Kenny had packed up his home and office and moved to Florida on October 10, 1988, about a month after Dawn Mendes was reported missing. He had signed an agreement to buy a duplex in Port Richey, a town about forty miles north of Tampa, on August 27 and was planning to move in in September. But there were some delays in finalizing the move, and he didn’t hit the road until October. A friend, Jay Miller, who was newly separated, made the two-day drive south in the moving truck rented at New Bedford’s airport terminal, while Kenny in the passenger seat “sat back and ate.”9 Kenny liked to eat—a lot—and was always on the lookout for good buffets. Miller never asked why Kenny, a man he considered “a big-time lawyer,” was closing up shop and moving to Florida because “I didn’t want to ask him stuff like that. That’s none of my business.”10
A number of people were saying the move was no surprise. Kenny had been planning it for a while; his life in New Bedford seemed to be spiraling out of control between the cocaine use and the girls from the street at his house. He needed a fresh start. Others described the move as abrupt. Here today, then gone. The district attorney and a few others in his office found the move odd. No other women from the streets went missing after Kenny moved out. A couple of people in the DA’s office found the move curious and wondered if Kenny could be involved in the killings—or knew who was. Maryann and Jose weren’t convinced Kenny was involved in the homicides, but they did want to know what he knew. But as a precaution, in case he was the killer, police searched his old law office in Dartmouth after he closed up shop with the permission of the landlord, avoiding the need for a search warrant. It was a month after the latest bodies were found—two on the dimly-lit Reed Road clover leaf ramps off Interstate 195 in Dartmouth and another on Route 140—and it was pretty routine, as far as police searches go. One of the search dogs brought in took an interest on a rug in the office but, after additional examination, nothing tying Ponte to the disappearances or killings turned up. The search needed to be kept low-key, Maryann and Jose knew. If news leaked out, it would look like Kenny was a suspect and any chance of getting him to cooperate would be gone.
BOB ST. JEAN, the chief investigator for the district attorney, was talking with Jose and Maryann in their office as he usually did each day when he got a message from the front desk. There was someone on the line for him, a man named Ken Ponte calling from Florida. Did he want to take it? Of course. Put it through to Jose’s extension, he said.
Bob knew Kenny Ponte from his days on the state police in the late sixties and early seventies, before he quit and took the job with the district attorney’s office. Kenny back then used to hang out in the North End of the city, outside King of Pizza on Acushnet Avenue, with a group of heavy drug users. That’s when Kenny was using heroin. Bob arrested him for drugs back then but there were no hard feelings between the two in the years since. Kenny seemed to be, on the surface, a classic success story: overcoming a drug habit, going to school, becoming a lawyer. Bob found it interesting, as he put the call on speaker phone, that Kenny would pick him of all people to talk with decades later.11
“Hey, Kenny, what can I do for you?” he asked, as the troopers listened.
“I understand you think I’m involved with those murders up there?” Kenny answered.
“Who told you that?”
“That’s the word on the street. People are calling me from up there.”12
“Hey, Kenny, I’m not accusing you about anything but I’d like to talk to you about the case. I think you could be helpful.”
Bob listened as the former heroin addict turned lawyer began to ramble about the case.
Someone said there were some weird johns in Weld Square bothering the girls, Kenny was saying. It could be someone from the Coast Guard. They come and go from the city. Mary Santos was a former client. He had made missing-person flyers for her husband. And Nancy Paiva. She worked at a video store, right? Rochelle? Yeah, he knew her.
Bob tried to steer the conversation beyond the generalities. He needed specifics. Kenny was spouting off theories. He also seemed to be fishing for information. Bob kept trying to get the lawyer to focus on facts: how well did he know the women, where did he last see them. With each question, Bob detected a touch of agitation and anger in the lawyer’s voice. Kenny was talking fast. Very fast. Bob tried again to steer the conversation back to specifics.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you later,” Kenny said. Then he hung up.
Bob stared at the phone and shook his head.
What the hell just happened? he thought.
