Maryann and Jose knew all these stories about Kenny. New Bedford police, the Bristol County Drug Task Force, and the state police amassed what would be boxes filled with reports detailing his drug use, his acquaintances, and his times sharing cocaine with prostitutes at his house. One guy claimed Kenny was growing marijuana in the basement and had blocked the basement windows of his Chestnut Street home. Months after Kenny moved to Florida, police searched Kenny’s basement. It had been cleared out.26 There was no evidence of drugs. Police knew about Kenny’s paranoia; about how the life he fought to get was now gone again in a storm of drugs. What they did not know was if Kenny was a killer.
JUDY DESANTOS tried to focus on typing the file cards. Name. Address. Party affiliation. She filled the information for each new voter. A routine task on a routine workday in the city’s election commission in March 1989. She kept her eyes down and avoided the friendly, idle chatter of the office. She was afraid she would cry if anyone asked her that simple, offhand, everyday, well-meaning question: How are you doing? She was afraid if they did, if she answered, it would all come streaming down her face, leaving her coworkers’ mouths agape, fumbling for the right words when there were none. She was afraid of screaming: I’m afraid, I’m angry, I’m confused. How did this all happen? Why did it happen? It was better to stay quiet, head down, and type. No questions, no answers.
Up the street, just outside downtown center, a gaggle of television, radio, and newspaper reporters were watching witnesses parade into the courthouse as the special grand jury convened to find her sister’s killer. Judy wondered, as her fingers danced across the typewriter keyboard, if she would recognize any of the faces going into the courthouse if she was there. If she did, what would she say? Would she say anything? As she sat at work, her heart raced as she mentally flipped through the scenarios: yelling at Kenny Ponte to tell the prosecutor everything; screaming and slapping Frankie Pina for dragging her sister into a drug life; pleading with the line of addicted women waiting to testify to get help before it was too late. What if the killer was there, calmly waiting on a courthouse bench, to testify before the panel? Would her heart instinctively point to him? Would he look average? Would he be scared? She felt as if she were watching a made-for-TV movie from across a crowded room, waiting for a calming commercial break. This was not something that happened to average families like hers. This was not something that happened in a small city like New Bedford. This is not something that should happen to her sister.
People were always talking about the investigation, about what was going on at the courthouse, about the reporters gathered on the front lawn and steps. Judy could hear waves of the conversations then waited as the words receded like the tide. She looked up at the clock. Just a few more hours left at work. Just a few more hours before she could turn on the evening news to learn what happened a few blocks away. She slid another file card into the typewriter and hit the keys.
THE TELEVISION STATION VIDEOGRAPHERS outside New Bedford Superior Court slung the nearly fifty-pound video cameras on their shoulders and gave chase. Attorney Kenneth Ponte tried to duck through the back of the courthouse to avoid the scrum of reporters on the front steps and lawn. It didn’t work. There was a fence. He veered to the side of the building. He stopped and scowled. Reporters were waiting.
It was a wretched end to a miserable day. Kenny had spent most of March 2, 1989, the first day of a special grand jury session, in a second-floor courthouse waiting area, trying to avoid reporters. Kenny was agitated as he waited. He knew several of the people called to appear before the grand jury, including his friend the cab driver Arthur “Goldie” Goldblatt. Goldie knew all of the girls on the street and often drove them in his cab to Kenny’s house. Goldie had told reporters he would appear before the grand jury but he wouldn’t testify. “There’s no sense,” he said.27
Reporters milled through the courthouse hallway that day, watching as witnesses strode into the grand jury room. Inside that first-floor room, where a few grand jurors smoked cigarettes, the district attorney questioned the witnesses one by one. There was Donald Santos, the husband of Mary Rose Santos, one of the women still missing, who later told reporters he couldn’t understand why he was called because he was cooperating with police. There was former Freetown police chief Wayne Snell, who once owned the North End restaurant called Pal’s, who said Kenny once bounced a sixty-five-dollar check at his place. The only reason he even let him cash it was because someone said Kenny was a lawyer, he told reporters. There was a woman who simply told reporters this about Kenny: “He’s no killer.”
Kenny couldn’t be sure what people were really saying in the grand jury room; it was a closed door, secret session. He was convinced of one thing, though. The district attorney was asking questions about him, likely about his drug use and the girls who came to his New Bedford home. He was very sure he was the target of this investigation, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He was only partially correct about what was being said in that grand jury room. He didn’t know three prostitutes told the grand jurors about kinky johns and about attacks by a guy in a truck. He didn’t know the names and photographs of other men were presented to the grand jury, including a Tiverton, Rhode Island, man who gave hookers roses, a couple of New Bedford drug dealers, a fisherman, a cab driver, and a Freetown man who prostitutes said choked them. He didn’t know on this first day that the district attorney was trying to pin down the last time anyone saw the dead and missing women. He didn’t know one person testified a shaken prostitute said two cops chased her around a parking lot at the mills on North Front Street, wanting sex. Or how people talked about another cop selling drugs. He didn’t hear the story about the prostitute who suffered a broken kneecap trying to escape the guy with “very, very big hands” and “psychotic eyes” who tried to choke her. Stories about Kenny were woven in the testimony—“he was scared and paranoid when he got high”28—but he wasn’t the only character. When he saw the reporters camped outside the courthouse or when he recognized a witness being called, his only thought was he had a legal target on his back.
