When Mr. Snelgrove settled into his seat on the witness stand, the judge excused the jury, saying that the remainder of the day would be taken up by a lengthy discussion regarding the content of the letters Ned had written to his parents.
Then Mr. Snelgrove was asked to step down. And while the lawyers got into the minutia of the letters, Ned kept calling O’Brien back to the table and whispering things in his ear, to the point where Zagaja and Rovella began laughing at him. (“It was funny,” Rovella said later. “He looked like he was directing the entire defense—and I guess he was.”)
At one point, Zagaja explained to the judge why the letters were important, saying, “Your Honor, regarding…relevance. The fact that the defendant contemplated suicide beginning on October 12 and wrote what his thoughts were—that being, shortly thereafter the alleged disappearance of Carmen Rodriguez—is relevant…. Already the court has heard he kept up a somewhat normal routine at the bar, up until the time of the disappearance. These are inconsistencies that should be presented to the jury for consideration. These are the defendant’s words to what state of mind he was at….”
O’Brien, of course, didn’t agree.
As they continued, both parties discussed which parts of the letter would be redacted. The main issue was Ned’s prior acts. Zagaja was working hard to get in as much information as he could about Ned’s prior convictions. “What’s your claim on that?” the judge asked Zagaja, regarding trying to sneak in Ned’s prior bad acts.
“I don’t see—I don’t make that leap. That’s why I left it in. I don’t see it referring to his prior conviction or his prior record.”
The judge agreed, adding, “I don’t think there’s any connection to any prior convictions or record there.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Ned blurted out, “What else could it be?”
Everyone turned. O’Brien tried to downplay Ned’s outburst by interrupting: “Other than making a reference to this incident, what else could it refer to? I mean, I’ve spoken to my client, that’s exactly what the reference is all about, so he, certainly, knows what his own reference is. But to say, ‘They’ll never know who I truly am….’”
“Because he’ll be dead, that’s why!” the judge clarified. “Because he won’t be around for them to get to know him.”
“No,” Ned yelled, “the reason…” O’Brien tried to speak over him, but Ned wouldn’t let him. “Well…,” O’Brien started to say before Ned interrupted.
“I can’t have lifelong friends because I can’t tell them who I am,” he yelled.
The judge said, “Well, that might be—you know, you can say it as loud as you want, it’s not going to make any difference. Whatever he says now is of no significance.”
O’Brien wanted to keep the discussion professional. “No,” he said, “but if you read it in context, ‘I can never have lifelong friends who will know who I really am.’ The court is looking at it that that’s futuristic after he does the deed. But my point is that the reference is that he will not have friends who know who he really is.”
“Yeah,” the judge said, “people don’t know who he really is—”
O’Brien interrupted, “Because of the prior convictions.”
The judge had heard enough. “That’s a leap that is not reasonable,” she said. “It is to you because you know what his past is. But the people who don’t know what his past is, they are not going to assume that. It’s not logical to assume that it means that he has prior convictions…. It’s just [not] reasonable…so the court will allow that.”
II
After an ice storm on January 6, the jury was brought back in on January 7 and the trial resumed. Outside the courtroom, the ice cast a translucent glaze, giving everything a lucid appearance. Salt and sand were tossed all over the sidewalks heading into the Hartford Superior Court, and those entering the building tracked it into the foyer area, making things a bit messy. Inside the courtroom, however, cold feelings and tension—forever building among Ned, O’Brien, Zagaja, and Judge Espinosa—were about to make things even messier. Ned looked rather respectable: blue necktie noosed tight up to his throat and a light-colored shirt. He smiled, if ever so slightly, while studying the jury.
After O’Brien, Zagaja and the judge had a brief argument over the redacted suicide letter. Ned watched closely as his father, clearly tired and physically weak, walked up to the witness stand. For a few moments, the elder Snelgrove talked about his family, Ned and his siblings, where they lived, his army days, and how the kids had split up and gone their own ways as they grew older. In many ways, it was a familiar American story.
White picket fence. Suburbia. Two cars. Dog. Neighbors. Kids in expensive colleges. Empty nest.
But then, Ned started acting bizarrely, Edwin implied. Not like the son who had left home for college after high school.
“OK,” Zagaja asked, “did there come a time when he ended up living at home with you again? [And] could you describe your home?”
“It’s a cape on about a third acre—”
“How many bedrooms?”
“Three.”
A few questions later, “Did he occupy one of the bedrooms?”
“No. He lived in the…he decided he was more comfortable in the—in the recreation room downstairs. He slept on a sofa down there because he had a desk and some other stuff down there.”
And then they discussed Ned’s employment. Indeed, Edwin testified, Ned traveled around the Northeast. Meeting people. Selling frozen foods. Driving through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and, well, Rhode Island.
Zagaja was quite shrewd in his questioning. He was setting up his closing argument. Laying the foundation for one of those character-building sections of the trial. Without even possibly knowing it, Edwin was giving Zagaja exactly what he wanted: the details of a man who liked to be alone, a man who forwent a cozy little room upstairs in the house he had grown up in for an old smelly couch downstairs in the basement. The dungeon. The sexual den, as Zagaja put it later.
