by Liza Rodman
Meads asked him why the urgent return to Provincetown.
“Jim,” he said. “I have their car.”
* * *
One of the ironies of the entire Costa case was that if he hadn’t been greedy in wanting to keep Patricia Walsh’s car, he in all likelihood would have walked away from the murders—all of them. Yes, he had met the women at Standish Street, but so had several others. Yes, he had a few of their belongings in his room, but he could have said the women left those items in his room when they used the adjoining bathroom. Yes, they gave him a ride to Truro, but he could have said they dropped him off where he wanted and he never saw them again. But Tony wanted that spiffy car, and it became his Waterloo.
Tony left the car parked at a gas station in Burlington and took the bus back to Provincetown, arriving sometime Sunday evening. Monday morning, February 10, in preparation for the interview with state and local police, Tony shot himself up with four heads of speed. Tony was sure that his “super intellect” would convince even the most seasoned detective of his innocence. It didn’t work, and after his rambling, often contradictory, and somewhat incoherent answers, police never seriously entertained any other suspects in the women’s disappearance. Still, Tony impressed Bernie Flynn with this clean-cut good looks and polite manners; he was not the sleazy Provincetown hippie Flynn had been expecting to see walk in the door.
The six-hour interrogation began smoothly enough, but when Flynn started asking about how Tony had come to be in possession of the women’s car, Tony’s slick cool evaporated and his story began to unravel, starting with his claim that although he had bought the car from Patricia Walsh for $900, he hadn’t actually given her the money. Flynn pounced.
“You want me to believe that the Walsh girl, a girl you just met that day, signed her 1968 Volkswagen car over to you without receiving any payment for it?” Flynn asked.
“I told her I would pay her in the morning,” Tony said.
Then, when Flynn questioned why Tony had asked Pat for a ride to Truro if he now owned her car, Tony replied, “I didn’t need it right away and wanted to be a good fellow to the girls.”
“Didn’t you find it strange that these girls would put their car in the middle of the woods in Truro?” Flynn asked.
“No, I just went along with them.”
“How did the girls get out of the woods after leaving the car there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t they park it in front of the rooming house where it would be convenient to you?”
“I don’t know.”
It only got worse from there.
What is this bullshit? Flynn thought.1
He then read Tony the names of eighty girls and women one-by-one who were reported missing in New England. Already suspecting that Tony was directly involved in Pat’s and Mary Anne’s disappearance and possibly in more missing women’s cases, Flynn wanted to gauge Tony’s reaction to the list. Other than fidgeting, running his hands through his hair, and looking around the room like a squirrel on a high wire, Tony remained unfazed.
Sergeant Jimmy Meads was also in on the interview and tried to appeal to Tony’s paternal instincts, telling him that the parents of the missing women were concerned for their daughters’ safety and if Tony knew anything, he could help relieve their anxieties. Tony paused and placed his head in his hands. Meads and Flynn waited, expecting a confession of sorts. Instead, Tony took a deep breath and raised his head.
“Jim, if I could help you, I would. But those girls are a long way off, and I doubt it you will ever find them.”
The moment had passed, and from that point on, Tony doubled down on an ever-changing story about the fate of the two Rhode Island women.
* * *
On February 14, with still no sign of Patricia Walsh or Mary Anne Wysocki, Bernie Flynn drove to Providence to interview the women’s parents. He found Leonard Walsh a passive, slight man and his wife, Catherine, a strong, outspoken, and very angry woman. Catherine Walsh had good reason for her rage; it had been nearly three weeks since her daughter was last seen in Provincetown, and yet that town’s inept police seemed to be sitting on their hands. She let Flynn have it between the eyes for the police’s failure to connect the dots, for their dismissal of Turbidy’s concerns and information, and for their letting seventeen damn days go by without so much as a phone call to them before this. Flynn could only let the woman vent her anger and fear, while he stood in the living room, hat in hand.
