Christina Monteiro, missing, photo supplied to the media by the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office
Photo of Robbin Rhodes supplied to the media by the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office
Photo of Rochelle Dopierala supplied to the media by the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office
Photo of Sandra Botelho supplied to the media by the family and by the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office
THE CALLS came into newsrooms in Massachusetts from Florida at least once a week even after Kenny Ponte’s attorney warned him to stop talking.
This is Kenny Ponte, the caller would start. You have to agree this call is all off the record.
Some reporters agreed. Others did not.
It is off the record unless you confess to a crime, one reporter told him. Sometimes Kenny would hang up immediately; sometimes he would snort and agree. When Kenny did stay on the line he would rant: the district attorney was out to get him, he was corrupt, he was using the case to get reelected, to get a job in Washington, D.C. He would make allegations about the DA’s second wife, question the validity of her widely questioned reported abduction two years earlier and her struggles with sobriety. He even created bumper stickers asking “Who put Sheila in the trunk?” Kenny would ramble in those phone calls, his voice rising in frustration or anger. And then he would abruptly hang up. Sometimes the click would come with a question asked. Sometimes it would come if the listener failed to agree with him. Sometimes there was no reason. He called newspapers, he called television stations, he called radio stations. Kenny liked to talk.
He sent a letter to the editor of the New Bedford Standard-Times titled “THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES,” comparing his case to the fable of the same name. “The time as arrived to state the obvious to the people of Bristol County—YOUR EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES. Despite his many press conferences and television appearances in which he has cutely portrayed four (4) different persons as being guilty of this horrendous crime, the obvious truth is niether [sic] I nor anyone else has been shown to have any involement [sic] in this crime,” Kenny wrote in the April 1, 1990 letter.
“The general public is apparently afraid to criticize you Mr. Pina but I am not. You can bring all the phony charges you like against me but just remember that when the smoke clears you will be left standing alone as a court defendant answering my charges that your intentional abuse of your power has violated my civil rights,” he continued in the three-page letter.
Even when there were no articles about him, Kenny called reporters or wrote to complain about Ronald A. Pina.
Kenny was seeing his life and his career slip away, and he was angry. “It was really a travesty what was happening to him,” Kevin Reddington recalled in an interview years later.
FROM AFAR in this pre-Internet world, Kenny learned what was going on in New Bedford through phone calls and newspaper clippings sent to his Florida house from the few friends he had left in the city. The secret he tried desperately to keep hidden—his relapse into drugs a couple of years earlier—was now fodder for headlines and television news teasers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In Port Richey, police were keeping watch on his single-story duplex. An anonymous, scrawled printed note on lined paper mailed from Groton, Connecticut, to the Florida town’s police chief a year earlier simply said “Keep an eye on this guy.” The cops in Florida took it to heart. His closest buddy Ryley was locked up in a New Bedford jail overseen by a sheriff both he and Kenny campaigned for and served under as part-time deputies. It was likely he would stay there, too. The bail was set at $25,000, and Kenny figured it would stay that high until the guy testified before a grand jury. Where would it all end? Kenny had already flown back to New Bedford once to meet with his new attorney, Kevin Reddington, and now he was in a sort of limbo in Florida, not sure what would happen next.
At the district attorney’s office in Massachusetts, prosecutors and members of the Bristol County Drug Task Force were deciding what to do with Kenny. By February 9, 1990, a report by the prosecutor’s office entitled “Factual Report of the Indictable Offenses of Kenneth C. Ponte” had been written to outline the evidence against Kenny in a drug case. It detailed Kenny’s cocaine purchases and use; how he bounced checks; how he had two handguns; the girls who came to his house; the girls who claimed he wouldn’t let them leave. It quoted a man who told police and the grand jury that Kenny said he would kill him or his friends if they ever testified against him. By the end of March, that evidence was presented to a grand jury separate from the highway killings.
