure there weren’t any problems before trailering it to open waters in Fall River later in the month.

  Alves had packed a cooler and a small bag that Sunday morning and was looking forward to a relaxing weekend and, hopefully—using some vacation time—taking off part of the upcoming week during this unseasonably hot summer.

  He pulled down his buddy’s driveway around noon and was getting out. Alves could feel a slight breeze. This would be a good day, he thought.

  Eeep. Eeep. Eeep.

  Alves heard the annoying sound and felt the vibration of his Motorola beeper. As the sole detective on the department, he was on call 24–7, even on holiday weekends.

  Crap.

  He took a deep breath. Maybe it was something minor, he thought hopefully. He reached down and pulled out the bulky cell phone he kept in a suitcase-like box in the car. He liked gadgets, and this phone was the ultimate of gadgets. It was cool. Miami Vice cool.

  There was a body northbound on Route 140, just over the Lakeville town line, the dispatcher told him. Head over there. State police will meet you.

  He went home, picked up his unmarked cruiser, and zipped up to the highway where two Lakeville officers waited.

  About thirty feet off the road, in the brush, lay the remains of what appeared to be a partially clad woman, a bra wrapped around her neck. A woman who stopped along the roadway to relieve herself in the brush had discovered the body, he learned.

  “It’s all yours,” one Lakeville officer said, before eventually taking off in the cruiser.2

  Finding bodies along a highway happened sometimes. A few years earlier, the skull of a man was discovered on Interstate 195 in a nearby town. The skull was examined, and eventually an artist crafted a model of what the man might have looked like. Police circulated that image nationwide. He was still unidentified. But Alves was pretty certain this would be different. The area was pretty close-knit. If a woman were missing, someone would know. This woman would not be nameless long, he was convinced.

  To seasoned investigators there wasn’t anything unusual about the scene. Classic “body dump” is how several would later describe it: a vehicle would pull over; someone hauls a body out and flips it onto the ground then takes off. Far enough from the road to stay hidden, close eno
ugh to the highway so someone wouldn’t have to walk too deep into the woods and risk getting caught by a state trooper passing by.

  That’s what State Trooper William Delaney first thought when he stepped gingerly through the brush that day.3 In Massachusetts, whenever there is an unattended death, such as a homicide, state police investigators assigned to the county district attorney’s office are required to respond to scenes in all but the three largest cities in Massachusetts—Boston, Worcester, and Springfield—where local departments have larger detective and specialty units. At the scenes, they work with the locals and coordinate crime-scene efforts. Technically, the state police are in charge of the cases. In practice, they often share the workload—and credit—with the locals. In the days, weeks, and months after a homicide, the state police officers interview witnesses usually in coordination with the town or city detectives, and hopefully identify the killer or killers. When one of these cases came in, the troopers would take turns going out. This holiday weekend, it was Delaney’s turn to be on call.

  The troopers assigned to the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, on average, went out to fifteen to twenty homicides a year in the 1980s and more than double that in what are called unattended deaths—overdoses, drownings, accidents, and a wide range of other deaths outside a hospital setting where a doctor isn’t present. Most of the cases were in the main cities of the county: New Bedford and Fall River to the south, Taunton to the north, and Attleboro to the west.

  Delaney walked up to the Freetown detective standing at the side of the highway to get the rundown on what was there, gave the scene a quick look then backed away, making sure he didn’t disturb any potential evidence. He could tell, though, it was not a recent death. The body was unrecognizable. The skin, to his eye, looked leatherlike, as if the person had been there for months. The medical examiner, he hoped, would be able to give him more information about how this woman—if it really was a woman—died and how long she had been out here. The state crime-scene investigators, he hoped, might be able to give him a lead on who put her there.

  It would take hours before the medical examiner would remove the body, enough time for someone from the state police photo and fingerprint unit to get there to memorialize the scene in photographs. These were the days before DNA collection was the norm, before crime-scene collection became a widespread law-enforcement art. These were the days of television shows like Magnum, P.I. and Murder, She Wrote, where quick-thinking detectives reigned, not the scientific wizards of CSI and Bones. Old-fashioned interviews, street work, and searching records by hand were what cleared most cases in Bristol County in 1988.

  The troopers in the district attorney’s office were pretty versatile. All had spent time on road patrol. Some worked in other investigative services before coming to the Bristol County office. They knew how to get stuff done and who could do it quickly. They were specialists who also had a good general knowledge of other areas and other jobs. If needed, they could step into any investigation confidently. The state police units assigned to district attorneys in Massachusetts are split into two sections: the body side, where troopers investigate deaths, and the drug side, where the major narcotics investigations are done.

  On this holiday weekend, when folks were heading to Cape Cod on other highways or to family cookouts, it was the uniformed troopers from the Dartmouth barracks who were on hand to wave the few ogling drivers on, stop others from walking to the scene, and offer whatever help Delaney needed.

  The uniformed state troopers stood guard at the scene as the sun set along what is normally a quiet highway leading to New Bedford, waiting for the medical examiner to arrive.

  There was nothing unusual about the case to cops accustomed to death.

