As the rest of July unfolded, Dextradeur became increasingly worried and frustrated. He was still getting calls from Frankie from jail, as well as from Judy. Then, in late July, Dextradeur heard of still another reported missing person who seemed to match the background of the first three. Robin Rhodes was 28, and the mother of a seven-year-old boy. She had last been seen by her family in April 1988.
On further inquiry, Dextradeur learned that like the first three women, Robin was a known drug user who frequented the three Faith Alameida taverns, and possibly the Whispers bar, as well. And it appeared that she had once worked at the same fish-processing plant that had employed Donald and Mary Rose Santos. To Dextradeur, there seemed to be powerful links between the four cases. In vain, Dextradeur pleaded for his department’s higher-ups to assign more manpower to the problem, but was refused. The attitude remained unchanged: junkies disappear all the time. As a result, Dextradeur began following leads on his own time.
Meanwhile, State Trooper William Delaney still had the problem of the unidentified skeleton found by the motorist alongside Route 140 earlier in the month. Yes, there was a spate of missing persons in New Bedford, Delaney realized, but those were recent missings, not someone last seen nine months ago, as the experts kept saying the remains on Route 140 represented.
That was the situation when, on the next to last day of July, a second skeleton was found, this one about six miles west of the New Bedford city limits on the westbound side of U.S. I-195.
11
“That’s My Sister”
Just as in the case of the first skeleton found on July 2, 1988, the latest discovery was made by a motorist who stopped to relieve himself in the tree line back from the roadway. What was almost immediately striking about the new skeleton was the similarity in the disposition of the body to the earlier victim.
Both victims were found on their backs, with feet toward the highway. That suggested to some that the killer had carried them over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then unceremoniously rolled them forward off his shoulder and onto their backs before making a quick departure. In turn, that suggested that both women were killed at some other location. Because both roads were leading out of New Bedford, it was logical to speculate that the women had been killed somewhere inside the city limits. Unlike the first victim, however, there was no clothing found at the newest scene, and there was no obvious cause of death, like the earlier brassiere around the neck.
The state police assigned to Ron Pina’s CPAC unit were hardly experts in serial homicide investigation, but it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the two cases of skeletal remains were quite likely connected. Again, Trooper Ken Martin took samples of mud and dirt for the purposes of assembling any trace evidence. A search was made of the surrounding woods, but nothing of significance was recovered. Later that day, as the sheet-covered body bag of the skeleton was being wheeled out toward the roadway, Judy DeSantos happened to be driving by with her husband and kids on her way back from swimming at a public pool in Fall River.
From the backseat of the car, Judy watched the activity off the north side of the road. The car radio had already reported the discovery, so Judy knew exactly what was going on. That was when she turned to her husband and children. “That’s my sister they’re taking out of the woods,” Judy told her family. The kids looked at her as if she were flipping out.
That day, the state police decided they needed more help to identify the remains, which some thought might have been in the woods off the road for two to five months. A call was made to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and arrangements were made to ship the two skeletons to Washington, D.C., where they would be examined at an FBI laboratory.
Meanwhile, another state police investigator, Corporal Jose Gonsalves, was assigned to work with Trooper Delaney on the two cases, with Delaney retaining responsibility for the first skeleton and Gonsalves taking over the second.
But just as in the case of the first skeleton, the estimate of the death date for the second skeleton was wildly overestimated. Judy DeSantos was right: the skeleton being removed from the woods that day was that of her sister, Nancy Paiva. But it would be another four months before anyone besides Judy would figure that out.
12
The Weld Square Dance
As the summer of 1988 unfolded in New Bedford, there was yet one more person whose activities that season would eventually gain the intense interest of the police in the months to come. This was a huskily built, dark-haired man with a flattened nose, whose peculiar predilection was the beating and raping of young women who earned their living as prostitutes in the city’s red-light district, an area known to all as Weld Square.
Weld Square was not really a square, but rather a neighborhood in the middle of the city, where Weld Avenue, connected to an off-ramp from I-195 as it passed through the city, crossed Purchase Street, one of the city’s main commercial thoroughfares. The Weld Square neighborhood was filled with seedy apartments, rundown or abandoned businesses, vacant lots, dark alleys, and sidewalk squadrons of drug pushers, and there a great many prostitutes plied their trade. The neighborhood’s handy proximity to the interstate highway just a quick on-ramp away made it a favorite attraction for motorized vice.
The “Weld Square dance,” as some news media later called it, was little different than commercial prostitution practiced in most other parts of the country. Essentially, prostitution as practiced in New Bedford was a trade conducted on wheels.
Prostitutes, most of them women with heavy drug habits, congregated during evening hours at intersections in the Weld Square neighborhood. Drivers pulling off the interstate simply drove through the area; it was easy to catch the eye of a strolling woman, pull over to the side of the street, make a “date,” and drive to some nearby secluded location. That, after all, was exactly what Flat Nose had done with a 34-year-old woman named Bethany in late April 1988, and with many others during the season of killing.