III
Edwin talked about Ned taking a bottle of sleeping pills in October 2001, and Edwin calling 911 and Ned ending up in the hospital—which, of course, afforded Zagaja the opportunity to introduce the suicide note.
After even more debate, Zagaja was allowed to read the letter into the record—exactly what he had wanted to do from the start. Near the end of his reading, one of the main points he had wanted to make, by getting the note in, was that Ned was setting up a story, his excuse, his reasoning for being investigated. He was acting strange. Bizarre. Odd.
Guilty.
The end of the note was a warning of sorts by Ned to his parents, letting them know that the cops would be calling on them once again to ask questions about a woman—a missing woman. And here we go again…“‘Last, but not least, there is a missing person’s case in Hartford,’” David Zagaja read aloud. Ned squirmed a bit in his chair hearing his words echo into the record. Zagaja read aloud that Ned told his parents that he was “‘supposedly one of the last people to see Carmen something-or-other…’” Carmen something or other. Ned knew her name. Knew it well, in fact. Zagaja continued, “…This girl, reportedly, has not been seen since…It’s best that I just end it now.”
The cops were badgering him again, Ned implied. Focusing on him solely because of his record. He was never going to be able to escape that person he had been in New Jersey. It was better to just kill himself.
Zagaja later explained his thoughts regarding Ned “supposedly” committing suicide. Here’s a guy who’s going to end it all, yet he is writing details, clear details about where he picked up this woman and where he dropped her off. “He was telling his parents what to say to the police,” Zagaja suggested. “That’s what he was doing.”
Anyone who looked hard enough could have figured out that Zagaja was only interested in dropping the letter into the trial to show how, in addition to all the other evidence he was presenting, Ned was a calcu
lated, well-experienced killer who had gone to great lengths to put every duck in a row. When things didn’t work out for Ned, when the cops moved in and his mistakes surfaced, he tried to cover himself.
An innocent man, in other words, had no reason to kill himself.
90
I
After a short break, Zagaja showed dozens of photographs the CSP had taken of the Snelgrove property—both inside and out—to the jury, asking Edwin Sr. to describe the inside of his house. For about ten minutes, Edwin outlined it all: the garage, bedrooms, dining room, living room, and kitchen. And then the basement, which Zagaja had Edwin focus on for a moment. The fact that it was in such disorder. Stuff everywhere. That Ned’s “office” and “bedroom” were an utter mess. The guy was a slob. Part of that mess, Edwin admitted, was his own fault. He and Norma had owned a sewing shop. Whatever was left over from the shop after they closed it had been put down in the basement for storage. In fact, inside a toy box to the left of the space Ned called his bedroom, Zagaja suggested, were two of Ned’s sexual toys he had manipulated and painted. They were there among games and children’s plastic dolls. Those two Styrofoam mannequin heads, which looked as if they were props in a horror film. One had been made to look pretty, as pretty as white Styrofoam colored with blue and black markers could be; the other more vile, with graphs and pressure points on the temple, forehead, and throat. Zagaja asked Edwin if he recognized the photo of the items inside the toy box.
“Yeah,” Edwin said, “yes.”
“And you’d seen them before?”
“Yes.”
“Did these items look this way in late 2001 when they were in the toy box?”
“Um,” Edwin said, stumbling with his words, “I don’t remember, to tell you the truth. I don’t…I don’t know. I assume they did. I don’t know.”
“OK. But you don’t have any firsthand knowledge that these were in this condition in late 2001?”
“No.”
“You don’t? OK.”
“Well, just…just the one,” Edwin decided to add at the last minute. “My wife…these were mannequins in her shop and she used to put knitted caps and so forth on them. They were on a shelf in her shop. And I know that she drew the eyes and mouth and so forth on this one. This…thing here, you know, looks to me…I think one of my grandchildren did it. It looks like something a kid would do.”
Listening, Rovella couldn’t believe it. He shook his head, thinking, We should have him arrested for perjury.
When you looked at the objects, one thing became too obvious to overlook: Whoever had drawn on one had drawn on the other. They were created by the same hand. (“The thing is,” Zagaja said later, “we weren’t even going to make a big deal out of these heads until Mr. and Mrs. Snelgrove said they were responsible.”)
To pin the artwork on a child was a significant stretch. There are not too many kids who can create such an eerie-looking model. It just didn’t make any sense. Kids didn’t think like that. Neither head would look so literal. And the running joke among many in the courtroom in the days that followed was that if a child had indeed painted those heads—which was, of course, a possibility—it was clear that the child in question was in need of some serious psychological help. Quickly.
“You had seen both of those mannequins in your house, however?” Zagaja asked.
“Yes. Yes.”
“I would offer seven through eighteen and twenty and twenty-one as full exhibits, Your Honor,” Zagaja said, referring to photographs of the heads.
“If I might have a moment, Your Honor?” O’Brien queried.