“Just get away from me. Just get away from me,” he told reporters when they swarmed him as he arrived at court or when he briefly emerged to get coffee.
At the end of the day, after waiting hours without being called to testify, he left the courthouse and was again surrounded by the media scrum. He shoved his way through, an image shown repeatedly on the nightly news for months to come. “Get away from me,” he screamed.
The next day, Kenny would do it all again, but this time court officers would escort him in and out of the building.
It was a different scene when District Attorney Ronald A. Pina would come and go. The prosecutor would smile as he passed reporters, often saying hello to one or two by name. Before leaving the courthouse that first day of the grand jury, he had a simple comment. “I think the information is coming a little more fluidly now,” he said.
The jurors were getting a hint of at least six possible suspects and a glimpse into the hardened streets of drug addiction. The jurors, originally scheduled to temporarily adjourn the next day, were also told they would be back the next week.
After two and a half days of waiting, Kenny finally strode into the grand jury room. Earlier, the district attorney coyly told reporters that if a witness cited his or her right against self-incrimination, he would ask a judge to step in. Minutes after Kenny stepped into the grand jury room, the district attorney and Ponte’s lawyer, Joseph Harrington, met with a judge. Reporters were left to draw their own conclusions.
When the special grand jury recessed that week, Kenny was on a plane back to his single-level duplex in Port Richey, Florida. He never testified before the grand jury. He was hoping this would be the end of his involvement in the case.
BY THE TIME Kenny’s plane touched down in Florida, investigators were already talking with more women who spent time in his Chestnut Street house. New Bedford detectives had amassed a wealth of inf
ormation about the life of the once-recovered addict turned lawyer. One man doing time in the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Bridgewater told Troopers Kevin Butler and Kenneth Martin that the lawyer knew at least two of the highway-killing victims, used coke, and even more women talked about getting locked inside his house. The incidents dated back years and the files on them were beginning to fill a box.
HER HEART was thumping so loudly Judy DeSantos worried people could hear it as she walked into the courthouse where the special grand jury was meeting. She had been there twice: once when she divorced her first husband, and once to be sworn in as a notary. The building was a small by modern standards: a courtroom on the first floor and a courtroom on the second with a series of offices off a long hallway by the entrance. It was easy to navigate, and there was always someone to answer questions. She even recognized some of the employees from around town. None of that mattered, though. She was still a little intimidated by the formality of the courtroom and the uniforms of the court officers. Now, after passing the cluster of reporters outside, she could feel herself shaking as she walked to the district attorney’s small courthouse office across from the grand jury room. She wasn’t sure what she would do once she got there. She wasn’t sure if she could do anything. She only knew she had to be here rather than at work, to bear witness and watch the parade of witnesses into the grand jury room.
Her sister’s children were too young to comprehend the intricacies of this grand jury investigation, Judy knew. She had a hard time figuring it out herself. Maryann and Jose insisted she didn’t have to be at the courthouse; there was nothing for her to do there; there was no reason to be there. She couldn’t hear what the witnesses were saying in the grand jury room. She would be sitting there, in a hallway, doing nothing. Judy didn’t see it that way. There would be answers at some point at that courthouse. If she was there, if the witnesses saw her sitting and watching, maybe they would talk more, maybe they would remember more. To her, the grand jury would lead to the holy grail of the case. This grand jury and this district attorney would give her—and all of the families—answers.
Judy liked Ronald A. Pina, the district attorney. He was smart, he was cool under pressure, and he seemed committed to finding her sister’s killer. He was on the news a lot, talking about the case, keeping the investigation alive, providing the families confidence that something would be done. He seemed sincere and caring and dedicated and smart. She believed him when he said they would do everything possible to find the killer. She believed he would find justice for Nancy.
Judy’s boss at the election office understood the situation. When the woman noticed how nervous Judy seemed, then realized it was the second day of the special grand jury, she told her to head up to the courthouse. Work could wait; schedules could be adjusted. This was important. So Judy grabbed her pocketbook, left the office and walked three blocks up to the courthouse.
Judy was uncertain when she opened the door to the district attorney’s office at the courthouse. She was afraid her voice would crack when she introduced herself to the person behind the counter. A victim/witness advocate hurried from a back room to greet her. The woman told Judy what she had been told before: she didn’t have to be there, there wasn’t anything she could do there. Judy smiled. I need to be here, she told the woman.
Judy turned back into the hallway and waited. She paced the corridor as witnesses walked into the grand jury room to testify. She flipped through her memory, trying to recognize the faces. She wondered what these people were saying, what they knew, what answers they had.
