Talking with Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  The student body of Cornell was three times larger than the entire population of his hometown of Brooklyn, and the campus became a large playground for Michael Ross. Now free from his mother’s unpredictable influence, he could do whatever he wanted, without fear of reprisal. He literally went crazy with all the fun he was having, plunging headlong into the party life to the extent that he started taking Ritalin three times a day to control his hyperactivity. He would continue to use this drug for a further six years. He drank heavily and he started to experiment with sex, often sleeping with different girls four nights a week.

  During his first junior year at Cornell, Michael met his first true love, a pretty girl called Connie Young. They met at a party, and he walked her home through the moonlight, and they kissed as they watched a team of divers swimming in the shimmering silver water of Beebe Lake. They strolled to the statues of the college’s founding fathers, and he explained how they were supposed to move together and shake hands when a virgin passed between them. On this occasion, the statues apparently did not move, for ‘Connie was hotter than a kitchen stove’, Michael recalled.

  Connie remembers Michael as a ‘go-getter’, and a guy who always liked to be ‘the centre of attention’. At first she accommodated this behaviour because he seemed a worthwhile prospect. She certainly overlooked his arrogance and constant boasting about his father’s egg farm. In Connie’s eyes, he was handsome, if just a little nerdy. He was articulate, took her dancing and dined her out. She remembers that he always had money when he needed it and, for his part, he enjoyed taking her to places to show her off. To everyone who knew them, they seemed the perfect couple, and most were thrilled when they became engaged to be married.

  For a short period, Connie shared his bed, and then the arguments started. Michael’s fraternity brothers threw him out of the house because he was breaking the rules by sharing his room with a female. As a result of this, the couple rented a small apartment where Michael withdrew into himself. The schooling pressure and the demands made by the close relationship with Connie had started to take their effect. Added to this were his parents’ escalating marital problems, and these were clouding his judgement over the future, as home issues were never far from his mind.

  Connie’s distress over her lover’s change of attitude came to a head when he started to miss classes. She was a dedicated student, trying to cram four years of education into three, but Michael Ross seemed to have lost interest, and he started to hang around their apartment all day, watching television and reading pornographic magazines. He changed his major, to Agricultural Economics, and his grades plummeted. He became bone idle, expecting Connie to do all the housework and cooking and, despite the fact that she was exhausted after studying, he demanded sex with her at least four times a day.

  Initially, Connie complied with Michael’s demands, for fear of rejection. She loved him deeply, and even allowed him to have rough sex with her, although it hurt her badly. Then, as the day-to-day events became even more unpleasant, she now started to wonder if marrying Michael was such a good idea at all. He was, she now believed, sex mad, and getting worse. With his graduation approaching in the spring of 1981, Michael could not face the prospect of leaving Connie behind at Cornell, and he became even more restless and agitated, withdrawing for much longer periods into a fantasy dream world of his own.

  Even as a pre-teen, he had experienced constant fantasies about women when he would take them to what he called ‘a special, underground place’, where he hid them, and kept them so that they could fall in love with him. From juvenile criminal records, it is known that, at the age of 15, he molested several neighbourhood girls. Now an adult, Michael’s fantasies grew more sexually extreme and progressively more violent. During these fantasies, he says that he was always the assailant and, by the time of his graduation, Connie had joined his faceless dream victims. He terrorised his fantasy girls and humiliated them by forcing them to undress and drop to their knees in front of him. Michael gained enormous sexual pleasure and relief from raping his fantasy victims. He savoured the sense of domination that accompanied their fear, and he reasoned that he had control over real women, too, even though these bizarre thoughts were still locked away inside his mind.

  Whatever dreadful thought patterns were developing inside Michael’s head during that period in his life, it seemed that there was a meeting between his distorted subconscious thinking and the bland reality of everyday life. This is where the two roads met, for not only did Ross overlay the beautiful face of Connie on to his fantasy victims, his demands for kinkier sex from her began to spiral out of all control. Added to this, he masturbated himself raw. Although he did not know it, he was suffering from ‘satyriasis’, an abnormally intense and persistent desire in a man for sexual intercourse. In women, the compulsion is called ‘nymphomania’.