Bethany later recalled that a man in a dark blue pickup truck pulled over and offered her a “date.” She recalled that the man in the truck had very distinctive features: a nose flattened against his face and a right arm which seemed to be slightly impaired. Bethany agreed to give the man in the truck fellatio for $20. Bethany suggested that the man drive to a place behind New Bedford High School, but the man said no. Instead he drove out toward the New Bedford Municipal Airport some three or four miles away.
As he drove, the man with the flat nose told Bethany a little about himself. He said his name was Kurt, and that he was a former prizefighter. That was how he’d gotten the smashed-in nose, Kurt said. Now, he said, he worked for a construction company, and Bethany saw a check on the truck dashboard from what appeared to be Kurt’s employer. Kurt wanted Bethany to show him her arms—to inspect her for possible needle tracks, a prime source of AIDS for many prostitutes—and then said he’d been watching her and thought she might be an undercover policewoman. Bethany denied this, and then realized Kurt had been drinking pretty heavily.
After parking the truck, Bethany started giving Kurt the oral sex he’d asked for. Suddenly Kurt grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head up. He made a fist and told her she’d better do exactly what he wanted or he’d punch her in the face and mess it up.
Bethany was scared. She was sure Kurt would beat her face in if she resisted. Kurt made her take off her pants, and then raped her. Afterward, Kurt drove her back to downtown New Bedford and let her out of the truck. Bethany immediately told one of her friends what had happened. Neither woman reported the attack to the police. For a short while, though, the word about the ex-boxer with the flat nose made the rounds among other prostitutes in the city; Flat Nose was someone to stay away from. But despite Bethany’s description of her unpleasant experience, many of the women in Weld Square either didn’t get the message, were high on drugs, or had simply forgotten about Flat Nose by the time the heat of the summer arrived in 1988.
Bethany and her fr
iend saw Flat Nose driving around the Weld Square area several times in late May, and again in June, July, and August of 1988. Although Flat Nose was now driving a black 1987 pickup truck, Bethany was sure it was the same man: the face was so distinctive.
Yet she still did not go to the police. Who would have listened to her, anyway? A drug user and convicted prostitute? In this, Bethany’s confidence in the police was little different than it was for most of the women in the Weld Square area in the summer of 1988.
Caught between the perils of their drug addiction and the prospect of being arrested by the police for prostitution, the Weld Square women simply took their lumps from violent customers like Flat Nose and told themselves to be more careful the next time.
A year later, it was hard for those not familiar with the ravages of serious drug addiction to understand this. An investigator with the state police tried to explain to a grand jury:
“With regard to you, sir,” said the investigator in response to a question from a grand juror, “I know you’re saying there’s a gap from when she reported it. It’s unfortunate that these girls—they’re heroin addicts, they’re addicted to drugs. And if they don’t get their drugs every day, that’s a life-and-death situation to them.
“They know if they go to the police department and say, well, ‘I was raped by this guy,’ unfortunately, some of them may be charged with soliciting themselves, and they know they’re going to be locked up for a period of time. They’re going to be ‘dope sick,’ as they say, and they’re not going to get their heroin. That’s why they don’t come forward sometimes, and give their information as soon as maybe someone who wasn’t a prostitute would. Do you understand what I mean?”
So Flat Nose continued to roam about the Weld Square area with impunity, picking up women pretty much on a weekly basis, driving them to darkened areas, punching them, choking them, raping them, and generally terrorizing them with threats of homicidal violence. Usually Flat Nose appeared to be drunk, and once he was finished, he seemed desperate to get away, often thrusting his truck door open and literally kicking his victims across the seat and out into the street before roaring off. At least a dozen women were assaulted in this fashion by Flat Nose between June and September 1988, and not one reported their experience to the New Bedford Police Department—at least, at the time.
One night in late July or early August, a woman named Margaret Medeiros found herself walking down Purchase Street near Weld Square when a man driving a blue-and-white Ford Bronco truck beeped his horn at her and waved her over. Medeiros, known as Peggy to her friends, was new on the streets of New Bedford. She knew very few of the people who hung out in Weld Square, and certainly had not heard anything about the man with the flat nose who was behind the wheel. She did notice that the Bronco had Rhode Island license plates, so she was immediately suspicious that the driver was a cop.
Flat Nose told Peggy that he wasn’t a cop, that he was from Tiverton, Rhode Island, just across the state line. Where do you want to go? Flat Nose asked her. Some-place nearby, Peggy told him, and then she asked Flat Nose what he wanted.
A blow job, Flat Nose told her.
That’ll be 25 bucks, Peggy said.
Flat Nose steered the Bronco over the tracks down to the waterfront. Pulling up into a darkened area, Flat Nose guided her into the Bronco’s rear seat, then sat down and began to unzip his pants, but Peggy said he’d have to give her the money first. When he heard Peggy say those words, Flat Nose suddenly lunged toward her and grabbed her around the neck with both hands. He was incredibly powerful. Peggy couldn’t breathe. Flat Nose’s eyes were demonic as he twisted the muscles in her neck, and Peggy was sure she was going to die.
