by Mark Gado
Kiss the Girls Goodnight
Mark Gado
“The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain,
is the loophole through which the pervert climbs.”
Jacob Bronowski (1908-74), British writer and scientist
Copyright
Kiss the Girls Goodnight
Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gado
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Electronic edition published 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC, New York.
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795324482
Contents
eForeword by Marilyn Bardsley
Chapter 1: The Dark
Chapter 2: Germs
Chapter 3: Bomb Shelter
Chapter 4: Amy
Chapter 5: The Junkman
Chapter 6: Barbara
Chapter 7: Celeste and the Skeleton
Chapter 8: Denise, the Fighter
Chapter 9: Ellen, the Girlfriend
Chapter 10: Into the Dark
Chapter 11: The Wanderer
Chapter 12: The Search
Chapter 13: “They Weren’t People to Him”
Chapter 14: Sentencing
Chapter 15: After Justice
Photo Credits/Index
Sources
Acknowledgements
eForeword by Marilyn Bardsley
Kiss the Girls Goodnight is a terrifying true story of sex slavery not in some Middle Eastern harem or seedy Third World brothel, but in an affluent suburb of Syracuse, NY. The unlikely “slave master” was an intrinsically odd elderly man with a wife and three sons. Most people knew him as a disheveled, poorly dressed character with a confrontational personality. He was a penny-pincher and obsessive coupon clipper who was too cheap to even buy a newspaper to get his coupons. Instead, he bullied the local librarians to save him day-old newspapers. He traveled around collecting empty bottles until his car could hold no more and then redeem most of them for small amounts of money. Some of the bottles he saved for his enormous, highly organized and carefully maintained bottle collection in his basement. He saved absolutely everything, even organizing all of his mail and catalogs in boxes. The obsessive need for structure inside some areas of his home was in stark contrast to the chaos outside, which was indistinguishable from a junk yard of rusting machinery and trash. Although his behavior appeared to result from being in poor financial condition, he was actually well-off, having inherited money that he had parlayed over the years into securities and real-estate holdings worth more than a million dollars.
Then came his midlife crisis. It started out with “befriending” a troubled girl by letting her live in his home. His wife, fighting a long bout with cancer, became suspicious of the relationship and insisted that it end. Later, he started roaming the streets of Syracuse and neighboring towns in search of female friendship, dressing and acting like an aging hippie. His behavior was not criminal or even particularly unusual. The turning point from eccentricity to diabolical criminality was the construction of the “bomb shelter.” Because he was so odd, even his family never guessed that the underground structure had any other purpose, except perhaps storing the items he hoarded. Turning the concrete rooms into a cold, dark dungeon to imprison runaway girls as sex slaves was unimaginable, even to the police, who heard the story from the girls he had eventually released when he tired of them.
Former Detective Mark Gado’s 29 years with the City of New Rochelle Police Department in New York and two years as a federal agent on a Drug Enforcement Administration task force gives him a perspective on crime that few other storytellers have. Gado leads you into the depths of a bizarre criminal mentality so clever and tactical that even when the suspect’s captives were eventually released, they were unable to tell the police who he was or where he had kept them prisoner. Gado explores the psychology of a strange man with a tenuous hold on conventional morality who gradually rationalized his unspeakable crimes, believing that he was protecting troubled girls until they were old enough to find suitable mates. His story is fascinating and shocking at the same time.
www.crimescape.com
Chapter 1: The Dark
He had to crawl on his hands and knees in order to get through the narrow opening. The stone floor was cold and damp, causing wet spots to gather on the knees of his pants and, as the moisture spread, to his lower leg and the cuffs. Soon, the bottom portion of his pants was soaked. Carrying a high-powered flashlight in his right hand, he used his left hand to prop himself up as he inched his way along. His partner followed quietly just an arm’s length behind him. After crawling about 10 feet, he came upon a metal door, which felt heavy and stiff when he swung it open. As he pushed it aside, its rusty hinges squeaked loudly. He pointed a beam of light into the open space in front of him.
Crawlspace
It appeared to be a 10-foot square room with concrete walls, floor and ceiling. It smelled awful, like runaway mold or a bag of wet garbage. To his immediate left, he saw something that resembled a bed: a piece of yellow foam draped over a sheet of plywood. There was no pillow or blanket. Directly in front of the makeshift bed was a large plastic pail, the kind that a local Home Depot sells for a few dollars. Next to the bucket was a chair with no seat. Its tubular aluminum frame was thin, frail and did not look strong enough to support a person. When he first saw it, he immediately surmised the chair would be positioned over the bucket to make a crude toilet. At least that’s what he thought.
He lowered himself off the ledge and dropped onto the floor, which was maybe 3 feet below. The acrid odor of urine overwhelmed his senses the moment he took the first step forward. Because he stood 6 feet tall, he estimated the ceiling to be about 12 inches above his head, giving the space a very confined and oppressive feel. Using that as a guideline and the steps needed to get down into the room, he concluded he was approximately 4 feet underground and within 10 feet from the rear of the house. It might as well have been a 100 because the silence was total. Virtually no sound from the house penetrated inside the concrete room. The space was as quiet as anything he had ever experienced before, as quiet as a tomb.
