She would later say she went along with it, afraid he would kill her. Then it was over. “And then he got up, zipped up his pants, and ran toward Coggeshall.”9 Her shirt was covered with mud and prickers. She remembered his nose. It was flat, as if someone had punched him, like the nose of a boxer. A few nights later, a black truck pulled up to her on Purchase Street. As she went to get in, she caught a look at the driver. It was the same man. “You gotta be kidding me,” she would recall saying later before turning away. A month later, she saw him again. “I never did that to you,” he told her. She looked at him, answering: “Bullshit. I’ll never forget your face.”10
A dark-haired woman whose pale Irish skin would be ravaged by drugs within a year on the streets told the story of a guy in a truck with a “pushed in” nose who took her to a cemetery on January 11, 1989, flashed a fifty-dollar bill then put her in a headlock. “You know, I mean, he had me in a headlock so I couldn’t breathe. And I was fightin’ him. And I could hardly breathe.”11 She said she was sexually assaulted and, as she jumped out of the car, the man drove off. She was able to grab her pants. Her shoes were still in the car.
Another prostitute told of a john who picked her up three times. “He took me up towards the airport first time I went out with him. And I’ve been out with him I think twice. And the third time, he was drinking. And he just started going crazy on me. And he told me that if I didn’t fight him, he wouldn’t hurt me. And so he tried. He started to take my pants off. And I reached in my back pocket, and I pulled a knife. And I told him if he didn’t let me go, I was going to stab him. And he let me go. And I got away from him,” she recalled.12
The man, who looked like “he’s been punched in his nose a couple of times,” tried to pick her up again. She didn’t go. Other girls did, she said, like Dawn Mendes, who was found dead on Interstate 195 in November of 1988.
Another woman suggested to Trooper Kevin Butler and Detective Gardner Greany during an interview on January 23, 1989, that police investigate an ex-boxer with a flat nose who may work construction and drives a truck. He raped several of the girls on the street, she told police.
Yet another woman told Detectives Gary Baron and Richard Ferreira a man who called himself “Tony” or “David” attacked her. She later identified her attacker from a photo array. “That’s him,” she told Trooper Kevin Butler,13 pointing to a photo of Anthony DeGrazia.
The attacks chronicled by New Bedford police and state troopers dated back to July of 1987. As the special grand jury met, these stories would be intermingled with others as witnesses appeared before the grand jury. While the headlines in January of 1989 publically screamed the name of Kenneth C. Ponte, the testimony before closed doors two months later told the stories of other men, like Tony, and the broader story of addiction, life on the streets, and how women in the late 1980s struggled to pay for heroin.
By mid-April, police were ready to bring Tony in for a chat.
TONY DEGRAZIA was at his rented Freetown cottage when the unmarked state police cruiser pulled up on April 19, 1989. We would like you to talk with you, the two troopers told him. Some women in Weld Square said you attacked them. Can you come with us to the office to so we can clear some things up? He didn’t want to go at first. He called his parish priest saying he was afraid he was going to be arrested. He was afraid someone would try to pin the murders on him. Father George Harrison tried to assure Tony: if he didn’t have anything to hide, if he was innocent, there was nothing to fear. Go with the police.
So Tony left the small cottage near the shores of Long Pond. He got in the back of the Ford Crown Victoria and began to talk with Troopers Kevin Butler and Lorraine Forrest as they began to drive south toward New Bedford. He never picked up a prostitute, he insisted. And he never raped anyone. He appreciated the opportunity to clear it all up, he told the troopers.
As the three drove to New Bedford down Route 140, the highway where three bodies had already been found, a team of state police and New Bedford detectives were pulling up to Tony’s house with a search warrant. Troopers Jose Gonsalves, Maryann Dill, Kenneth Martin, and New Bedford detective Richard Ferreira strode into the house and looked through the drawers, the closets, under the bed, and through Tony’s personal papers. They looked through Tony’s 1987 black Ford pickup truck and took a cigarette lighter, a drywall cutting knife, a four-inch butcher’s knife, a steak knife, a sock, a bottle cap, and mail. They found a human fingernail on the passenger side of the floor. They swabbed the black interior air vent of the truck and found blood. There were signs of blood on the driver’s seat. There were footprints on the passenger side ceiling, on the center strip of the ceiling and hairs under the floor liner.
