Killing Season

by Carlton Smith

  About 15 miles to the south, a brash, outspoken, often volatile 38-year-old New Bedford lawyer named Kenneth Ponte was contemplating his imminent retirement to the sun-drenched Florida Gulf Coast. He was finished with New Bedford, Ponte told his friends and family; he was going to move to the land of sand, warm breezes, and palm trees, and put his old life behind him forever.

  The second son of a highly respected former official of the City of New Bedford, Kenny’s life had lurched off to a rough start, but then had stabilized. Many people in New Bedford knew all about Kenny’s battle with heroin as a teenager and young adult. But Ponte had been able to escape the habit, leaving behind so many others who had been sucked in.

  Eventually, he’d graduated from college, then law school; an influential state senator had helped him win a pardon for crimes he had committed while an addict, and Kenny had passed the bar examination and become a lawyer in his hometown. He’d even become an honorary deputy sheriff of Bristol County. Now Kenny was getting ready to move on to even better things, with the help of his rich friend, Paul Ryley.

  Like Ponte, a third man, a 36-year-old New Bedford fish cutter and occasional handyman, Neil Anderson, had no awareness of the police activity then underway along the side of Route 140.

  Anderson lived from week to week, with his mother in a small house on Willis Street, only a few blocks away from Ponte’s own house on Chestnut Street; and if on that Sunday afternoon, Anderson had looked at his heavy motorcycle boots, he would have had no idea as to how interested police would eventually become in those boots, and indeed, all of his activities that summer of 1988.

  And 15 miles to the east, in the small town of Tiverton, Rhode Island, a 46-year-old diesel mechanic was similarly oblivious of the discovery of the skeleton along Route 140. James Baker was a man of definite views about some things, including drugs. As far as Baker could see, drugs were destroying people’s lives. Everywhere Baker looked, the evidence was all around. Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, uppers, downers—all of it was rotting away people’s souls, and Baker detested it.

  None of these four men knew each other, and indeed, there were very few similarities in their lives. A stonemason, a lawyer, a fish cutter, and a diesel mechanic. But all had in common at least one thing, and that was an attraction to the city of New Bedford’s red-light district, an area known as Weld Square. In the end it was an attraction that would alter their lives forever.

  4

  Dextradeur

  On the second floor of an old ramshackle stone building in downtown New Bedford, up a flight of stained and narrow linoleum stairs, lies the dusty, cluttered office of the city’s embattled detective squad. There, during the first week of July 1988, a man named John Dextradeur contemplated his large and seemingly ever-expanding caseload, and couldn’t see much reason for optimism.

  Dextradeur had been a cop in the city for almost 20 years; he’d already had one heart attack as a detective for the department, and he was more than familiar with the ordinary routine of human foibles that marked the lives of many, perhaps even most, of the nearly 100,000 residents of the city that paid his salary.

  As one of the larger cities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, New Bedford had a police force of just over 230 officers—about one cop for every 430 residents, a low ratio for many East Coast cities, and one that meant Dextradeur’s department was very nearly overmatched by the criminal element.

  From the dilapidated threes-story headquarters in the center of the city, New Bedford’s limited numbers of finest ranged across an intensely urbanized warren that was about ten miles long and perhaps three miles wide.

  Because New Bedford developed long before the automobile, the city was filled with narrow, crooked alleys, dead-end streets, pedestrian-only byways and fortuitously located but unexpected passages, along with obscure and darkened stairwells enabling anyone equipped with fast feet and a knowledge of the city to make a quick escape from the law.

  New Bedford was therefore a haven for purse-snatchers, smash-and-grabbers, pickpockets, strong-arm robbers, and a never-ending cavalcade of petty dope dealers and dealees. The cops had long ago learned to use their radios to put their cars in strategic positions to maximize coverage, much like basketball players playing a zone defense. Still, a person afoot beat a police cruiser on many days of the week—too many.