His head bumped into a 40-watt light bulb that dangled from the ceiling on a single strand of wire. When he pulled the braided chain, the light did not work. From what he could see, there was no other electrical outlet or any other source of electricity. He wondered what a person would do if they were trapped in there for any amount of time. Maybe read? But what? There were no magazines or newspapers. No books. No windows. Just the four stone walls. What would someone do? Sleep? Exercise? Go crazy?
He scanned the light across the floor and into each corner. An empty potato chip bag, a plastic water bottle, old rags and isolated items of trash were strewn everywhere. Parts of the walls were damaged, as if someone tried to punch their way out using a hammer or a metal rod. A large portion of cement had broken off near the second door and lay on the floor, leaving reinforced rods of steel exposed on the surface of the wall. Graffiti was scribbled across the wall adjacent to the gaping hole. The letters were blood-red, wide and stout, and seemed to have been written in a rush because the words were choppy and unevenly spaced. He moved closer. When he read it, his first thought was that the hairs on the back of the neck really did stand up during moments like this.
“READY TO RUCUSS,” it said, “SO BRING ON THE PAIN!”
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Chapter 2: Germs
> DeWitt, a small town located 10 miles east of Syracuse, New York, was named after a Revolutionary War era judge and soldier, Moses Dewitt, a cousin of Dewitt Clinton. It is an affluent community where the average income is well over $60,000 and less than 4% of the families live at or below the poverty level. However, it wasn’t always the picture of success. When John Thomas Jamelske was born in DeWitt in 1935, the town was a rural area with many farms and a population that was only a fraction of what it is today. John Thomas was the son of John and Wanda Jamelske, who, after years of struggle, had managed to buy a home and property located on State Route 92, one of the busy roads that led into Syracuse.
DeWitt, NY Neighborhood
Photo by Joegrimes
John Sr. was a frugal man who enjoyed collecting and repairing clocks. The family also sold home-grown berries and vegetables to travelers who passed by the family farm on their busy road. When John Jr. became a teenager, he attended nearby Fayetteville High School, where he had a rather undistinguished academic career for four years. He never attended social gatherings, nor did he participate in sports. His grades were at or below average and he rarely exhibited enthusiasm for anything. He was quiet, unassertive and never drew attention to himself. “He wasn’t much to talk,” a classmate later said to the press. “You’d say hello and that would be the conversation.” To make matters worse, John Jr. had a persistent acne problem, which caused him to be painfully self-conscious. He wore old shirts and jeans and often showed up at school wearing the same clothes. His classmates knew about his careless attitude toward his appearance. They had a nickname for the teenager, which they used whenever they saw him. They called him “Germs.”
Despite his poor showing in high school, John Jr. went on to college at the insistence of his father. He attended the State University of New York at the Morrisville, NY, campus and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1955. Shortly afterward, he joined the Army Reserves where, according to his recollections, he met and carried on sexual relationships with dozens of women who could not resist his charms. He later claimed that he was one of the most popular soldiers on the base.
A few years later, he met Dorothy Richmond, an outgoing girl who aspired to be a teacher. They were married in 1959 and had three sons in succession beginning in 1961: Paul, Eric and Brian. The Jamelskes seemed to be an average hard-working family striving to make ends meet and raising their children. Dorothy taught at a day school in nearby Fayetteville and became a substitute teacher at Moses DeWitt Elementary School. Jamelske coached Little League baseball and worked in local retail stores.
Like his father, he was a penny-pincher and often argued with people over money, even if it was only a few cents. “I’m very thrifty,” he once told a news reporter, “extremely thrifty.” He also made it a habit to go to the local library each Monday to retrieve the supermarket coupons from the Sunday newspaper so he wouldn’t have to buy it. Jamelske had persuaded the librarians to save the coupons for him. On the few occasions when they didn’t, he became abusive and angry toward the staff. He demanded to know what the library would do to make it up to him. “The way he would behave if we didn’t have them would be kind of scary,” a staff member later said.
Jamelske was a careless dresser and most often wore blue jeans and a dirty sweatshirt. His sneakers were always dirty, and he frequently went days without shaving. Most people knew him as a rather quirky man who roamed the streets at night looking for bottles and cans that he could cash in for their deposit value. He was a familiar sight around DeWitt and neighboring towns as he wandered through the streets to search for empty bottles. He sometimes accumulated hundreds of bottles and filled his car to the roof until he couldn’t cram in a single additional empty. Then he would drive home, separate the bottles that he wanted to keep, and redeem the rest at a local beer distributor. Every few months, he would load up an old trailer with dozens of cases of empty Gatorade or Snapple and drive up to Maine to collect the 10-cent deposit on each bottle. New York did not honor the deposit value of certain containers, and Jamelske knew each brand by heart.
