Because You Loved Me

by M. William Phelps

  As the day came to an end, Jenn approached the woman.

  “How are you?” she said. “My name is Jennifer.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Jeanne. This is Drew”—she put her arm around his shoulder and hugged him—“and this is Nicole.”

  “What do you do for a living?” asked Jenn out of curiosity.

  “I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

  “I’ve been watching you all day. Admiring your parenting style.”

  Jeanne was never one to accept praise. Being nice was so much a part of her nature that it wasn’t supposed to come with a reward, nor had she expected it to. She’d much rather shower someone else with admiration.

  In any event, Jeanne said, “Thank you.”

  “Would you be interested,” offered Jenn, “in babysitting for me part-time? I’m a teacher. So, the hours are regular and you’ll have summers and school vacations off.”

  “Maybe,” Jeanne said. She was being honest. It seemed like a lot. Her plate was already full.

  So, the two women made plans to meet at Jeanne’s house the following day. Jenn wanted to check it out. See where her child was going to spend his or her day.

  “My first impression of the house,” recalled Jenn, “was that it was old and decorated frugally.” Jenn noticed Jeanne didn’t have a “lot of material things…but the house was immaculately clean, orderly and organized.” She could sense a feeling of pride Jeanne took in what little she had, “and the time and love she put into the house to make it a home.”

  She respected that about Jeanne—a person able to make do with what she had, instead of complaining about the things she didn’t.

  Sometime after Jenn’s daughter, Emilee, was born, Jenn dropped her off at Jeanne’s with her older sister for the day. Jenn wanted to “check” things out “more closely,” she admitted, because “one has to be sure.” She figured her older daughter could report back to her. If the day went well, Jeanne was hired.

  Quite comfortable in her choice of character, Jenn observed, “I was right. Jeanne was an awesome person, one I would want to help me raise Emilee.”

  As time went on, it became evident to Jenn that Emilee was “special.” The child wasn’t talking. She seemed “different.”

  This did not particularly scare Jeanne, however. Jenn believed it made Jeanne love Emilee more and pay particular attention to her.

  Exactly what the child needed.

  “I would drop Emilee off, and Nicole and Drew would be waiting for her and they would watch TV together and play. Jeanne would call me at work to fill me in on Emilee’s firsts.”

  Just the thrill of telling Jenn that Emilee walked or crawled for the first time brought tears to Jeanne. In a way, she felt bad about experiencing it without Jenn; but Jeanne was pleased nonetheless to share the happiness of being a parent, so she’d call Jenn, sometimes three or four times a day, and, in detail, explain anything new Emilee did.

  As Emilee grew, Jenn started taking her to specialists, but no one could tell her what the problem was.

  “Emilee is a lot smarter than she appears,” Jeanne suggested one day. “She can do more than she lets on.”

  Jenn was pleasantly shocked that Jeanne had taken such a gentle approach to caring for Emilee. By now, Jenn viewed Jeanne as part of her—especially Emilee’s—extended family.

  “Emilee thinks she is the queen,” Jeanne told Jenn one day. “Make her do more and she will show all of us!”

  Jeanne had confidence in the child. She sensed the child was holding back. It was Jeanne’s instinct as a care-giver, a parent. Jenn could tell by just being around her and watching her with the kids.

  When doctors failed to determine a diagnosis, Jenn and Jeanne referred to what Emilee had as the “Queen Bee Syndrome,” because it fit her.

  When it came time for Emilee to attend school, Jeanne was in as much of a state of panic as Jenn and her husband. By the time she was three years old, Emilee could “barely walk and could not talk….”

  Jeanne was concerned for Emilee as she prepared to stretch out into the world on her own. Jeanne was worried Emilee wouldn’t have the same opportunities most other kids did. And she knew she couldn’t depend on the school system to be there for her.

  Sometime before Emilee’s first day of school, Jeanne sat Jenn down and said, “I’ve made a decision.”

  “What’s that?” Jenn asked.

  “I want to go to school with Emilee. I cannot allow her to go it alone.”

  The following day, Jeanne applied to the Nashua School district to be Emilee’s full-time paraprofessional. To everyone’s delight, she got the job.

  So, on Emilee’s first day of school, Jeanne placed Emilee on the bus with her knapsack, then jumped into her own car, sign language books in hand, and off to school she went, where she stayed with Emilee every day until the second grade.

