He was surprised at the depth of the investigation and the number of state troopers and local detectives working the case. “I remember thinking: this is a good job,” he recalled. “It was detailed, very detailed.”
As he went through each box and reviewed each report, as he examined each suspect, the special prosecutor searched for evidence tying someone to a murder. Some of the suspects were better than others. He wondered why Tony DeGrazia wasn’t considered a better suspect by the former district attorney, based on the information gathered by police. He wondered why the grand jury investigation took this fork in the road.
When he took the case, he was prepared to prosecute Kenneth Ponte. He went into the case prepared to prosecute. Now, after reviewing the evidence, he wasn’t so sure.
JUDY WAITED A LITTLE BIT then decided to write the special prosecutor, to make sure he knew the families needed answers. This was not just a case. This was not a political issue. She wanted him to know they were all counting on him to do the right thing, to find justice for the dead and give some comfort to the families through that. She didn’t expect he would answer, so when a letter came in mid-May with a return address from the Law Offices of Buckley, Haight, Muldoon, Jubinville & Gilligan in Milton, Judy was encouraged.
“I know only too well the frustrating and angry feelings you and the families of the other victims continue to experience,” Paul V. Buckley wrote in the three-paragraph May 15, 1991, letter. “I am not in a position to answer all of your questions and I may never be able to answer some questions to your satisfaction. However, I can advise you that the State Police investigators have been most helpful and cooperative. The material to review is voluminous, but I can assure you I have been able to keep to the schedule that I originally established.”
As she kept reading, Judy could detect signs that the case had problems. “District Attorney Paul Walsh and, in turn, myself have been dealt a very difficult hand,” the special prosecutor noted in the letter.
THE FIRST CALL was to Paul F. Walsh Jr., the new Bristol County district attorney.
The second call was to Ronald A. Pina, the man Walsh defeated.
Paul Buckley, the special prosecutor hired to handle the prosecution against the only person charged in the highway killing case, knew the second would be an uncomfortable call. He also knew it was the professional thing to do. Ron Pina spent two years trying to identify who killed at least nine women—most likely eleven—and he deserved to know what the next step would be in court. Buckley had gone through boxes of police reports and grand jury minutes. He talked with the investigators, including Maryann, Jose, and Richie. He was brought to the body dump scenes. He looked at the evidence with the eye of a prosecutor. He looked at what he would present at trial.
When the former district attorney got on the phone, Buckley identified himself.
“You’re not going to like what I’m going to tell you,” he told Ron Pina.15
The murder charge against Kenneth C. Ponte would be dropped on July 29, 1991, the following Monday. The charge would be formally nolle prosequi, Latin for “we shall no longer prosecute,” also called nolle prossed. What it meant in practice was the prosecution could still bring the charge back if more evidence was found.
“What? You can’t do this,” he remembers Ron answering.
The rest of the conversation was short and curt.
When he finally hung up, Paul Buckley realized the ex-DA, the man who spent years on the case, never asked him why the charge was being dropped.
JUDY WANTED TO SCREAM when she heard the news. She couldn’t cry; she had no tears left. The only person charged in the murders would soon go free, leaving her and all of the families stuck in justice limbo. She had faith in the district attorney, she had faith in the police, she had faith in the system. Kenny Ponte was a killer, she was certain. That was why he was charged with murder. Now, he would be on the street, living his life while her sister and eight others were dead.
The special prosecutor hired by the new guy was saying there was no evidence against Kenny, and a gun-assault charge would also be dropped because it wasn’t prosecuted fast enough. How could that be, she wondered.16
The special prosecutor was emphatic in his conclusion: there was nothing tying Kenneth Ponte to murder or to the disposing of a body. If the case did go to trial, a judge would throw it out.
Judy didn’t believe him. She called the only people she now had faith in: Maryann and Jose. They answered on the first ring.
She posed the question bluntly: Did he do it?
She was surprised by their answer.
This was the right decision.
She hung up. It was just Thursday. She wondered how she would get through the rest of the week until the court hearing on Monday.
ATTORNEY BOB GEORGE did not like this latest development in the highway killing case. With charges against the main suspect to be dropped, did this mean they would look at his client, Tony DeGrazia, anew? Tony was in a tough spot, but the defense attorney was mapping out a good trial strategy to win on the rape charges, both those lodged in 1989 and the one pressed in 1990. He felt pretty confident about that. The prosecution witnesses likely would be weak on the stand, if they appeared at all, he believed. He would hit their credibility, their memories, and their backgrounds as drug addicts. If they were high, could they really remember? If they were high, how sure could they be that they identified the right person? Did they swap stories with other prostitutes? Did they make up their stories? These were all issues he could raise if the case went to trial.
On the flip side, Tony was a hardworking, churchgoing young man who was heading to college, who was well liked, and who was devastated by the allegations. He kept insisting he was innocent. This was the portrait of a young man Bob George planned to show the jury when the rape cases went to trial.
