Fatal Jealousy: The True Story of a Doomed Romance, a Singular Obsession, and a Quadruple Murder

by McEvoy, Colin

  Also among the factors that went into Ballard’s release was the inmate job he had held for two years at a hospice unit for elderly prisoners. Although all inmates were required to have a job within the prison, this particular one was among the toughest and most unpopular. Ballard had nevertheless volunteered for it. Similar to nursing home professions outside of prison, it involved interacting with the elderly and sick inmates, writing requests on their behalf, serving them meals, and cleaning up after them. Ballard received average work reports, demonstrated no problems during his time with the patients, and spoke regularly to counselors throughout his two years on the job.

  In Pennsylvania, the parole process begins eight months prior to the end of the prisoner’s minimum sentence. Staff members from both the parole board and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, as well as counselors and other employees of the prison, prepare a case file about the inmate for the parole board to eventually review. This case file includes information about the inmate’s crime, criminal history, emotional stability, history of family violence, prison misconduct records, and status of institutional program completion. The file also includes testimony notes from the sentencing hearing and any recommendations by the judge, prosecuting attorneys, institutional counselors, and prison warden about the prisoner and his possible parole. That file is then sent for consideration to the parole board, which interviews the inmate four months prior to the end of their minimum sentence.

  Two people who did not share the state’s enthusiasm for Ballard’s chances at rehabilitation were Gloria Sieber and Elaine Keim, the sisters of Donald Richard. After their brother was killed, members of his family swore that they would do everything they could to ensure that Ballard never got out of prison again. When the time came for his parole hearing, Gloria and Elaine wanted to address the board directly, but were denied that opportunity because of the amount of confidential, sensitive information about Ballard that would be discussed at that hearing. Instead, they wrote a letter to the board strongly encouraging them to deny Ballard his freedom.

  One group that did not oppose Ballard’s release, however, was the Lehigh County district attorney’s office. As was common practice, the parole board submitted a letter to the office seeking any opinion about Ballard’s possible parole, and warned that a failure to respond would mean an assumption that there were no objections. The district attorney’s office did not reply.

  “I wish to hell I could say to you I have a letter that says, ‘We strongly object to his being paroled,’” Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin told the Morning Call after they reported the failure to respond. Martin, who was not district attorney at the time of Ballard’s 1991 murder, told the newspaper his office would review every parole case involving a violent crime. But he said he did not know whether he would have objected to Ballard’s parole anyway, given his young age at the time of the murder and lack of other criminal record.

  On November 27, 2006, Ballard was released from the SCI–Laurel Highlands state prison in Somerset County and placed into the custody of the Allentown Community Corrections Center halfway house. He was officially paroled on March 1, 2007, and released from the halfway house, although he was still required to follow an ongoing post-release plan.

  But barely more than a year later, Ballard would be back in prison.

  He was taken back into custody on April 23, 2008—almost a year after he had started dating Denise Merhi—for failing to complete a mandated anger management program under the terms of his post-release plan. This violation of Ballard’s parole made him a “technical violator,” according to the state. Most such violators are sanctioned an average of five times before they are sent back to prison.

  Then came the claims that Ballard sexually assaulted an underage girl during his brief time out of prison. The authorities investigated the claims and determined they did not have enough to file criminal charges against him. Nevertheless, Ballard’s parole was formally revoked on June 2, 2008, due to the technical violation, and he was returned to SCI–Laurel Highlands. There he was ordered to participate in another institutional program and not to receive any reports of misconduct, after which the board would review his case again in another six months.

  This time, after those six months passed, the board opted to deny his parole. During a November 25 notice about its decision, the board indicated that Ballard had failed to demonstrate any motivation for success, continually minimized or denied the seriousness of his crimes, and refused to accept responsibility for his actions. According to the board, Ballard was still in need of continual treatment from the prison’s institutional programs, and was too much of a risk to the community to go free.

  Just over a year later, however, that same board would reach a very different conclusion altogether.

  On December 30, 2009, Ballard was granted parole a second time. The board’s reasons for this decision mirrored those of its first parole decision, such as good institutional behavior and a positive recommendation from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. It now also stated that Ballard showed remorse for his crimes and demonstrated a strong motivation for success, points that were completely opposite of those cited in its 2008 decision to deny parole.

  Ballard was once again released to the Allentown Community Corrections Center on April 19, 2010, a little more than nine weeks before he murdered four people in Northampton borough.

  As is often the case after a paroled criminal commits a violent crime, the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole came under harsh criticism following the quadruple homicide. The local newspapers were flooded with letters and Internet comments condemning the board and questioning how Ballard could possibly have been granted freedom.

  In one such letter that ran in the Express-Times, Bath borough resident Brian Smith wrote, “If Michael Ballard had committed a murder similar to the one he did in 1991 while living in Russia, China or any Arab country, he would have been rightfully executed within two months and given no second chance to murder again.” In another, Barry Willever of Wilson Borough wrote, “The people who let this man out should be charged as accomplices to four murders.”

