And today, Maryann would do it all again.
Unless tests on evidence from a crime scene finally pointed to a killer. Unless an eyewitness came forward. Unless another body was found. Unless someone confessed.
She hoped the proverbial break in the case would come today. They needed to solve this case. The families needed them to solve this case.
Maryann Dill was one of the small but growing number of women on the state police and one of a handful in the investigative units. Tall and slender with short dark hair, her South Shore accent—a blend of a Boston and Rhode Island twang—gave her a down-to-earth yet no-nonsense air. When she graduated from Cape Cod Community College in 1979, the Hanover, Massachusetts, native was considering two career paths: lawyer or state trooper. Her mother, an assistant postmaster in Hanover, spotted a notice about an upcoming state police entrance exam. Figuring this was a good sign, Maryann took the test and passed. As a kid, she babysat the children of a state trooper and, through talking with him, had a vague idea what the job was like. After attending the then twenty-five-week State Police Academy, she knew the job would be challenging, both mentally and physically. By January of 1980, she graduated from the academy and was a full-time trooper, assigned to the Dartmouth barracks on Route 6. That post covered one of the busiest areas in the state.
In 1983, she and Jose Gonsalves were asked to move from the uniform division to the investigative unit at the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office. One of her mentors—Corporal Natale “Butch” Lapriore—was already there and told her to give it a try. The DA’s office—headed by District Attorney Ronald A. Pina—had an often-strained relationship with the state police ever since he kicked out the troopers assigned to his office who had supported his opponent a few years earlier. But even before that, relations between the district attorney and state police were strained. It had even come to blows. In an old and often-embellished tale, a trooper returning from a grisly double murder in Norton was at the popular watering hole for the office. The scene he had come from was heart-wrenching: A young mother had been stabbed to death in a house, and then the killer went outside and attacked her little boy. The child was stabbed so many times and so deeply the body was stuck into the ground by the knife. The trooper had just dropped off some evidence to the office and was at the small, downtown New Bedford restaurant and bar called Octavio’s trying to clear his head of the bloody scene before heading home to his own young children. And it was there he saw District Attorney Ronald Pina. Some snide words were exchanged. The prosecutor questioned the trooper’s election loyalties in impolitic terms. The trooper told him to shut up. The prosecutor kept talking. The trooper turned in his bar stool and, while still sitting, punched the DA in the face. His claddagh ring left a tiny slice on Pina’s cheek. It became the stuff of police legend, sharply illustrating the rift between those tasked with investigating death and those holding political office. The nuances of what made the judicial system work in a political climate—the lobbying for state and federal money, the cajoling of state representatives and senators for support—were lost in that moment. It came down to two sides. There were those facing firsthand the grit and pain of death; and there were those running for political office. It would take years to break down that wall between them.
Maryann knew what she was facing when she joined the unit. She heard all those stories, knew the deep-rooted resentments between Ron Pina and some members of the state police, but she also knew working in the unit offered a great opportunity, a chance to hone her investigative skills and learn new police techniques. The politics of the past would stay there. She planned to do good police work.
Now, almost five years after joining the unit and earning her bachelor’s degree at Northeastern University, she had no regrets. She had already weathered one potential political storm earlier that year in April when the district attorney’s fiancée, a Rhode Island television personality named Sheila Martines, was found locked in the trunk of her Mercedes-Benz along a rural town road in Dighton, Massachusetts, about twenty miles from Providence, Rhode Island. Martines had claimed she stopped at a truck rest stop along one of the busiest sections of Interstate 195 in Seekonk in broad daylight after experiencing car trouble and was abducted at knifepoint by a man. She claimed she was forced to drive her Mercedes about a dozen miles away where, she told police, the man ordered her into the trunk. She was found in the trunk twenty-four hours later when a young man looking out his bathroom window spotted the car in a nearby empty lot and went to investigate.