MARYANN DILL couldn’t feel her fingers. It was twenty degrees and, with the twelve-mile-per-hour winds whipping through the gravel pit a few miles from Interstate 195 in Dartmouth, it felt much colder. It was December 10, 1988, and she could swear it felt like mid-February. Mid-February in Maine. She could feel wind slice through her jacket. Her nostrils stung as she breathed in. Her skin hurt. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so cold as she stood near the tree line, looking at the remains of yet another woman.13 Two squirrel hunters had stumbled on the body earlier and notified police. As she looked into the brush ringing the gravel pit, Maryann knew this would be victim number six.
The secluded spot was well known to the state police: car thieves often dumped stolen vehicles there, and road troopers routinely swung by to check. The remains—all that was left at this point was a skeleton with a jacket around the neck—were found in the heavy brush ringing the area, difficult to see in a casual glance from a passing cruiser. Only on foot could a person see the remains and then only if the person was within tripping distance. Teenagers on ATVs regularly road through makeshift paths to the pit and hunters were known to stroll through the woods, looking for small animals. No one had walked or driven close enough to this corner of the pit to see the remains during the spring or summer. No one until December 10, a date everyone who was there recalled decades later as one of the coldest days of the year.
Word spread quickly about the discovery. Uniformed troopers were stationed at the scene to keep the growing number of reporters at a distance. Trooper David Wordell was now accustomed to the drill: it would be the third time he stood guard at a crime scene in the case. Newspaper, radio, and television reporters chatted in clusters, trying to stay warm. Bob St. Jean, the chief investigator for the district attorney, came to the scene from home, leaving tickets to that day’s Patriots football game he now wouldn’t see with his sons on his bedroom bureau. Maryann and Jose gathered with other investigators near the tree line covered in light snow, looking at the scene. The sun was setting, they were losing natural light to search, and the temperature was dropping. The decision was made: a state trooper would guard the scene overnight and everyone would return fresh in the morning.
The next day, Maryann and Jose stood to the side and once again watched their colleague, Trooper Kenneth Martin, kneeling in the brush where the remains were found. Kenny Martin was the unofficial crime-scene expert in the state police homicide unit in the office. Over the years, he developed a keen eye for the details others might miss and for finding the type of evidence lab experts could analyze. He looked for the obvious, of course: the footprints, the shell casings, the blood spatter, the fingerprints. But outdoors, he found himself looking around in less obvious places for evidence or items that could be analyzed.
Maryann and Jose were familiar with how their colleague worked. He would step back and look at the wider scene then slowly narrow his focus. He looked at the scene, not the victim, for clues.
Kenny Martin scanned the area surrounding the remains. He looked for indentations in the brush, for obvious footprints, tire impressions. It was an old scene, he knew, and some of the best evidence might be gone or covered over. He would come back, if needed, with a metal detector to scan for bullet casings, knives or other pieces of metal. He also knew animals will carry away things from crime scenes. Sometimes it will be bones. Sometimes it will be clothing. Sometimes birds will take minute items to be used in nests.<
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As the other investigators stayed back, he moved in closer, finally crouching near the remains. It had been too cold the day before to do an exacting inspection and he was trying to make up for lost time. He looked up, his eyes following the tree trunk about a foot away. Earlier, at another scene, he had pointed to a nest perched in the branches. “We’ll take that,” he said then.14 Today, he would be doing much of the same.
For hours, as darkness set and the temperatures dropped, he scoured the scene. Finally, when it got too dark and light snow continued to fall, he left.
An autopsy later determined manner of death was homicide; cause of death was strangulation. It would be up to a forensic dentist, Stanley Schwartz, from the Tufts Medical Center, to try to identify her.