  AT THE SOUTHERN MORTUARY in Boston, a state trooper watched as the medical examiner made the distinct incisions on the body as the autopsy began. Troopers—and longtime detectives in local police departments—had long gotten used to the sights and smells of procedure. Well, maybe not quite used to it, but they knew what to expect. Cops early in their careers learned the tricks to observing autopsies. High on the list of necessary accessories was Vick’s VapoRub under the nostrils to deaden the smell of decomposition. “Decomp” is a smell police say is unique. Once you smell it, you never forget it. It is harsh, pungent, and permeates the senses. The scent sticks to your clothes, your skin. Some say it gets into your head. Death does not let go easily.

  But there were few of those smells on this day. The woman had lain dead along the highway in Freetown for months, more than enough time for the bulk of death’s scent to dissipate. What investigators hoped was not gone was evidence telling them how this woman—classified as Jane Doe for now—died and how long she had been exposed to the elements.

  The troopers got some of those answer, or at least thought they did.

  Cause of death: Strangulation.

  Manner of death: homicide.

  Time of death: About nine months earlier, prior to winter.

  Based on decomposition and the skin condition, the body had been out there before winter came, the medical examiner reported to police, anywhere from September to December of 1987. The woman also had been treated for a broken jaw, which was still wired.

  Billy Delaney later went to the newly formed missing-person unit at the state police barracks in Middleboro, a brick building along what was once the main road to Cape Cod before Interstate 495 was extended through the area. There he was given a computer list of 1,724 missing women in Massachusetts who matched the description and death time frame. He went through it. Nothing matched.

  He then checked missing-person reports for January. Then February.

  Nothing.

  The information would eventually be entered into a state and national system with the same results. He put the file for Jane Doe on his desk, a daily visual reminder of a lost, unnamed woman and waited.

  It would be five months before he would learn how wrong the medical examiner had been in estimating time of death. By that time, other bodies would be found and investigators would be on the hunt for a suspected serial killer.

  IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK, on July 30, 1988, more than three weeks after Jane Doe was found in Freetown. Trooper David Wordell was in the Dartmouth state police barracks, about twenty minutes southwest of where that body was found. It was a Sunday, the start of his shift, and he was itching to get on the road. It was hot outside and it was hot inside. It had been unseasonably hot for all of July, and cooler weather wasn’t in the forecast. There was air-conditioning in the state police barracks in Dartmouth—barely. It consisted of a couple of air-conditioner boxes hanging from the windows, blasting cold air in a few corners of the old house. It was best to hit the road in the air-conditioned cruiser.

  First, though, he needed to read the roll-call items: who was wanted, what to be on the lookout for, what major crimes just happened in the area. He exchanged a few words with the trooper working the desk for the evening, and then he headed out.4

  David Wordell wasn’t one to hang around the barracks. There really wasn’t much going on in the white clapboard building on Route 6, down the road from the mall. It was once a house, complete with china cabinets and a fireplace, and it tended to get cramped very quickly—such as when troopers brought in more than one prisoner at a time to be booked and had to handcuff a suspect to a hook attached to the wall in what used to be the dining room. Or on payday when everyone stopped by to pick up his or her check and stayed a few extra minutes to chat.

  David expected a quiet Sunday shift on the road. It was 95 degrees, it was late in the afternoon, and the Cape Cod congestion didn’t really hit the section of Interstate 195 he patrolled. Most of the attention—and traffic—for the day was in Fall River for the Coors International Cycling Pro-Am where a contingent of eight troopers, including four on motorcycles, were covering the race. And that was just fine with him. A few weeks earlier, he had wound up parked in his cruiser for hours in Freetown, guarding
the spot where a woman’s remains were found. He watched as the medical examiner pulled the body—now in a body bag—out of the brush. Then he waited until someone came to relieve him at the end of his shift. That was the most excitement he had had on his shift this summer. Days on the road for a road trooper—at least in D Troop—meant endless loops on the highway, helping disabled motorists, stopping speeders and drunks and keeping an eye out for the occasional wanted criminal.

  He was getting ready to head out when he heard the trooper working the desk tell him to head over to 195 westbound, between the Hixville Road overpass and Reed Road exit. Two guys on motorcycles say they found a body.

  Minutes later, he and another trooper were standing by the side of the road with two motorcycle riders. The riders, Arthur Denham and Francis Carreiro, both of Fall River, pointed into the brush. David walked about fifteen feet down a narrow worn path. Then he saw it—the remains of what appeared to be a woman. Her features were unrecognizable. There was no smell, no flies. No one would ever know she was there, even if they walked a few feet to the right or the left. He remembers thinking it was amazing she was found at all.

  The bikers told the troopers they stopped to take a quick leak by the side of the highway and saw the remains. Fearing they wouldn’t find the spot again, the men flagged down a driver and asked the person to call police. The troopers stayed with the pair, keeping the scene secure, until the detectives from the district attorney’s office showed up. Wordell looked at the path, thinking it looked like one of those narrow “cut-through” trails a person might take to avoid a longer walk. An investigator noticed the worn grass and later wondered if someone had come to the spot before, possibly lingering over the body, raising the possibility the killer returned to the scene to mentally relive the crime.