Killing Season

by Carlton Smith

  Later, Jeanne went on to claim that Kenny asked her to inject him with cocaine.

  “In his neck,” Jeanne agreed.

  “And then what happened? You said he freaks out.”

  “He pulls his clothes off; and he freaks out. Sweats. Just a nightmare.”

  “So that happened once? Or did you do it again?”

  “Many times.”

  Jeanne went on to claim that she or Rochelle had injected Kenny with cocaine on many different occasions. Usually, she said, Kenny would become heavily paranoid, and worried that the police had surrounded the house.

  “Did he ever get violent with you?”

  “Just—no. He never got violent with me. He never got violent with me to the point that I couldn’t handle it. You know.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’d tell him, ‘Let’s do some more drugs, Kenny.’ You know. And I kind of played him out until he needed another shot.”

  Eventually, Jeanne told Pina, she met a man at Kenny’s who claimed to be a multimillionaire. “Preppie. Good-looking. Very clean cut. Nice eyes. Piercing eyes. Square jaw. Very well dressed. Well-manicured nails. Looks like he walked out of a yacht club and told me he was a multimillionaire.” The man Jeanne described fit the description of Paul Ryley.

  Jeanne went on to say that during the summer of 1988 she’d spent a considerable amount of time doing drugs with Kenny. Once, she said, they’d been stopped on South First Street by the police. That was when the New Bedford cops found Kenny with a gun, in June 1988. Near the end of the summer, she met the man who looked like Ryley at Kenny’s law office. The man told her he had $40,000 in cash. He also had a gun. Kenny took some of the money and bought drugs with it after the man left, Jeanne said.

  Early in September 1988, Jeanne continued, Kenny called her again and asked her to come over to his house.

  “It was like midnight,” she said. “I came back to his house and the man (who looked like Ryley) was there.”

  “Do you remember talking to the man? Do you remember anything that happened that night?”

  “We were getting high. He didn’t like—he didn’t get high.”

  “The man didn’t use drugs, right?”

  “No. Like he was drinking. I don’t know if he was drinking soda or alcohol.”

  As the night wore on, Jeanne continued, a videotape was put into the VCR.

  “There was the tape that was put in; and they were like, ‘Watch this.’ They were asking me if—will you play this with Kenny? And I was like, well, let’s get high. Let’s keep getting high. And I saw a tape with them that was really bizarre.”

  “They asked what?” Pina demanded. “Would you play with Kenny the role in the movie? Or would you play some game with him, or what?”

  “Yeah. It was like into S and M (sadomasochism) and stuff like that. They wanted me to dress up in, you know, studs. They were talking about, you know, like S and M type of stuff.”

  “I really don’t know,” said Pina. “If you could help us out. I’m trying to get you—I don’t want to embarrass you.”

  “I am embarrassed.”

  “What were they asking you to do? I mean that’s—”

  “The other—the—”

  “Take your time.”

  “The man who I don’t know his name wanted to watch me and Kenny play games. And then when the movie came on, I was—after I saw the movie, I got scared.”

  “Okay. But you said something about the movie, play games like the movie.”

  “First one I saw, I don’t know if it was a tape or not. It was S and M, hitting, tying up; stuff like that.”

  “And they wanted you to play those games with Kenny?” Pina persisted.

  “And I was like, no way,” Jeanne said. “I don’t do that. I don’t play those games. And the other one, they were like, ‘Watch this.’ And Kenny was flying around really high, really off the wall. Sweating. Took his clothes off. He runs around the house without his clothes on. And I saw a film. And it scared me.”

  “Do you remember what was in the film?”

  “I just remember it was a rape. And it was strange. And it was—it looked like a dead stare.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “A dead stare,” Jeanne said. “A dead stare. Like when the hands were put around her throat.”

  “Was it a violent scene? Was the girl getting raped?”

  “She was being raped. And she was—” Here Jeanne put her own hands around her throat and bugged her eyes out to indicate strangulation.