Flynn then drove across town to the Wysockis’ and walked up the two flights of stairs to their three-room attic apartment above a bakery. The couple seemed more like the grandparents of a twenty-three-year-old woman rather than the parents, and Flynn felt a deep sense of regret having to invade their privacy with such painful questions about their daughter, brutal questions really, in light of what everyone now feared had happened to Mary Anne.
By the time he returned to the barracks, Flynn knew in his gut that the women had been murdered and that Tony Costa was somehow involved.
* * *
Police in Burlington, Vermont, located the VW where Tony told them he had left it in the gas station parking lot, and Gunnery and Flynn drove up to bring it back to Massachusetts for forensic tests. While the autopsy was being done on the body found in the woods and investigators searched the VW for any evidence of a crime, Tony made a pest of himself at the Provincetown police station, dropping in unannounced and demanding to see certain officers and detectives. Every time he talked, he told a different story about how he had met the women, why Pat “sold” him the car, where they had gone, and when he last saw them. He had read somewhere that liars cannot meet the gaze of those questioning them, so Tony trained himself to stare unblinkingly into the eyes of anyone who challenged him. It was more than unnerving to the cops. When he wasn’t trying to win staring-down contests, Tony delivered frenetic monologues in a “high, soft baritone articulated with a precise, almost effete accent,” one that was out of character with Provincetown locals’ you knows. Flynn thought it was obvious that Tony had a high opinion of himself; Antone Costa did not want to be mistaken for a tough townie.
What Flynn didn’t know was that when Tony was twelve, he had gotten his hands on a tape recorder and heard his voice played back for the first time. Always having disdained as low class the Portuguese accent of nearly everybody around him, including his mother, Tony spoke into the recorder and listened to his voice, practicing various intonations, emphases, and pronunciations until he came up with a style of speaking that was a strange mix of effete Boston Brahmin and a local trying a bit too hard to sound worldly. It was that odd and variable speaking voice that Flynn, and later a long list of interviewers, would notice, wondering why Tony tried on his various accents like a selection of hats.
Finally, Flynn had had enough of Tony’s circle-talking around questions.
“The next time I talk to you, you’ll be under arrest,” Flynn told him.
Tony jumped out of his chair, upsetting it onto the floor. “Are you accusing me of killing these girls?”
Flynn was surprised; Tony had made the leap from the women being missing to their being murdered.
“I never said anything about those girls being dead,” Flynn said, his voice cool and smooth as ice.
“I want out of here!” Tony shouted.
Flynn pointed toward the door. “You’re free to go.”
A few days later, George Killen also had had enough.
“Tony,” Killen said, “before you say anything else, you should know you’re a suspect in the disappearance of these girls and the theft of their Volkswagen.” He proceeded to read Tony his Miranda rights.
Tony listened patiently, then started right back in, avowing his innocence and spinning yet another contradictory version of where the girls had gone and why he had their car.
Killen held up his hand in Tony’s face.
“Just stop. You’re getting in deeper and deeper, and I suggest you st
op talking right now and get yourself a lawyer. It’s time for you to leave my office.”
Ever the gentleman, Tony shook Killen’s hand and left the police station.
Even though police knew that Tony was deeply involved in the disappearance of the women, they couldn’t make an arrest without at least having evidence that Pat and Mary Anne had met with foul play. So they kept him in their sights and on Monday, February 24, when Tony took the bus out of Provincetown, Bernie Flynn followed it to Hyannis. As Tony got off the bus, Flynn put a restraining hand on his arm; he felt Tony flinch.
“Listen, Tony, all of this will be cleared up once we hear from the girls. That’s all we need, and we’ll stop bugging you.”
Flynn thought he saw a light bulb go off behind Tony’s eyes. He pressed his point. “Let us know when you hear from those girls.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll hear from them soon,” Tony said.
Flynn all but gave himself a high five; Tony had taken the bait.
Tony got on the bus to Boston and from there traveled on to Buffalo, New York. The next day a telegram to Tony from “Pat and Mary Anne” was delivered to Cecelia’s apartment; Tony told her to take it right down to the police station.
