I'll Be Watching You

by M. William Phelps

  What did it matter? The family hadn’t been proud of him, he felt, since his Rutgers years. And that bothers me. He hated dragging his family through his troubles. They were his problems, he insisted. It’s best if I go away…, he wrote. He couldn’t bear the thought, he explained, of being in the house if one of them had died before him. The pain would be too much. If only he could “go” before them.

  End it now.

  Take the coward’s way out.

  As far as going through with it, Ned wrote he wasn’t afraid to die. Eventually it would happen to everybody. On top of that, he wrote, he didn’t believe in hell, just sleep. Anyway, he knew God would forgive even me for the life he had lived and the pain he had caused so many. He apologized to his mother first for not playing the piano for her since returning home from prison. She used to like that: Ned sitting at the piano, corduroy jacket, polyester bell-bottom slacks, belting out tunes into the late hours of the night, while she sat nearby drinking tea, tapping her foot, mouthing the words.

  For Dad, Ned said he was sorry for playing only one game of golf with him since returning. He knew this disappointed his father.

  If it was a suicide note—which it surely seemed to be—Ned didn’t have the guts to go through with it on this night. Because instead of putting the barrel of a .45 in his mouth, or slitting his own throat, he went to bed. What seemed odd later was that not once did Ned claim to be innocent of the latest accusations made against him. Quite to the contrary, he seemed to be depressed that he had done it again.

  II

  Ned’s parents went to Applebee’s on October 13, 2001, the following night, while he stayed home, stewing, contemplating once again the idea of taking his life. It was a Saturday night. Ned had no date. Never did. Here he was again at home, while his peers and friends were out and about going through their lives with wives and kids. But not Ned. When he wanted companionship, he paid for it. He was a john. A frequent one at that. He struggled with the emotions that came with purchasing prostitutes. For him, it wasn’t about the sex or even power; it was more about talking to someone, having a woman there to listen.

  Again feeling as if suicide was the answer, Ned paced in his room. He had heard his parents leave the house. He had said good-bye, too. Urged them to enjoy their dinner.

  The real reason, he wrote, that he could never go out to eat in public with anyone ever again, let alone Mom and Dad, was because he knew he could never hold it together long enough to get through the night. He’d fall apart.

  He said it was not feeling comfortable enough to open up to his parents—especially his dad. There were times, Ned explained, when he’d sit in the kitchen across from his father at breakfast or dinner, and the two of them would be at the table with nothing but silence between them. Eating wasn’t a social event; it was a chore. Something Ned and his dad had to do.

  Sit. Eat. Be quiet.

  The not-to-be-discussed elephant wasn’t in the Snelgrove living room—it was in every part of the house, wherever Ned and his parents were.

  Before bed that night, Ned sat down again and wrote to his mom and dad. A short suicide note was turning into a series of journallike entries, each dated and timed. Ned asked his father if he ever noticed how Ned could never look him in the eyes when they were together. He wondered if his dad had ever really contemplated the reason why. Part of it, Ned explained, was that he felt like a disappointment to them. But it also had to do with guilt and disassociation: Ned felt he had never been able to “tell” his dad “what” he was thinking, or how he felt, because he knew his dad would never understand.

  But again, as the night wore on, Ned fell asleep instead of completing a job, one could say, he had started nearly two decades ago when he tried to kill himself after murdering Karen Osmun.

  III

  Ned woke up late on October 15. He sat in bed for a while, thinking.

  Today is the day.

  His parents were upstairs, either sitting at the kitchen table reading the morning paper, or lounging around in the living room doing crossword puzzles, watching television. They loved to bury their minds deep into the world of questions and letters. Perhaps it made everything else go away.

  It had been a week since Ned had made the decision to kill himself. At 11:00 A.M., he got out of bed and sat down at his desk. By 11:20, he was writing.