  “And then what happened? How did the movie end?”

  “The girl got—it was really bizarre. Her eyes looked like they were dead. And I said, ‘That’s not just a movie. That’s not just acting.’ The man was telling me movies like that cost a lot of money, but this isn’t a real one. And he was telling me the prices of how much people pay for snuff films. And he said that wasn’t a snuff film, because nobody—they’re too expensive. And you have to buy them or something. I went in the bathroom. You have to buy them from certain people. I never even heard of somebody like that.”

  The man who looked like Ryley tried to convince her, Jeanne said, to go into the pornography business as a model. That’s why they wanted her to act out some of the scenes from the tape—a sort of screen test.

  “Act out some of the S and M scenes,” Jeanne added. “Not from the rape. Not from the videotape. I just—I really got scared. I went into the bathroom. I did that to myself to see if your eyes look—” Jeanne bugged her eyes out again to show what she would look like if she were being strangled.

  “I put my hands on my neck. And I tried to look in the mirror. Just, I’ll never forget it. It was—it was so real. It didn’t seem like it was—you know how those—I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a porn movie. And they just seem so much like acting. They seem so fake.”

  “And this movie didn’t seem that way?”

  “No,” said Jeanne.

  Later that night, Jeanne continued, Kenny and the man who looked like Ryley decided that she was flipping out, acting bizarre. Jeanne wanted to leave, but the door was locked, she said.

  “Did you ever get out of the house that night?”

  Jeanne said she had. “I fought with him (Kenny),” she added. “And he ripped my shirt. And I said, ‘I’ll get you another girl.’ Because I just wanted to leave. I was just in pending fear of doom.” Jeanne said she called another woman, who came over. Jeanne said she left and never spent any time with Kenny again. She went to prison in late September of 1988, just about the time Kenny moved to Florida.

  45

  Memories

  Now the jury had heard from a witness who testified under oath that she had seen Kenny and, presumably Ryley, together; and that she had seen both men watch a video that appeared to contain a violent rape scene in which a woman was supposedly strangled. Even more significant, the jury now had testimony that the man who looked like Ryley was allegedly familiar with such films, and knew how they could be marketed, and for how much.

  But a close inspection of Jeanne’s story—and Pina’s attempt to interrogate her about it—reveals several important problems. The first problem was that Pina never showed Jeanne any photographs of the man who looked like Ryley. Therefore, one is forced to conclude that Pina wasn’t sure that Jeanne could positively identify him.

  Second, nowhere did Jeanne tell the grand jury what Boudreau had just said she would she say: namely, that Ponte and the Ryley look-alike had claimed to her that they actually made videos with real murders in them, using “homeless and terminally ill women.”

  Indeed, Jeanne’s information to the jury clearly indicated that the Ryley look-alike had assured her that the choking scene she supposedly saw was not real. The only discussion about snuff films came when Ryley assured her that such films existed, not that he was in any way involved with them. That was Jeanne’s sworn testimony, not Boudreau’s description of it.

  A final problem with Jean
ne’s story arose when Pina told her he did not plan on prosecuting her for anything she might say. Yet, four months later, Jeanne was in fact indicted by the district attorney for conspiring to possession of drugs with Kenny Ponte.

  Later, Pina would say, in defending the use of the grand jury, that very few people had repudiated their testimony—not more than two or three, he said. That raises the question of whether Jeanne told Boudreau things that she declined to repeat later in front of the grand jury under penalty of perjury, which naturally raises questions about her earlier veracity with Boudreau.

  But those questions might be resolved another way—Ryley himself could be called to testify. And that’s exactly what Pina did.

  That afternoon, Ryley went into the jury room, accompanied by his lawyer, Joe Macy of Fall River. Under Massachusetts law, defense lawyers are permitted in the jury room, but they cannot ask questions or make statements.

  Shockingly, Pina did not ask Ryley any questions about Jeanne’s story.

