His lawyer would later insist the tests cleared his client of murder for a simple reason: the police never charged him.
9LOOKING IN OTHER CORNERS
PAUL BOUDREAU LISTENED to the intercepted telephone call through the headphones. He and other members of the Bristol County Drug Task Force had spent months investigating allegations that large amounts of cocaine were moving out of Whispers Pub in the city’s South End, the same bar several highway killing victims used to frequent. One informant told police “he/she” saw sales of cocaine in the bar and heard people on the phone setting up deals. Yet another saw someone carrying cocaine to be sold. It was January 26, 1989, day three of a court-authorized wiretap for the case, and the listening detectives expected to hear more talk that would bring the drug ring down. They were also keeping an ear open in case anyone mentioned any of the dead women.
Whispers Pub was one of several neighborhood bars lining the southern section of County Street, where patrons were often hanging out on the sidewalks. It was a cramped area of the city with apartments above local businesses and tight side streets with tenements.
A number of the dead and missing women hung out at Whispers Pub, and one, Nancy Paiva, was at the bar at one point the night she disappeared. Homicide investigators were curious if there were any links between that bar—or any bar—and the case. This wiretap—even the entire drug investigation—could wind up giving the murder case a major boost. Someone might slip and mention the women—or even dumping a body. Stranger things have happened.
The wiretap on the bar phone was already yielding promising and incriminating information on the cocaine-dealing ring. A day earlier, members of the task force had picked up calls detailing several suspected cocaine sales. New Bedford detective Bruce Machado heard one woman ask to buy cocaine and if she could “get two for fifty, referring to an amount of cocaine.”1 The man on the other end of the phone told her he is at the bar and will bring it by. He also warned her the phone was tapped. That warning apparently didn’t stop people from talking on the tapped phone. Raynham detective Mario Bettencourt heard someone say he was going to the North End “to pick up good shit” and yet another caller asked if the person on the other end had “good stuff.”
It was now 23:10:55 hours on the third day of what was to be a thirty-day court approved wiretap spanning forty-five days.
“Hello, Ronnie,” the caller said.
“Yah,” the person on the other end answered.
“I need three.”
“Of what?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Ah, yah all right.”
“You gonna bring it over here?”
“Where are you?”
“At the bar.”
“Oh, wow!”
Paul listened closely, trying to recognize the two voices arranging a meeting at a bank in ten minutes. The next night, he intercepted another call to a beeper number listed to “Ronnie.”
“Give me a call at Whispers right now. This is very, very important. Give me a call now as soon as possible. I’ll appreciate if you call me right now.”
The call, they believed, based on other information gathered, had to do with drug deliveries and sales. Eventually, thanks to the wiretap, informants, and undercover drug purchases, the task force was able to shut down the ring and convict its leaders.
But the narcotics detectives never heard anyone talk about the dead women. They never heard anyone talk about bodies.
“There was nothing, nothing at all,” Louis J. Pacheco, who led the task force at the time, would later say.2
Once the Whispers Pub drug investigation started to wrap up, the drug task force turned its sights on the dealings of Kenny Ponte and his friends in Florida to see if they could find any ties to drug dealing in Massachusetts—or to the deaths of the women. State police investigators were still also checking on other suspects.
JOSE GLANCED into the rearview mirror at the handcuffed prisoner in the back seat of the cruiser. The prisoner—a man named Ronald Ray Griffith—had been locked up in Missouri until four days previously when he had been flown under guard to Massachusetts. The twenty-eight-year-old Griffith had told a correction officer at the South Franklin County jail in Union, Missouri, where he was locked up on larceny charges, that he killed the women in New Bedford when he was living back East. The guard wasn’t sure if the story was true, but he passed it along—just in case. Now, Jose was in the car with this prisoner, tooling around the area in the August heat of 1989, trying to figure out if the story he was telling was yet another yarn. Since the start of the case, investigators followed up on claim after claim that someone confessed to the killings. None, so far, proved true.