She did, and as she handed it across the counter to Bernie Flynn, she said, “Now, maybe you’ll believe my Tony.”2
With the bogus telegram in hand, Bernie Flynn knew they finally had their man.
49 TONY
Tony was now squarely in Bernie Flynn’s crosshairs; the fact that they hadn’t been able to nail him yet was just Tony’s dumb luck. Emphasis on the dumb, Flynn thought.1 Flynn began interviewing all of Tony’s friends and family, beginning with Avis. When Flynn went to her apartment to conduct his first interview, it didn’t go well. Not only did Avis squirm her way through the meeting, but Flynn was also shocked and disgusted by the state and stench of her apartment. Three small children played on a floor littered with dog feces, a few teenage kids with filthy clothes and greasy hair flopped on cushions, beer bottles covered the coffee table, ashtrays brimmed with cigarette butts, and dirty dishes and rotten food filled the kitchen sink and counters. The grimy teens never budged from the couch, not that he would have taken a seat if offered; Flynn remained standing. He made a mental note to shift from foot to foot to prevent cockroaches from crawling up his pant leg. He left soon after he arrived, having learned almost nothing new. Avis avoided answering any question with a straightforward answer and was a staunch defender of her ex-husband. Flynn suspected that she’d lied to him when answering even the most basic questions about Tony’s whereabouts and actions, but then again, so did most of the locals when questioned by police, starting with Tony himself. His friends were circling their wagons.
* * *
In the Truro woods, the searches continued for the bodies of Mary Anne Wysocki and Patricia Walsh. Even the most seasoned police officers and detectives hated venturing into the thick forest, and Chief Marshall admitted that he was afraid he’d get lost and never find his way out, even with a compass. Officers tied yellow ribbons on the trees as guideposts and told Marshall, “If ever in doubt, keep the sun over your left shoulder and walk due west and out.”2 It didn’t really help. It was a land without landmarks. Standing in the middle of the thicket of brambles, bushes, and trees, it was almost impossible to determine which way was west, sun or no sun, and more often than not there was no sun in the winter sky. Police often had to honk a cruiser’s horn to help guide an officer out of the woods.
As police continued their research into their only suspect, in early March they learned that two years before, Tony had been cited in an “accidental assault,” hitting one of his “kid chicks,” Marsha Mowery, with an arrow in those very woods. They called her in for questioning. She initially refused, but after Killen called her parents, she was brought into the station by her father the next day. She told Killen, Flynn, and Marshall that she believed Tony had purposefully aimed the arrow at her, but that “it had been a joke” to scare her. Nothing more. The police then marched her through a freezing rain into the woods to show them exactly where it happened.
“There,” she said pointing. “That’s where he hit me with the arrow.”
Flynn felt an excited flicker go through him; this was a half mile from where the car had been parked and one hundred yards farther into the woods from where the body had been found and earlier searches had been conducted.
Police quickly organized another search party, and on March 5, Chief Marshall, George Killen, Bernie Flynn, Jimmy Meads, and Tom Gunnery were headed back to Truro, accompanied by two national park rangers. Not knowing if they’d find anything in yet another search of the woods, they held off summoning old Dr. Hiebert. If they actually found a body, protocol would demand that a medical examiner immediately be called and then be present for the removal of the corpse. So Flynn, Killen, Marshall, and the rest of the men went in, shovels and probes in hand, trudging through a new dusting of snow.
This time, one of the state troopers had brought his hunting dog and boasted, “Cookie here’ll find something if there’s anything to find.”
Flynn wasn’t so sure. The dog seemed much more interested in running through the woods like a crazed bird dog on uppers, lifting his leg on every branch, tree, and brush. Flynn called out to Gunnery, “Don’t stand still too long or that damned mutt will piss on your leg!” As the dog ran through the woods in its manic frenzy, Flynn suddenly saw it stumble and roll through the underbrush; his hind leg had caught on something that tripped him.