  As a result, the days and nights of veteran cops like Dextradeur were filled with matters to be investigated: street fights, domestic battles, threats, thefts, strong-arm holdups, assaults, stabbings, shootings, rapes, and occasionally worse. It was enough to make anyone cynical about the potential of human nature, and Dextradeur was not immune.

  There was always a surplus of things to be looked into, and a shortage of people to do the looking. Every detective on the New Bedford force had an apparently inexhaustible supply of open cases, a backlog made worse by the creaking slowness of the courts; too often even the solved cases were dismissed simply because too much time had elapsed between the crime and the courtroom.

  Sooner or later, though, the perpetrators and the victims came back around again, with new crimes, although occasionally the roles of victim and perpetrator were reversed. Dextradeur did not then know it, but just such a situation was about to present itself, and it would tie back to several of those cases that were clogging the open-file bin that was the bane of his existence.

  The police of the city of New Bedford were only one level of the state’s police hierarchy. At the local level were cops who worked for townships, like Freetown’s Alves; next up were city cops, both uniformed patrol officers and detectives like Dextradeur. Both the township police and the city police performed similar functions and had similar responsibilities, even if being a cop in a city like New Bedford was a hundred times more frenetic than in a rather more bucolic setting like Freetown.

  In addition to the local police departments, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had another police agency—the Massachusetts State Police. Organized along the lines of an old colonial militia, the state police had two primary functions. One was to patrol the state’s highways; the other was to investigate major crimes—like murder—within the boundaries of each local elected district attorney’s territory.

  Police organizations are notoriously clannish all over the country, and those in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are no different. Efforts by well-meaning politicians and administrators to consolidate or break down barriers to cooperation and communication are invariably resisted. Cops usually have a hard time trusting each other, let alone officers from a strange department; added to these barriers to communication were ego obstacles; many officers of the state police, for instance, considered themselves the elite cops in the state, and only rarely deigned to concern themselves with the troubles of cops on lower levels like Alves or Dextradeur.

  As a result, information collected on one level of the system does not routinely flow to another level of the system, and that is just what transpired during the first week of July 1988, as Detective Dextradeur contemplated his open-case files—files that contained several pieces of information that eventually became of great interest to Ronald A. Pina, district attorney for Bristol County.

  5

  Pina

  Ron Pina was 44 years old that summer of 1988, and whatever else one might say about him, he had a style that was all his own.

  Born the only child of a successful New Bedford contractor, Antonio Pina, and his seamstress wife, Ron Pina had been groomed from childhood to do great things, to carry the banner of his ethnic community, the hardworking Portuguese-Americans of southeastern Massachusetts, into the mainstream of America; with the grace of God and a little money, Pina hoped to be seen as a Portuguese-American version of a Kennedy.

  It was only later—much later, as Ron Pina’s future haplessly unraveled before his eyes—that most Portuguese-Americans in southeastern Massachusetts concluded that their former great hope was first of all an illusion, and worse, had sold them out.

&
nbsp; Blessed with a long, angular, trim frame, coal-black hair, full, sensuous lips and intense dark eyes, Ronnie Pina—as many still called him even as he neared his middle forties—was as handsome and elegant as he was articulate.

  After growing up in New Bedford, Pina graduated from Providence College in Rhode Island, and then went on to Boston College for a law degree. He married a former Miss Massachusetts, and almost immediately embarked on a career in politics. Pina served several terms in the Massachusetts legislature, and soon became one of then-Governor Michael Dukakis’s top allies.

  As many in New Bedford were later to observe, at least initially Ronnie Pina was seen as the true champion for a long-ignored minority, who by his actions and public stature might somehow finally legitimize aspirations and allow so many of whose roots were in the Azores or Lisbon to feel fulfilled in the possibilities of America. So, at least in the beginning, there were tens of thousands of New Bedford residents who cheered Ron Pina as one of their own.