  More and more, Michael found himself wandering aimlessly around the campus. He became titillated by stalking female co-eds, staying just far enough behind them to remain undetected. He explained, ‘This turned me on so much I always had a hard on.’ To release this almost uncontrollable compulsion, he had to masturbate ever more frequently, or else tip right over the edge, and act out his fantasies in reality.

  Michael Ross crossed that threshold in April 1981, when he found himself running up behind a co-ed, grabbing her and dragging her into a small copse where he forced her to act out his fantasy of stripping naked before him and giving him oral sex. After he ejaculated, he ran off into the night, swearing to himself that he would never do such a terrible thing again.

  Just three nights later, he was revisited by the same uncontrollable demons and, overcome with sexual compulsion, he attacked a second girl. During this assault, he slipped a rope around the student’s neck, enjoying the heightened power this form of restraint bestowed on him. The terrified co-ed was like an animal he could control with a quick tug of his hand. Fortunately, someone approached the scene before he raped her and he fled into the shadows, his sexual frustrations still boiling inside him.

  Michael has said that he firmly believed that these outrageous acts would cease after he left Cornell, and that he prayed that he could last out the final month without attacking anyone else. At the same time, he says he also felt cheated of the ultimate sexual satisfaction, which had been denied him during the previous attacks. Weighing up the pros and cons on his mental balance sheet, he said he was compelled to satisfy himself fully, at least once before he graduated, but he promised himself that this would have to be the final attack, after which he would never hurt a woman again.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, 12 May 1981, Ross stalked a pretty 25-year-old student called Dzung Ngoc Tu. He followed the delicate young woman from her class, and raped her in a secluded area of the campus. During the attack, she recognised her assailant and, when she told him this, she effectively signed her death warrant. To avoid arrest, Michael now had no option other than to kill her, so he strangled her before throwing the body over a bridge and into Beebe Lake.

  A chilling fact of this murder was that, during the autopsy, the medical examiner determined that the cause of death was by drowning, indicating that Dzung had been alive when she plunged into the icy water. Although Ross has always been suspected of committing this murder, he has never allowed himself to be interviewed by the police. The case was finally cleared up when he admitted to the murder, during one of the interviews which form the basis of this chapter.

  * * *

  Michael believed that his parents attended his graduation ceremony only for appearance’s sake and he decided, from that moment, not to return to the family farm. By a stroke of good fortune, despite his poor grades, he managed to land an enviable job in June 1981 with Cargill Inc, of Minnetonka, on the outskirts of Minneapolis.

  Cargill is an international agricultural business best known for grain sales, and Ross was employed at one of the company’s more modest operations, in Louisburg, a country town about 30 miles north-east of Rale
igh, North Carolina. As a production-management trainee in the poultry products division, Michael was taught how to supervise the care and management of a quarter of a million laying hens. It was a job well suited to him and, by all accounts, his career prospects with Cargill were excellent.

  During the transitional period between graduation and full-time employment, Michael tried to convince Connie to transfer to the North Carolina University, where, he suggested, she could complete her studies. Over the preceding months, their relationship had so deteriorated that he was now paranoid about the separation and feared that she would soon be gone for good. Nevertheless, he was secretly hopeful they would marry one day. Connie had ideas of her own, and marriage was no longer one of them; besides, she was now dating someone else.

  Then a bomb dropped on Michael’s world when he learned over the phone that his mother and father had separated for the third time, with Mr Ross leaving the family home and business to its own devices. Patricia flew to Louisburg, and Michael was pleased, if not surprised, to see his mother so quickly after learning the bad news. Mistakenly, Michael thought this visit was a sign that his relationship with his parents might improve. At the very least, he wanted to believe that his mother could keep the egg farm going until he returned home to take charge, if only for his father’s sake. This thought was the furthest thing from Mrs Ross’s devious mind, for she had, in fact, come to visit her son for one reason only. She needed Michael to sign over his shares in Eggs Inc so that she could dispose of the company, while becoming rich into the bargain.