  He explained that he had “kept calm” because he had made the decision to go through with it. Doing it had given him back a sense of control over his life. He had spent the past several days in bed, covers over his face, curtains on the little box basement windows drawn so what little sun that managed to sneak into the basement was shaded. He liked it that way: dark. He felt he was ready to “go” now. Eternal sleep sounded like a “good idea” to him.

  Ned told his parents that if they were to sit down and talk about it as a whole, his legacy could be boiled down to a series of what-ifs and could have beens. And next, for the first time in what had turned into a three-day suicide manifesto, Ned wrote there was a missing persons case in Hartford that would be causing him more problems in the coming months and years. He warned his parents that the Hartford PD would be in touch sooner or later. He was supposedly—a fact that had been indisputably proven by the time he wrote the note—one of the last people to have seen Carmen something-or-other—he knew darn well what her last name was—on the night she disappeared. He then launched into details that could arguably be viewed as some sort of alibi he was trying to set in place for himself, making his parents aware of those “facts” he wanted them to know. I gave her a ride from Kenney’s…to the Shell Station two blocks from Capitol Avenue, he mentioned. Carmen, Ned further explained, referring to her as this girl, had reportedly…not been seen since.

  He didn’t want to go through this again, he wrote, no doubt referring to what had happened in New Jersey. Even worse, he didn’t want to have to see his parents go through it all again. It’s best, he wrote, that I just end it now. He was sorry for leaving the family holding the bag…. I have no answers for the police.

  Ending the letter, he said he appreciated all the help his parents had given him since his release from prison. I do love you both…. And then he took a handful of pills and, comfortably numb, lay down and went to sleep.

  62

  I

  Ed Bouchard had worked for American Frozen Foods for the past six years. He was the regional sales director, working out of an office in Danbury, Connecticut. Besides its main corporate office in Stratford, American had satellite offices in Danbury, Connecticut; Orlando, Florida; Central New Jersey, and Wethersfield, Connecticut, where Ned worked. The Wethersfield office had fallen on hard times and was on the verge of being closed. Because American had leased the building for the year, Bouchard allowed Ned to use the office, giving him a key and total access. “He was one of the better reps,” Bouchard said later. “He was willing to travel farther than most reps. And his schedule was a lot more flexible than most reps. So he got more than his share of appointments for those attributes.”

  All of American’s sales reps submitted their billing on a regular basis. They’d put a package together weekly and either mail it into the main office in Stratford, where Bouchard would pick it up, or drop it off at Bouchard’s office in Danbury. During the third week of October, Ned had called in sick several days in a row. This was out of the norm for Ned. He was a loyal employee who took very little time off. Near the end of the week, on or about October 15, Bouchard received Ned’s sales report, as he normally did, but something was different about the package. Ned had included what Bouchard interpreted, he later said, as a suicide note. Ned asked him to “make sure all” of his “future” payments for sales got sent to his father. Please try, he begged Bouchard, my parents could use the money.

  The letter shocked Bouchard. It seemed desperate and needy. He called Ned’s house to see what was going on.

  “Is Ned home?” Bouchard asked Mr. Snelgrove.

  “Yeah, he’s sleeping.” It
was almost noon.

  “Sleeping?” Bouchard sounded stunned and explained the letter. “You better go check on him.”

  Mr. Snelgrove went downstairs and returned a few moments later, saying, “I couldn’t wake him.”

  “Get him up…. It’s important that you wake him up. I’ll call you back.”

  Bouchard waited.

  Then called back.

  No answer.

  He tried again over the next few hours and still couldn’t get hold of anyone.

  II

  The day Ned was supposed to meet Detective Harry Garcia at the Hartford PD came and went. Garcia waited, but Ned failed to show up or call. St. Pierre and Garcia decided it was time to visit American Frozen Foods and begin looking into Ned’s professional background to see what they could learn about his movements during the past few months. Maybe get a bead on what he had done in the weeks before and after Carmen went missing. Ned himself seemed to be extremely interested in the investigation—suffice it to say he had called the HPD and told Garcia he would be in to answer some questions. Kenney’s patrons were reporting Ned had asked a lot of strange questions after cops started poking around the bar. From experience, curiosity like that told St. Pierre and Garcia that Ned knew something, was maybe hiding something, and wanted to know if the cops had anything on him. Otherwise, why would he even care?