  Pina showed Ryley some of the pictures of the victims; Ryley said two, Robin Rhodes and Rochelle Clifford, looked slightly familiar, but he did not know them by name. During most of 1988, he said, he had been living in Brownsville, Texas, and wasn’t anywhere near New Bedford. With that, Ryley was excused.

  There was another witness called by Pina that day. A woman named Gayle told the jurors that she had known Rochelle Clifford in the winter and spring of 1988. In fact, Gayle said, Rochelle had once called her to ask her to come pick her up. Rochelle, Gayle said, told her that she’d been riding on I-195 with Kenny Ponte, that she and Kenny had been in a fight, that Kenny had tried to choke her, that she’d taken his gun, and had escaped from Kenny’s car.

  This, indeed, was useful testimony, although far short of definitive proof because of its hearsay nature. If it was true, however, it seemed to indicate that Kenny had once attacked Rochelle Clifford.

  The big problem with Gayle’s testimony was its lack of precision in timing. Indeed, Gayle’s memory, if anything, seemed far worse than Jeanne’s, Pina’s compliment to Jeanne notwithstanding. Gayle seemed to recall being with Rochelle at Christmas 1988, which couldn’t be right, because Rochelle’s skeleton had been found on December 9, 1988.

  She probably meant Christmas 1987, but that seemed to contradict Jeanne’s story, in which Jeanne had said she and Rochelle were pregnant together in December 1987, and Gayle mentioned nothing about Rochelle looking like she was about to give birth.

  In any event, Gayle’s husband began running around doing drugs with Rochelle, according to Gayle, perhaps beginning in January or February of 1988. On one occasion, she said, Rochelle and Gayle’s husband stole Gayle’s wallet and tried to use her Sears charge card. The store knew Rochelle wasn’t Gayle, and called Gayle to ask her if she wanted Rochelle arrested. Gayle said she did. The police were called, but the officers let Rochelle and Gayle’s husband go.

  It was some time after that, in the spring, when she’d received a call from Rochelle, Gayle said.

  “And she was calling you from where?” Pina asked.

  “From Wareham exit off 195.”

  “She was using the phone off the road?”

  “Yeah. When you take that exit, there’s a phone booth.”

  “And what did she tell you?”

  “That Kenny Ponte was trying to kill her, so she jumped out of his car. She took his gun. He had a gun. She jumped out of his car.”

  “Did she say how he was trying to kill her?”

  “No. She just said please come pick me up. She’s all shook up. And I didn’t go and get her.”

  “You didn’t go and get her?”

  “No.”

  Pina then asked Gayle whether she’d told the police that Kenny had tried to choke Rochelle.

  “She was in the car. She’s—yeah. She was strangling him, gets out of his car. She got the gun from him. That’s what she told me.”

  “She was strangling him? Or he was strangling her?”

  “I think she was—he was trying to strangle her. I wouldn’t think she’d try to strangle him. She got the gun. She got out of his car. That’s what she said.”

  Gayle said she told Rochelle to stay away from Kenny. But later she heard that Rochelle was still hanging around with the lawyer—“a few months later than that.”

  What could anyone make out of this story? Taken literally, and together with previously established facts about Rochelle, it would seem to indicate that at some unknown point, Kenny had tried to choke Rochelle on I-195, that Rochelle had taken away Kenny’s gun, that she was afraid of him and called Gayle for help; but then later, had reconciled with Kenny, then apparently stole his gun again in the burglary of April 13, 1988, then stayed with Frankie Pina and Nancy Paiva, then returned to Kenny’s house “a few months later than that,” by which time, if the forensic people were correct, Kenny would have been living with a walking skeleton.

  In a courtroom under cross-examination, Gayle’s testimony would have been torn to shreds. But Pina wasn’t planning to put Gayle on any witness stand; he was operating his perjury-powered fact-sifter in the hope of uncovering some new leads.

  Pina now tried harder to get a more specific time frame for these events.

