by Irene Pence
Stacks of books leaned against every wall and crowded each room while bare bookshelves stood ready to house them. The books defined Battaglia. One pile held Hangover Soup, appropriate for a man they later learned had addictions. That lay on top of The Bell Curve, a controversial book with racial overtones suggesting that blacks performed lower on IQ tests. There was Neo-Conservatism balanced above A History of Western Morals, and, under that, a copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. What kind of problems had sent Battaglia in search of answers in books like these?
With guns still drawn, the police covered the areas in front of, behind, and inside the boxes. When they had satisfied themselves that those areas were secure, they turned toward the kitchen. Seconds later, they stopped.
A speakerphone and a pistol sat on the countertop. On the floor directly beneath them, an older girl lay on her side. Her left arm was tucked under her chin as if she had fallen asleep, and a tiny gold earring glistened in her lobe. A bow held her ponytail in place, and a blue Band-Aid circled her middle finger. Her red shorts were clean, but her white Highland Park hockey T-shirt was splashed with blood. A stylized cartoon hockey player, stenciled in yellow-and-blue plaid on the back of her shirt, wore a determined look with his hockey stick raised high. Two bullet holes marred her back, and she too had suffered that final execution-style shot to the back of her head. The blackened, powder-burned flesh around the wound indicated that the gun had been shoved into her scalp. That bullet had exited through an open starburst gash in her forehead. There was way too much blood on the floor to hope that any life still clung to that little body.
Officer Thornton needed a flashlight to look under beds and around darker areas. He left Murray and Rojas at the scene. When he entered the hall outside the loft, he noticed a closed door that wasn’t an entrance to any apartment.
He jerked open the door and pointed his revolver into the dark interior. It was a janitor’s closet. Even filled with brooms, mops, and other cleaning equipment, it was definitely large enough to hide a man. He made a mental note to check that closet on each floor. Then he hurried to the elevator and rode down to the lobby on his way to get a flashlight from his squad car.
As he stepped outside on the sidewalk, he almost collided with Mary Jean Pearle. She had been talking on her cell phone. Her face was deathly white and her brown eyes puffy from crying.
“Are they there?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, they are,” he replied gravely.
“Are they . . . ?” she asked, unable to utter the unspeakable word.
“Yes, Ma’am. I’m afraid so.”
Mary Jean screamed, and collapsed in Officer Dane Thornton’s arms. He grabbed her to keep her from falling. As she sagged against him, he said, “Ma’am, I think you better stay here. You just don’t need to be up there.”
She visibly gathered her strength so she could stand alone. Sobbing, shoulders slumped, she turned to a pretty, young brunette. Tears also ran down the cheeks of the other woman, who reached out to hug Mary Jean.
“This is my friend, Melissa Lowder,” Mary Jean told the policeman. “She just got here.”
“Do you know the little girls?” Thornton asked Melissa. “I mean, could you identify them?”
Melissa nodded solemnly, then clutched her wadded Kleenex and mopped her eyes.
“I hate to ask you, but we need to have their identification verified. Why don’t you take Ms. Pearle to the squad car. My officer will stay with her.”
Melissa nodded and ushered Mary Jean to the waiting car.
As her heart pounded, Melissa Lowder accompanied the officer through the lobby and into the elevator.
Once the door slid shut, Thornton asked, “What do you know about this Battaglia guy?”
“He’s a CPA. Had his own business until recently, but he still keeps his office. A few months ago, a small oil exploration company hired him as their chief financial officer. That business is downtown.” Then she cautioned, “He’s been a Marine, and he’s still very fit and strong.”
As the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, Melissa was filled with foreboding. The doors slid open and the two began their way down the long hall. In the distance she could see the opened loft door. Everything looked hazy and smoky inside, but even from this distance she could detect the outline of a small child stretched on the floor. A gasp of horror caught in her throat. She was doing this for her friend, and that thought was the only thing keeping her going.
She entered the loft, careful not to step on spent bullet casings, and then hesitantly headed toward the first body. Tears filled her eyes. It took every bit of resolve for Melissa to look down.
“This is Liberty,” she stammered. “She was only six years old.”
Police escorted Melissa into the kitchen; tears were still rolling down her cheeks. “Faith,” she said somberly. “She was nine.”
She turned to leave the most devastating scene she had ever witnessed in her life, but one of the officers stopped her.
“One more thing, ma’am. We found this picture on the countertop. Can you identify him?”
Melissa glared at the smiling face. “Yes, that’s John Battaglia,” she said bitterly, tapping the photo with her forefinger. “That’s who you need to find.”
TWO
Dark clouds hovered over the family of John Battaglia Jr. even before he was born on August 2, 1955. After his birth, tragedy continued to shadow him.
His Grandfather Battaglia, an Italian immigrant, lived in Brooklyn, New York, where he raised his family. Rumors abounded that Grandpa crossed the ocean with more than just his family and dreams of finding success in the New World. Through his contacts from the land of the Mafiosi, the family patriarch was said to have had a connection with organized crime. John Jr. would later brag that his grandfather had been a Mafia chief in Chicago. In any event, John Battaglia Sr. was just a boy when his father robbed a bank at gunpoint, was arrested, and was sent to prison.