  Garcia and St. Pierre took the long drive down to American Frozen Foods in Danbury and hooked up with Bouchard, who explained that Ned was a good employee, who lived in Berlin, about twenty minutes outside Hartford. He’d been working for American for two years. “Hard worker,” Bouchard added. “He keeps very detailed appointment books.”

  “What about his past?”

  “The owner,” Bouchard explained, “wanted to give Ned a chance after he got out of prison. Ned was a model employee. He had no friends, though, like he was a loner. He complained all the time about not having a girlfriend. He would often speak of ‘getting laid.’ But he had no sex life. Everyone knew it. But he was obsessed with sex.”

  Garcia asked if the company knew about Ned’s background in New Jersey.

  “Yes, we do,” he said, explaining what had happened with Ned over the past few days. “Ned called and said he’d send any orders he had taken to the main office. He told me not to call him back until later the next day because he’d had a late night at the casino [in Ledyard, Connecticut, near the Rhode Island border].” But when Bouchard got that package in the mail with the alleged suicide note, he said he called.

  St. Pierre was curious. “What happened?”

  “His father couldn’t wake him up,” Bouchard said.

  “Did you ever talk to them?” St. Pierre asked.

  Bouchard said he finally got through later that night. He said Ned’s mother told him what happened: “Ned took an overdose of pills.”

  But he lived. He was in the hospital.

  Garcia and St. Pierre knew from reading Ned’s prior record in New Jersey that when he had been accused of killing Karen Osmun in 1983 (before he admitted to it four years later), he had swallowed a bottle of pills and downed a bottle of iodine when cops started asking questions. It seemed whenever Ned Snelgrove got himself into a jam and police put a bit of pressure on him, he curled up into a ball and tried taking a final exit, and yet he couldn’t seem to complete the job. Odd that a man who could kill a woman with a knife and attack another—nearly killing her, too—couldn’t take his own life.

  Bouchard offered to call Ned’s mother. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Sure,” Garcia said.

  Bouchard got Mrs. Snelgrove on the phone. Norma said the hospital was moving Ned to the psychiatric ward any day. Beyond that, she didn’t know much else.

  St. Pierre and Garcia knew once Ned was moved into the psych ward, he’d be off-limits. They had to get over there immediately.

  “What did Ned have for appointments on September twenty-second?” Garcia asked.

  “Let me see,” Bouchard said, taking out Ned’s book. “He had only one appointment that day. Cromwell. One o’clock.”

  Leaving American Frozen Foods, Garcia and St. Pierre headed to New Britain General Hospital.

  III

  Ned looked fine, lying in bed, machines buzzing and beeping around him. The pills he had swallowed hadn’t done much. St. Pierre noticed the tremendous growth on the side of his neck she had heard so much about over the course of talking to patrons at Kenney’s. It was unmistakable; it was like he had swallowed a cantaloupe and had gotten it lodged on the side of his neck.

  “I’m getting it removed while I’m here,” Ned said of the growth.

  St. Pierre explained why she and Garcia were there. Did Ned know Carmen Rodriguez? Had he seen her since she was reported missing? Why had he called the Hartford PD the other day and made an appointment, only to break it? Why had he tried to commit suicide again after the police put a bit of pressure on him?

  Ned answered no to all of St. Pierre’s initial questions, adding that he had a tendency for depression, was prone to it, and when he felt strained, he considered death to be his only option to take away the pain of being accused of something he didn’t do.

  Right, St. Pierre thought, asking, “You saw Carmen in the bar that night?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I saw her. I played a great deal of pool that night. I danced with her a few times.”