  The Express-Times’s editorial board was almost equally reproachful. In a June 29 editorial titled “State’s Prison System Failed Us All,” the paper claimed that the system had failed with both of its decisions to grant Ballard parole: “Ballard scammed the system to get out, behaving while he was locked up and convincing prison officials to write recommendations that members of the Probation and Parole Board looked upon favorably. Someone needs to explain how that happened.”

  One of the most vocal critics of the parole board was John Morganelli himself. Long before the four Northampton murders in June 2010, Morganelli had strongly and vocally maintained that parole should be abolished altogether for those convicted of violent crimes like murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping and crimes committed with a gun. While the Express-Times called Ballard’s case an unfortunate failure of the parole system, Morganelli called it an inevitable result of the way that system was designed.

  And the more he reviewed Ballard’s case, the more Morganelli became convinced that his position was correct.

  Although the parole board reviewed Ballard’s behavioral evaluations while considering their parole, and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections issued positive recommendations on his behalf, Morganelli’s review of Ballard’s records revealed that he had committed several infractions throughout his time in prison.

  Ballard’s first reported violation was on November 24, 1993, less than one year into his first prison term. On that day, Ballard refused to cooperate with a corrections officer who had ordered him to return to his cell, shouting, “Don’t touch me.” When the officer ordered Ballard to place his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, Ballard shoved him, and then took a swing at him with a closed fist when they tried to further subdue him.

  Ballard was written up for the assault and refusal to obey orders, the first of s
everal similar violations. He was written up on the latter infraction twice more that year, on December 15 and December 22, for separate unrelated incidents. On August 9, 1995, he was written up again for violating prison rules and illegal possession of a controlled substance.

  Ballard continued to display resistance to authority over his next several years in the prison. On August 31, 1996, he was written up for fighting, refusal to obey orders, and presence in an unauthorized area of the prison. He was issued the last two violations again on separate incidents in 1998. On March 6 of that year, after a corrections officer found him in an unauthorized area, Ballard ignored several calls issued via a PA system to clear out. On September 27, he was written up again when he was found in another unauthorized area, hiding underneath a towel in the corner. He ignored several verbal commands to come to the door.

  On June 24, 1999, Ballard was written up once again for possession of a controlled substance. On December 11 of the next year, he received another infraction for violation of rules, this time after giving a corrections officer trouble as he tried to inspect his cell. Ballard became furious with the guard, who repeatedly tried to calm him down. When he asked Ballard to remove the tape that was holding pictures against the cell wall, Ballard ripped the pictures down altogether and became aggressive with the guard, forcing him to exit the cell and lock the door before the situation escalated any further.

  Ballard’s violations became less frequent as time passed, but they did not end altogether during his final prison years. He was written up for another violation on May 26, 2005, barely a year before his first parole, this time for failure to cooperate with prison staff as they were attempting to do an inmate count and make sure all the prisoners were accounted for.

  The Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, no stranger to public criticism after a paroled inmate commits another high-profile crime, defended itself when reports of Ballard’s parole history began to emerge. When questioned by the Express-Times, a parole board spokesman pointed to the positive recommendations Ballard received as part of his case file when questioned by the board.

  They also noted the board considered a total of 1,713 parole decisions the month Ballard’s parole was considered. If you factored in other matters before the board such as recommitments, references to prior actions, and court assignments, they considered a total of 3,595 decisions that month alone, according to the board.

  Although the extent of Ballard’s misconduct violations had not yet been made public, Morganelli, in the course of his pre-trial preparation, eventually spoke to one of Ballard’s former correctional counselors from SCI–Laurel Highlands. Penny Lynn Sines, who now worked as a social worker at the women’s state correctional institution at Muncy, had been one of several people who interviewed Ballard and made a recommendation for his 2006 parole as part of his pre-release case file.

  Sines explained that many of Ballard’s misconducts were informal resolutions, meaning they were referred to the prison’s unit manager for disciplinary sanctions rather than going through the more formal process before a hearing examiner. In an eleven-year period prior to his parole, all but one of his violations were informal resolutions, according to court records. While he had some official misconducts on record from his time at other prisons early in his term, he had none during his time at SCI–Laurel Highlands at the end of his term.

  During his time at that prison, Ballard was found to have a health stability rating of B, which indicates that he had a mental health history but did not require any mental health services in the prison. His psychiatric history was reviewed before he started working in the hospice unit, and he showed no signs of problems during his sessions with counselors during that time, Sines told Morganelli. As his case file was prepared, Ballard was deemed a low risk to reoffend.

  A parole board spokesman told the Express-Times that a review of the process that led to Ballard’s parole would be conducted, and any deficiencies identified would be reported and addressed. However, the spokesman said this report would be made available only to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole and its staff, and would not be publicly released or discussed.

