Shallow Graves

by Maureen Boyle

  “Part of it was to do with a cult-type stuff, like satanic-type things. And he did it three or four times a year. They do like offerings and stuff. And now I’m real, real Catholic. I don’t like to keep talking about it. You know. It goes against our religion. And they owed money. He owed money too,” she said.6

  The district attorney and the grand jurors tried to press her for specific information. One grand juror asked her to describe in detail the film she claimed showed women being killed.

  She refused. “Mr. Pina,” she told the prosecutor. “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go through that again.”

  One grand juror told her she seemed to have “selective memory.”7 Another grand juror called Diane a “fruit loop.”8 The foreman told her there was a “huge credibility gap” dating to before the trip to Florida. Even the district attorney told Diane people were having a hard time believing her.9

  This was one of the star witnesses in the case against Kenneth C. Ponte.

  AS THE GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION FOCUSED on Kenny, he took to the airwaves and went on the offensive. He was calling into radio stations from his Florida home, insisting he was being framed. He was writing letters to the editor. He was even interviewed for a Rhode Island television station in his Florida backyard.

  “If I’m indicted, I absolutely know I will be acquitted, and if I’m indicted, it will be for Ron Pina’s purely selfish political reasons,” he told freelance radio reporter Aubrey Haznar in one interview aired on WHJJ in Providence in August.

  Kenny claimed the case had turned into a political sham used by the district attorney to win the upcoming primary. Just wait, he said. Just wait and see.

  ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY CAROL STARKEY and District Attorney Ronald A. Pina outlined the case of Commonwealth v. Kenneth C. Ponte to the group of city and state police investigators gathered in the conference room at the DA’s office. It was August 8, 1990 and the grand jury would be meeting again. It was now clear to the investigators that the prosecutor would ask the panel to indict Kenny in at least one of the murders.

  For about three hours each day for the next few days, the two prosecutors went over Kenny’s ties to Rochelle, the Falmouth woman who once stayed at his Chestnut Street house. The prosecutors noted Kenny appeared to be the last person to see her alive, that a witness said Kenny feared Rochelle would testify against him, and that he reportedly threatened her.

  These were the facts:

  Rochelle was living with Kenny.

  Rochelle was set to testify against Kenny in an upcoming gun case. She was a witness to an April 3, 1988, gunpoint confrontation on North Front Street between Kenny and a man she accused of raping her.

  Rochelle was seen two weeks later walking down the street with the boyfriend of another highway killing victim.

  Kenny drove Rochelle to the Cape and back sometime in April.

  Kenny drove Rochelle to a mobile home where she visited an older man in April. He waited outside until she came out and the two drove off.

  A woman who used to sell drugs in Weld Square heard Kenny threaten Rochelle in April of 1988.

  Rochelle was not seen alive by anyone else after April 1988.

  Diane Doherty alleged Kenny confessed and claimed the attorney possessed a snuff film.

  To bolster the presentation, there were charts showing links to other victims, links that might show motive, links that tied Kenny to other victims. Grand jury testimony was reviewed. Ron was wrapping the case up in a neat package.

  New Bedford detective Richard Ferreira quietly listened to the presentation. Yikes, the DA doesn’t have anything, Richie thought.10

  Jose and Maryann listened and questioned why other suspects weren’t being considered for indictment. Jose told them he didn’t agree with the direction the prosecutors were moving in. “I thought a better case could be made against other suspects,” Jose said.11

  Bob St. Jean thought an indictment might bring more—and stronger—witnesses forward. He also knew a lot more work was needed to get a conviction.

  KEVIN REDDINGTON was in his Brockton office, waiting to pick up his thirteen-year-old daughter at soccer camp in nearby Easton. He was hoping on this hot, sunny mid-August Friday to beat the heavy Cape Cod traffic and get to the family’s summer house early.

  Then the phone rang. Kenny was getting indicted today, a tipster told him.

  Kevin called his client. Meet me at the Dunkin’ Donuts at the end of Route 140. And wear a suit. You’re being indicted.