“I’m gonna do to you what I did to those other bitches,” Flat Nose hissed as he choked her. Crazily, Peggy noticed a tiger tattoo on Flat Nose’s right forearm. She put her hands up to Flat Nose’s wrists and tried to pull his hands away, but he was too strong. She began to black out. Her arms were losing their strength and her grip on his wrists was weakening. Desperately she kicked at Flat Nose with her last remaining ounce of energy. One kick seemed to have some effect, so she tried again. On the second kick, Flat Nose removed his hands and bent over, holding his groin. Peggy guessed she’d nailed him in the testicles. Quickly Peggy jumped back into the front seat, threw open the passenger-side door, and ran away from the Bronco.
Incredibly, the following night Peggy saw Flat Nose again, driving the same Bronco. Even more incredibly, he beeped his horn again, and again waved her over. Peggy couldn’t believe that Flat Nose didn’t recognize her. She kept walking, and Flat Nose moved on.
About two weeks after the discovery of the second skeleton—the remains that Judy DeSantos was convinced were those of her sister, Nancy Paiva—State Trooper Delaney gave a short press briefing about both skeletons.
The victims were both short, slightly built, brown-haired women, Delaney said, just over five feet in height; of course, that description applied to thousands of women in the Bristol County area, so it wasn’t much help.
But Delaney also noted that both victims had extensive dental work, and both appeared to have been dropped at their respective locations in the same fashion. In addition, Delaney noted that the first woman had recently suffered a broken jaw. There was always the hope that the information about the broken jaw might jog someone’s memory.
In the meantime, Delaney said, he’d sent a teletype requesting information on possible missing women fitting the criteria to other states, and received about 20 different responses. But then Delaney added that he’d asked the state police computer systems for a listing of all missing women in Massachusetts alone who were between four-eleven and five-five in height, and was presented with a list of 1,724 names. Nearly 2,000 names was just way too many.
To narrow things down, Delaney said, he’d asked all local Bristol County police departments for any reports on missing women that might fit the characteristics of the two victims. Delaney told the reporters that he intended to start with the Bristol County list when it was assembled. Then, he said, he intended to track down the group’s dental and medical records, and send them to Boston for the medical examiners there to check for possible matches to the two skeletons. Once police figured out who the dead women were, work could begin to determine who might have killed them, and why.
But in this there remains something of a small if painful mystery.
Just after seeing the police pull the second skeleton out of the woods along I-195, Judy DeSantos began trying to assemble her sister Nancy’s medical and dental records for Detective Dextradeur of the New Bedford Police. After doing some detective work of her own, Judy learned the name of Nancy’s dentist. She called Dextradeur, telling him that she would get Nancy’s records. Dextradeur told her it wouldn’t be necessary, that he’d go himself.
The following day, Dextradeur called and said he’d gotten the records and turned them over to the state police. Dextradeur also told Judy that it would take about two weeks to compare the charts to the recent victim. Judy marked the date down on her calendar: August 14, her daughter’s birthday.
On that day—the day after Delaney told the news media that he wanted dental records—Judy called the New Bedford Police Department to find out the results of the check of Nancy’s dental charts. She was told that there was no information on whether Nancy’s charts matched the teeth found with the second victim, the one Judy was somehow sure was that of her sister.
Why wasn’t there any information? If Delaney had Nancy’s records, had they been compared with the latest skeletal remains? If they had, did that mean Nancy’s charts didn’t match? Why else would Delaney be asking for more records? Why couldn’t the police answer this simple if vital question?
It was maddening to Judy to be enmeshed in the disinterest of the police bureaucracy, most of which treated her as if she were some sort of crook, at least judging by their indifference or outright hostility. But at this stage, Judy was still timid abo
ut confronting the police.
“Whatever they said to me,” Judy recalled, “I would say, ‘Okay, all right.’ I’d hang up. I didn’t want to upset anyone. I figured that they knew what they were doing … you know, you put all your faith and trust in them. These are the people you’re brought up to believe in, your police officers, your firefighters, your dentists. And then you find out, hey, they’re human.”
Beneath her timidity, however, Judy had a disquieting thought. Did Delaney ever have the records at all, despite Dextradeur’s assurance that he’d given them to the state police? Or if Delaney had them, what had he done with them? Had he even bothered to look at them, or send them on to the experts, or whatever it was that was supposed to be done?
Like most people, Judy didn’t understand that in those days, the state police rarely gave the time of day to the city police; cops were cops were cops, at least to Judy, and what she said to one she assumed would go on up the ladder. But that was not the case.
Eventually, the city cops told Judy to call back again in two more weeks.
But by the time the two weeks was up, Dextradeur had been forced to go on a medical leave. He was suffering from hypertension, probably due to frustration and too much work. Hypertension did nothing to ease Dextradeur’s already battered heart. When Judy called early in September to ask about the charts once more, no one at the city department seemed to know anything about Nancy’s dental records, or much care.
Thus, even while Trooper Delaney was casting his net during August and September for dental charts to match the two skeletons, a complete set of records from a known missing person that could have identified one set of remains was available to police.
And as a further result, Judy DeSantos continued to search for her sister for the next four months, even while one level or another of the police had all the information needed to resolve the mystery of Nancy’s whereabouts. It was not a great testament to police efficiency, and stands as one of the main reasons Judy later became so angry at the police.
Killing Season Page 6