  CHAPTER 72

  As Jenn sat in the courtroom, staring at the back of Billy’s head, she couldn’t help but recall those memories of Jeanne. It all came back to her in waves. Like many extended victims of crime, Jenn wondered why good people were taken away from their friends and family. Jeanne had given Emilee a life. She had made such an impact on so many other lives. And here sat some punk-ass kid, scratching his head, picking at his pimples, on trial for brutally murdering her. Where was the balance in life? How was any of it fair?

  “Jeanne was a very proud woman. She had nothing monetary, [but] she gave herself to everyone—her time, love, soul or just a smile. She never complained about anything. Even when things were at their worst.”

  It was the simple things, Jenn insisted, Jeanne had done for people that hadn’t allowed anyone to forget her—and perhaps nobody wanted to. That person, though, was somehow pushed to the side during Billy’s trial in lieu of the state’s burden to focus on evidence. And Jenn, like all of Jeanne’s friends and family, wanted to make the point later that Jeanne was fervent and empathetic where all people were concerned. For example, Jenn’s mother was in the throes of fighting cancer during that week Billy and Nicole took Jeanne’s life. Jeanne had been at odds with Nicole all week, yet she took the time to call Jenn and say that she was there for her and Emilee, even if she hadn’t been a part of their lives on a regular basis for quite some time. She also wrote Jenn a poem of encouragement and hope, then stopped by the house.

  “We were just chatting and she started to tell me some facts she had learned, and she started to ask me questions,” recalled Jenn.

  Jenn was dealing with a flood of grief, guilt and doubt. Jeanne picked up on it.

  “Do you know how many gallons of water it takes to flush a toilet?” Jeanne asked as they sat.

  “What?”

  Jenn was surprised by the question.

  “Or how ’bout this? How many gallons does it take to wash a load of clothes?”

  “Huh?”

  Jeanne was laughing as she posed the questions.

  “No,” Jenn said after a while.

  “Well, Jenn, I think it takes thirteen to wash a load of clothes and two to flush the toilet.”

  “Jeanne, why do you know these things?”

  “The pump in my well broke one time and I had to lug water from the neighbor’s house.”

  And that was the essence of who Jeanne Dominico was; she did not have the money to get her well fixed, she told Jenn, until she received her tax refund.

  “Let me give you some money, Jeanne,” offered Jenn.

  Jeanne never asked for a loan. The point of the story to Jenn was that Jeanne in no way complained about her situation, regardless how bad it was; she instead looked for solutions to her problems without worrying about the negative aspects associated with them.

  The trial, Billy Sullivan and Nicole, Jenn was convinced, were things Jeanne could have found a way to deal with. Although the person Jeanne was had not been mentioned that often during court proceedings, Jeanne was in Jenn’s heart the entire time. And Jenn wasn’t going anywhere until she saw it th
rough—until she was able to sit and hear jurors send Billy Sullivan to prison for the rest of his life.

  CHAPTER 73

  As June 23 passed, Delker and Wilson were confident the state’s case against Billy Sullivan was going well. As the trial continued, Billy wasn’t helping himself much. At one point, he made a sign out of a piece of paper and tried holding it up.

  “F- - - the media,” it said.

  But his lawyers stopped him before he could embarrass himself.

  It was the media’s fault now. First Jeanne. Then Nicole. Now the press was responsible. One more indication that although he had admitted stabbing Jeanne to death, Billy wasn’t prepared to take any responsibility for his crimes.

  The state put Detective Denis Linehan on the stand next, so he could explain how a conversation he had with Billy on the night of the murder turned into an interrogation—and finally a confession. Linehan had brought Billy into the NPD to simply get his story, same as he had scores of other witnesses. Billy broke down, Linehan implied. He vomited into a garbage barrel.

  Then he confessed.

  After giving a blow-by-blow account of his night at the house and interview with Billy, Linehan summed it up.

  “Mr. Sullivan indicated he killed Jeanne Dominico. Mr. Sullivan indicated he and Nicole wanted to be together, sooner rather than later.”

  What more, really, was there to articulate?

  About three-quarters of the way through Linehan’s testimony, Kirsten Wilson brought up the shopping trip Billy and Nicole went on after murdering Jeanne.

  “[Billy] said that they went to get him a shirt,” Wilson said. “Did he tell you why they needed to go get him a shirt?”

  “He had to go get a new shirt because the shirt that he was wearing was covered with blood.”

  Powerful explanation. An insane murderer would not have likely made such calculated decisions. One who is literally “crazy” and irrational might sleep in those bloody clothes for days without even knowing it. But Billy—he and Nicole drove around town trying to cover up a murder.

