Shallow Graves

by Maureen Boyle

  The prosecutor’s house was put under twenty-four-hour watch throughout the weekend. His daughter stayed at a friend’s house. At the request of First Assistant District Attorney Raymond P. Veary Jr., a judge approved a restraining order that Saturday ordering Kenny to stay one thousand feet from the district attorney, his family, or his employees.

  Threats by suspects in the case were not new. Neil Anderson, an early suspect in the investigation, made a threat in jail against the DA then immediately thought better of it. Tony DeGrazia, accused of choking and raping prostitutes, was charged in a threat he made shortly before being released on bail, a charge later dropped. Neither of those threats led to a round-the-clock watch. Until now.

  The small city of New Bedford also just got smaller. Kenny’s mother lived next door to Ron Pina, and the houses were twenty-five feet apart. Kenny decided to stay put in Florida for now.

  AS KENNY FELT HIS LIFE UNRAVEL in Florida, investigators in Massachusetts were slowly piecing together the last days of Rochelle Dopierala’s life.

  She was in a car on April 3, 1988, when Kenny allegedly threatened a New Bedford man with a gun. She went into detox in Quincy but left a few days later. Two days after she left the detox, a dentist who befriended Rochelle called her mother to say she ripped him off. Rochelle was seen in Falmouth by a police officer on April 21. She was due to go to Barnstable District Court. At some point, a man matching Kenny’s description had driven her to the Cape in April to deal with some court issues. Detective John Dextradeur saw her walking down the street with Nancy Paiva and Nancy’s boyfriend on April 27, 1988, and pulled her aside to make sure she would testify against Kenny. She said she was staying with Nancy and Frankie and told him she was afraid of Kenny. A man matching Kenny’s description had driven Rochelle to a mobile home in Acushnet sometime in April, waited outside until she came out, and then the two left. Police believe that was in late April of 1988, likely after she told the New Bedford detective she would testify against Kenny.

  Rochelle had a meeting at the welfare office in Falmouth on May 19, 1988, to review her benefits and case file. Her mother was to meet her there. Rochelle never showed up.

  And then there was the troubling story from the drug dealer about the threats.

  A FALL RIVER WOMAN named Linda Robitaille, dealing drugs on Purchase Street, heard and saw a lot. She heard the stories about this weird guy who got the girls to buy him coke; how he had a gun; how the girls used to shoot the cocaine into his neck; how some girls would stay at his house for hours or days. A friend of hers went with him twice. The first time her friend stayed out all night, doing coke with him. The second time, the dealer tracked her down to the guy’s house and lay on the car horn. When her friend came out, the dealer pulled her into the car and they left. “I took her from the house. Because I was tired of her being in there all night shootin’ cocaine or whatever they was doin,’” the dealer later testified to a grand jury.11

  It was sometime in April of 1988 when she saw Rochelle Dopierala driving a big brown car on Purchase Street. Rochelle stopped and got out. Then a man came running toward the car, yelling.

  “He said, ‘Get over here you fuckin’ bitch, because I’m gonna kill you,’” the dealer later recalled.12

  Rochelle bolted up a nearby street. The man, later identified as Kenny, jumped in the car and took off.

  The dealer turned her attention to another car pulling up. It was a customer looking to buy drugs. She didn’t see where Kenny went. She never saw Rochelle again.

  IT WAS HARD TO MISS JOSE GONSALVES, even from a distance. He always stood straight, so he always looked taller than his six-foot-plus frame. Judy DeSantos spotted him first as he walked up the path to New Bedford Superior Court. Then she saw the woman in handcuffs he was escorting. Who is that? This was a new face. Judy had recognized a few of the witnesses appearing before the grand jury in the past year and a half. A few were cops involved in the investigation, some were businessmen and women, some were drug addicts or street people. She knew a few through their families; others were acquainted with acquaintances. There were even a couple she recognized because they passed through city hall to pay a tax bill or register to vote or pick up a birth certificate.