  “You left together?”

  “Well, yes. When I explained that I was leaving, she asked me for a ride home.”

  “Where’d you take her?”

  “When we got into the car, she asked me for money…. She told me about her new boyfriend.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I was upset that she had asked me for money. I kicked her out of my car on the corner of Capitol Avenue and Broad Street at the Shell station.”

  St. Pierre could sense something odd about Ned. “As smart as he claimed to be, he was fairly stupid,” she said later. “He had set up a pattern of behavior with these suicides, which made us that much more suspicious.” It was the same scenario—just nearly twenty years later.

  “What else can you tell us about that night?”

  “Well,” Ned said, “I drove her to that gas station and dropped her off.”

  Which was it? thought St. Pierre. Did you drop her off at home or the gas station? Ned had said she asked him for a ride home.

  “They are talking about putting me in the psychiatric ward here,” Ned said.

  After Ned refused to say anything more about that night, St. Pierre and Garcia left, with a promise to return.

  63

  I

  A few days after that first interview with Ned in the hospital, St. Pierre went back with another colleague, Detective Jerry Bilbo. They wanted to find out if Ned had been moved to the psych ward.

  The security guard looked it up and said, “No, in fact, he’s in the same room.”

  “Will you speak to us?” St. Pierre asked after entering Ned’s room moments later.

  “Sure,” he said. “Come in.”

  Ned was eating lunch. He seemed a bit more relaxed. St. Pierre wanted to focus on the “route” Ned had taken when he left Kenney’s.

  “South on Lawrence Street,” Ned said, wiping his mouth with a napkin, “then left (east) on Russ, left (north) again on Broad, where I pushed her out of the car at the corner of Capitol and Broad Streets.”

  Ned’s history came up. “Tell me about your girlfriend in New Jersey?” St. Pierre asked. “What’s her name?”

  Ned answered immediately, St. Pierre recorded in her report of the conversation. “Karen Osmun. She was killed in New Brunswick…. I served time in jail for Karen’s homicide and the rape and assault of another girl.” (“His demeanor was very calm,” St. Pierre remembered.) It was odd he never said, “I killed her.” But instead said, “She was killed.”

  “Will you sign a consent form allowing us to search your car?”

  “Sure,” Ned volunteere
d. (He appeared very matter-of-fact about the killing, St. Pierre wrote in her report. That seemed strange to her. She felt the fact that Ned claimed Carmen had asked for a ride home was suspect in and of itself, telling me, “If you’re familiar with that area, who in the hell would want a ride for a half a block? It just didn’t make any sense to us. On top of that, where Ned said he dropped her off was in the opposite direction of her apartment.”)

  St. Pierre knew Ned was lying. He was cocky, willing to dish out these stories of that night and allow them to search his car without batting an eye. (“I kept telling myself as he spoke to us,” St. Pierre told me, “go ahead, keep on talking, keep on lying. You see, lies are just as good as the truth when you’re investigating someone.”)

  As St. Pierre and Garcia were walking out of Ned’s room with a signed consent form to search his car, Ned stopped St. Pierre, saying, “Hey.”

  “Yeah?” She turned.

  “I didn’t kill Carmen Rodriguez. I can prove where I was that night.”

  “Oh, you can,” she said, walking back toward him. “How is that?”

  “I have all of my mileage receipts from my job. My gas receipts.”

  If there was one thing about Ned Snelgrove, when it came to keeping mileage records and gas receipts for his job as a traveling salesman, he took on the task as if his life depended on it. He was methodical about keeping records. He had stacks of notebooks at home with all of his mileage written out in chronological order.

  “Where are they?” St. Pierre asked.

  “I can give it to you,” Ned said. He was smiling. It was as if he had pulled one over on everyone. (He was almost gloating, St. Pierre later added.)

  “Where can I get it?”

  “My dad will give it to you—he made copies. I’ve already called him.”