Michael was driving around aimlessly until he saw Wendy walking in the opposite direction. He turned his Toyota around so recklessly that some observers thought he had a tire blowout. Screeching to a halt, he parked his car and walked quickly to catch up with her. “I got out and went after her. I think in the confession I said something about asking her to the company picnic or that she said something to make me mad, but she didn’t. I just made that up to have an excuse for why I did it.” Describing the event with the same detachment as he did every crime, he said that he came up to her from behind and “grabbed her and dragged her into the woods. I forced her to undress, forced her to perform oral sex on me, raped her and strangled her.” The coroner’s report said that Wendy had been strangled manually, but in his confession to the state police, Michael said he had killed her with a belt. When they told him that was inconsistent with the evidence, he admitted that he couldn’t really remember how he had killed her. “It was all a blur. I covered her body up with some stones I took off a stone wall and left.” I don’t think Michael was obfuscating about what happened. He really couldn’t separate one murder from another with the exception of the date, location, and distinguishing features of the landscape. He couldn’t have even described the women unless he had seen a picture of them in the paper.
Multiple witnesses had seen his reckless driving and confrontation with Wendy. John Nelson, owner of Nelson’s Garage on Route 12 in Lisbon, told the police that he saw a man about eighteen years old with long hair walking about fifty feet behind a girl. He said he saw the man “grab the girl by the arm.” When he looked out a short time later, the car was gone. Cheryl Ciliano was driving her car on Route 12 while on her way to cash an insurance check. She said she saw a clean cut–looking man walking about eight feet behind the girl, and the girl “had a distressed look on her face.” She reported that the man was trying to catch up with the girl and that she had “the impression that it was a boyfriend/girlfriend dispute.” She described Michael more accurately as being close to six feet tall with a skinny build. George MacDonald drove by on a motorcycle and later told police that he had gotten a good look at the car, first thinking it was a Datsun, but when he couldn’t find a similar model, he went to a Toyota dealership, looked at a brochure, and was certain the car was a blue Toyota Celica. He even drove around and saw the car parked near Michael’s apartment.
When Wendy didn’t come home that afternoon, her parents became concerned because it wasn’t like her to stay out. By five o’clock, her mother, Sharon Baribeault, went out looking for her. They searched for her all evening, and at about ten thirty finally called the state police in Montville. The police interviewed her friends and found that Wendy had not seemed upset and that there were no problems at home. So the police took some of Wendy’s clothes and started looking for her with bloodhounds. Her body was found on June 15.
Michael stayed away from the crime scene. “I didn’t visit the body because police were in the area searching for her. It would have been too risky.” On some level he wanted to get caught, and yet he was afraid. I believe Michael wanted more than anything to be able to overcome the monster himself, but by the eighth murder, he knew that he would never stop on his own.
But the killing spree was finally over.
16
CONNECTICUT
JUNE 1984
Michael Malchik was a handsome state trooper and a member of the Connecticut major crimes unit. In 1983, Tammy Williams was still missing, and Malchik had been assigned to the case to see if he could come up with any new angles. Coincidentally, he sat next to the detective assigned to the Debra Smith Taylor case at the station, and as the two of them began to compare notes, he started to see similarities between the crimes. The women were the same size and were seen roughly six miles apart, so he surmised that one person might be responsible for what were classified as a disappearance and murder.
While he was working on this theory, Wendy Baribeault disappeared. Four days later, her body was found in Lisbon, about eighteen miles from Danielson, and Malchik was assigned as chief investigator. A dozen witnesses had given a description of the man they saw in the vicinity of the crime. A few saw him abruptly turn his car around, almost as if he had lost control of the vehicle. For the first time, the police had a description of a car and a description of the perpetrator. Malchik looked at the list of 3,600 Toyota owners and selected names of those who lived closest to the crime scene for questioning. Michael Ross’s door happened to be the first one Malchik knocked on because of its proximity to the crime scene. Malchik knew nothing about Michael’s past convictions but did have a reason to go to Michael’s apartment first; George MacDonald had already reported that he’d found the car.
No one was home the first two times Malchik knocked on Michael’s door, but on the third try, Malchik arrived very early in the morning, catching Michael before he left for work on June 28, 1984. Michael was still in his bathrobe when he answered Malchik’s knock. The detective identified himself and explained that he was investigating the homicide of Wendy Baribeault. Seeming relaxed and unfazed by the visit, Michael said that he had been expecting the police because he had read in the papers that the police were looking for a small blue car like his. Despite feeling a sense of relief and an impulse to confess to Malchik, at the same time Michael was petrified of being arrested. He told me later he felt as if Malchik could see his heart pounding under the bathrobe.
At first Malchik thought he had the wrong man. Michael was wearing glasses when he answered the door, and that didn’t match the composite sketches of the man who had been seen following Wendy. While stalking, Michael always removed his glasses so he wouldn’t be recognized—a kind of magical thinking that he had held on to since the stalking began. Yet every time Malchik indicated that he might be ready to leave, Michael would drop a crumb to make the investigator think that he should ask more questions. Michael couldn’t bring himself to confess, so he dropped hints instead. Still, Malchik wasn’t entirely suspicious. “I can’t say I was that smart. I thought that one person had killed everybody, and yet this looked like a mild-mannered guy. He had me as fooled as anybody else.”