Nancy the brave one, the adventurous one, risk-taker, was gone. Judy the timid, quiet one, the sister who watched from a distance, who was too often afraid, was here in her place.
Judy tried to calm herself by silently repeating the mantra: I need to do this for Nancy. Judy slowly paced the hallway for the rest of the day, imagining her sister watching from above.
At the end of the day, as Judy walked home alone, she thought about the other missing women and their families. She wondered if knowing someone was dead was better than that grief-limbo, that shadow between hope and despair. She wondered if the search dog, when and if it came back, would help answer that.
7“CATCH THIS GUY”
IT WAS THREE MONTHS into the new year, and Andy Rebmann was back in Massachusetts, giving a stretch of Route 140 in Freetown another look. Massachusetts trooper Kathleen Barrett and her dog had already checked it four months earlier, back in November of 1988, but it wasn’t unusual to “double cover” a search area. He also knew Kathy’s dog was fairly new and still learning the finer skills of looking for the dead. This search, both for her and her dog, was good field training, but he felt better doing a second sweep—just in case.
So far, two bodies had been found in 1988 along this highway in Freetown: one by a passing motorist in July and a second in December by his own dog.
This time he was here with troopers and their dogs from four different New England states. It took a little longer to get back here: he had to coordinate everyone’s schedules, and he was waiting for a break in the weather. He didn’t want the dogs searching in the ice, snow, and freezing temperatures. He also needed to make sure his schedule was clear in Connecticut before returning to help in what was now one of the biggest and most intriguing murder cases in New England.
Shortly before two in the afternoon on March 28, 1989, he was walking along the side of Route 140 with Josie trotting nearby. The number of tires discarded on the side of the road was striking.
The Chase Road exit sign was just ahead when Josie let him know she found something. There, about twenty-eight feet inside the tree line, were the remains of what appeared to be a woman with long brown hair. She appeared to be about five feet one or so. Her teeth were intact.
Neighbors in homes near the highway would later say they smelled something foul in the area the previous year. No one could pinpoint the location. No one could pinpoint the smell.
Maryann got to the scene quickly and was rounding her cruiser as her colleague, Trooper Kathy Barrett, passed. She knew Kathy pretty well. There were more women on the state police now than in decades past, but it was still a small, and often tight, group. Kathy was very intense and focused. She was a single mom, raising a young son, and determined to show nothing would keep her back. Maryann worked with her—and her dog—several times and knew not to try to pet the animal. Maryann strode toward the scene as the leashed dog passed her side.
Snap.
She felt the dog grab the elbow of her wool coat. Great, she thought, walking ahead. Just great. Even the dog is working against me.1
Within minutes, more cruisers pulled up. More troopers arrived. More reporters lined the road. Everyone knew what to do. They had done it all before.
Chris Dextradeur was driving down Route 140 with his dad after a light round of golf and saw the line of state police cruisers along the side of the road.
“Christ, they found another body,” John Dextradeur, the former New Bedford detective, told his son. “Pull over, Chris.”2
Chris slowed down and began to merge toward the breakdown lane. “Never mind, let’s just keep going,” John told him. “Never mind.”
The man who convinced others that the disappearances of the New Bedford women were linked knew it was no longer his case.
As the two drove off, Maryann and Jose were watching as Trooper Kenneth Martin went to work, meticulously searching the ground for evidence. He would be there for hours. As darkness fell, he kept working as a fellow trooper, Kevin Butler, held a light close to the ground.
One day later, body number seven would be positively identified as Robbin Rhodes, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who had disappeared in April of 1988.
“I was hoping it was somebody else,” her mother, Jean Arsenault, said at the time. “I was hoping to hear from her. Now I’ll never see her again.”3
THREE DAYS AFTER THE BODY was found in Freetown, a twelve-year-old boy name
d Robert Bauer was walking with his best friend, fourteen-year-old Paul Keyes, in the woods by their homes in the Kirby Street neighborhood in Westport, a waterfront town peppered with sprawling farms. Paul’s dog got off its chain and the two were trying to find it as they followed a stream paralleling Route 88, the road leading to the popular Horseneck Beach, a state park known for rolling waves and pristine beaches.4 It was a bit chilly on this afternoon of March 31, 1989, as the boys searched along the stream, keeping on the grassy edge. The boys often played in the woods but this was a new spot they were exploring as they called for the dog. Then they stopped cold. They spotted what appeared to be a skull. They turned and ran toward home. Did they really see a skull? the boys wondered. They went back to double-check. It was a skull. It took five minutes for Robert and his friend to get to his house and tell his mother what they had found.
When the call came into the Westport police station, Officer Michael O’Connor swung by the boys’ homes and brought them back to the scene. The boys were right. There in the woods were what appeared to be the remains of a woman, propped up a bit on what looked like a slight hill. Dogs had searched just north of Route 88 that week and the handlers had wrapped up efforts about an hour earlier, planning to finish that road sometime after the weekend. The remains were found about ten miles from the Interstate 195 exit in Dartmouth where the bodies of three other women had been found a year earlier.
Shallow Graves Page 19