They stayed at the house for hours, looking for evidence in the rape and beatings of at least seventeen prostitutes. Tony lived alone in the cottage, and it was not the cleanest of houses. There was quite a bit to go through. If there was anything there, they planned to find it.
Roughly twenty miles away at the district attorney’s office in New Bedford, Tony was read his Miranda rights then was interviewed by the two troopers who for months were meticulously following stories by prostitutes that an ex-boxer with a pushed in nose had attacked them. Kevin Butler and Lorraine Forrest had culled similar information from the files of New Bedford detectives and fellow members of the state police and then had reinterviewed many of the victims. They discovered Freetown detective sgt. Alan Alves, who had been bounced off the highway killing investigative team, had arrested a man matching Tony’s description years earlier in two other rape cases.
Lorraine and Kevin were troopers who liked to delve deeply into a single project, drawing out the meticulous and obscure details to cement a case. They liked all of the i’s dotted in their investigations. The t’s were crossed perfectly. They believed that attention to even the tiniest of details helped solve cases. They also believed the man sitting in the back of their cruiser was the one who was attacking prostitutes in the city. Was he also the man who committed the murders?
Lorraine Levy was a head-turning blonde who had been a trooper for a little more than a year and a half before joining the investigative unit. She would be the first to admit she was the least experienced in the office, but she was determined to learn and pull her weight. She embraced the challenge of the work and this investigation in particular.
Kevin Butler was an intense investigator with a wry sense of humor who had grown up in Brockton. He was detail oriented and approached investigations unfettered by hometown ties and with a laser-focused, out-of-town eye that some mistook for aloofness.
When Tony agreed to talk without an attorney present, the troopers got right to the point. Did he pick up prostitutes? Once, a long time ago, he told them. He didn’t need to go out with prostitutes. He had a beautiful girlfriend for nine years until they broke up in October of 1988.
The troopers told him that at least seventeen prostitutes had identified him as the person who attacked them. Tony then admitted he did pick up some girls in the past but that was more than a year ago, and he never assaulted any of them. Some did tell him that he looked familiar and that he looked like someone who assaulted them, Tony said. People often mistook him for someone else.
Then the troopers detailed the allegations and showed him photographs of the women who were attacked. They also showed him photographs of the highway killing victims. Some of the faces looked familiar, he said. Most did not.
“Usually when I deal with people like this, I try to forget them right away,” he told the investigators. “I don’t want to be seen with them. I don’t know why I even stop for them.”14
The trooper pressed him about the allegations. Why would the women identify him? Why would they say this? Look at the photos again. Are you sure you don’t recognize them? No. Maybe. I don’t know. Tony’s answers fluctuated with each question. “She looks like a girl I picked up but I can’t really tell,” he said when shown one photo. “I don’t look at their faces.”
“I don’t usually black out, and I don’t think I ever hurt anyone,” Tony said. “I hate going with these girls because it’s degrading. These girls only want money so they can buy drugs. They’re dirty. I couldn’t take a chance of bringing something home to my girl. I’d be riddled with guilt. She would know right away. The few times I did, it was probably after I broke up with my girl last fall.”
Tony’s answers swung from insisting he never went to Weld Square and never picked up prostitutes to saying he just couldn’t remember the faces of the women he went with. “I could have picked them up, but I don’t remember them,” he told the troopers. “I have picked up girls that I don’t remember. These girls are such scumbags that I don’t want anything to do with them. I’ve been approached a hundred times. I just don’t want anything to do with it.”