Malchik was ultimately tipped off by Michael’s memory of June 13, the day Wendy had disappeared. He could remember in great detail what he had for breakfast, what color socks he had on, when he arrived at work, and to whom he talked, but his memory was spotty at best starting about 3:00 or 4:00 P.M., just about the time that Wendy was last seen alive. After that time, he remembered only that he went home. “He also placed himself in a direct line from where the girl was last seen, and I thought that was odd,” Malchik remembered.
As Malchik stood at his door, Michael was in excruciating turmoil. He wanted to be stopped from killing again, but he didn’t want to be caught. He wanted Malchik to figure it out and arrest him, but the thought of being charged with murder was unthinkable. Michael finally revealed that he had been arrested twice for sex offenses, so Malchik decided to bring him down to the temporary command post at the Lisbon Town Hall for questioning.
Michael claimed that after the questioning began, he asked to call his father to get him a lawyer, but he was not allowed to do so until all the confessions had been signed. Malchik denied this assertion. If Michael had actually asked for a lawyer, the interrogation should have stopped. If he had not been free to go, Malchik should have read him his Miranda rights and allowed him to make a phone call. If Michael had been telling the truth about his requests and Malchik’s refusal, the confessions would not have been admissible as evidence, because his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights had been violated.
A talented and experienced law enforcement officer, Malchik slowly calmed Michael down and gained his confidence at the command post. They talked about Michael’s family and the farm. They talked about college and Michael’s former fiancée. The conversation went on for about four hours, varying between small talk and pointed questions about what
Michael had done on June 13. It was by all accounts exquisite police work.
Malchik was able to make Michael feel as if he were on his side. Perhaps this was because Malchik had yet to make up his own mind about Michael. “Sitting across from him, I’m asking [myself], Is this someone who has killed a number of women or just some guy? He doesn’t have a tail, fire or horns. He looks just as much like the average guy as anyone,” Malchik remembered.
Then Michael asked Malchik what he thought about Christopher Wilder, a serial killer who had recently been in the headlines after being killed in a shoot-out. Michael wanted to know if Malchik thought Wilder was sick, and Malchik responded that he didn’t really know. Michael also wanted to know if psychiatrists would examine an accused murderer, and Malchik answered in the affirmative. Hypothetically, Michael asked, if a suspected killer went into psychiatric therapy, would that person not be charged? Malchik was quick to assert that “would not be possible.”
Michael then asked if the detective thought he had killed Wendy Baribeault. Malchik responded that he did think that he had killed her and that he would probably kill again, but that he probably really didn’t want to kill again. He told Michael that the most important thing was that he not hurt anyone else. That was just what Michael Ross wanted to hear.
Within hours, Michael had confessed not only to Wendy Baribeault’s murder, but also to five others: Tammy Williams, Debra Smith Taylor, Robin Stavinsky, April Brunais, and Leslie Shelley. However, he didn’t initially mention Debbie Taylor until the officers mentioned where her remains had been found, because part of his denial was actually forgetting he had killed her. He not only convinced himself after each killing that he would never commit another murder, but after a while he also forgot about some of them. In his mind, they became all one big murderous fantasy. His inability to remember this murder was consistent with Dr. Cegalis’s test results that revealed memory impairment. But when he was told the location of her remains, he did not hesitate to confess.
Malchik had to control himself because he didn’t want to let on that he was both viscerally disgusted with Michael Ross and excited that he had caught a serial killer. Malchik also knew that he had to obtain evidence of the crimes. He had to find the bodies for corroboration that Michael wasn’t just confessing to crimes he hadn’t committed. Malchik taped the confessions and then had Michael sign confessions that had been composed by Malchik and the other officer, Detective Frank Griffin, summarizing what they said Michael had told them.
By the time of his first trial, Michael felt betrayed. He thought that Malchik was his ally and that they were going to “solve” the case—in his mind that meant that Malchik would help him understand why he had committed the crimes. He had no idea why he had done such horrendous things, and he naively hoped that by cooperating with the police, he would find answers. “We were a team,” Michael said bitterly, almost crying. “They kept hounding me. Malchik said, ‘Well, maybe you did it because of this,’ and then he said, ‘This is why you did it.’ He put a lot of stuff down. I thought we were trying to figure it out. I was a real idiot. I trusted him completely. I talked to him all day long, and I thought he was my friend and I was trying to help him. He said, ‘Did you do it because you didn’t want to go back to jail?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ ‘Could you have done it because of this or because of that?’ He took this stuff down and then everything got twisted. Things that I said were completely taken out of context. I never said that I had killed the girls to escape jail or identification. That was his theory,” Michael insisted.