The defense attorney thought his guy was eliminated as a suspect in the highway killing case but it appeared that wasn’t quite true. He knew he needed to go on the offensive if the DA shifted gears and focused on Tony. He hoped it wouldn’t happen.17
IT WAS 3:30 in the afternoon on Friday, July 26, 1991, and Father George Harrison was rushing out the door when he saw Tony on the rectory deck. The priest didn’t have time to talk for long but he could tell something was wrong. Tony seemed very depressed. Earlier, Tony tried yet again to convince his ex-girlfriend to come back after more than a year apart. He was planning to go to college in Boston, he told her. His life was changing. Let’s try again, he pleaded. She said no. Not now. Not ever. She was in love, engaged, and pregnant, she told him. She would always love him as a friend but they would never be together. She was starting a new life without him. “I just can’t believe it,” Tony told the priest.18
Father Harrison said they could talk more later; he had an appointment, and he was running late.
The news that the special prosecutor planned to drop the murder charge against Kenneth C. Ponte was never brought up. Tony never asked for the Sacrament of Reconciliation—commonly called confession. The two just parted.
Two and a half hours later, his ex-girlfriend’s parents left their Pawnee Court home in Freetown for a spaghetti dinner at the Lakeville Eagles Club, a community hall one town away. They stayed until midnight then stopped at the Freetown VFW for a nightcap before returning home.
It was one in the morning when they slipped the key into the front door and headed to bed. No one saw anyone come by the house while they were gone.
When the couple rose the next morning and looked out the back window, they saw a motionless figure on the picnic table and called police.
AS HE ROUNDED THE BACKYARD of the house, Jose Gonsalves could see Trooper Kevin Butler and Freetown cops clustered near a picnic table. On the ground, at the end of the table, was the body of a man. He knew, even before pulling up to the Pawnee Court house in Freetown, what he would find.
Tony DeGrazia was already cold to the touch. His body was already stiff, in full rigor mo
rtis. Kevin Butler, the trooper who interviewed Tony two years earlier and later charged him in a string of sexual assaults, was taking detailed notes on what was at the scene.
Tony was wearing a gold chain and cross around his neck. He had a rosary in his front jeans pocket. In his wallet were ten dollars and two business cards. One was from the Wentworth Institute of Technology housing director in Boston. The second one was from a doctor at McLean Hospital in Belmont.
There were two sixteen-ounce bottles of Diet 7-Up, one empty, one partially full. Nine feet from Tony there was a capsule of the anti-anxiety medication Mylan 5410.
In his right breast pocket, there was an empty prescription bottle for 100-milligram capsules of the antidepressant Doxepin HCL, filled five days earlier. Tony was supposed to take three capsules before bed. Trooper Butler surmised 85 of the 100 capsules were unaccounted for. The medical examiner, Dr. William Zane, would later tell the trooper that Tony had more than ten times the minimum fatal level of Doxepin in his blood.
The medical examiner officially ruled the death a suicide.19
That Saturday morning, the second call by the ex-girlfriend’s parents was to Father Harrison. When the priest arrived, he knew Tony was gone and there was only one thing left to do: pray.
“Heavenly Father, have mercy on him,” the priest prayed over the body. “Give him eternal rest.”20
By Monday, two days later, the murder charge against Kenneth C. Ponte was set to be dropped. The reason: lack of evidence.
Months later, all of the charges against Anthony DeGrazia were dismissed in court. The reason: defendant deceased.
KENNY STOOD NEXT TO HIS LAWYER in the first-floor courtroom, beaming, while the families of the dead watched and cried.
Three years earlier, in July of 1988, the first of the bodies was found along the highways circling New Bedford, launching one of the largest criminal investigations in the region. Now, it was ending the way it started: with tears, frustration, and questions.
Sandy Botelho’s mother bowed her head. Nancy Paiva’s sister wiped away tears. Dawn Mendes’s mother said a silent prayer. Debra Greenlaw DeMello’s mother scowled; Deb’s sixteen-year-old daughter looked puzzled.
Judy DeSantos looked around the courtroom crammed with reporters and saw Maryann and Jose sitting in a row behind her and remembered what they had told her from the start: if you see us there in the courtroom, it is the right decision.
The investigators initially planned to skip the court hearing and the media scrum that day; they preferred to let politicians take center stage and liked staying out of the media glare. Then, while in the office, Jose remembered what he told Judy and how their absence would be perceived not only to the families, but the public. The two—and many, but not all, of the investigators—agreed with the decision to dismiss the murder charge. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict Kenny, they believed. There wasn’t even enough evidence to charge him. They had shared those concerns with the former district attorney, Ronald Pina. Jose had told the district attorney before the indictment was sought that he believed it was the wrong thing to do. There were other suspects they could look at, both Maryann and Jose calmly told him several times. But the case against Kenny moved forward. When the new district attorney and special prosecutor reviewed the evidence, the trio presented the facts and tried not to give their opinions. They went over the investigation, the suspects, the witnesses—and let the prosecutors decide the next step. Now, by their simple presence, the troopers could let all the families—and the public—know they agreed with this new decision.