Because of the disgrace he brought upon his family, Grandmother Battaglia divorced her husband. She took her children and fled to Florida, hoping that nobody there would learn the family’s ugly little secret.
In the next generation, John Battaglia Sr. married a pretty, sensitive blonde named Julia Christine. Soon after their marriage, he joined the military and served as a specialist in logistics with the Army Medical Corps.
Their first child, John David Battaglia Jr., was born at a military base in Alabama. John Jr. took after his mother. At two, he was a beautiful child with green eyes and blond ringlets.
The Battaglia clan grew rapidly, and two brothers and two sisters soon followed. The house was filled with the aroma of Italian dishes, but also with intimidating threats, harsh discipline, and drunken brawls.
The large Catholic family stayed closely connected to the church. As the oldest, John was nudged into serving as an altar boy. That gave some structure to John’s fragmented life as he began to spend three to four hours a week assisting priests to prepare the sacraments. But he fought wearing the black floor-length cassock covered with a lace-trimmed white surplice.
Because of John Sr.’s military career, the family moved like gypsies. They were always pulling up stakes and having to make new friends. Their nomadic life took them from Alabama to Texas, then to Washington, D.C., Germany, Oregon, and New Jersey. As a career military man, John Battaglia Sr. disciplined his children like a drill sergeant. Their father’s rule was “Do as I say and don’t ask questions.” Questions earned them swift punishment—their father’s belt on their backsides.
However, John Battaglia Sr. disagreed with anyone who said he was a harsh taskmaster, insisting that he only “paddled some rumps.” But the punishment he dished out went further than that. He broke one son’s guitar over his back.
In 1970, John Battaglia Sr. left the military after fifteen years of service. He continued to stay in the Army Reserve for many years, ultimately retiring as a lieutenant colonel. With his medical background, he landed a job
in Oregon as a hospital administrator and emergency services manager.
It was in Oregon that John Jr. began his first year of high school, where he also played football. The following year, his father was transferred to New York City, much to John Jr.’s disappointment. He was yanked out of high school and forced to give up his football team and all the new friends he had made. But his father had a chance to set up the first addict-run drug clinic and the first publicly financed abortion clinic in the country.
They lived in Dumont, New Jersey, a town of 20,000 in the upper northeast corner of the state, where John Jr. attended Dumont High School. Dumont was just across the Hudson River from New York.
It was difficult for John to get close to his father, whom he saw as intolerant. Instead, he saved his attention for his mother, Julia, whom he loved very much. When his father became agitated and demanding, his mother would say, “Don’t get your dad upset. Just go to your room.”
Always the peacemaker in the family, Julia was a woman with fragile emotional health. She suffered from severe depression for weeks at a time, and once had been treated at Englewood Hospital for eighteen days. She drank heavily to alleviate her depression, but that merely intensified her problem.
Her hospitalization at Englewood had provided only temporary relief, because her despondency came back. On the evening of December 5, 1972, her husband broke the news that he was going to commit her to Bergen Pines, a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey. She flew into a frenzy at the prospect of being sent to what she viewed as a prison. Finally, a doctor came to the house to administer a sedative. John Jr. was only seventeen at the time he witnessed the confrontation.
The next morning, John Jr. was the last person to speak to his mother before she climbed into her year-old Buick and drove one hundred miles north along the Hudson River, crossing into New York State. She found a scenic overlook not far from the West Point Academy, and pulled off the road.
The river splashed over granite boulders, and had, over time, carved deep slices into the rock cliffs that supported the Palisades Parkway. Dense vegetation of every description—tall pines, huge leafy oaks, and wildflowers—covered the hilly terrain and trailed down to the water’s edge. Surrounded by all this beauty, she stepped out of her car and walked almost fifty feet. As she stared down at the pounding river, she pulled out a 9-millimeter German Mauser. Placing it to her right temple, she squeezed the trigger. She dropped to the pine needle-covered ground, falling on top of the gun. The Palisades Parkway Police found her lifeless body at 2:15 P.M.
A note in her pocket described the depression that had caused the young mother to take her own life, leaving five children behind.
Gossip suggested that John Sr. was terribly abusive to Julia and that he contributed to her mental problems. In any event, their mother’s suicide shattered the family so severely that some family members still don’t speak. John, more than his brothers and sisters, was particularly depressed and subject to explosive mood swings. At times he blamed himself. Could he have said something during those last few moments when he had spoken with her? Could he have been more sympathetic? Could he have changed her mind? To relieve his nagging guilt, he threw himself into his studies and graduated from high school in just three years.
A year later, John’s father remarried. His new wife, a woman named Kathy, was a statuesque blonde. She brought an additional son into the family, whom John Sr. immediately adopted.
In a family of six children supported by a sole breadwinner, no one expected to be sent to an exclusive Ivy League school or given money for an expensive dorm or apartment. So, while still living with his family in Dumont, John Jr. began attending one of the four extensions of Fairleigh Dickinson University, a large private New Jersey university. His first major was pre-med, but after plodding through his courses for a year, he realized that math was his forte, and switched to accounting.
