Shallow Graves

by Maureen Boyle

  As Christmas neared, she finally told her family she had been put on AZT. “Not to be a downer at all. I’m OK really. Just a little scared,” she wrote in one letter.

  She tried to downplay her fears of dying as she reached out from behind bars. “I am alive, I am here now and want to have some kind of family again,” Debra wrote. “I’m trying, I really am, and I am afraid whoever doesn’t know I love them may never know.”

  Her gifts to her family for Christmas 1987 were poems and expressions of love, hope, contrition, and thanks. “I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain and when I did I caused myself even more but my dear family I do love you, all of you, if I could give you anything for Christmas this year it would be just some of me and to tell you to look around at each other and see how much you truly have. Nobody ever knows how much they have till it’s no longer there,” she wrote in a December 17, 1987, letter sent to her mother and addressed “Dear Family.”

  She included in the envelope individual letters to her siblings, written in flowing cursive. “You are: someone I’m delighted (always) to see. Someone who is welcome to what I have,” she wrote to one brother.

  To another, she wrote: “You’ve sheltered me from the cold when need be and I hope you see I’m the same little sister in heart I always was.” To a sister, she asked for forgiveness: “At this holiday season I wish for you wonderful things and the big one a little if not a lot of forgiveness. I’m not always able to give ’cause sometimes I’m empty inside and even when I want to give to say, hey, I love you, sometimes I can’t find the key to the door and then when I do, sometimes there’s nothing there.”

  In four months, she expected to be paroled and planned to return to Brockton, Massachusetts. She would be in a drug-treatment program for women, she would be near her children, and she would finally have the life she promised her family for so many years. She would make it all up to everyone, especially her mother. She would prove her mother’s faith in her all these years was not lost.

  “You are my mom . . . My friend . . . My buddy . . . My Lifeline . . . I throw the rope you’ve never thrown back and anchor!” she wrote her mother in an early Christmas letter.

  While others counted down the days to Christmas in 1987, Debra Greenlaw DeMello was counting down the days to her parole date.

  For her children, Christmas of 1987 was a time of new beginnings and hope.

  Seeing mom in the time leading up to Christmas of 1987 meant a long car ride to a different state and sitting in a prison visiting room with lots of other people. The visiting room was nice, as far as a prison visiting room could be. There were long tables and chairs, and fourteen-year-old Chandra Greenlaw could sit next to her mother if she wanted. That was a good thing about the women’s Adult Correctional Institution in Rhode Island. If she looked at the room a certain way, Chandra could almost convince herself they were meeting in a school cafeteria. Except for the guards at the doors. And the security checkpoints to get in. Overall, though, it wasn’t too bad. As far back as she could remember, Chandra and her little brother, Justin, trekked to county jails and state prisons to visit their mother. She suspected her grandmother was relieved when her mom would get locked up. At least then her mom wouldn’t be on the street, wouldn’t be using drugs, wouldn’t be at risk of overdosing. They would know where she was. It wasn’t ideal, of course. After all, who wants to go to a prison to see your mom? But that was what Chandra and Justin always did with their grandmother. It was just part of life.

  Chandra’s grandmother, Madeline Perry, got custody of two of her three grandchildren once it was clear Deb was using drugs heavily—and heroin in particular. Madeline Perry was a strong, no-excuses woman. A widow, she raised six children, took care of her terminally ill father for more than a year and was intent on making sure Deb’s children didn’t get lost in the foster-care system. When she first got word all those years ago that Deb was holed up in a decrepit Brockton apartment on North Warren Avenue with four-month-old Chandra, doing drugs 24–7, Madeline Perry stepped in swiftly. According to family lore, Madeline and her son, Brian, crept up to the back of the house and Brian crawled through a window, snatching the infant from the back room. No one in the apartment noticed until much later, and by that time Madeline had her infant granddaughter safely at home.

  Chandra believed her mom tried over the years to get straight—and a few times she briefly succeeded. She remembers her mother’s wedding at St. Edward’s Church in Brockton when she was about eight. Her mother looked like a princess in the beautiful white veil and gown of satin peau de soie accented with lace and seed pearls.37 That’s what she would always remember: that soft-focus image. The wedding portrait would hang for years in the hallway of her grandmother’s apartment, a daily reminder of what might have been.

  As a child, Debra was a mischievousness blonde with pigtails and never one to back down, her older sister, Gail, would later say. She began hanging around with what her brother, Wayne, called “the wrong crowd” in her early teens, but when the family moved from the city of Brockton to the suburbs of Raynham about fifteen minutes away, everyone thought things would improve. Instead of doing drugs with kids in a city, she was doing drugs with kids with money, her mother once said. “She got started on drugs with the people that some would call the better-class families,” Mrs. Perry recalled.38

  Debra’s mother would track her down and bring her home. They went to counseling sessions and she searched out programs—any programs—that might help her daughter. Over the years, Debra was in and out of halfway houses and the few treatment programs available for female addicts at the time. Mrs. Perry sought out meetings with other parents, hoping to find a solution. It always ended the same: Debra would get clean then would use again. It was a heart-wrenching cycle.