  Such acceptance, lionization, and adoration can be intoxicating stuff, particularly to the young, and there are many in New Bedford who still say Ronnie Pina stayed far too long at the punchbowl. Outwardly, Pina was self-confident, at home in his gifts of articulation, aware of his good looks and his powerful connections. Whatever doubts possessed Pina, he kept them well-hidden; but precocious as Pina was, there were those who couldn’t help feeling he would be a better person when he finally failed at something.

  In 1970 Pina was just out of law school, and he quickly won a spot in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. By the mid-1970s, he was among the inner circle of idealistic reformers associated with then-Governor Dukakis.

  Soon Pina carved out a spectacular reputation as the charismatic, liberal enfant terrible of the Massachusetts legislature, bent on cleaning up political corruption, confronting entrenched interests, legislating consumer protection laws, mandating environmental regulations, insurance reform, or a host of similar measures seen in Massachusetts as progressive lawmaking. Pina was particularly adroit at manipulating the Massachusetts news media, which rarely cared if Ronnie made any real sense, but were interested in the sort of conflict with other talking heads that Pina, playing the role of Outrageous Young Legislator, often provided for the evening news.

  By 1976 Pina considered running for lieutenant governor on a ticket with Dukakis; his relationship with Dukakis had advanced that far. In the end, however, Pina was thwarted by the ambitions of another career politician, Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., the son of then U.S. House Speaker “Tip” O’Neill. But for Pina, losing out to the younger O’Neill might have been a blessing in disguise, at least initially.

  As Dukakis was heading for a defeat by Republican Edward J. King in 1978, Pina realized that his time in the Massachusetts legislature was about to expire; conservatives were on the march in tax revolts across the country, and Ronald Reagan was looming large on the political horizon; as a result liberal, progressive reformers like Pina were about to become an endangered species.

  Thus, in 1978, Pina ran for a new, $38,000-a-year, soon-to-be full-time job: district attorney of Bristol County, a swatch of territory that encompassed the most populated areas of southeastern Massachusetts, and where Portuguese-American voters were in the majority. His name, his family connections, and his earlier, highly publicized experience as a member of the state’s legislature helped him win the job easily.

  But if in 1978 Pina at least temporarily exited from the legislative arena, his political instincts—and more particularly his deftness in orchestrating news media coverage—were hardly in remission.

  Whether he intended to or not, Pina soon became known as a rather flamboyant prosecutor, one who seemingly relished seeing his name in the headlines and his image on the evening news. Some later contended that Pina quickly realized that as the chief crime fighter in the most populated, drug-affected area of southeastern Massachusetts, he was in control of a cornucopia of good publicity, with all its potential for his political future.

  6

  The Politician

  As the late 1970s merged into the early 1980s, Pina’s irrepressible desire to play to the news media sometimes got the young district attorney in trouble. At least one rival soon called him a “grandstander, a publicity hound”; and even neutral critics readily conceded that the aroma of naked political ambition sometimes wafted from the offices of the district attorney.

  Until the Highway Murder case, unquestionably Ron Pina’s largest claim to fame (or infamy, depending on which side one was on) were the two Big Dan’s rape trials from the middle 1980s.

  In that notorious case, a somewhat intoxicated woman had been raped by four men while held down on a pool table in New Bedford’s north end. At least five other people in Big Dan’s tavern at the time did nothing to interfere.

  Later, there was a question about just what the uninvolved five actually saw, or could reliably testify to, but as it was reported throughout the world—mostly by news leaks from Pina’s office—it seemed there was an entire barroom filled with a cheering section of men urging the rapists on.

  Whatever the true facts, as it was publicized, the Big Dan’s rape instantly ignited women all over the country. Pina was sought out by news media from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, even from other countries. He became fast friends with Geraldo Rivera, and granted scores of interviews. In each, Pina came across as the sorrowful but sincere district attorney: sensitive to the needs of the victim, seemingly slightly uncomfortable with all the media notoriety, but committed to justice.