Jose and the other investigators had already checked motor-vehicle records, arrest records, and interviewed people who knew the guy. His story could be true, Jose thought. The guy had been in the area between April and September of 1988—the time of the killings—with his then wife. He was only sent back to Missouri, where he was a fugitive from justice, after police in Attleboro arrested him on car theft and disturbing the peace charges. The timeline made sense. This could be the real deal. But he and the other investigators were still cautious. They had teetered several times on identifying the killer before, only to see the cases were built on rumor, innuendo, and outright lies. In some cases, the people with the information were just plain crazy. In some cases, the suspect had an alibi.
The case had extended beyond the homicide unit. Narcotics detectives both in the city and county were looking at possible ties between their cases and the murders. After the Whispers Pub cocaine-trafficking case and its related wiretap failed to reveal ties to the killings, members of the Bristol County Drug Task Force looked in other directions. The New Bedford city narcotics unit raided an apartment the husband of one victim was sharing with a group of people—finding cocaine but no evidence to help the murder probe.
And, earlier, New Bedford and state police investigators had spent weeks checking on a group of dangerous sex offenders who were released on days-long furloughs from a state facility called the Treatment Center for the Sexually Dangerous in Bridgewater, about forty minutes away. Under state law, sex offenders could be civilly committed for life if a judge found they were likely to reoffend and if they were a danger to the community. But being committed didn’t mean all of the offenders stayed locked up, thanks to the furlough program at the time. As part of a rehabilitation effort to prepare the offenders for possible release, some of the them were allowed to leave the facility to work or attend other programs. At least ten of the convicted rapists who were out on furlough during the summer of 1988 either owned or had access to vehicles, ranging from compact cars such as a blue Pinto to full-sized vehicles and a truck. One rapist on furlough was a man named Kenneth Junier who had been convicted of raping two women and trying to attack a third in the 1970s. In one of the cases he pulled over the victim, claiming to be a cop. In all three cases, he grabbed the women by the neck or throat. In 1988, he had been working and staying with his wife in New Bedford from Mondays to Fridays while on a furlough, returning to the center just for the weekends. (He was eventually moved to a minimum security state prison after he was deemed not “sexually dangerous” in 1991. He was denied parole five times and was still in prison in 2017). Another convict was out for a few hours; yet another for a few days. One of the men, Michael Kelley, was convicted of raping two women in Boston in 1976 and 1977. (He was later charged with the murder of two women months after he was released in 1992.) Yet another man, Ronald Leftwich, who raped and tortured a sixty-seven-year-old Nantucket woman in 1977, was moved out of the furlough program in August of 1988 because of a “pattern of lies and inappropriate behavior.”3 (A year after he was deemed “not sexually dangerous” and released in 1995, he beat a pastor in Brimfield, Massachusetts, to death.) The men at the treatment center were considered the worst of the worst sex offenders: violent pedophiles and serial rapists. The group of men who were now out on furlou
gh topped the list for investigators to check out.
The furlough records, however, were not as detailed as the investigators had hoped. Sloppy was the way one person later described them. There were some cases where police suspected the prisoners weren’t supervised properly. There were other cases where the prisoners weren’t supervised at all while out on a furlough. There were reports the men were seen in Weld Square and that some were dealing or using drugs. In some cases, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact times prisoners returned or were let out. The furloughed sex offenders were never “ruled in” as suspects in the murders. Some were never completely ruled out either. They were, like so many others, in that “maybe” pile.
As Jose drove in the cruiser this day, Maryann in the front and Richie, the New Bedford detective, in the back with the prisoner, he wondered if this latest suspect from Missouri would be yet another dead end.
For three days now, they had driven for hours with the prisoner, past the areas where the women’s bodies had been found. Sometimes the prisoner would say a spot looked familiar. Sometimes he said nothing as they drove by. The investigators were careful to keep quiet during the ride. In interviews with the troopers and detective, the prisoner talked about the case but never gave specifics. The only information he provided was what anyone reading a newspaper would know: the women had been strangled and left along the highway.