Maryann and “Butch” Lapriore were the prime investigators in the case. They were determined to find the abductor and prove to the district attorney that state police investigators were professional and nonpartisan. But determination and good intentions were not enough. The more the two dug, the more flaws they found in the girlfriend’s story. There were no witnesses to the abduction, other than Sheila. There was no evidence of a second person having been in the vehicle. There were no footprints of a suspect in the dirt. There were no fingerprints of a suspect in the car. Sheila had to drive past a local police station to get to the spot where she—and her car—were later found. And the DA’s fiancée, who had documented alcohol problems, wasn’t available for additional interviews. There were rumors her job was on the line at the Rhode Island television station. Some in the district attorney’s office speculated the abduction was an elaborate hoax. But the two investigators still dug in, looking for that single shred of evidence to prove it happened: a button. Martines claimed her abductor ripped her shirt in the car and a button popped off. Butch searched every crevice of the car for that single button. The final report in the case would note there was no evidence to show the abduction took place. While it was a widely accepted determination by nearly everyone in the prosecutor’s office, it wasn’t quite what the district attorney wanted to hear. To DA Pina, it was just another time state police dropped the ball. His fiancée had been abducted, and they couldn’t find the suspect. The case was eventually closed by the state police.
Now, Maryann was again in the center of an investigation in which the district attorney was taking a keen interest. Butch had asked for a transfer out of the unit when the Martines investigation was done, so now, as the murder investigation intensified, Maryann was working with Jose Gonsalves. She and others in the unit hoped this time politics—and the outside pressures it brought—would stay out of the investigation.
The list of things to do in the case grew daily: finding elusive witnesses, finding experts to examine evidence, sifting through tips coming through a hotline, sorting truth from rumor, sorting through a growing list of suspects—all while still keeping track of other, unrelated cases. For the first few months of the investigation, Maryann and Jose were on the rotating on-call list for the unit, heading out to the “unattended deaths”—ranging from overdoses to murders to accidental deaths—throughout the county. They juggled their days between the highway investigation and the rest of their caseload. Everyone in the unit was trying to share the work, though, as the case progressed. Teams were set up to split the pool of suspects, the first step in ruling out—or ruling in—possible killers.
Maryann mentally checked off what she needed to do that day once she got into the office. Check hotline tips. Call the state prison to check one suspect’s alibi—he claimed he was locked up. Call the crime lab to see if testing on the evidence was done. Call back the mother and sister of two of the victims—she knew there would be a message from them waiting on the desk. Then, it was on to the streets, searching for more witnesses.
But before the police work could start, ironing clothes—and feeding her 135-pound German shepherd, Beau—took precedent. It was the era of crisp cotton shirts and dress pants. No jeans. Proper dress was business attire—even though everyone on the job knew he or she might have to walk through muck at a scene. She tried to get all her ironing done on Sundays, her day off, but she knew what they said about the best-laid plans. Ironing often went to the bottom of the li
st on Sundays as she tried to catch up on bills, grocery shopping, laundry, and sleep. So that meant nearly every morning she hauled out the ironing board to press her cotton shirt and put the proper crease in her dress pants. That meant getting up a little bit earlier.
About twenty miles away, in Freetown, one of the towns abutting New Bedford, Jose Gonsalves was sleeping soundly.
“Wake up,” his wife, a nurse in a hospital geriatric unit, said, shaking his shoulder. “It’s seven.”
He could hear his son and daughter in the kitchen, getting ready for school. By seven fifteen, he’d be showered and shaved and ready to go. His clothes were ready to wear, already ironed by his wife. He noticed the waistband on his pants was a bit loose. So was his shirt. Within a couple of months, the six-feet-two-and-a-half-inch trooper had gone from 220 pounds to his high-school weight of 185 pounds. Someone had asked him just the other day if he was sick. He made a mental note: Eat more.
He looked at the clock. It was seven fifteen. Time to go.