  Having been duped into signing the share transfer, and soon after learning of the true reason behind his mother’s impromptu visit, Michael felt that he had betrayed not only his father but himself.

  Then life was made even worse when Connie flew to North Carolina with more bad news. For her, the trip was a short one. She explained that she didn’t like Michael’s parents, and even if he did end up running the egg business, this wasn’t exactly her idea of a future. The finality of the relationship hit home on Tuesday, 25 August 1981 when, at Raleigh Durham airport, the couple fell into each other’s arms, sobbing their farewells. Michael could not bring himself to believe that his relationship with Connie was finished, so he was understandably distraught as he drove back down Highway 401 to Louisburg.

  At around 6.30pm, he passed through the small town of Rolesville where he spotted a young woman pushing her seven-month-old child, in a buggy, along Main Street. Within milliseconds, his uncontrollable sexual urges surfaced again and, after parking his car, Ross ran up to the woman and offered to carry her groceries.

  Rolesville was a friendly place, with just 353 residents, and violent crime was virtually unknown, until Ross drove down Main Street. The young mother, used to such a secure environment, did not hesitate when this helpful and decent young man approached her. She thanked Ross for his offer and passed over the heavy bags. They walked to her home several blocks away and, as they entered the backyard, Ross suddenly dropped the bags, whipped off his leather belt, and threw it over the woman’s head. He dragged her into a nearby soya bean field, while threatening to smash the baby’s head against a tree if it didn’t stop crying.

  This innocent woman now became a repository for the months of Ross’s pent-up anger and sexual frustrations. He smashed his fists into her face, and he choked her with the belt, forcing her to her knees to beg for mercy. Then, with his hands tightly clasped around her neck, he ejaculated.

  After regaining his breath, Ross sat back on the ground with his victim squirming around in front of him. Somehow he felt cheated, for he had wanted to satisfy his perversions by ejaculating as she died, not beforehand. Enraged, acting like a wild animal, he ripped off the woman’s clothes, beating her again and again before strangling her with his bare hands while the baby screamed close by. And, as suddenly as he had appeared, Michael Ross vanished. It was over an hour before the woman regained consciousness. Painfully, she crawled across the street to a neighbour who summoned the local police chief, Nelson S Ross. Officers arrived almost immediately and roadblocks were set up to the county line, but Michael was long gone. He was not charged with this offence until he was arrested in Connecticut, three years later.

  When asked if he recalled the Rolesville attack, Michael said, ‘I don’t really remember her, or any of my victims for that matter. It’s like an old, black and white movie; a collage of strange faces, that’s all. Nope, I couldn’t remember this woman if you had showed me her photograph the next day. There was nothing she, or any of them, could have done when I zeroed in on them. They were dead. All over. That this one lived ain’t got nothing to do with me. That she lived? Well, that was purely an act of God.’

  When I asked him if the Rolesville victim fought back, and tried to escape, Ross said, ‘Nothing. She could have got away or something, but it never happened. I can’t remember. I can’t remember any kind of struggling with her or anything like that. I can’t remember, uh, any kind of fighting at all. I do recall, with the Rolesville victim, saying that I would smash the baby’s head into a tree or a wall. So, I would imagine I probably said things equally horrible to, uh, the other ones that would make them stop and think not to do anything.’

  Ross simply carried on his daily existence as if nothing untoward had happened at Rolesville. Then, on Tuesday, 17 September 1981, his parents filed divorce papers at the Windham County Superior Court. A week later, Michael’s employer, Cargill, sent him on a field trip to Illinois, where he would visit the Chicago Commodities Exchange. Before this trip was over, Ross would be arrested for the first time.