That grand jury handed up a three-count indictment in the case of “K. P. Doe,” charging Kenny with conspiracy to possess cocaine in 1988. A cab driver, Arthur “Goldie” Goldblatt, was also indicted on charges of conspiring to violate drug laws. The attorney for Goldblatt, Paul Walsh Jr., questioned why the charges were lodged now, two years later. “I wonder if there are any motivations other than solid investigative work here,” the attorney said.2
When the indictment was handed up, Kenny booked a flight back to Boston.
KENNY BOWED HIS HEAD, lips tight, as his lawyer whispered in his ear.
Kevin Reddington always told his clients the same thing at arraignment: don’t show emotion, don’t shake your head, don’t glare, stay dignified. Say two words: “Not guilty.”
Kenny did all of that during his arraignment in New Bedford Superior Court on drug charges on April 13, 1990, two weeks after the indictment on drug charges was handed up. His attorney stayed close as Kenny carefully entered a not guilty plea before Superior Court judge Gerald O’Neil and was released on personal recognizance—his personal promise to come back to court without posting bail—and ordered to return to court in six days.
Ten minutes later, Kenny was handed a subpoena to appear before the grand jury investigating the highway killings.
This time, Kenny did not try to duck reporters as he left the courthouse. He stood next to his attorney on the courthouse steps, the same spot the district attorney often stood to chat with reporters. Kenny’s attorney called the subpoena “another indication of harassment” of his client, a move he would fight. He also called on Bristol County district attorney Ronald A. Pina to hand the murder case over to someone else. “After all of the passage of time, the investigation is really breaking down and I think it’s time for Mr. Pina to step aside and an independent prosecutor to take over, and it’s time to appoint a special prosecutor,” Kevin Reddington told the reporters.3 He said the foreman of the grand jury, talk-show host Henry R. Carreiro, disliked his client because of another, unrelated case. (Carreiro denied those allegations, saying he tried as hard as he could to avoid sitting on the grand jury. “I said my rosary every night so I wouldn’t get a celebrated case.”4)
Then, with the cameras trained on the pair, Kenny spoke. “I feel completely victimized by the system,” he said, adding he had written an unpublished book called “Presumed Guilty.”
After a few minutes, client and attorney walked calmly away, camera crews trailing.
The stage was set. Kevin Reddington thought it went pretty well as he drove out of New Bedford back to his office.
KENNY WAS PACKED and ready to leave New Bedford right after the arraignment. His friend, Daniel Branco, would drive him to Logan Airport, he would hop on a plane and go home to Port Richey, Florida. As they hit the road, they could see what appeared to be an unmarked police cruiser behind them. The blue lights went on; they pulled over. His friend was arrested on an outstanding warrant for motor-vehicle violations. Kenny pulled his luggage out the trunk and started walking down the street, looking for a pay phone. Police followed him as he walked along the street. “Are you having a bad day, counselor? The bag looks very heavy, counselor,” Kevin Reddington later quoted a trooper as saying.5 When he found a pay phone, Kenny called his lawyer. Then he called his brother, asking for a ride to the Brockton law office. Unmarked cruisers followed them as they drove up Route 140 and onto Route 24. The cruiser
s followed the car as it took the exit for Route 123 toward Easton and as it pulled into an office-complex parking lot.
Kevin Reddington gave explicit instructions to his client. Pull in and go to the end of the lot at my office. He asked his secretary to get in her car and block the exit when Kenny’s vehicle and cruisers pulled in. He had already called a photographer to come over to take pictures.
Kenny’s brother pulled in; Kevin was outside the building, waving them to the rear of the lot; the cruisers pulled in; his secretary blocked the only exit from the lot; a photographer for the Brockton Enterprise stood near Kevin with his camera. Click. Click. Click.
A trooper looked at Kevin. “She said something like, ‘Oh, my God,’” he recalled.
Later that day, the defense attorney described the incident to reporters as “Gestapo tactics” and said it showed the district attorney was harassing his client. “How many cops working for how many hours following Ken Ponte around does he have?” he asked.