  By the time Chandra was born, the family had moved back to Brockton and settled into one of the low-income housing developments in the city. Chandra called the development “the projects.” Her grandmother, who was very active and respected in the tenant association, preferred the term “housing development.”

  Over the years, Debra tried to stay in her children’s lives as best she could, but drugs always seemed to pull her away. Sometimes she stayed with the children at her mother’s house. Sometimes she would come by for a quick visit. Sometimes she came looking for money. Sometimes she just vanished from their lives. Madeline Perry mothered her daughter’s children, just as she mothered her own. She soothed their disappointments when Deb didn’t show up. She was their anchor.

  Shortly before Christmas of 1987, Madeline Perry loaded the kids into her blue Chevy Cavalier and drove the fifty miles to the women’s prison in Cranston, Rhode Island. It was visiting day, and it was a chance for the children to see their mother for the holidays. Mrs. Perry hoped, maybe, this time it would be different when her Deb was released. She was on a work-release program, was doing well, and there was the hope she might be paroled to Massachusetts in a few months. But there was a major hurdle to be cleared first: she needed to get into a residential treatment program in Massachusetts, and the openings for women in those programs were few. She might have to stay in prison until there was an opening.

  Chandra wasn’t aware of any of those intricacies of her mother’s life as she sat there in the state prison, staring at her mother in the visiting room. Her mother’s long hair was cut short and she had put on some weight. She looked healthy, Chandra remembers thinking as she listened to her mother talk that day.

  Her mom was clearly proud. At age thirty-five, she was finally a high school graduate. She passed the General Education Development test—or GED—during her latest stint behind bars and was clutching the high school equivalency certificate in her hands.

  It’s an early Christmas present, her mother was saying, handing it to Chandra’s grandmother.

  Chandra could tell her mother was pleased with what she had accomplished and so was her grandmother. Her mother was also chatty this visit. Deb told her daughter not to do d
rugs—ever. She made dumb choices, Debra said. Don’t make the same mistake. If she made parole, as she expected in the upcoming months, she would eventually live with them in Brockton. They could start fresh. She would do better. She would do it this time.

  Chandra heard some of those promises before. She’d heard a lot of promises from her mom over the years. This time, though, it felt different. Wow, she thought. This time I’m actually going to get a mom.

  Chandra kept that thought in mind on the hour-plus ride back from Rhode Island and for the months that followed—it will be different.

  Six months after Christmas, it all changed.

  Madeline Perry tried to steel herself when the collect call came from the Rhode Island prison. There would be no parole, her daughter was telling her through tears. She would not be coming home. She tried. She tried so hard. She studied and got her high school equivalency diploma. She followed the rules. She worked hard at her work-release job at a Providence warehouse. Why wasn’t it enough? Why wouldn’t they let her come home? The Rhode Island parole board had agreed to parole her and let her move to Massachusetts if authorities there supervised her. But the Massachusetts parole board refused, saying Debra needed to come up with a better plan for life outside. The big stumbling block was drug treatment: she needed to first get into a residential treatment program in her hometown of Brockton before she could be paroled. There were no openings.

  Madeline consoled her daughter. It will be okay. There will be an opening at a treatment program. Don’t worry. You will be home soon. Don’t worry, she told her. But, deep inside, Madeline was worried. Her daughter had seemed determined to finally get clean, to change, to finally be a mother. This last time behind bars seemed to be the turning point. Maybe it was age. At thirty-five, running the streets had lost its allure. She was tired of the drug life. It destroyed her relationship with her children, her mother, her siblings. It destroyed her health. It destroyed her looks. Debra Greenlaw DeMello had once been a long-haired stunner, with a bright smile and an easy laugh. But that was before drugs, before the rough life running the streets. By the time she was arrested in Providence and sent to prison, her cheeks were sunken, her eyes dark, and her body rail thin. Her lips folded in, giving her a toothless appearance. She looked like a hag in her mug shot. Even Deb didn’t recognize herself.

  Madeline Perry tried to stay upbeat as she talked with her daughter on the phone. It will work out, she kept saying. It will work out. She wasn’t sure Deb believed her. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.

  A few days later, Debra Greenlaw DeMello went to work as usual at the Providence warehouse. Then she walked away.

  It was June 18, 1988.

  In the weeks that followed, Debra would make her way to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a city she knew from the days when she was married and lived in the neighboring small town of Acushnet. One woman said she met Deb on Hazard Street in New Bedford right after she escaped. They talked about going to Florida, she said Deb called her “sis,” stayed with her at an abandoned Mount Pleasant Street house, and used the ID belonging to a friend named “Anne.” Deb bounced from house to house during that time, borrowing clothes from other women. One person remembers seeing her in New Bedford in late June or early July. She likely crashed at an apartment on Morgan Street. She likely spent time with Nancy Paiva. She most likely started using drugs again.

  Her family learned she was an escapee a few weeks after she walked off. They never heard from her while she was on the run.

  Now, six months later, her family would know why.

