Killing Season

by Carlton Smith

  “If he felt that attention would have been turned to him again in the aftermath of Ponte’s dismissal, that would have upset him greatly, since it was something that he had put behind him once before,” George told The Globe. “It was a tremendous effort for him to try to survive day to day.”

  No matter what Buckley suggested, George continued, there was just no evidence to link Tony to the murders. Even mentioning Tony’s name in the wake of the decision on Ponte was “a cheap political maneuver to attempt an end to the travesty of justice known as the serial killing cases,” George said.

  “Any suggestion or statement by the special prosecutor or any other person who knows anything about the serial killing case which infers that Mr. DeGrazia was involved in these killings is reckless, callous, and disrespectful of DeGrazia’s family, friends, and supporters,” George said.

  And what of the victims’ families? The decision not to prosecute Ponte was a bitter pill. Some thought that Ponte’s background as a lawyer had served him unfairly well.

  Debroh McConnell’s father, for one, believed that somehow Ponte had talked his way out of trouble. “He’s a lawyer,” James McConnell told The Globe. “He knows how to talk his way out of things, he has a lot of friends, and he has money. When money talks, everything walks.”

  McConnell told reporters he thought the investigation should be stopped. “They aren’t going to do anything about it anyway,” he said. “Why don’t they just close the books on it and let those poor girls rest?”

  Some blamed Walsh. Madeline Perry, for one, thought that Walsh wasn’t as interested in solving the case as Pina had been. And she remained convinced that Ponte had something to do with the murders.

  “Mothers have intuition,” she told The Globe. “He knows something. He’s involved in my daughter’s death. I will never give up on that,” Perry said. “It’s scary,” she said. “It’s almost like he smirks, like he knows you are not going to be able to do anything to him. He’s so self-confident. He doesn’t care about us; he doesn’t give a damn about us.”

  But others blamed Pina. “He bungled the investigation at the beginning,” Donald Santos, husband of Mary Rose Santos, told The Globe. “It was just one big media circus.”

  Judy DeSantos had her own perspective. “You put your trust and faith in people,” she said, “and then you’re blown away.”

  In retrospect, it seems clear that neither Ponte nor DeGrazia could have had anything to do with the murders. Most telling, both men eventually provided samples of hair and saliva that were compared with samples found at the nine known skeletal scenes. There were no matches. That alone was probably enough to clear them, at least as far as the authorities were concerned.

  Additionally, the very fact that Ponte had a personal relationship with some of the victims—or at least, knew them—has to count in his favor, even though Pina saw it in the opposite light. As an almost invariable rule, serial murderers don’t know their victims. Indeed, the pathology that drives them to kill very nearly requires that the victim be someone not known to the killer. It is only by being able to see the victim as an object, rather than a person, that virtually all serial killers are able to murder.

  That sort of pathology apparently was present in Tony DeGrazia’s life—if one believes, as the evidence suggests, that he was responsible for the rapes of prostitutes. After all, Tony did not know any of those victims—so much so, that he repeatedly attempted to pick up women he’d already assaulted previously. He simply didn’t recognize them.

  But Tony almost certainly was not capable of committing murder. As he himself had indicated to the police, had he murdered the guilt would have destroyed him. Moreover, most of Tony’s alleged crimes occurred at night, when he was drunk. It’s highly unlikely that Tony would have driven so far out of New Bedford to get rid of his victims; indeed, Tony’s method appeared to include an almost hysterical haste to get away from the victim immediately after his attack. And Freetown Detective Alan Alves, who had known Tony almost all of Tony’s short and tragic life, simply doesn’t believe that Tony would have been clever enough to have committed so many murders without it being obvious to everyone around him.

  So, if Kenny Ponte didn’t kill the New Bedford women, and Tony didn’t kill them, who did?

  That remains the darkest mystery, a mystery that was deepened by the well-meaning struggles among those who tried to resolve it. The unseemly haste of Ron Pina and others to find a viable target for their investigation sidetracked the entire process and prevented the sort of painstaking assembly of information and analysis that is the heart of any complex investigation, particularly one involving serial murder.