  Then he sped to the soccer field to pick up his daughter.

  In less than an hour, on August 17, 1990, Kevin was sitting in a Dunkin’ Donuts in New Bedford, his daughter next to him, and a man who would soon be charged with murder sitting across the way. Kenny was wearing a clean, dark suit. Kevin could tell his client was nervous. He had told Kenny to fly back to Massachusetts earlier in the week suspecting this would happen. It was best to be here, to face the charge voluntarily, rather than be arrested in Florida and be returned in handcuffs. Image was important, Kevin knew.12

  Kevin outlined the plan: they would leave Dunkin’ Donuts, drive together to New Bedford Superior Court and walk calmly inside, through the line of media. No smart-ass comments, no scowling, no shielding his face from the cameras. When the grand jury handed up the indictment, they would be there, waiting to be arraigned immediately. This showed Kenny was not a flight risk, that he wanted to clear his name, that he was not a danger to the community.

  The three then hopped into Kevin’s red Porsche and drove to the courthouse five minutes away. When they pulled into the tiny side lot reserved for court personnel, the reporters, still photographers, and videographers surged forward. Some chuckled at the defense attorney’s NG license plate. Kevin smiled warmly. His client stayed calm. They strode into the courthouse together and to the first-floor courtroom and waited outside the wooden swinging doors.

  Kevin peered through a small window on the door, watching as twenty-one members of the original twenty-three-member grand jury entered the courtroom shortly after four in the afternoon. He and his client slipped inside and stood not far from a court officer as the foreman handed up the indictment to Judge George Hurd. Reporters filled the courtroom as the district attorney began to speak.

  “I’d request that the paper be impounded and the grand jury not be discharged from further duty,” Bristol County district attorney Ronald A. Pina asked the judge.

  Kevin Reddington saw the district attorney glance toward the door. He swore the prosecutor flinched in surprise.

  The judge impounded the indictment. Reporters for the Standard-Times and the Boston Globe objected to the impoundment. The judge rejected the media request and left the bench.

  Kevin was annoyed. So was the judge when he discovered the defendant was in the courthouse and could have been arraigned immediately.

  The judge later ordered prosecutors to appear in court on the upcoming Monday to explain why the indictment should be sealed—especially, people would later say, since the defendant was there when it was handed up. “The judge was not pleased,” Kevin recalled.13

  Kevin asked to speak with the prosecutor. A court officer told him the DA would talk with him later. The DA told reporters he needed to talk with the families of the victims first.

  JUDY DESANTOS AND GRACE BOTELHO, the mother of Sandra Botelho, the last victim to be found, and Sandra’s sister had been waiting in the court hallway all day, expecting something would happen. Other relatives of other victims had also stopped in throughout the week, looking for slivers of information. Everyone at the courthouse was tense. Everyone could feel the anticipation rising with the August heat as more reporters arrived each day.

  Judy had been at the courthouse all week while the grand jury met—just as she had since the second day it convened a year and a half earlier. She was now used to passing through the line of media out front and the boredom of waiting inside. She knew it only took a minute to w
alk up and down the main hallway. She knew the defendants were locked up on the second floor, behind the amphitheater-like courtroom there. She knew the names of most of the court officers, including Ralph Tavares, who gained fame in the 1970s as one of the original members of Tavares, the rhythm-and-blues group of Cape Verdean brothers. She knew how he quit the group to return home to a steady job, where he was home every night with his family rather than on the road. She knew the clerks and the secretaries. She recognized the probation officers’ faces. She even knew the reporters.

  By late afternoon, word was spreading quickly in the small building. The grand jury might have an indictment. Judy was scared but she didn’t know why. She could feel cold, almost paralyzing, fear creep through her body. What, if anything, did she need to do? What would happen when the indictment was handed up to the judge? She wasn’t a lawyer. She didn’t know the finer mechanisms of the criminal justice system.