  He decided on Monday, 28 September, to look over the Cargill operation in La Salle, which is about 11 miles south-west of Chicago. He rented a car at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and headed west across the flat, central Illinois farm country. Just before 11.00pm, an attractive 16-year-old La Salle girl was walking along a road that threaded through a cluster of houses, when she noticed a car slowly creeping past her. She had noted the vehicle several times beforehand, and she was now becoming frightened for her safety.

  Without warning, the teenager was suddenly grabbed from behind and a handkerchief was stuffed into her mouth. She was dragged into nearby woods where the attacker wrapped a belt around her neck and asked her for money. She gave him the 22 cents she had and, when he loosened his belt, she screamed. She was now moments from a terrifying rape when salvation arrived. A woman living nearby, had just switched off her television, with the intention of having an early night when she heard a noise that made her blood chill. Opening her kitchen window, she heard a gurgling sound and rustling noises in nearby bushes, so she called the police. Luck was now on the teenager’s side, even more so because a patrol car was only 100 yards away, and it arrived at the scene in a flash. When Ross saw the beams of police torches illuminating the woods, he hurried back to his car but, this time, his luck deserted him.

  Sergeant Lewis of the La Salle Police explained how Ross got himself arrested. ‘What happened is, when we took the girl home, Ross had his car parked on the same street she lived on. And, on the way home, she saw the car, and said, “That’s the car, that’s the car.” And, so pretty soon we were looking at the car, and he comes up and says, ‘What’s the problem?”’

  After Michael’s arrest, for ‘unlawful restraint’, Sergeant Lewis said that he was puzzled by the contradiction, between Ross’s demeanour, and what he had done.

  ‘He was real humble,’ Lewis recalled. ‘He wouldn’t look you in the eyes when you talked with him. He was a very educated and a talented kid. He didn’t appear to be the kind of guy who would go out to other towns and do this kind of stuff. He more or less kept his mouth shut, and he was subdued and spiritless when we took him in.’

  The downside of the La Salle attack was that Ross was fined $500 after pleading guilty and on Tuesday, 8 October he was fired from his job. On the upside, and with no alternative, he returned to Brooklyn where he attempted a reconciliation with Con
nie. Indeed, he was very pleased when she invited him to spend Christmas with her at her parents’ home in Vermont. He was even more delighted that they had also been invited to share the New Year with his mother in Brooklyn.

  Unfortunately, the visit to Mrs Ross was an unmitigated disaster. His mother could not stand the sight of such a beautiful young woman in her house, and Michael was very upset by the fact that his father had been reduced to living in a run-down shed nearby. The hoped-for rekindling of his relationship with Connie failed, for the second time, and she went off to Ithaca, New York, to visit a ‘friend’. This was the catalyst that precipitated Ross into rape and murder again.

  * * *

  Seventeen-year-old Tammy Lee Williams lived with her family on Prince Hill Road, Brooklyn, which was only a mile or so from the Ross’s egg farm. That Christmas, among the gifts from her parents, she received a pocketbook. A free-spirited young woman, who had quit high school, she came and went as she pleased, and it wasn’t unusual for her walk along Route 6 to visit her boyfriend who lived in Danielson, about three miles away.

  At 10.15am, on Monday, 4 January 1982, Tammy left her boyfriend’s apartment and started to walk home, after first promising him that she would telephone him to let him know that she had arrived safely. She did not fulfil this promise because she encountered Michael Ross on her journey. He was surprised to see the young woman walking along a busy road on such a bitterly cold day. Seizing the moment, which distinguishes the opportunist killer, he parked his car and ran up to Tammy offering her a lift. When she declined, he dragged her screaming and struggling into nearby woods, where he forced her to strip and get to her knees. He raped and strangled her before hiding the body, under a pile of rocks and brush, in a swamp. He said it took him all of eight minutes to throttle her to death, because he kept getting cramps in his hands. Each time this happened, he had to release his grip and massage his fingers before finally throttling the life out of her.