  One of the major shortcomings of the investigation was the lack of truly precise information on where and when the victims were last seen. Time and resources, devoted to attempting to make known facts fit suspects, might have been far more productively invested in delving into the lives of the dead. It is only by carefully reassembling the last days and hours of the victims that any serial murder investigation can hope to produce evidence leading to the killer. Indeed, even the limited amount of information known about the 11 New Bedford victims suggests a solid pathway toward the killer’s true identity.

  The pathway begins with the comparison of Tony’s alleged victims with those of the murderer. The most striking result of that comparison is the fact that so few of Tony’s alleged victims knew the Highway Murder victims. It was almost as if there were two different groups, entirely: the Weld Square victims of Tony, and the Highway Murder victims, who were clearly tied together by experiences in New Bedford’s south end.

  Any analysis of the police interviews of Tony’s victims shows that few of those 20-odd women from Weld Square were familiar with the Highway Murder group, and of those who did know them, most knew only one or two. Indeed, most of Tony’s victims did not even know each other.

  The Highway Murder victims, by contrast, were fairly well known to one another. Their boyfriends knew each other; some of them had actually worked together over a period of years; and several had even lived in the same places. That was the singular fact that had so mesmerized Ron Pina.

  But what the Highway Murder victims also had in common was an affinity for New Bedford’s south end—the neighborhood around Whispers Pub. Most of the Highway Murder victims were addicted to cocaine—not heroin, as was often the case of the Weld Square population preyed upon by Tony. The Highway Murder victims frequented the south end of the city to acquire drugs; only a few of them could ever reliably be placed in Weld Square. That probably means the killer was someone who also frequented the drug circles of the city’s south end, and that it was in that area that the killer truly encountered the victims.

  It is unlikely, however, that the killer had personal knowledge of the victims—only that they were familiar objects in his environment. The killer probably knew that the victims were drug users, which further suggests that the killer himself was at least familiar with the drug culture, if not the actual substances. How did the killer make contact with the victims? Most probably by offering the victims drugs, either as part of an inducement to prostitution, or simply as a “generous” offer to get high. So prevalent were drugs within the south end, so common in many personal experiences, that it is almost certain the victims never suspected that the friendly man who shared their drug interest was in fact intent on killing them.

  Who might this person have been? There are several intriguing facts that may or may not have relevance. First, the fact that so many of the victims—all except Rochelle Clifford—were found a short distance from the sides of major highways could be an indication that the killer was someone not entirely familiar with the back roads of Bristol County. The major highways were familiar, however, and thus provided locations where a victim could be disposed of quickly. That in turn suggests that the killer was not a native of New Bedford, and that he was not therefore cognizant of more secluded areas.

  As a major center of fishing
activity, New Bedford has long attracted a seasonal population. The very term of the killing season—from April to September—coincides with the peak of the fishing industry. With these facts in mind, it is not unlikely that the true killer was someone who was familiar with the south end drug culture, a temporary resident of New Bedford, who was in town for the fishing season.

  What about the white pickup truck? Although several witnesses reported seeing a white pickup truck near the locations where skeletons were found, it would be shortsighted to confine all suspicions only to those who drove white pickup trucks. Serial murder cases in other parts of the country suggest that such killers often vary their means of transportation—chiefly by borrowing friends’ and relatives’ vehicles. That could well have happened in New Bedford.

  So, is it too late to solve the crimes? The passage of so many years makes it far more difficult, naturally, because human memories recede. But it is not impossible. The most productive starting point now would be an effort to reassemble the cultural milieu of the 11 victims—developing a coherent picture of who was who in the south end of New Bedford during the summer of 1988. Police records indicating the identities of those arrested for possession or sale of drugs, particularly at Whispers Pub, is an obvious place to begin. The reinterview of those most familiar with the streets near the pub would reconstruct the timing and movements of those most likely to know the truth, whether they know they know it or not.

  With such interviews, an exhaustive process to be sure, eventually the shadow of the true killer will emerge—someone no one really knew, someone quietly ever-present, someone familiar enough to be taken at face value, but who was in fact a secret killer, who destroyed nearly everything he touched.