The defense attorney had now fired a verbal and public round at the prosecution. He figured he could now steer this case in the right direction without any surprises.
PAUL F. WALSH JR. was a newcomer with a local political pedigree when he decided to run for district attorney against twelve-year Democratic incumbent Ronald A. Pina. His father, known warmly as “Doc,” was on the local school committee, active in Republican Party politics, and close friends with two of the most powerful Democratic leaders in Greater New Bedford. As a child, young Paul grew up in the shadows of politicking. He watched his father go door-to-door asking for each vote, saw how aligning with different camps was important, and how a tight campaign organization made it all work. He saw how a campaign coffer could illustrate the strength, or weakness, of a candidate. People didn’t put their money on a loser, even if it was five bucks.
Paul, who, unlike his father, was a Democrat, toyed with running for the Bristol County prosecutor’s seat for a couple of years in the predominately Democratic county. He was just waiting for the incumbent to move on and up. Every so often, Bristol County district attorney Ronald A. Pina’s name would surface as a possible candidate for a higher state or federal office, such as governor, or even Congress. When Governor Michael Dukakis’s run for president was strong, Ron Pina was mentioned for a high-level Washington post. At the state Democratic Convention, Walsh had heard the DA’s name floated for two offices: lieutenant governor and state attorney general. If the DA left New Bedford, Paul wanted to be ready to run.
The younger Walsh began his careful planning in 1987, after leaving the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston where he worked as a prosecutor after law school. It was a great job, but he was looking to do more. “There is an old Russian proverb: ‘It is a poor solider who doesn’t want to be a general,’” Paul said. “I loved working as an assistant district attorney, it was the greatest job I had, but I thought, I would like to be general. That was always in the back of my mind.”6
He quit the Boston job and moved to Portugal where he enrolled in a language-history program at the University of Lisbon. For nearly a year, he was immersed in Portuguese culture and language, preparing to run for district attorney in the largely Portuguese Bristol County. When he came home, Paul quietly made inquiries: If I ran, could I win? If I ran, would you support me? If I ran, what type of political organization would I need? If I ran, how much money would I need?
He learned the importance of planning and teamwork early in life on two fronts: his father’s campaign work and his own experience on the basketball court. As the captain of the Holy Family High School basketball team in 1972, he watched who was in the best position and learned to look for the strongest players to throw to. “I was probably the third best of the starting five,” he said. “But I knew who the ball should go to. . . . It’s not all about you, it’s about your team.” His high school team won the state championship.
The same skills Walsh used on the basketball court and in the courtroom—planning and observation—were now turned to politics and a possible run for Bristol County district attorney when he returned home from Portugal. He opened a small law office in New Bedford, became active in Democratic politics, and kept his ears open. “I wanted to have my ducks all in a row,” he said.
To find out how much money he would need to run, Paul needed to see how much his opponent had. He drove to the state campaign-finance office in Boston where candidates were required to file financial reports. As he flipped through the file for Ronald Pina, he expected to see a campaign chest of at least $100,000. What he saw was a tally under $5,000. “I remember thinking he is having a tough go with this. He has no money in the bank,” Paul said.
On the drive home, he stopped at the Howard Johnson’s at the Route 24 rest area in Bridgewater to call his older brother. Forget about waiting for Ron to leave office. This is it. “Billy, he has no money in the bank, I’m in, I’m going,” Paul told him excitedly.7
Just come home and we’ll talk with Dad, his brother calmly answered.
Six months before the Democratic primary, in early March of 1990, Paul F. Walsh Jr. stood in Weld Square and formally announced his candidacy for Bristol County district attorney. “I chose that site because it represents what has gone wrong with the criminal justice system,” he wrote at the time in his campaign’s “drug policy for the 1990s.” “Weld Square, which not too many years ago was a vibrant, safe neighborhood, is today dominated by criminal elements who prey on the innocent. And, at the root of that area’s problems is the illegal drug trade.”