Between his answers, the man kept repeating the same question. Now could he see his estranged wife, who was still living in the area? He asked in the morning when they picked him up. He asked as they drove him around the towns circling New Bedford. He asked when they ate lunch. He asked while they interviewed him at the office. He asked as they returned him to the county jail.
Ronald Ray Griffith had an agenda and it didn’t include solving the highway killings, they were convinced.
By the fourth day, the trio was weary of Griffith and weary of his blathering about his wife. They needed to lay a trap to confirm he was lying.
The cruiser passed by a spot off the highway. Richie was smiling in the backseat. “Isn’t that where that other body was found?” Richie asked.4
Ronald took the bait. He launched into a description about how he killed a woman and left her there. Richie shot a look at his colleagues and grinned. There was no body found there, the investigators knew. The guy was wasting their time.
Finally, we can get this guy out of the car, Jose thought.
Ronald Ray Griffith was on the next available plane back to Missouri with a U.S. marshal. He never got to see his estranged wife.
AS MARYANN AND JOSE CONTINUED to follow what seemed at times unrelated but intriguing leads in the case, the troopers were getting reports the drug task force was taking a keen interest in what Kenny Ponte and his friends were doing in Florida. Questions were being raised about the business dealings of one of Kenny’s friends, and they were hearing reports about disturbances at the lawyer’s Florida home. It would be interesting what the narcotics detectives came up with, the troopers thought.
PAUL BOUDREAU leaned the Canon SLR on the dashboard to keep it still as he focused on the shoebox-like duplex ahead. The building reminded him of a double-wide trailer in a rundown neighborhood: indistinctive and a bit trashy.
Slowly, his boss in the DA’s office, chief investigator Robert St. Jean, inched by the house. Paul, sitting on the passenger side, peered through the camera lens.
Click. Click.
One shot of the car.
One shot of the car and duplex.
The pair had flown down from Massachusetts in October 1989 to scope out Kenneth Ponte’s Florida place for a couple of days to see—firsthand—what he was up to. They heard from Florida investigators, Sgt. William Sager and Detective David Buhs, that there had been a few problems at the lawyer’s house about two blocks from the Port Richey police department. A rock thrown through a window. Shotgun blasts in front of the house. Arguments. Fights. Lots of people coming and going. The “general arguments and fights.”
Port Richey police were keeping a close eye on the house after getting more than a few reports in late December of 1988 and early 1989 about the murder investigation in Massachusetts and Ponte’s possible ties to the case. Now, nearly a year after the attorney had moved to Florida, Paul and Bob were at the police station to meet with Port Richey investigators first, getting the not-on-the-report background on the neighborhood, the people coming and going, and the general “cop feel” for what was going on at the house.
Kenny Ponte didn’t go out much: an occasional trip to the grocery store or take-out at Hooters. Most of the trouble he got into—or when trouble found him—was at his own duplex.
Now, it was time for the Massachusetts investigators to find out for themselves what was going on at the place. Paul was already looking into the business dealings of one of Kenny’s friends, a former corrections officer in Massachusetts by the name of Paul Ryley. The man was a braggart: a few years earlier he stopped into Boudreau’s video store in the North End of New Bedford and told him he had invested in fifty movie theaters in Tennessee; bought a two-hundred-unit condominium complex in Texas; had money in an Acapulco hotel and gold company, and had invested in Florida property. He also claimed he was working undercover in Texas. He told the detective he was doing great and making lots of money. Want to go into business with me? How about a private investigation business in Florida? At least once a month, Ryley would stop by the movie rental shop to talk about business, his life, and the money he was making. In December of 1988, the visits stopped—around the same time the narcotics detective began a side investigation into Kenny Ponte’s drug issues.5
Paul Boudreau was intrigued by one of calls from the Port Richey detectives. Did he know a woman named Elsa Johnson from Dartmouth, Massachusetts, who was living in the duplex next door to Kenny? And did he know the woman said her “old man” was a guy named Paul Ryley? And did he know Paul Ryley was “married” to a woman named Sandra Castro? The New Bedford detective was interested—especially since he knew Paul Ryley was not divorced from his wife who was still living in the New Bedford area. What was going on down there, he wondered. For months, the Florida police department had been keeping a daily watch on the duplex, reporting back what they saw to the detective.