  Judy heard someone talking as Jose and the woman passed inside.

  “That’s the woman from Florida. That’s Kenny Ponte’s girlfriend.”

  Judy wondered what this woman—who she would later learn was Diane Doherty—would tell the grand jury. Whatever it was, Judy hoped it would be a story to solve the case.

  RON PINA STARED INTO THE DISTANCE, a book on his lap. His teenaged daughter, Kari, knew the look. He was thinking. Deeply. She knew he was involved in a big case, an important case. She knew a little bit about it: someone was killing women and leaving their bodies along the highways. The women had families that loved them. She saw firsthand how much the families missed them. One woman found dead was the mother of her junior high schoolmate, Jolene. She saw from a distance at that time what Jolene had to go through as some people, even children, tried to downplay the murders because the victims had drug problems. Kari could see how the words had stung her when people referred to the victims as prostitutes and junkies. People could be mean.13

  Her father was different. He saw stolen lives and the need to find a killer. He wanted justice for those without a voice. She could tell he was haunted by this case, by the grief of the families. She saw his quietness at home, how he would sit and read and think. He was always reading something legal-like and important. To relax in the summer, he would sail on his Tartan 30 named Cyrano, after Cyrano de Bergerac, the central character in the play by Edmond Rostand. On most days, though, especially during the school year, he would be sitting in the den area of the house reading as Kari did homework on the dining room table. The first floor was an open floor plan, and she could see him when she looked up from the table or was anywhere else in the house. There was always that sense of quiet urgency in his work when he was at home.

  In the office, Ron’s staff also felt they were doing something for the greater good—and the highway killing case was part of that. “There is no question he genuinely wanted to find out who the highway killer was,” recalled Raymond P. Veary, Jr., the first assistant district attorney at the time. “He clearly wanted to identify the murderer or murderers, and he wanted the investigation to be successful.”14

  But Ron was also a political lightning rod for criticism this election year and everyone knew it. He was handsome, smart, well spoken, and shined on camera. When he entered a room, his presence rippled through the crowd. He laughed hard, smiled a lot, and could, at times, unleash searing comments. The word had always been he was headed to Washington, D.C., maybe the Senate, maybe a high-level presidential appointment. He was going places. He was a brilliant star.

  “Ron has always been a big personality,” Ray recalled. “That has always been his strength and, in some cases, considered a fault by others.”

  The investigators knew the district attorney was the public “face” of the case and never doubted his commitment to both the victims’ families and solving the murders. With the primary election coming up in September, they also knew he was heading into one of his toughest political battles. His challenge would be in balancing the two.

  12THE INDICTMENT

  JUDY DESANTOS COULD TELL something was different when the grand jury session continued in August of 1990. There was an air of anticipation tinged with uneasiness. The district attorney seemed on edge. The moment he stepped outside the court, reporters were pressing him. Are you close? Will there be an indictment?

  It was clear to her—and everyone in the city—that Kenny Ponte was the main target in the killings probe. In the more recent sessions of the grand jury, it appeared all the witnesses were tied somehow to the lawyer. Kenny was again making radio and television appearances, saying he was being railroaded. His lawyer, Kevin Reddington, was slamming the prosecutor publically. And there was the steady dru
mbeat of news stories about Kenny’s ties to the dead women. Judy knew that her sister knew Kenny from when she worked at a video store and that he handled her bankruptcy case. Judy’s nieces swore the lawyer used to call and come by the apartment, particularly when Frankie wasn’t around. One time, Judy was told, Kenny offered her sister a job in his office. There were too many coincidences. If he wasn’t the killer, he knew who was. She was sure of it.

  Judy also trusted the prosecutors and the police. Maryann and Jose didn’t talk about the suspects or Kenny Ponte or about how the grand jury was being handled. They didn’t disparage the district attorney. They didn’t criticize anyone. When she spoke with them, they would just tell her everyone was working hard and trying to find the person who did it.