BEFORE AND AFTER the body was found in the gravel pit in Dartmouth, Kenny Ponte continued to call Bob St. Jean in the DA’s office. Hey, did you find out anything about the Coast Guard? How about truck drivers? Someone said a truck driver could be involved. Have you talked with the girls in Weld Square? And with each phone call, the chief investigator would try to extract bits of information from Kenny before the lawyer would slam the phone down. When was the last time you saw Rochelle? What was she doing? Who was she with? What were you doing with Rochelle when you last saw her? Was she your girlfriend? Did you date her? The answers were broad. Rochelle was just a friend. No, they weren’t close. They were just friends.15
Investigators already knew Rochelle Dopierala, the woman from Cape Cod, was more than a brief acquaintance of Kenny’s. She told people she was staying with Kenny, and, they believed, he once called her mother looking for Rochelle (although her mother would later insist she never spoke with him). In April, shortly before she went missing, the twenty-eight-year-old mother of two was seen driving with Kenny in the city. The first time she was seen with him, Kenny pulled a gun on a guy who Rochelle claimed assaulted her. Another time, a woman claimed Kenny was chasing Rochelle, yelling that she stole something from him, then saw them together a few days later. Yet another time, Kenny waited outside a trailer while Rochelle briefly visited a man inside, and then the two drove off. Some people told police they saw them later that day in the Weld Square neighborhood, or at least they thought it was the same day. No one, Bob knew, came forward to say they saw her after that. She never called her mother on her birthday. She never called anyone, as far as they knew, since April of 1988. Bob wanted to know if Kenny could pinpoint when he last saw her, if he could give a specific date, time, and place. Did he know who else she might have gone with? Bob couldn’t get a straight answer in any of the telephone conversations with Kenny.
“Kenny, how about we talk face to face?” Bob would eventually ask during one phone call. “I can come down there.”16
“I’m coming up there in a few weeks,” Kenny answered.17
“We would like to get together with you when you’re up here.”
“I’m only talking to you,” Kenny said.
When the call ended, Bob St. Jean stared at the phone. Maybe Kenny isn’t involved, maybe the guy can be of some help, he thought. This was a good first step forward. Bob discovered that would change quickly.
By the first week of January 1989, before the two could meet, Kenny Ponte was headline material throughout the state: “Ex-New Bedford Man Reportedly Frequented Weld Square,” read the Standard-Times. “Cops Probe Lawyer in Serial Case,” and “Serial Probe Targets Ex-Junkie,” blared the Boston Herald. “DA: New Bedford Probe Has Fewer Suspects,” headlined the Boston Globe, where the district attorney confirmed Kenny had a “personal relationship” with some of the victims.
How the hell did this get out? Bob thought. This was not good. They still needed to sit Kenny down, talk face-to-face, to see what he knew or didn’t know. They weren’t sure if he was a killer or a fumbling, egotistical cokehead. Ken Ponte was a wild card in the investigation. Bob thought about what he would say when Kenny next called to rant. He needed to find a way to calm him down and get some information.
He had asked the New Bedford detectives assigned to the drug task force what they knew about the Kenny Ponte of today. Could they give him some ideas about how to keep him on track?
The New Bedford cops took St. Jean back five years, to January 1984, and detailed what they called one of the most unforgettable—and oddest—visits with Kenny Ponte.
IT WAS JANUARY 1984. The house was dark. That was the first thing the four investigators noticed walking through the door at the Chestnut Street house. Dark and gloomy. In the shadows stood the hulking figure of Kenneth C. Ponte, a local attorney. The lawyer earlier had called New Bedford detective Paul Boudreau, asking for help.
“You know about videos and video equipment,” Kenny had said on the phone, the narcotics detective recalled. “I need you to check something out. The film I rented keeps changing. It shows people being killed.”
Paul knew a little bit about videos, videotape recorders, and video equipment: he owned two video stores, both called Movies-To-Go, and did plenty of research before plunking down cash for the business. He was surprised, though, by this call from Kenny, an attorney he knew from around the courthouse and who occasionally rented videos at his stores.
Whatever Ponte was talking about was worth checking out.
New Bedford sgt. Ronald Cabral, detectives Bruce Machado and Boudreau, along with Robert Jones, a video and financial investigator in the DA’s office, were now at the house to see this film.