For a few hours, Boudreau and St. Jean watched the lawyer’s house from a distance in a rented car as people came and went. Then, as the sun set, they hid out back in a swamp-like area about seventy-five feet away to see what went on at night. Paul made sure he wore long pants, even though the night was warm. A couple of years earlier, he was on the east coast of Florida on a drug surveillance and felt something crawling up his leg. He had been bitten by red ants. That wasn’t going to happen again.
Through binoculars, they could see shadowy figures moving in the windows and the flicker of the television. Was that a woman’s figure? Paul wondered. Who was it? The two kept looking. Was it someone from New Bedford? Was it someone they should know?
Paul slapped a mosquito on his arm. Then another. Then another. He mentally added “hazmat suit” to his list of “must haves” for the next surveillance before packing up for the night.
FOLLOW THE MONEY. Follow the paperwork.
That’s what Paul Boudreau tried to do when he returned to New Bedford and tried to untangle Paul Ryley’s business dealings to see if anything illegal was being done. It turned out to be fairly easy. Ryley was cocky and he was sloppy. A close look at the man’s late mother’s estate found a document had been forged to get about $60,000 of a 1970 real-estate trust’s assets. There was already a civil case pending, but criminal charges could also be lodged.6 Paul began putting together his case.
A grand jury handed up an indictment in Bristol County Superior Court on December 12, 1989, charging Kenny’s friend with uttering a forged instrument—the charge covering the forgery—and larceny. After a bench warrant for the man’s arrest was issued, the detective was on the phone with Port Richey police sgt. William Sage
r. Arrest him.
By three o’clock that afternoon, Kenny Ponte was standing in the doorway of his Sun Glo Avenue duplex, watching police lead his friend away in handcuffs.
Ryley turned to Kenny briefly. “Call Joe. Tell them to be very careful.”7 Police never identified who he was talking about.
Inside the duplex Paul Ryley occasionally shared with his girlfriend from Massachusetts, police found a foot-thick pile of “hard core pornography books.” In a dresser drawer were Polaroid photos, including two of his girlfriend partially dressed. In the trunk of Ryley’s car, they found a fully loaded 9 mm Smith & Wesson automatic with two extra clips. At the police station, they found he had two Bristol County sheriff’s badges along with four deputy-sheriff photo IDs.
Five days later, Ryley called the New Bedford detective. It was the first time they had spoken in four months.
“What’s going on?” Ryley wanted to know.
“You don’t have to talk with me,” Paul Boudreau answered.
“I don’t understand why I’m being arrested. Get me back to New Bedford as soon as you can.”
Ryley told the detective he knew hanging around with Kenny would be trouble, without elaborating.
“So why do it? “Paul asked.
“Who else can I bum around with?” was the answer.8
By the time the detective and Bob St. Jean arrived in Florida on December 27, 1989, to bring Paul Ryley back, it was clear they didn’t want to talk about forgeries or estate trusts. Bob read him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.
You want to ask me about Kenny Ponte, he told the investigators.
He knew Kenny from New Bedford, and the attorney had done some legal work for his mom, Doris Trimble. They socialized a couple of times and went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant in Westport, Massachusetts. In Florida, Elsa the girlfriend needed a place to live, and Kenny had a cheap place to rent next door for $275 a month. His wife Sandra—well, maybe the marriage wasn’t quite legal because he never got a divorce—was living in Springhill, Florida, and didn’t know about the girlfriend.
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