Jamelske seemed to have a darker side as well. On September 1, 1975, he was driving alone in Syracuse on a quiet residential street. He noticed a home that appeared to be unoccupied and made several passes to memorize the owner’s name on the mailbox. He then drove to a nearby convenience store, looked up the number in a phone directory, and called the home. When no one answered, he was convinced the house was unoccupied. He walked back to the residence, leaving his car parked at the convenience store. When he arrived at the home, he rang the bell several times, but no one answered the door. Jamelske found a ladder that was leaning up against an outside wall and carried it to the rear yard, where he placed it next to a second-level window. He climbed up, carefully removed the storm window and attempted to enter the house. When he saw a man staring back at him from across the room, Jamelske panicked and raced down the ladder. He sprinted across the street and ran back towards the convenience store. In the meantime, the homeowner had called the police and then ran from his house to pursue the burglar. Within minutes, the homeowner caught him. Jamelske was later arrested for attempted burglary. Because it was his first offense, he pleaded the case out on a lesser charge and did no jail time.
Jamelske’s father died in 1978. Because he was an only son, he and his mother inherited the estate, including a valuable clock collection. According to some reports, the collection included several Tiffany pieces worth in excess of $40,000 each. He contacted a local auction service, which helped him organize the estate collection, and later sold most of the items to the highest bidder. Jamelske also took ownership of his father’s house and property on Highbridge Road. By the 1980s, developers were looking to build on that land and purchased a tract of eight acres from the estate for over $100,000. By then, Jamelske had already been investing in land in Nevada and New Mexico and purchased several parcels of real estate on speculation. He also bought some stocks and bonds, which he held for many years. Though he never divulged the exact amount to his family, some experts believed these investments exceeded $1 million in value.
In 1984, he met Debbie, a 16-year-old girl, while cruising around in the town of Skaneateles. Though the girl was much younger than Jamelske, who was 49 by then, he became sexually involved with her and later let the teenager move into his home with him and his wife. During that time, he seemed to go through some sort of mid-life crisis. He lost a great deal of weight and began to wear designer jeans and sneakers when he appeared in public with Debbie. He grew his hair long and tied it into a ponytail. Though he attempted to keep the relationship from his wife, Dorothy, she did not believe his explanations, and Debbie’s presence became a contentious issue in the family. One of his sons reportedly punched his father in the face during an argument over the girl. The incident caused so many problems that Jamelske swore to himself he would do things differently the next time he wanted a young girl. “I felt so guilty about the girl that I said to myself, ‘I am not going to have a mistress or a girlfriend… I will pay the girl money.’”
Skaneateles, NY
Photo by Lvklock
In 1990, his mother, Wanda Jamelske died in her home. Though she was 85 years old, police were suspicious because there was no heat in the house and the body showed signs of dehydration and malnutrition. The county medical examiner performed an autopsy, but found the manner of death natural. Police closed the case while John took over his mother’s home and property. Though he had cash in the bank and substantial real-estate assets, there was no way anyone could guess that he was a millionaire simply by looking at him. Most times, he looked as if he was homeless. He was often disheveled and unshaven, a habit he had continued since his high school days, and he never seemed to care. “He looked like a 68-year-old man who wants to be a teenager,” one police officer later told the press. “He even strutted like a teenager.”
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Chapter 3: Bomb Shelter
By the early 19
80s, Jamelske’s sons were adults. One by one, they moved out of the home to pursue their own lives. His youngest, Brian, who was closer to his father than his other two sons, chose to remain in the area. He kept in touch and frequently helped him with various projects. Because family and friends considered Jamelske eccentric, Brian did not think it strange when his father asked for help digging a huge hole in the ground next to his house. Jamelske told his son that he planned to build a “bomb shelter.” The hole measured more than 10 feet deep, 24 feet long and 15 feet wide. When the excavation was complete, they constructed wooden forms for pouring concrete.
Jamelske Home
Courtesy of Author
“It was just a novelty,” Brian said years later. “A challenge. My father just had a notion to do it. It wasn’t built in secret. We certainly didn’t call it a dungeon. It was just an addition.”
They divided the forms into two separate areas. One was approximately 10 feet by 8 feet and the other larger area was about 13 by 12 feet. The walls would be almost 8 feet high and several inches thick. Jamelske then called a supplier, the Albanese Ready Mix Company, and had them deliver several loads of premixed concrete. Jamie Carncross, a local truck driver, made at least six concrete deliveries to Highbridge Road.
“When he first built it, you couldn’t even get into it,” he later said to a news reporter. “He had to bash a hole through a basement wall to get into it.” After the walls and foundation were poured, Jamelske waited several weeks before he was able to cover the bunker with 3 feet of excavated soil. Then he turned his attention to the interior. The concrete rooms were close to the rear of the house so that they could be entered from the basement without exiting the building.