See you later tonight, he told his wife, kissing her.1
He grabbed the metal Christmas-cookie tin on the kitchen table as he slipped out the door without eating breakfast. Inside was a trail mix of pretzels, raisins, peanuts, and a few other things. His mother, a widow now in her early seventies, lived in an attached in-law apartment and quietly started leaving the tin on the table a few weeks earlier. That was when his workdays stopped ending at five and his weight loss started becoming noticeable. She never mentioned how thin he was getting. She just left the tin on the table, so he could have just a little something to snack on. He appreciated the quiet gesture—and the food.
Jose tried not to think about when he would be back home as he went out the door. For the past several weeks, he would pull into the driveway well after midnight. He missed dinner with his family. Homework with his children. Quiet time in the house. Noisy times watching his four children playing soccer and basketball. All that was replaced with late-night interviews on New Bedford streets, tracking down people in the city as well as the state prisons and jails who might have information, writing reports, reviewing the reports done by others working on the case. Family was important to him, and the long days were tough. When he and his wife built their Freetown home in 1979, he made sure to add an in-law apartment for his aging parents. Just months before the house was done, his father died at age eighty-three, and his mother moved in alone. His father, a merchant marine who had emigrated from Portugal, like many in the area, and his mother, a stay-at-home mom who was born in New Bedford, instilled a strong work and family ethic in Jose. They also made sure their children embraced their American heritage, insisting on speaking English at home to their children.
Jose graduated from New Bedford High School in 1965 then went to Southeastern Massachusetts University—later called UMass–Dartmouth—where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business in 1969. He joined the state police almost by accident. A buddy was taking the state police exam and asked him to take it with him. They both passed. When it later came to the physical endurance test, which included an obstacle course and a required six-and-a-half-minute mile run, Jose did it in six. His buddy did it in seven and failed. Jose wound up on the state police, his friend ended up as a successful business owner in the Albany, New York, area.
By 1983, Jose earned a master’s degree in criminal justice from Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts, and, after years as a road trooper, was working in the state police unit assigned to the district attorney’s office. He worked hard on the job—often logging fifty-plus hours—but tried to never lose sight of what was important: family, church, and helping the community. He coached youth sports teams when he could and took a keen interest in the youth basketball program at the Boys’ Club in New Bedford, helping to raise money for the center and its efforts targeting at-risk youth. Giving back was rooted in his Catholic faith and something he felt honored to do. He hoped working on this murder case, and hopefully helping to solve it, would be a major service to his community and to the families looking for justice.
MARYANN WALKED INTO THE OFFICE, coffee in hand, and saw her partner already at his desk, flipping through sheets of paper.
Each day, every call to the tip line was logged, and the information was given to Dill and Gonsalves. The tips ranged from the plausible to the preposterous:
My ex-husband did it. He was always weird.
It was a trucker.
The missing bodies are in the ocean.
I had a vision about the killer.
I saw something on TV about a similar case. You should check it out.
My ex-boyfriend picks up hookers. I think he did it.
There’s a white truck that’s always around, picking up girls.
There’s a guy out there beating up the girls, I heard.
I heard someone talking, saying the killer is a fisherman. Check it out.
I heard the killer is a truck driver.
Jose scribbled “truck” on a legal pad
“Here’s another one about a truck,” he said, looking up. “We have a couple of these mentioning a truck.”
“There was one where . . .” The ringing phone cut Maryann off.2
“Yes, we will be right there,” Jose said into the phone.
He put down the pen and shuffled the papers to one side. The staff sergeant wanted to see them.
Down the hall, Staff Sgt. Gale P. Stevens, who went by his middle name of Pat, was waiting in his office to hear a daily update on the case.
What did the two do last night? Who did they talk with? How close are they to identifying a suspect? What did they plan to do today? If the DA asked him a question on the cases, he wanted the right answer. He didn’t want any surprises. As the supervisor in the unit, Pat Stevens knew he would be asked by the district attorney and Bob St. Jean what was new in the case, were there any leads, how things were progressing. While the district attorney and Bob also went directly to the troopers regularly for updates, the staff sergeant needed to be kept in the loop daily.