He was never violent. Sometimes he pushed girls out of the truck, he admitted. Sometimes he did lose control if he was drinking. “Sometimes I get out of control and I just want to get away from them. I don’t know why I pick them up. Then I just want to get rid of them. I have to get them away from me.”
Yes, he did choke girls in the past but they weren’t unconscious, he said. “Sometimes I get screwed up and make a mistake,” Tony told them.
He didn’t kill anyone, he insisted.
“If I killed one person, the next person would be me,” he said. “My guilt feelings would kill me.”
Five hours into the interview, Lorraine left the room. The search of Tony’s house in Freetown had wrapped up and Jose—now back at the office—joined the interview.
Jose quietly asked Tony about when he went to Weld Square and how many times. Did he remember if he was there on Labor Day? How about Memorial Day weekend? Tony believed he went to Weld Square about fifty times, often on the alternating weekends his girlfriend worked. Sometimes he went there late at night after she went back to her own home.
Tony was shown the photo again of Sandra Botelho, the mother of two found dead in April in Marion. Yes, he now said, she did look familiar.
We know you wrote a personal check to her, he was told.
Tony admitted he did write a check to a girl for oral sex. She was crying about her kids. The check was for thirty or forty dollars. He never wrote checks to other prostitutes, he insisted.
He answered a series of questions. No, there wouldn’t be any blood in his car, he answered the troopers. No, he never brought prostitutes back to his house. No, he didn’t kill anyone. He would never go back to Weld Square again, he promised. Never, ever, ever. Just give me another chance. Just let me go.
“I fucked up and got out of hand before, but I didn’t kill anyone.”
Tony looked at Jose and paused. You remind me of my father, he told the soft-spoken trooper.15
Jose paused and changed the subject. He would later wonder if it was a missed opportunity. What if he had followed that line, what if he had told Tony his father would want him to tell him everything? What would the young man have told him? Would it have been anything?
It was now getting late—it was quarter to one in the morning—and Tony was getting tired. He had to work in the morning. He said he would like to go home.
As Lorraine and Kevin drove him back to Freetown, they broke the news that police had already searched his home and his truck had been seized.
When they got to the house, the troopers took the clothes Tony was wearing as evidence: leather work boots, blue jeans, and a blue, purple, and tan flannel shirt.
A polygraph test was scheduled for a few days later, Monday, April 24, 1989.
He never showed up. He now had a lawyer, Edward Harrington, the former mayor of New Bedford, an affable but shrewd attorney who was a fixture in all of the city courthouses. He could spout off legal precedent and arguments with such ease some people claimed he made up the cases. Do not talk with my client again, Tony’s lawyer now ordered.
The next month, a prostitute by the name of Margaret Medeiros appeared before the special grand jury. She said a man named Tony picked her up, but when she asked for the money upfront, he lunged at her. “He just lunged at my throat; and he tried to—you know, he was twisting my neck He tried snapping my neck.”16 The two struggled, his hands still on her neck, she said.
“And he told me what he was going to do to me like he did to the other bitches,” she said.17
She said she couldn’t lift her arms and felt like she was going to pass out. “So I just gave every strength that I had; and I kicked him. Because that was the only thing I had free was my feet.”
She kicked him in the gut and the groin. He grabbed his stomach and called her a bitch. She jumped out of the vehicle—it was either a Bronco or Blazer, she said—and ran home. She didn’t get the plate number then. It was a new vehicle, though, “because it still had the smell to it, you know, like a new car smell.”
For the next two days, he tried to pick her up again; she didn’t get in the vehicle. Then he drove by in a dirty, beat-up hatchback. She didn’t recognize him—he was wearing a hat—or the car. She got in. They drove a couple of blocks before she recognized the face. When the car stopped at a red light, she jumped out. He yelled, calling her a bitch as she bolted down the street.
When Margaret left the courthouse after testifying, she told television and newspaper reporters the same story—including the claim that her attacker said he would do to her “what he did to the other bitches.”