  In meetings with Ron Pina, she was impressed by the prosecutor’s kindness and nonjudgmental nature. He was smart, he was sharp. He was their legal knight charging ahead for justice.

  The special grand jury had been meeting sporadically for a year and a half, drawing both state and national media attention. Judy had used her vacation, sick, and personal time from work to wait outside the grand jury room whenever the panel met to keep watch. During that time, she had felt both encouraged and discouraged by its progress. Sometimes she was convinced the end was near and she would quietly celebrate in her mind. Other times, it appeared the killings were unsolvable, and she would try not to drown in despair. She could tell there had been different suspects in the case based on whom she saw going into the grand jury and what the media was reporting. She wasn’t sure, though, what type of evidence police had—if any. All she could do was pray they had something.

  Judy shared her concerns with the mother of Debra Greenlaw DeMello. Deb’s children were young—just like Nancy’s—and her mother, Madeline, was easy to talk with during the long grand jury waits. They were both angry and sad and overwhelmed by the case and the media attention. They both also had faith in the district attorney and developed a strong distaste for Kenny Ponte. Madeline lived nearly an hour’s drive away in Brockton and wasn’t at the grand jury sessions as often as Judy. Madeline wanted to keep home life as normal as possible for her daughter’s kids. It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes the grief was overwhelming, but Madeline was determined to shield the children from her own pain. She needed to be stronger than ever.

  The two women also felt a pull from beyond the grave when they were together. They couldn’t shake the feeling that Nancy and Debra were friends, their lives and deaths intertwined. Nancy’s clothes were found across the highway near Debra’s body. It had to mean something. They just weren’t sure what it was. Was the clothing planted by the killer to throw them off? Or was there a simpler explanation? Could the killer have just tossed Nancy’s clothes out while rounding the highway ramp to return to New Bedford after dumping her body less than two miles away on Interstate 195 westbound? Could Debra have borrowed Nancy’s clothes while staying at her apartment and been wearing them at the time she was killed?

  In July, Judy had watched from a discreet distance as Diane Doherty was escorted into the courthouse. Now, on this August day, Judy felt certain the case was coming to a close when she saw Diane Doherty escorted yet again into the courthouse. She found herself trembling slightly.

  Is this what justice feels like? she wondered.

  THE GRAND JURY ROOM in New Bedford Superior Court was on the left side of the hallway, across from a pay phone and the district attorney’s satellite office. Inches from the grand jury door, Court Officer Valerie Fletcher sat guard at a tiny wooden desk, checking in witnesses and keeping the media at bay. Reporters sat on the wooden benches lining the wall, smoking and watching people go in and out. On one side of the grand jury room, there was a line of windows looking into the courthouse hallway, blinds shielding the view to the inside. Reporters tried to peer through the slats on occasion, squinting to catch a glimpse of a witness talking or the prosecutor gesturing. No one could hear what was being said.

  It was hot during the summer in the courthouse and the grand jury room was no exception. Smokers huddled occasionally by an open window to catch a cigarette, trying to keep the smoke away from the others. It had been a long seventeen months for the twenty-three grand jurors. They were trying to balance their lives with the biggest case in Bristol County, if not the state. They were average people: secretaries, factory workers, teachers, retirees, office workers. When they were called to the grand jury, most figured it would be a three- or four-day event. Instead, they were spending three and four days every few months listening to testimony about a street world of drugs foreign to them. “It was a difficult year and a half,” one of the grand jurors, Charles January, recalled. “The whole thing went on . . . forever.”1

  Some jurors would leave the session and go straight to work in the evening or night, the testimony lingering in their minds of the women from the streets who had been beaten, choked, or robbed. “They weren’t easy to forget, the lives they lived,” recalled another grand juror, Beverly Powell. “When I came home, I was just glad I had a normal life.”2

  By August of 1990, the grand jurors had listened to testimony from a wide range of people, including prostitutes, drug dealers, drug users, cops, a grieving mother, a grieving husband, a john who knew the dead women and had passed a polygraph test in the case. They heard about Kenny Ponte, Tony DeGrazia, Neil Anderson, and a host of other people who knew or may have known the dead women. They heard about porn tapes, about drug use, about threats, about rapes, about beatings.