The district attorney wasn’t shy about asking questions and often ignored the chain of command to get answers. A couple of times a week, Ron Pina would stroll into the office Jose and Maryann shared, plunk himself down in a chair, and chat.
“So what’s going on?” the DA would ask, sitting in the chair next to Jose’s desk.
The DA listened as the troopers detailed the latest theories, evidence, and would-be witnesses in the case. Then he would give his thoughts: who looked good, who didn’t, what more might need to be done.
The troopers felt the prosecutor wanted to do the right thing—they just didn’t always agree with some of his theories or his suspects as the case moved on. “Tunnel vision,” is what Jose always worried about as talks with the district attorney continued each day. The phrase was now becoming Jose’s mental caution light. Focusing on one suspect and making the facts fit was dangerous. There were many suspects—maybe too many—investigators needed to look at. A wide net brings in more fish at sea and more information on shore.
IT WAS WELL PAST TEN at night, and the street lamps cast a yellow glow onto the streets of Weld Square. Maryann and Jose circled the neighborhood yet again, looking for familiar figures. Once. Twice. Three times.3
“There,” Maryann Dill said, pointing. “She’s over there.”
Jose pulled up Penniman Street the wrong way and jerked the cruiser to a stop.
“Hey,” he yelled as he opened the car door. “Hey, we just want to talk.”
Two pencil-thin women bolted up the dark street.
Jose exhaled. Really? he thought, then gave chase.
A minute later, one woman paused on the street to look back—then stopped.
“Oh, it’s just you,” she said, smiling broadly. She turned and yelled down the street. “It’s all right,” she yelled to her friend. “It’s only Jose and Maryann. Come on back. It’s okay.”
Maryann stood by the unmarked cruiser, chuckling,
as the three walked toward her.
They often talked with the two women on the street. The investigators learned about their families, their HIV diagnosis, their T-counts, their attempts—and failures—to get clean. The investigators spent so much time in the area, Jose and Maryann became “JoseyandMaryann,” a single name said in one breath, one unit they could trust.
A week earlier, one of the women who bolted down the street had been in the back seat of the cruiser headed to the district attorney’s office to look at some photos.
They were halfway into the ride when one of the women piped up from the back seat.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” she asked.
“Go ahead,” Jose answered.
“Are you two married?
“No, that’s probably why we get along,” he quipped.
“Well, maybe you should be,” the woman retorted.4
Jose and Maryann appreciated the street humor of the women they met through the investigation. The pair knew the women on the street who either worked as prostitutes or sold small amounts of drugs to support heroin or cocaine habits saw things police didn’t. These women knew the rhythm of the street. They knew when things were “off.” The troopers knew the women might tell them what johns were acting strange, who was dealing what drugs, who was ripping who off, who disappeared, where the women still missing might have been last seen. Some of the information was second-, third-, or fourth-hand. The information might be part fact, part rumor, part fantasy. But it was what was circulating on the street, and street talk was what Jose and Maryann needed to know. The women on the street had just one request of the investigators: catch the killer.
THE INQUIRIES were discreet, of course. As investigators gathered the names and descriptions of the men who bought sex on the street, some people were getting nervous and calling Bob St. Jean, the DA’s chief investigator. My name wasn’t mentioned, was it? I know one of the women on the street. I went to school with one of the women. I was talking to one of the girls. One of the girls down there used to live in my neighborhood, and I once gave her a ride. When Bob started hearing the names and occupations of some of the customers, he expected to get calls—lots of them. Bob was surprised that men of means, men with power, men who should know better, were picking up prostitutes in the city. Didn’t they read the news? Didn’t they know the women were shooting heroin? Didn’t they know some of the women tested positive for the AIDS virus? How stupid could they be?
Shallow Graves Page 9