In May of 1988, one month after state police searched his house, Tony stood before a judge to face four counts of rape, six counts of assault and battery, and one count of assault with intent to rape. All of the charges stemmed from attacks on six prostitutes from April 1988 to April 1989. It included the time span of the murders.
THE BRISTOL COUNTY HOUSE OF CORRECTION and Jail on Ash Street in New Bedford was chilly in the winter and brutally hot in the summer, and the corridors were eerily shadowed. The walls throughout the building were painted in either steel gray, green, or dirty white, colors that covered the walls of nearly all municipal structures at the time. It was a noisy place, difficult to sleep in. Prisoners often stuck their hands through the bars, clutching small mirrors to see down the halls. Sometimes there were so many prisoners the sheriff was forced to double them up in the 287 cells.
The jail held men doing time and men awaiting trial. They were technically separated but the building was small enough and the prisoner network tight enough that everyone, from the guards to the inmates, knew who was coming in. Most of the prisoners were drug addicts, arrested or serving sentences for crimes ranging from drug possession to bank robbery. These were the prisoners with drug-addicted girlfriends or wives still copping heroin and cocaine on the street. These were the prisoners who knew how some of the women earned money to buy drugs. These were the prisoners waiting for Tony DeGrazia.
For seven months, Tony bounced from the jail to Bridgewater State Hospital where he underwent weeks of psychiatric evaluations. When he was at the jail in New Bedford, the staff either kept him segregated or under close watch. His bail was $75,000 cash, too high for anyone to post. His lawyer, Edward Harrington, kept trying to get it lowered and judges kept refusing. Finally, on December 11, 1989, a judge agreed to reduce the bail to $37,500. There was a good chance Tony would now be out by Christmas.
Tony was on the phone in a social worker’s office in the jail on December 14, making plans for his release, when the psychiatrist who did work at the prison walked in.
“Hey, I hear you’re getting out. Now you can start getting your life back together,” the doctor told him.18
“I’m not getting my life back together. Why should I? Pina’s made my life miserable. Now I’m going to make his life miserable. I’m going to end it,” Tony answered.19
The doctor, Robert Sisson, paused. That isn’t a smart thing to say, he told Tony. Tony didn’t answer.
It wasn’t unusual at the jail to hear prisoners thre
aten prosecutors or police officers. Most of the comments were idle “letting off steam” remarks. Neil Anderson of New Bedford, another man once considered—but dropped as the investigation continued—as a suspect in the highway killings had been arrested a year earlier, accused of choking and raping prostitutes. He said similar things to the doctor when he was jailed. He immediately said he was just angry and didn’t mean it. But Tony didn’t do that, and the doctor was worried; he told jail officials he was afraid Tony was serious.
Officials at the jail had been keeping a close watch on Tony since his arrest in May of 1989 on the rape and assault charges. They knew he was named a suspect by a grand jury witness in the highway killings and was once considered a suicide risk. No one was taking any chances: the threats were reported to the state police after Tony was released on bail. A court complaint was issued from New Bedford District Court charging Tony with attempting to commit a crime by threatening to kill the district attorney.
A retired plumber named Peter Duff, who had once employed Tony, posted the $37,500 bail, using a savings account as collateral, on a Thursday. Tony was arrested five days later as he waited in district court for a routine hearing on earlier, unrelated drunk-driving charges. His lawyer, Edward Harrington, was livid and told the judge the prosecutor’s office was overreacting and the remarks, if his client even said them, were taken out of context and couldn’t be taken seriously. The judge agreed and released Tony. “It’s absurd. I didn’t threaten to kill him,” Tony said after he was released.20
It was the latest court ordeal for Tony. He had been in and out of the public investigative spotlight for months in the murder case. In May of 1989, Tony had been ordered to provide a blood sample to prosecutors, and that sample was later sent to the FBI to compare with the blood found on the seat covers of the passenger and driver sides of Tony’s truck and the vent grille near the glove box. The blood sample could be used both in the rape case and other cases.
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