From the moment the investigators arrived, Ponte was jumpy, “wired, really wired,” Bruce Machado would later say.18 He was talking fast and he was intense. Someone, Ponte was telling them, taped over a film he rented. Look, he said. Look. Then he turned on his new VCR and ran the film. It was the film Porky’s. The investigators looked at each other.
After about twenty-five minutes, he turned to them. “Okay, get ready. I’m going to play it in the slow-motion mode.”
Look, he told them. It changed into a different movie. Don’t you see it? He pointed to the large-screen TV. There, he said, running the film in slow motion. See it? Right there. He froze the frame. See the women being raped? See the women hung upside down and their heads cut off, one by one? He started the film again.
“See it! See them! They are killing the babies.”19
Kenny moved closer to the television, pointing at the screen. “There,” he told the investigators, “right there. Don’t you see it?”
Paul moved closer to the television. “Where, Kenny? Where?”20
Kenny sat on the floor in front of the television. “See how it comes on? Look at the babies. Look at the babies under the porch,” he told them.21
Kenny kept pointing. The detectives noticed he was moving quickly. Pointing. Tapping his foot. Looking around. His agitation was increasing. There had been stories about Ponte’s cocaine use. It was clear to them he was high, if not on coke then on something else. The other investigators moved closer to the screen. There was nothing. Just another 1980s teenage raunchy comedy. For nearly an hour, they watched as Kenny played and freeze-framed the film, tears streaming down his face. Yeah, there may be something, they told him. We’ll take the movie to be tested. It was the only way, they knew, they could get out of the house without a hassle.
Outside, the four looked at each other, stifling a laugh. Paul watched the film again that night. He played scenes in slow motion. He froze frames. Over and over. What was Kenny seeing? Was he missing something? He watched the film four times. It was just another B-grade film. Other investigators watched the film. Nothing. Boudreau filed away the incident in his mind as just another weird day as a cop.
Weeks later, Bruce Machado saw the disheveled lawyer, his tie crooked, prowling the arraignment session in district court looking to make a quick buck on a bail hearing. The detective remembers seeing him in the court, fumbling routine court matters, unsure of basic procedures and protocols. Machado remembers saying to himself, “How did this guy pass the bar exam?”22
&nbs
p; Kenneth Ponte nearly didn’t.
He was a familiar sight on a North End corner in the late 1960s and early ’70s where drug users and dealers would hang out. By age twenty-two in 1971, after several heroin arrests and convictions for drug possession, he was jailed in the Bristol County House of Correction, the oldest operating jail in the country. He was sentenced to six months, served three, and was out by 1972.
State Trooper Kevin Butler, far right, on the Reed Road westbound entrance ramp to Interstate 195 in Dartmouth where Andy Rebmann’s dog found the remains of Dawn Mendes in November 1988 (Standard-Times photo by Jack Iddon)
Connecticut state trooper Andy Rebmann with his dog before starting another search in March of 1989 (Standard-Times photo by Ron Rolo)
New Bedford residents joined friends and relatives of the victims in a candlelight march through the streets of New Bedford in December 1988 (Standard-Times photo by Ron Rolo)
Chandra Greenlaw, daughter of victim Debra Greenlaw DeMello, leans out of a school bus brought to the courthouse to bring relatives back to the district attorney’s office the day Kenneth Ponte was indicted in August 1990 (Standard-Times photo by Hank Seaman)
Crowd outside New Bedford Superior Court waiting for Kenneth Ponte to leave after he was indicted on a single count of murder in August 1990 (Standard-Times photo by Dana Smith)
Diane Doherty, who claimed Ponte confessed and then recanted her statement, is led from New Bedford Superior Court after testifying before a special grand jury (Standard-Times photo by Dana Smith)
Trooper Kevin Butler holds a flashlight as Trooper Kenneth Martin examines the ground for evidence where the body of Robbin Rhodes was found on Route 140, this time in March 1989 (photo by Kevin Fachetti)
Shallow Graves Page 11