  ARMED WITH DEB’S NAME and description, the state police working out of the district attorney’s office were able to obtain dental records from the Rhode Island state prison to positively identify the remains that had been found in Dartmouth on November 8. The dental X-rays had been taken one year earlier, shortly before Christmas. The X-rays detailed what Deb had once called her Christmas present: her new front teeth.

  Just days before Christmas in 1988, two troopers—Maryann and Jose—were standing at Wayne Perry’s front door to tell him that his sister was dead. Wayne wondered how he was going to break the news to Deb’s kids and his mother. The district attorney’s office was holding off releasing the news of the identification until Monday, December 27. He had four and a half days to figure it out. He called his older sister, Gail, who had posed the question after seeing news reports about the bodies of the women found along the highways: Do you think one could be Deb? He now had the answer.

  CHANDRA GREENLAW could feel the excitement growing as her grandmother drove from their inner city apartment to her aunt’s raised ranch home along a rural road in East Taunton on Christmas Day. Chandra Greenlaw figured it was going to be a great Christmas. Holidays at her aunt Gail’s home were always the best. There would be a house jammed with aunts, uncles, and cousins, talking and laughing. There would be dish after dish of meatballs, pasta, turkey, and chicken wings. Some people would grab a chair at the kitchen table, others balanced plates piled with food on their laps in the living room while a few braced the winter chill in the sunroom. She loved going there, and her aunt loved hosting those big, sometimes loud, always-fun family bashes.

  Her maternal aunt, Gail Hardin, was one of the eldest siblings in the family. She had six children of her own and believed getting everyone together—even just for a holiday—was important. Chandra’s mother was always invited and most years showed up or called, unless she was locked up. At those holiday parties—Thanksgiving and Christmas at Gail’s, Fourth of July usually at Wayne’s—Debbie was just a member of the family, not someone battling addiction, not the ghost in her children’s lives. There was just one outburst at a party at Wayne’s home in Plymouth: Debbie’s son, who was a toddler and had been staying with Gail, called his aunt “mom” at a Fourth of July cookout. He’s my son, Deb hissed at her sister. Maybe if you were around he would know who you are, Gail snapped back. Their voices rose, then cracked. In tears, the sisters later embraced. They had never fought like that before, Gail would later recall, and never did again.39

  Gail put a bright smile on her face when her mother, niece, and nephew showed up for Christmas dinner. Her brother had called three days before, breaking the news of Deb’s death. They agreed not to tell their mother or the kids until the day after Christmas. They would tell the rest of their siblings later on Christmas Day—after the party—or early on December 26. Everyone had kids. Bad news could wait. Gail hugged her mom, Chandra, and Justin, as the three walked in. She would not think about the next day. She would enjoy the moment. She would enjoy the living.

  Gail and Wayne knew, though, that they needed to make plans for the next day. Huddling in the corner whispering, they swapped questions. Where should they be when they break the news? Who should be there? Should they tell mom alone? Who should tell the kids? How should the kids be told? How much do they say?

  What are you two whispering about? Madeline Perry asked the two suspiciously.

  “Nothing, mom. We’re just joking around,” Gail recalls answering.

  For more than a month, Gail and Wayne feared their sister was one of the murder victims. They watched news reports, listened to detailed descriptions of the dead, and knew no one in the family had heard from Deb since June. They were prepared—or at least thought they were—to learn Deb was dead. Their mother had no clue.

  Chandra bounced from room to noisy room Christmas Day. Each time she got closer to her aunt and uncle, they stopped talking.

  Wow. There must be a big surprise coming, she thought. I must be getting a pretty awesome Christmas gift this year.40

  Not seeing her mother at the party was a disappointment but not unexpected. She would probably call later, Chandra thought. Chandra had tried to shrug off that odd question her aunt Suzanne had asked a couple of weeks earlier. Did her mother have a broken wrist and did she remember which one? Chandra thought it was weird. Why would she want to know that? She recounted that exchange with her best friend in
high school. Then she wondered aloud: I think there’s something wrong with my mother. But Chandra didn’t think much more about it as the days passed. Teenagers, she would later say, didn’t think beyond their own little world.

  As the holiday party wound down, Chandra turned to her grandmother and asked her the same question she had asked on Thanksgiving Day: Mom didn’t call like she usually does. Don’t you think that’s strange?

  THE FOLLOWING DAY was another traditional family Christmas bash, this time on Cape Cod. The family packed into the car and drove to Bourne where Chandra’s uncle Brian, who didn’t make the first Christmas party, would play host. Maybe that’s where they’d get the big surprise gift, Chandra thought.

  They had barely gotten in the door, though, when Wayne’s wife, Suzanne, suggested Chandra and her cousin take a ride with her to the beach a few minutes away. Why not? Chandra thought.

  The winter sea air was sharp as the three sat in the car parked along Monument Beach. “I have something to tell you,” Suzanne Perry started. “Remember when I called you that day and you thought something was wrong. Well, there was.”41

  Suzanne continued, telling the teenager her mother was dead, one of the women found along the highways outside New Bedford.