Paul Buckley, the special prosecutor, rose from his seat and asked Judge Richard Connon that the murder charge lodged against Kenneth C. Ponte—the only murder charge pressed in the highway killings case—be formally closed by a nolle prosequi. It was not a total vindication but close. Within a half hour, the case was over, the courtroom emptied, and Kenny was standing outside the courtroom, addressing reporters in the same spot the former district attorney once held press conferences.
“It has been a long, terrible nightmare that is finally ending here today,” Kenny told reporters outside the courthouse.21 “There was no case and there never was. . . . I’m just looking forward to picking myself up and dusting myself off.”
His attorney, Kevin Reddington, praised the decision to drop the charges. “This is an opportunity to highlight what can happen to an innocent man . . . when a grand jury hands up an indictment as a result of a prosecution which was biased and in fact improper,” he told reporters.
And then they walked away.
“I’m glad you can go home to your family. I have to go to the cemetery to see mine. Why don’t you talk about your relationship with the girls?” Judy yelled at Kenny, tears in her eyes.
Shaking, she turned and walked to the other families gathered at the side of the courthouse. They hugged and sobbed. Then left.
“We were misled,” Wayne Perry, Debra Greenlaw DeMello’s brother, said.
“All you can do is hope and pray,” Dawn’s mother, Charlotte Mendes, said.
The special prosecutor, Paul Buckley, would later say, based on his review of the case, that his key suspect was Tony DeGrazia, even though there was no evidence linking him to the murders. The timing of Tony’s death, shortly after the announcement that the murder indictment would be dropped, was “just too coincidental.”22
Tony’s lawyer, Bob George, later said prosecutors were “dancing on the grave of Mr. DeGrazia,” and “taking pot shots at a person who can no longer defend himself.”
At the district attorney’s office, Trooper Kevin Butler was finishing his report on Tony’s death.
In the Standard-Times, the four-paragraph obituary for Anthony R. DeGrazia, twenty-nine, was published that afternoon. The photograph accompanying it was taken in court.
It was July 29, 1991. The next day would mark the third anniversary of the day Nancy Paiva was found dead.
THE SNOW WAS COMING DOWN HARD when Kevin Reddington passed the run-down former Coca-Cola factory that once served as a bus terminal on Route 6 in New Bedford. It was December, Christmas was just around the corner, and the defense attorney was feeling the holiday spirit. Kenny Ponte had opened his new office in this dreary building at the base of Route 140 hoping to jump-start his life and his career after the murder charge was dropped. It was tough going, Kevin suspected. He knew his former client was struggling to get his law practice running, and people likely weren’t lining up to hire him. Kenny had name recognition but not quite the type would-be clients were looking for. Kenny was still angry at the former district attorney, Ronald A. Pina, and bitter at how his life had been upended.
Kevin pulled into the lot and drove to the back of the building, the tire tracks quickly covered by the falling snow. He planned to say a quick hello to Kenny, slip him a hundred as a holiday present, then head up the highway home. Kenny broke into a wide smile when he walked in. The office wasn’t much, Kenny admitted, but the building was historic. You have to see some of the odd things in the building, Kenny insisted. He escorted Kevin through the structure then opened a door that led to the top floor. Snow was coming through the roof. It was cold. Reddington heard a gasp and a shuffle. Kenny leapt to the heavy metal fire door, grabbing the corner just before it could slam shut. He could see the relief on Kenny’s face. It would have locked behind us and there is no other way out, Kenny told him. No one would have found us this snowy evening, his lawyer thought. No one would have found us for days.23
It was one of the last times the two saw each other. Over the years, Kenny would call or drop a short note to Kevin Reddington to touch base, but when the former murder suspect was later arrested for drunken driving, shoplifting, or marijuana possession, other attorneys would represent him.
15UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
CHRIS DEXTRADEUR AND HIS BOSS, Lt. Thomas DaCosta, were heading the unmarked narcotics cruiser to a Portuguese restaurant on Belleville Avenue for a quick bite to eat before an hou
rs-long surveillance. Chris loved his assignment in narcotics: the guys he worked with were a tight group, reliant on each other as they strapped on bulletproof vests, kicked in doors, fished heroin out of toilet traps, and searched cockroach-infested apartments. His colleagues were funny, smart, and made the days and nights pass quickly. Surveillances could be tedious, but, overall, the work was an adrenaline rush. It was, as far as police work went, fun.1
Chris was now twenty-four and could boast nearly six years on the police department. He started at eighteen, as a cadet, then became a full-time officer at age twenty. His dad and mentor, John Dextradeur retired in May of 1989 under the so-called heart bill, where cops who suffered job-related heart problems could retire with a full disability pension. As an adult, he found himself closer to his father than any other time in his life. They played golf together, they would share an occasional beer, and his dad would sometimes give him some tips to follow up on. These days, his dad was working as a private investigator, sifting through court records and tracking down information for attorneys, but he always harbored the hope his last case, the highway killings, would eventually be solved.
Shallow Graves Page 30