  EPILOGUE

  “The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck …”

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Outcomes

  Ron Pina is a lawyer in private practice in New Bedford, along with his former chief deputy, Ray Veary. He is still married to the former Sheila Martines. He has considered returning to the political arena.

  Kenny Ponte is also a lawyer in private practice, also in New Bedford. The FBI’s tests of hair, blood, and saliva cleared him of having been the murderer. Recently he agreed to represent Tony DeGrazia’s mother in a wrongful death action against Pina, alleging that Pina’s statements about her son helped drive mm to suicide.

  Paul Boudreau took an early retirement from the New Bedford Police Department and moved to New Port Richey, Florida.

  Louie Pacheco, the Raynham police captain who is a computer buff, continues in police work in Raynham.

  Diane Doherty faded from the public eye, but not until she gave an interview to the Standard-Times’s Maureen Boyle, saying that she first became interested in Kenny Ponte because of a vision she’d had while in MCI Framingham.

  Elsa Johnson was found dead on the streets of New Bedford in August 1991, just two weeks after the death of Tony DeGrazia and the dismissal of the charge against Kenny Ponte. She had been in poor health due to years of alcohol and drug abuse. Police believe she died of a drug overdose.

  Paul Ryley moved back to New Bedford. All charges were dropped against him, and hair, blood, and saliva tests showed that he, too, was not the murderer. In 1993, he was still in litigation over his great aunt’s estate. The theft charge brought against him by Pina in December 1989 was dropped.

  John Ellement and Tom Coakley continue as reporters for The Boston Globe, as does Maureen Boyle for the Standard-Times.

  Bob St. Jean, aka The Saint, returned to his roots in Acushnet, Massachusetts, and started his own contracting business.

  John Torres, the Marion detective, joined the Customs Service, while Alan Alves, the Freetown detective, still works for his city.

  Jose Gonsalves and Mary Ann Dill are still investigators for the Massachusetts State Police. Gonsalves is now a sergeant and Dill is a corporal. Dill was transferred back to the highway.

  The conspiracy-to-possess cocaine charges against Ken Ponte, Jeanne Kaloshis, Adele Leeks, and “Goldie” Goldblatt were dismissed. So were the cocaine charges brought against Donald Santos, the husband of Mary Rose Santos.

  The charge that Ponte had assaulted Roger Swire by threatening him with a gun was also dismissed; the charge that Swire had assaulted his own girlfriend in January 1989 was similarly dismissed.

  Neil Anderson was convicted of one count of sexual assault, and sentenced to serve 3-to-5 years in prison. He was released early in 1993, and is appealing his conviction.

  The Highway Killer remains at large—the one who did survive the wreck.

  Image Gallery

  The victims in the approximate order of disappearance:

  Marilyn Cardozo Roberts

  Robin “Bobbie” Rhodes

  Deborah McConnell

  Debra Ann Medeiros

  Christine Monteiro

  Nancy Paiva

  Deborah Greenlaw Perry DeMello

  Mary Rose Santos

  Sandra Botelho

  Dawn Mendes

  Not pictured: Rochelle Clifford

  About the Author

  Carlton Smith (1947–2011) was a prizewinning crime reporter and the author of dozens of books. Born in Riverside, California, Smith graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, with a degree in history. He began his journalism career at the Los Angeles Times and arrived at the Seattle Times in 1983, where he and Tomas Guillen covered the Green River Killer case for more than a decade. They were named Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative reporting in 1988 and published the New York Times bestseller The Search for the Green River Killer (1991) ten years before investigators arrested Gary Ridgway for the murders. Smith went on to write twenty-five true crime books, including Killing Season (1994), Cold-Blooded (2004), and Dying for Love (2011).

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 1994 by Carlton Smith

  Cover design by Amanda Shaffer

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4761-6

  This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  180 Maiden Lane

  New York, NY 10038

  www.openroadmedia.com

  CARLTON SMITH

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Find a full list of our authors and

  titles at www.openroadmedia.com

  FOLLOW US

  @OpenRoadMedia