  “Did you tell the detectives that after this incident with Rochelle calling you on the highway—I’m just trying to refresh your memory, see if this brings your memory back—you told them you had a phone conversation with her; and she, Rochelle, said she’d been arrested, and she was shoplifting?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Gayle recalled. “She called me from the police station.”

  “Okay.”

  “She called me up from the downtown police station. And she had got arrested for shoplifting. She told me a name to use. She didn’t use her (real) name. I can’t remember her name. Helen, maybe. I can’t remember. And that she was downtown, if I’d go get her out of jail. And I never called back the jail. I never went down there or anything …”

  “But she was under arrest?” Pina wanted to find out if there might be any police paperwork that would help pinpoint the date of the highway call more accurately. He wanted to show that Kenny Ponte could have been with Rochelle after April 27, 1988. If Pina could prove that, he could get around the problem of Dextradeur having last seen Rochelle with Frankie Pina on that inconvenient date. The problem was that Gayle had told the detectives the shoplifting incident had happened after the phone call about Kenny’s supposed attack. That meant Rochelle was still alive afterward—not good for Pina’s theory, at all.

  “Yeah,” said Gayle. “She was in jail downtown.”

  “Okay,” said Pina. “But the call—so—I’m just trying to get my time right. Okay. The call from the highway was before that or after that?”

  “Before I think,” said Gayle. “No. After. After she got arrested.” One has to wonder at this point about Pina’s body language with his witness, along with other questions relating to any possible charges against Gayle’s drug-using husband. There is certainly no legal rule against leading witnesses behind closed doors.

  “After she got arrested, when she called you to help come and get her away from him on the highway?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “So she got arrested first before that?”

  “Yeah. I think so. I don’t know. I can’t really remember times. You know. Dates.”

  Eventually, Gayle agreed that the call from Rochelle might have come around two months after the incident in which Rochelle had tried to use her Sears credit card. If only Pina could find a date for that—then what? It was no real help, not with such elastic time estimates from a woman who thought she’d first met Rochelle Clifford two weeks after she’d already been found dead.

  46

  Return of the Boston Strangler

  The following day Pina took more testimony from Ryley; the Standard-Times’s Boyle calculated that altogether, Ryley spent approximately four hours in front of the jury. None of this new testimony ever
leaked, but it seems unlikely that Ryley ever confirmed Jeanne’s story that he and Ponte were in the snuff-film business together; otherwise, Ryley would have been indicted, or at least immunized.

  And after Ryley’s additional testimony, a man who operated the New Bedford area video production business that was, in Boudreau’s opinion, involved in the manufacture of pornography, likewise appeared. Nothing of this testimony leaked either, but Boudreau himself was under the impression that the owner of the video company told the jurors that he’d never heard of either Ponte or Ryley. The man brought his business records with him.

  Afterward, Pina termed the testimony “very productive,” and told the Globe’s Tom Coakley, “We’re moving along well. It’s exhausting. There is a focus to it. There is a lot of work that has gone into this. At this point we want to see where it leads.”

  One direction the investigation was leading toward in early 1990 was Diane Doherty, although no one realized this at the time.

  By late 1989, Diane and her daughter had moved into an apartment in Lynn, Massachusetts, next door to a private investigator. After a dispute with their landlord, Diane and her daughter were evicted. Diane claimed the landlord was guilty of a long list of building code violations. For about a month, Diane and her daughter stayed with the private eye, who, in turn, happened to be friendly with a retired state trooper who had once assisted in the Boston Strangler murders.

  One thing led to another, and Diane began recounting to the private eye some of the stories she had heard about the Highway Murders while she was at MCI Framingham. Over the spring and summer, Diane had composed notes of her musings about the murders on yellow paper. The private eye showed a great deal of interest in these stories, and wanted to see the notes. Diane refused to give them to him, she said later. Later the notes disappeared from her car, Diane said; she suspected the private eye had somehow gotten them.

  At this point some of the reality of the Highway Murders begins to merge with the history of the Boston Strangler case.