  Report or no report, family members of the four murder victims and many others were infuriated to learn that Ballard had been released despite a history of past infractions.

  “He wasn’t a good person in jail, and he got out anyway,” Jaime Zernhelt later said. “He should have still been in jail, and none of this would have happened. If he’d still been in jail from the first time, our lives wouldn’t have been ripped apart.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The week preceding Denise’s death was an emotional one for her and Ballard, judging by the text messages they exchanged with each other.

  As part of their investigation, the state police had checked Denise’s text messages in the month leading up to her death. Between May 20 and June 26, Denise had exchanged 561 text messages, 86 of which were with Ballard. All those messages were exchanged in the five days immediately before her death.

  As a halfway house resident, Ballard was not allowed a cell phone, so he would often call Denise on the house’s pay phone immediately after getting back from work at Monarch Precast. If he was even just a few minutes late, he would often be greeted by a message next to the phone reading: “Mikey, your wife called. Call her.” Without a cell phone, Ballard had no ability to call Denise during the day, but a co-worker at Monarch regularly allowed him to use his phone during work hours to send text messages.

  Ballard’s text to Denise at 12:15 p.m. June 21 was about a pressing matter. He had just spoken to his parole supervisor, who had warned him that he might be sent back to jail because of outstanding issues with Forensic Treatment Services, the counseling group he had been required to attend as a parolee. He had hired a lawyer to help with his case, but it would cost $750 for her to file a petition on his behalf. He asked Denise if she could contribute $250 toward the fee.

  “I dont want 2 go back baby … If i do, i want u 2 know i will always love you denise!!” he wrote. “I am scared. And i am having a hard time with this … My fucking heart is breaking.”

  Denise tried to call him, but they couldn’t connect, so she texted him back at 1:31 p.m., writing: “Baby I would give u the money if I had it. I’ve been crying since this text came to me. I’m soooo soooo very sorry baby.”

  At 1:33 p.m. she texted him again: “I want u to know I took the mirena out a month ago.” Mirena is a birth control device.

  Ballard was overjoyed to hear Denise speaking once again about having a baby with him. His return text came about an hour later.

  “I Love you … For all the right reasons,” he wrote. “And I’m glad 2 know u feel the true love u have 4 me again … Thank u!! You make me feel like i really am superman!!”

  The texts began again the next morning, when Denise and Ballard continued their conversations about one day having a baby together.

  “I can’t wait to feel this baby grwoin inside me. Havin a part of u!!!!! God I so love u michael,” Denise wrote at 11:37 a.m.

  Ballard appeared equally excited.

  “We’re really gonna have a baby,” he wrote at 11:50 a.m. “i mean try 2 anyway. I’m so nervous, overjoyed, but still nervous! Thank u!! Thank u!! Thank u!! God be with us through this i pray!!”

  But their happy plans were not without some anxiety. Just three minutes later, Denise texted that she feared what others would think if she and Ballard had a baby.

  “I’m so fuckin stoked!!!!!!!” she wrote at 11:53 a.m. “But scared as hell. What the hell do I tell people. I mean seriously.”

  “Wow!” Ballard replied at 12:05 p.m. “Um, well lets just become pregnant first, ok? Then we’ll look at the ppl who we can be honest w/ and make decisions then. Ok?”

  But Denise was not so easily calmed.

  “Well I cannot tell my mom or kids or even my dad,” she wrote at 12:15 p.m. “I’m gonna look like a fuckin whore.”

  Ballard’s mes
sage at 12:25 p.m. was the last in the conversation.

  “No u wont look like a whore!” he wrote. When some small portions of the text messages were later read in court, this particular line struck a chord with many newspaper readers. They were reminded of the message written in blood on Denise’s wall: DENISE IS A WHORE.

  Ballard’s text message continued: “And u know u can tell ur dad and as far as the kids are concerned the talk we were having last night needs 2 take place between u and her trystan u can tell and slow ur mind down thats whats making ur head hurt!”

  Ballard’s shift at Monarch ran from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but in his exhilaration over the idea of having a baby with Denise, he must have arrived early specifically to contact her, as his next text message to her arrived at 6:37 a.m. And while he expressed love for her and excitement over the baby, he also indicated a concern that Denise might turn her back on him.

  “Get up and get the day going!! I love u denise!!” he wrote. “Plz dont ever again think of wanting 2 put someone in my place … U know the love u have 4 me well my love 4 us is 1,000,000 times stronger and the idea of u wanting a man buddy fuckin sux and makes my heart hurt plz just always keep in mind ur my wife and soulmate even when we r apart:) love u!!!”

  Denise wrote back right away to reassure Ballard of her affection for him.

  “Micael. I don’t want sex with anyone but u baby,” she wrote at 6:41 a.m. “Remember how I talked about dealin with fts and I made u cry. Baby remember this stuff when u get fucked up. I am ur wife. I want no one else.”