With all the volatile family arguments, living at home had its disadvantages. As the oldest, John received his father’s harshest discipline, causing his brother Marc to call him an “emotional cripple.”
At another time, during an explosive rage, John pulled a pistol on Marc.
In 1976, although John Jr. was busy in college studying accounting, his friends found it easy to talk him into leaving school for a year to travel with the rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer. He took off like he had been handed a ticket to freedom and excitement. He enjoyed the band’s fireworks and loud rock music, and relished being the group’s business manager as they toured the country.
In 1977, he completed his year’s tour with the band, but he still wasn’t ready to head back to college. Although his college major had been accounting, he frequently toyed with the idea of becoming an artist.
The decadence of the seventies, coupled with the rock scene’s mentality, had made it easy for him to hurl himself into drugs. He found that cocaine stabilized his mood swings, and he began selling the drug to finance his habit. Inevitably, he got caught. He was arrested, charged with delivery of a controlled substance, and given a suspended sentence.
To escape his problems, Battaglia joined the U.S. Marine Corps and worked in logistics, mirroring what his father had done in the army. After eleven weeks of basic training in San Diego, he began a four-year tour of duty that took him all over the country and also to Hong Kong.
Standing six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds, he looked proud and handsome in his dark wool dress uniform. It was cinched at the waist with a white belt and topped off with a matching white hat.
Born under the zodiac sign of Leo, the demanding, aggressive lion, Battaglia found that the most rugged branch of the military suited him. Proud of his sign, he had a large head of a lion tattooed on his upper left arm.
By the end of his hitch in 1982, he had risen to the rank of sergeant. He decided it was time to go back to school and get on with the business of becoming a CPA. He took his honorable discharge and left his military career behind.
At the time, his father was working in Dallas, managing emergency physician services at the Baylor University Medical Center. John had always wanted a closer association with his father. Having spent a lifetime trying to win his father’s approval, he moved to Dallas, where he found a job as an accountant.
At first, John lived with his father and stepmother. Kathy worked in the office of the Kim Dawson Agency, the premier Dallas modeling agency. She knew her handsome, dark-haired stepson could be a sought-after model, and she encouraged him to have portfolio photos taken.
He followed her suggestion and was soon hired for photographic shoots, mainly advertising upscale clothing. The camera captured his sad green eyes and wistful gaze.
Now he was juggling modeling along with his accounting position, in addition to taking night classes to reach that long-postponed CPA goal.
It was a frenetic but happy time for John Jr. For the first time in his life, he had formed a positive alliance with his father, and was on a solid career path.
THREE
In 1971, Michelle Ward graduated eighth of 400 in her Baton Rouge, Louisiana high school class. In the summer just prior to entering Louisiana State University, she began dating Dale LaBorde, and they fell in love. Her academics slipped slightly during her freshman year when she eloped with Dale.
Still, Michelle Ward LaBorde graduated with honors from college with a B.A. in Education, and began teaching fifth grade. Five years into her marriage, she gave birth to a son, Billy, on November 4, 1977. After the baby arrived, the young couple found that school, work, and parenthood took their toll. Dale wanted to continue partying with friends, while Michelle taught school during the day and stayed home with the baby at night. With such diverse interests, the marriage disintegrated and they divorced in 1980.
Afterward, Michelle took custody of her three-year-old son, and applied to Louisiana State University Law Center. She was immediately accepted. In law school, she rose to the top 1 percent of her class, automatically qualifying her fo
r the honorary Law Review. In May 1983, she graduated first in a class of 184, and began working for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld in Dallas. The highly respected law firm had more than one hundred lawyers. It also had offices in New York and Washington, D.C. The “Strauss” in the firm’s name was Robert Strauss, a one-time chairman of the Democratic National Committee who would later become the ambassador to the Soviet Union.
By mid-1984, John Battaglia Jr. needed a few more classes before he could take the CPA tests. The attractive man was the antithesis of an introverted, bespectacled accountant. Instead, he was gregarious around people and could be very charming.
One of his best friends—and roommate—Mark Weisbart, was a bankruptcy attorney at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. Weisbart was sure that the pretty blond bankruptcy and estate lawyer with whom he worked, Michelle LaBorde, would enjoy meeting John. She was tall, poised, and possessed a model’s good posture that exuded self-confidence.
Michelle LaBorde was two years older than thirty-year-old John Battaglia, but anyone would have guessed she was much younger, due to her unlined face and pretty brown eyes. Michelle wasn’t just smart; she was brilliant, and it would take someone with a fine intellect to interest her.
Mark Weisbart suggested that Michelle and her fellow lawyer, Kitty O’Connell, join him and John Battaglia for a drink at a local restaurant. Michelle and John were instantly drawn to each other. As soon as she began talking with him, she appreciated his intelligence. He knew a great deal about art, music, and the theater. In fact, she found that he could talk extensively and with authority about many subjects.
They immediately began dating, but before their first date, Michelle wanted to clear the air and let him know that she had a seven-year-old son.