“What the hell?” Flynn said as he moved toward the spot. There he saw a leather strap sticking out of the dirt. He pulled it, and a suede pocketbook emerged. It looked handmade; somebody had put a lot of work into its crafting. After weeks of frustrated searching and a growing sense of dismay that nothing else would be found in the grim woods, Flynn’s relief was palpable. He could have kissed the purse strap. They were on their way.
“I got something here,” he called to Killen.
Even though the women’s bodies hadn’t been found, police knew they were close. Chief Marshall said to Killen, “Both women were probably killed one after the other, so one of them would have had the chance to run.” The men surveyed the woods around them. “And she would have gone up that hill,” Marshall said, pointing. “People always feel safer on heights.”3
The men looked up the hill and saw a large, oddly shaped pine tree with a branch that had broken off, about six feet up. Walking to the tree, they saw strands of rope clinging to the branch and bark, and at its base they found empty vials of pills and strewn bottle caps, some bearing the pharmaceutical brand Wallace. Nearby, Gunnery found some solidified, pinkish matter that crumbled in his fingers. Then something glittering in the dirt caught his eye; fishing it out he saw that it was a gold earring.
Gunnery’s stomach clenched, and the muscles of his neck and back became taut with tension. He’d been here before. He called Flynn, Killen, and Marshall over.
Gunnery cleared away surface leaves and twigs and the outline of a recently dug hole emerged. He picked up a shovel and started digging, but the roots of the tree hampered his progress, so he knelt down, as he had a month before, and started clawing the loose sandy soil with his bare hands. Kneeling beside him, Flynn watched his progress and felt the cold through the knees of his trousers.
About eighteen inches into the hole, Gunnery’s fingers hit something solid.
“There’s something down there,” he said, leaning back from the hole, almost unwilling to repeat his own history in the ghoulish woods.
Marshall bent to have a closer look and saw something white under a thin layer of dirt. Killen knelt and brushed the dirt away. Both men jumped back.
“Jesus Christ!” Marshall said.
All four men looked down at a human hand, almost reaching toward them.
Once again all digging stopped while Dr. Hiebert was called to the scene. When he arrived, they resumed what was now an exhumation. Flynn bent
down and began clearing handfuls of dirt from the grave, revealing a clump of matted brown hair. He pulled the hair and realized it was not attached to a scalp. He then climbed into the hole and carefully brushed dirt away and saw the back of a head. He gently pulled the head; it had been severed and came easily out of the ground. He cradled it in his arm, brushing the dirt from its open eyes and mouth. With a heavy sadness, he recognized the face from the photos Bob Turbidy and Gerry Magnan had brought to the barracks; it was Mary Anne Wysocki.
The men took turns digging and hauling out the corpse; it had been cut into five pieces, and with each new discovery, their horror grew. None had ever seen anything like this, and each man silently envisioned the brutality it took to wreak this much damage. Then, as they placed the body parts on the ground near the grave, they realized there must be yet another grave; the corpse’s left leg was missing.
Nearby, a park ranger was staring at an odd scattering of soil on a pile of leaves, something that wouldn’t occur naturally. He felt the ground beneath the dirt was soft under his feet. He called Flynn and Gunnery over. Again, they began digging into the loose soil with their hands, and within less than eighteen inches they uncovered another tangle of body parts. Flynn once more climbed down and tried to pull out what appeared to be the lower half of a female, severed just above the hips, but it was too heavy, and Gunnery had to help him get it out of the grave. Under it, they found a torso, arms, and head; somberly, Flynn recognized the face as Patricia Walsh. Under her body they found various articles of clothing, including a man’s jacket with Turbidy written on the inside collar.
Along with the body parts came a powerful stench so putrid the men began breathing through their mouths. It was the stink of decomposition, and the men knew it wasn’t either body they were smelling; these women had been in the ground only a month, and because of the winter cold, their bodies hadn’t yet begun breaking down. Again, the men took turns digging, and their noses ran in the cold March air. Reflexively, they wiped at the drips with the backs of their gloves and instantly recoiled at the horrific stench already soaked into the leather.