The next day, Michael took Malchik to most of the crime scenes and to the places where he’d hidden the bodies that hadn’t yet been recovered—Tammy Williams, April Brunais, and Leslie Shelley. Malchik had found his killer.
17
BRIDGEPORT, CONNECTICUT
1987
It took almost three years for Michael Ross’s first trial to commence. In that time, Michael had been examined and reexamined by all five expert psychiatric witnesses on both sides in preparation for their evaluations and testimony. The first phase of the trial dealt with guilt. Michael did not deny that he had committed the crimes, so the defense psychiatric witnesses had to convince the jury that Michael’s sexual sadism made it impossible for him to control his compulsive need to rape and kill. If they succeeded, Michael would be found not guilty because of mental disease or defect. Even if the jury were not convinced, the psychiatrists would have a second chance during the penalty phase to convince jurors that Michael’s sexual sadism was real. If jurors found there was mitigation because of the mental illness, he would not be eligible for the death penalty. The prosecution had to convince them that his mental illness was a ruse and that he killed to cover up his rapes. During the penalty phase, they also had to prove aggravation—that his crimes were cruel and heinous.
The defense psychiatrists were Michael’s most frequent visitors at the jail, and even though the purpose of their visits was evaluation rather than therapy, Michael found the sessions helpful. His father and sisters had come at first, but after a while, only his father visited. He made sure that his mother was not on his visitor’s list and was adamant that he have no contact with her. “She sent a card once in a while, pretending to be the dutiful mother, but I just threw them away, sometimes without even opening them.”
Before the trial began, the defense raised the issue of where Leslie Shelley and April Brunais had been murdered. In 1986, there was a closed hearing held in response to a defense motion to dismiss those charges because the murders had been committed in the Arcadia woods of Rhode Island, not Connecticut. This was extremely important because Rhode Island did not have a death penalty and because the Leslie Shelley murder was the one that Michael had told psychiatrist Howard Zonana “would hang me” during his psychological evaluation in 1985. Did he kill Leslie because of his sexual sadism or did he kill her to cover up his rape and murder of her friend April Brunais? Even the doctors could not answer that question. If committing a rape and murder satisfied his sexual sadism, it would explain the first rape/murder but not necessarily the second. After killing April, he would have been relieved and no longer overcome with sexual rage, but then he would have been faced with the fact that he was placing a dead girl, naked from the waist down, in the front seat of his car and having a live one tied up in the trunk. Also significant was the fact that in his original confession, Michael said he didn’t rape Leslie Shelley. Was her murder committed just to silence her?
The closed hearing in Judge Seymour Hendel’s chambers was Michael’s “proof” that there was a “faked crime scene” concocted by Malchik. Michael claimed that at the time of his arrest, he told Malchik that the murders had taken place in Rhode Island, but that fact had never ended up in any report or confession. Michael said he didn’t bring it up again because Malchik had convinced him that he did not want to face another trial in another state. Why Malchik ignored the crime scene was unclear. He said he didn’t have time during the initial investigation because it was more important to locate all the bodies. The danger was that Michael would change his mind and not cooperate. Without the bodies, the state didn’t have a case. That made sense as the reason why he didn’t go immediately, but it didn’t make sense that in the two years between the arrest and the suppression hearing, Malchik had never attempted to find the actual murder scene.
The question at the hearing was whether the state police had ignored Michael’s directions to the crime scene because they didn’t want the double murder to be tried in Rhode Island or whether Michael had made the Rhode Island location up after the fact. The prosecution team suggested that when Michael found out that a double murder was almost by definition especially cruel and heinous and would result in a death sentence, he concocted the story about the Rhode Island crime scene as a ruse.
At the suppression hearing, prosecutor Bob Satti produced a report written by Malchik only weeks before the
hearing—two years after Michael’s arrest—containing what Malchik said were Michael’s directions to the crime scene. Malchik said they were inadvertently left out of the written and taped statements taken two years earlier, but Michael insisted he never gave them. Those directions, Satti contended, would place the crime scene within Connecticut, not a mile or so down the road in Rhode Island.
The defense produced strips of cloth, found in a secluded area in the woods, just over the border into Rhode Island, that purportedly matched a slipcover from Michael’s apartment and a ligature found around the neck of one of the girls. The defense lawyers were also able to show that on the taped statement Michael had offered to take officers to the crime scene three times, despite Malchik’s memory to the contrary.
Near the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Hendel lambasted the prosecutor and the police on the court record. Hendel screamed at the prosecutor and threw a map at the investigator. Convinced that he had been lied to, he roared, “Gentleman, there is no question in my mind this happened in Rhode Island. There is absolutely not one scintilla of doubt it happened in Rhode Island. I disbelieve the testimony of both officers, Malchik and Officer Griffin [Malchik’s partner].” He accused the two officers of lying for no reason other than keeping Rhode Island officials out of the case. He said he was glad that it was a closed hearing and a sealed record. However he warned that the whole matter “bothers me greatly” and that “at some point this record will become open when this case is over. Let the chips fall where they may.”
The Man in the Monster Page 18