  Judy slipped into the courtroom, watching as the grand jury entered single file. She would have her answer finally, more than two years after her sister was killed. She would have a name. She would have justice.

  She looked around the courtroom, at the reporters, at the lawyers, at the court officers. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. The name. She needed the name. She focused on the DA. She didn’t want to miss it.

  She listened as the prosecutor asked that the indictment be impounded. It took a moment to understand what that meant. She held back tears, wondering if the killer had really been found.

  A few minutes later, the district attorney met briefly with Judy and the Botelho family. He didn’t tell them who was indicted. He didn’t give them an answer. A detective later hinted the name on the indictment was Kenneth Ponte.

  Judy and the Botelho family left the courthouse quickly. Judy didn’t want to be seen crying.

  JOSE AND MARYANN stayed in the office when the indictment was handed up. The two investigators had felt uneasy at that earlier meeting when the case against Kenny was presented to the staff. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict. There was no “smoking gun”; they had no eyewitness to any of the murders; they had nothing to link Kenny directly to any of the killings. They had talked with Diane Doherty and didn’t believe her claims were credible. Her stories shifted. They had interviewed so many people since 1988 who had made wild claims, who alleged they knew who the killer was, where bodies were. The teams of investigators had followed so many leads, so many suspects, so many paths leading to dead ends. They knew a person’s word wasn’t enough—they needed evidence. Sometimes people were mistaken, sometimes people misheard a conversation, sometimes people exaggerated, sometimes people simply lied.

  There were other suspects, potentially better suspects, in the case even if there wasn’t any proof to charge them with murder. Why Kenny and why now?

  The troopers stayed in the office and waited for the families to call, uncertain about what to say.

  THOMPSON’S CLAM BAR IN HARWICH WAS BUSY. It was a popular eatery and one of Kevin Reddington’s favorites. A few hours earlier, he had been sixty miles away in New Bedford, over the bridge connecting Cape Cod to the mainland, fielding reporter questions and trying to figure out why his client wasn’t arraigned. He was telling his friends about the day, how strange it was, probably the strangest so far in his legal career. It was interesting dinner conversation. Then they moved on to other subjects.

  A few days later, he would be told someone had been listening to that conversation. Someone was saying he was joking and laughing about the case. Kevin was a bit unnerved and annoyed. “I was talking about how he was indicted and what a piece of crap case it was and someone is sitting there listening. Someone went so far as to go to a restaurant I was at and get a table near where I was sitting,” he recalled.14 It was, he suspected, going to be a long, arduous trial.

  THREE DAYS LATER, the relatives of the dead women jammed the conference room at the district attorney’s main office. Judy listened as Ron Pina told them what would happen in court later that morning. The defendant would enter a plea. The prosecution’s case would be outlined and they would ask for a high bail. The defense attorney would likely ask for a lower bail, maybe even no bail. The judge would make a decision and the case would be continued to another date. There would also be a lot of media.

  Only one murder case was being prosecuted, she remembered him saying. It was better to go with the one they could prove. If they didn’t have a conviction on that one, they had others to fall back on. Judy knew her sister’s murder was the “fall back” death. All of the seven of the victims represented by families in the room that day were in the “fall back” category. The death of Rochelle Clifford Dopierala was the case being prosecuted.

  Judy held back tears as she looked over at Madeline Perry.

  This doesn’t feel like justice, Judy thought.

  It is the little things people often remember in grief and crisis: the person at the wake or funeral, the card sent, the dinner made, the lawn mowed, the children entertained. Those are the things that can ease that crushing pain, if only for a moment. The slights are remembered years later just as deeply.

  For Judy, the walk up the hill from the district attorney’s office to the courthouse is what she remembers most.

  There were too many relatives and too few vehicles available to drive the families to court, they were told.

  Judy again turned to Madeline Perry. “Let’s go,” she told her.

  The two got up and walked out of the district attorney’s office. They walked through the front lobby, they went down the elevator, they walked out the front door and up the street that August 20, 1990, morning until they got to the courthouse. Behind them, a line of other families followed.