For the jury to see the heads was enough. The value of their presence alone was that they put a scare—a quick jolt—into whoever viewed them. Nothing more. What could Zagaja actually prove in regard to the heads? He hadn’t sent them for DNA analysis, which was something several people suggested (for semen, blood, hairs, and, Lord knows, whatever else). He hadn’t really decided exactly what Ned had used them for, besides practice pieces. Props. So, in effect, the heads were showpieces: two rather bizarre-looking creatures the jury could look at and be revolted by.
Exactly what Zagaja wanted.
II
There was an arrogance about Ned that seemed to thrive on the celebrity he achieved by being in the spotlight during the days of his trial, even if the proceedings were cast under such an immoral umbrella. Ned lapped it up. He’d never admit it, but he adored every moment of seeing his photograph on the front page of the local newspapers and the lengthy stories about his crimes. This was it—the payoff. Every starstruck killer lived for his moment in the spotlight. Ned believed he had total control. Everyone was there, situated and brought together, by his actions.
Convicted serial killer Michael Ross, who had been begging the state of Connecticut through the court to carry out his death sentence, was on the cover of every newspaper in New England lately demanding the state execute him. The guy wanted to die. Pundits were debating his sentence on national television as Ross granted the first interviews in decades.
But when Ned’s case began, Ned and his crimes usurped even Michael Ross (who was granted his wish, incidentally, on Friday, May 13, 2005, of all days, when he was executed by lethal injection), and Ned, seeing Ross pushed to the second page of the newspapers, was prouder than a new father, sources inside the jail where he was being held said.
III
As Ned’s father continued answering David Zagaja’s questions, a piece of rope became the focal point of the trial. It had been found on the top of a bookcase in Ned’s room. Investigators had their theories later of what Ned had used it for, but could never pin it down. Erotic asphyxiation fit into the type of psychotic profile investigators had put together on Ned.
Once again, however, just like with those mannequin heads, Edwin claimed responsibility, at least partially, for the rope, saying at one point, “It was just a little piece of clothesline and I…um, one day, you know, I guess I didn’t have anything to do and I was fooling around and I—I decided to see if I could remember how to tie the knots that I was supposed to learn how to tie when I was in the navy and I practiced a couple, and when I got through, I put it up there.”
IV
Before letting Edwin go, Zagaja wanted to talk about the mannequin heads again, maybe to see if Edwin wanted to change his mind, or if he was going to answer in the same manner as he had previously. It was an old trial-attorney trick, actually. End on a note of which you feel your witness might be pushing the truth. If he breaks, you can go after him. If he repeats himself, you haven’t really lost much. “And you said, previously,” Zagaja said, “regarding the head depicted on the right, you said you don’t know who drew that, but you think your granddaughter may have?”
“Yeah. I…maybe, yes.”
“Did you make any inquiries to determine who had drawn on that right-hand head?”
“Yeah. We called her the other day and asked. She said she didn’t remember.” Ned dropped his head. O’Brien winced. If a child had constructed something like that, wouldn’t she remember it quite easily?
“Objection, Your Honor,” O’Brien said, standing up.
Edwin said it again. “She didn’t remember doing it.”
Even better, thought Zagaja, smiling as the judge spoke up: “Wait a minute. There’s an objection. Sustained.”
“All you can say, sir,” Zagaja advised, “is whether you called or not.”
“Oh,” Edwin uttered, realizing, perhaps, he shouldn’t have said anything.
“You did call her?”
“Yes.”
“And did you speak with her?”
“Um, my wife spoke to her, I didn’t.”
“OK. And your wife relayed some information to you?”
“Yes.”
V
Public Defender Donald O’Brien didn’t have much for Mr. Snelgrove. All he wanted to do was clear up a few misconceptions he believed the jury might have and get the old man the heck off the stand
. My goodness, he had said enough already.
After he was finished, the judge asked Zagaja if he wanted a shot at redirect.
Zagaja declined. Edwin had done a fine job for the prosecution already.
Next witness.
91
I
Norma Snelgrove was heading into her late eighties—and it showed. Inside a courtroom, sitting in the witness stand, was the last place on earth the old woman wanted to be. This was clear from her demeanor. There was little doubt that Ned was his mother’s son. Most mothers have an inherent need to protect their sons at any cost, no matter what the circumstances (even if it’s for a third time). It is a maternal need, some therapists argue, to shelter.
Zagaja was kind as he walked Norma through the same set of questions he shot at Edwin: Ned’s work, living conditions in the house, college, skills, life. Everyday stuff. But quickly, Zagaja steered Norma into the mannequin heads, asking, “OK, I’m going to now…ask you…do you recognize those?”
Norma didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“How do you recognize those items?”
“They’re Styrofoam heads that I used in my yarn shop to display hats and scarves.”
“You owned a yarn shop?”
“Yes.”
Zagaja established the name and that it was located in Ned’s hometown. “And did that close at some time?”
“Yes,” Norma said.
“When did it close?”
“About ten years ago.”
The markings on the heads, however, didn’t appear to be smudged or worn by time. They seemed fairly fresh. “And did you end up taking items from the yarn shop home?”
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