  Nationally, it played very well, and in liberal Boston—crucial to any politician’s statewide ambitions in Massachusetts—Pina gained a great deal of favorable name recognition. The pool table crime later served as the rather loose foundation for a movie which won an Academy Award for actress Jodie Foster, The Accused.

  But in New Bedford, the Big Dan’s case was an entirely different story. Feelings ran so high in the community over the rape cases that Pina and others began receiving death threats. Half the city blamed him for bringing charges against the Big Dan’s Four; the other half approved of the trials, but blamed Pina for making New Bedford look bad in front of the nation by being so perversely public about it.

  In the beginning, most of the reaction came from those who were outraged that the rapes had taken place; but soon thoughtless remarks were made in the newspapers and over the airwaves about Portuguese immigrants and Portuguese culture, and inevitably there was a backlash.

  “There was a lot of stupid talk, and it tore this community apart,” Pina’s chief deputy, Ray Veary, recalled years later. “It had friends not talking to one another. It got very ugly here.” Fights broke out in barrooms and on the streets between proponents and opponents of the charges, while children of native-born Americans taunted the children of immigrants, calling them animals and worse, and saying they should all go back to Portugal, that they didn’t deserve to live in America.

  Almost overnight the case became a symbol: a woman’s right to be safe from rape, against perceptions of prejudice against Portuguese immigrants; as a simultaneous symbol of two different deeply felt things, to two different groups, the case moved well beyond whatever the facts might have been at the time of the crimes.

  At the end of the first trial, tried by Veary, the defendants and the prosecutors were literally trapped on the top of the courthouse while thousands of angry people ran around the building, shouting curses and screaming threats and fighting one another. “It was awful, just awful,” Veary recalled. To the present day, there are many in New Bedford who still blame Pina for dividing the city over Big Dan’s.

  But underneath his carefully constructed public persona, Ron Pina was a sensitive man, acutely conscious of how others were perceiving him. Yes, he wanted to seem commanding, in control, capable; that was, after all, the essence of being a politician. No one wanted to vote for someone who looked down at the floor, or was painfully shy, or who fumbled for an ans
wer under pressure. Sometimes Pina could be acerbic, or sound arrogant; but these were ways Pina used to hide his sensitivity, his vulnerability, and to override that quiet, always-present, tiny voice of self-doubt.

  So there was a hidden aspect of Pina, one which usually only emerged in his moments of introspection, often taken out on the sea in the cockpit of his small sailboat, Cyrano, or with his teenaged daughter, Kari, or in other similar places or situations where others who competed with him or wished to judge him did not tread. His marriage to the former beauty queen, the mother of his child, had disintegrated as Pina had moved up in politics, and the truth was, Ron Pina was a man who craved love and acceptance, an addiction that often made him a lonely man, even when he was surrounded by others.

  But this side of Pina was not one that was well-known to those who worked for him, particularly among the state police who had been assigned to his office. To the troopers, Pina was just a politician—and a peculiarly insensitive and selfish one at that.

  Early in his tenure as district attorney, Pina had actually been in a fistfight with one of the troopers; the officers had responded to a particularly gruesome murder, in which a mentally disturbed mother had killed her infant son with a chainsaw.

  When the ashen-faced cops returned to the office, Pina had made a flip remark about the crime, as much to protect himself against the horror of the act as anything else. One of the troopers, overcome by his own emotions, ignited at Pina’s remark and instantly decked him; and while apologies were given all around, the incident did little to convince the troopers that the man they worked for was anything more than a shallow, publicity-hungry politician who was as arrogant as he was insensitive.

  And after another dispute, Pina had effectively fired all the troopers assigned to his office, when he decided all were plotting against him to help another lawyer—the brother of one of the troopers—to be elected district attorney in his place. The troopers were disloyal, Pina decided; therefore, he couldn’t trust them. He ordered them out of his office, and the troopers retreated to their barracks in Dartmouth just west of New Bedford, while intermediaries tried to heal the breach.