  KEVIN REDDINGTON made sure his client was waiting at court early. He also gave him clear instructions on what not to do during the arraignment. No eye rolls. No head shaking. No grunting. No glaring. No grinning. No smiling. No deep exhales. No face making. No waving. No talking when the prosecutor is talking. No talking at all except to enter a plea of not guilty.

  The first-floor courtroom, the same courtroom where the indictment had been handed up three days earlier, was crammed with relatives of the victims, reporters, lawyers, and court personnel. Kenny’s teary-eyed mother and sister sat in wooden chairs along a courtroom wall, waiting for the case to begin.

  Kevin could see the families of the victims, some crying, clustered on one side of the courtroom. He could see Kenny’s mother on the other side, shaken, watching her lawyer-son now a murder defendant.

  CHANDRA SAT ON ONE SIDE of her Uncle Wayne, her grandmother sat on the other. All three stared at the man the prosecutor alleged was a killer. She wanted to believe the DA was right; they all did. This man, this alleged killer, was big but her mother was a fighter, a tough fighter, and would never give up, Chandra thought. How did he do this?

  She didn’t pay any attention to the people filling the courtroom. She kept her focus on the man charged with murder, the man they said likely also killed her mother.

  Judy sat in the third row, waiting for the arraignment to begin. Next to her sat her niece, Jill. In the second row was the district attorney’s wife, Sheila Martines-Pina. Behind Judy and Jill were rows filled with twenty relatives of the dead women. Judy surveyed the courtroom. She saw Kenny’s family sitting with their backs to the wall. She saw the reporters she knew. She saw court officers and lawyers. In one row, Robert St. Jean, the chief investigator for Pina’s office, sat. In another row, there were people from the victim/witness office.

  She scanned row after row. Jose and Maryann were not there. Neither was Richie. Neither were any of the state police or New Bedford investigators she knew.

  In that instant, she feared there was a problem.

  “Maryann and Jose had always said to me, if we feel we have the right person, we will be in that courtroom, but if you look around and don’t see us there, we don’t believe this is the right person,” Judy rec
alled.15

  THE INDICTMENT WAS READ by the court clerk: Kenneth C. Ponte, on or about the twenty-seventh day of April in the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight, at New Bedford, in the County of Bristol, aforesaid, did assault and beat Rochelle Clifford Dopierala with intent to murder her and by such assault and beating did kill and murder the said Rochelle Clifford Dopierala.

  How did he plea?

  Kenny stood straight and answered in a loud and clear voice.

  “Absolutely not guilty, your honor.”

  The relatives gasped. His lawyer wanted to smack him on the head. The district attorney didn’t skip a beat and asked the judge to set bail at $50,000 cash or $500,000 surety.

  District Attorney Ronald A. Pina told superior court judge George N. Hurd there were compelling reasons for setting bail. It was a serious crime and the defendant was and still is an intravenous drug user.

  Kenny’s eyes bulged at the words intravenous drug user. His attorney stood emotionless.

  Ron then argued the defendant was a lawyer and knew better than anyone about the law. “As a member of the bar, Attorney Ponte crosses the line from the legal community and became a member of the drug community,” he told the judge.

  “He used these women because he was an attorney and afraid to go buy the drugs himself. He recruited different women at different times. He brought them to his home.”

  The district attorney said the defendant was pressuring Rochelle not to testify against him in a gun case, began pursuing her, and threatened to kill her.

  Then it was the defense’s turn to talk.

  Kevin asked the court to free his client on personal recognizance—essentially a personal promise to come back to court without posting any bail. “He has no intention of taking flight,” he told the judge. “He needs a trial to clear his name.”

  His client knew he was the focus of a grand jury investigation for seventeen months but never tried to hide or flee. He was living in Florida but returned to Massachusetts voluntarily whenever he was needed. He even passed two private polygraph tests (although polygraph tests can’t be used as evidence in Massachusetts).