  Then Diane Doherty came into the grand jury room in July and August.

  She first appeared in July, after she alleged Kenny attacked her in Florida then recanted the allegation then recanted the recantation. Now, she was back, retelling part of that story and talking more about a mysterious film that was made in New Bedford.

  Bob St. Jean was familiar with Diane and her stories. As part of the investigation, he knew that Diane had alleged months earlier to someone that Kenny showed her a video depicting someone being killed. She never directly said he was involved in making the video, he recalled. The details she gave, however, were still enough to interest investigators.

  In her second appearance before the grand jury, Diane claimed the video production involved people tied to one of the bars in the city’s South End—the same bar investigators knew some of the victims went to. It was also the same bar members of the Bristol County Drug Task Force targeted in a cocaine-dealing investigation. But the wiretap obtained as part of the probe failed to turn up anything linking the bar or any of the suspects to the killings or any type of porn tape, Bob St. Jean and the task force members knew. It was not something the detectives listening to the tapped calls would have missed.

  Bob knew Diane was questioned about the video several times. She talked about it once in July to the grand jury and would be asked about it yet again when she appeared for a second time. He wondered what the grand jury members would think about her. He still wasn’t sure how much of her story he believed.

  When Diane was brought before the grand jury in August for another appearance, she insisted she had never met Kenny before she had flown to Florida to visit him in June of 1990. She said she wrote to him first, then sent him a mass card in May. Catholic mass cards are usually sent to indicate someone has made a church donation asking that a mass—and prayers—be said for someone facing a difficult situation, illness, or for someone who has died. Eventually they began talking on the phone, she said. She thought he was being railroaded and told him that. He proclaimed his innocence. She denied that she told anyone she had met him months earlier or that he confessed to murder in her former prison cellmate’s kitchen. She said the private investigator in Lynn was harassing her and was trying to force her to sign an affidavit claiming Kenny confessed to murder. That’s why she contacted Kenny, she told the grand jury. That’s why she also contacted Kenny’s lawyer months before going to Florida: she wanted to let people know he was being unfairly treated.


  In the month before she flew to Florida, she said they talked about how innocent he was.

  After her first night in Florida, she said she got nervous. She claimed he tried to choke her in bed. She claimed he threatened her with a gun. Then, the night before she was set to fly back home, she claimed he talked about a locally produced porn film funded by the owner of a South End bar, about murder, and about the death of Rochelle Dopierala. She claimed Kenny had cats named Rochelle, Robin, and Nancy—the names of three of the dead women. She said it was all very upsetting. She also said she loved Kenny and planned to marry him.

  She claimed while he was choking her at his Florida home, he alluded to Rochelle’s death. Kenny claimed he “offed” Rochelle, Diane alleged.3

  “And I was crying and talking to him and everything,” Diane testified. “And he told me if I, you know, didn’t stop crying and everything, that I would be like that—he used a swear word; it begins with a c—and then he called me—like that Rochelle.”4

  Diane claimed Kenny told her Rochelle died because she was going to testify against him and was also trying to blackmail him about the film.

  “All those girls, I guess, were, you know, talking too much before when they shouldn’t have been. And they all owed money for drugs, too. Like he did,” Diane testified. “A few of them went down into his law practice office and were really harassing him.”

  The film was supposed to go to Mexico and Canada but it never left the United States, she said. The girls just wanted their money for appearing the film and “kept bugging him,” she said.5

  Diane said she wasn’t sure if Rochelle was in the movie, though.

  She was asked about what Kenny told her about the other dead women; did he talk about how they died?