Before he even announced, Walsh had quietly set up a campaign organization throughout the county, tapping into the expertise of his father and other seasoned politicians in the area. “We were in and we ran hard,” Paul recalled.
At age thirty-five, he was viewed as “the kid” trying to topple the seasoned prosecutor with a dozen years in office.
Ron Pina was once in the same position as Walsh. He was just twenty-six when he first ran for state representative in 1970, part of the “new breed” of politicians. He was young, handsome, and touting change. In 1979, at age thirty-three, he won in a five-way race for district attorney with 29 percent of the vote. He was aggressive, took on tough cases, started new programs, created a child-abuse unit, and was touched by the pain of victims and their families. He was also, after years in office, becoming politically complacent. Some said he stopped returning phone calls and lost touch with political allies. Others said he took the job for granted as he looked for higher offices. Still others said he was struggling to deal with the highly public alcohol problems of his second wife.
Once Walsh jumped into the campaign, Pina discovered the political base he took for granted had eroded. Some of his strongest past supporters were working for his opponent or sitting out the election. The New Bedford Police Union endorsed Walsh; so did the Metropolitan Police Patrolman’s Union, even though it was out of Boston. Pina tried to hit back, issuing campaign press releases saying “integrity is the issue” and claiming his opponent had little experience to run the office. He kept referring to his opponent as the “fresh-faced rookie.” Pina touted the endorsement of the Massachusetts District Attorney’s Association, a group for which he served as president three times. In radio spots and newspaper political ads, Pina was highlighting old cases involving marijuana smuggling. One ad featured a comic strip illustrating the case. Voters were looking forward, though, not back. Then the district attorney made a crucial error. In what political observers at the time called a turning point of the campaign, Pina issued a press release claiming his opponent’s campaign manager, Joaquim “Jack” Nobrega, took the job only after his son was given a lifetime court job by the candidate’s father. “Being part of machine politics seriously questions Paul Walsh Jr.’s ability to make decisions on his own,” Pina said in a campaign press release.
Jack Nobrega was livid. He and the elder Walsh served together on the school committee, were close friends and shrewd poli
tical insiders. They were considered among the most politically powerful men in the city. The two friends shot back that there was no “deal” for the job—the younger Nobrega had been a probation officer who was qualified for the job, and three judges approved the appointment.
Friends of the elder Walsh and Nobrega stepped up efforts to unseat Pina. One of the most powerful politicians in the area, state senator William Q. “Biff” MacLean, was a close friend of the elder Walsh and Nobrega. He had said he was staying on the sidelines, at least publically. However, political insiders at the time said he was quietly working behind the scenes to help Paul Walsh win without publically endorsing him. The incumbent’s political misstep of criticizing Nobrega was seen by some as the beginning of the end for Ron Pina.
Walsh slammed Pina on spending, including paying a press secretary $50,000, which was much more than what an assistant district attorney was earning in 1990. In a July 16, 1990, campaign press release, Walsh hammered the incumbent on his public handling of the highway killings murder investigation. Walsh insisted the intense pretrial publicity in the investigation, and the incumbent’s statements to reporters, might jeopardize the case. He said it was turning into a media circus, tarnishing the city’s image just as the intense publicity in the earlier Big Dan’s rape case had. It highlighted the community perception of a prosecutor more concerned with image than justice—and it struck a chord with voters.
Pina was upbeat throughout the campaign. His opponent was a “kid” without the experience needed to run the office. His inner circle and supporters were loyal and determined. They would win. What was important to his campaign was identifying and charging the person or persons responsible for killing nine women, and hoping the police would find the bodies of the two who were missing. The case was increasingly becoming part of the campaign, with a growing number of people criticizing Pina’s press conferences and the focus on Kenneth Ponte. Jaded voters wondered aloud whether an indictment would be handed up just before the election. Pina’s media-darling image was turning into a political problem.
Shallow Graves Page 24