  “Where did the two of them go?”

  Linehan ran down the list of stores.

  “Did he tell you who went into the store?”

  “He said that Nicole went inside the store.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “Because he was covered with blood.”

  Cause and effect: Billy made important decisions based on the unnerving idea of being caught—hardly the choices a madman might make.

  As Linehan recounted Billy’s detailed confession—which was littered with violent, graphic particulars that many in the courtroom found outwardly offensive—Billy raised his hand and indicated he needed a time-out. He said he “feared” he would have an “outburst” soon if he continued listening.

  “I want to be in the courtroom,” he stated. “I want to see what’s going on. [But] I don’t trust myself being here.”

  Billy said he wanted to return to the jail, where he was being held during trial, but Judge Hicks ordered him to remain in the holding cell inside the courthouse. No special treatment. If Billy wanted to exit the courtroom, fine. But it was going to be on the court’s terms. Not his.

  As security prepared Billy to leave, Hicks explained to jurors, “The defendant has an absolute right to attend a trial of this nature. He has an absolute right not to attend. You are to draw no inference from his absence.”

  Near the close of Linehan’s direct testimony, Wilson posed a question that ignited an interesting discussion.

  “During the course of your investigation,” she asked the detective, “did you go down to Connecticut at any point?”

  Linehan explained how he had driven to Billy’s mother’s house in Willimantic to serve a search warrant. Among the items seized from Billy’s home, Linehan talked about Billy’s prescriptions. One clearly specified that Billy was supposed to take his medication “at bedtime.” And he had, in fact, filled the prescription that April.

  Then Wilson asked Linehan to reach into an evidence bag and take out its contents.

  “And the photograph, can you take that out? Did you obtain that, I believe you said, down at the defendant’s home as well?”

  “That’s correct,” answered Linehan. He spoke like a cop: direct, serious, unemotional.

  All business.

  “And who do you recognize in that photograph?” the prosecutor wanted to know as Linehan studied the picture. It was Billy and Nicole. They looked like two young kids in love posing for a teen magazine. Billy was standing in back of Nicole with his arms stretched around her shoulders. He peeked his head around the side of hers. They looked happy, as if the world around them didn’t matter. It was easy to tell that when he took his medication, Billy was a normal, loving human being.

  “I recognize William Sullivan Jr.,” Linehan said, looking down at the photograph, then back up at Wilson, “and Nicole Kasinskas.”

  After a few directions to the court, Wilson said, “I have nothing else at this time. I believe defense counsel may have some questions….”

  CHAPTER 74

  The following day, Billy’s defense lawyer Paul Garrity went to work on impeaching Detective Linehan’s testimony.

  “This entire scenario was crazy, wasn’t it?” Garrity asked.

  “I wouldn’t say so, no.”

  While questioning Linehan, Garrity stared at the transcripts of the detective’s testimony from the previous day. He read a little. Paused. Then asked a question. It was a tactical move more than a natural characteristic. Lawyers—at least smart lawyers—know how useful affect and tone are when presenting facts. It often worked. Jurors sometimes hung on every word.

  Not long into his cross-examination, Garrity asked Linehan, “Are [your] notes still in existence for us to look at?”

  Garrity was referring to a certain set of notes Linehan had taken regarding one of his conversations with Billy.

  “No.”

  “Those were destroyed. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Based on your training, it’s fair to say that on August sixth and seventh you were an experienced officer and detective, right?”

  “I would say that at the time I had a fair amount of experience, yes.”

  In actuality, Detective Linehan was new to homicide work. Paul Garrity was, even if his questioning sounded patronizing, simply pointing out that Linehan, although he might have conducted himself as a professional, didn’t have a wide base of hands-on homicide knowledge to cull from.

  “In fact, you had been the primary detective on three prior homicide cases, right?”

  It was a trap.

  “Two other priors, prior to this,” said Linehan, holding up two fingers. “Two priors. And I was the primary.”

  After Garrity finished with Linehan, because there had been so much talk of Billy’s interrogation—or was it an interview?—Judge Hicks said he was going to “reconsider” his earlier ruling not allowing the videotape in. Billy’s team had argued to keep it out, but Will Delker spoke up, saying, if Billy’s team was going to quote from portions of the videotaped interview, the jury deserved to see and hear all of it. Anything short of that might mislead them. A few words here or there, taken out of context, could change the entire integrity of the interview.

  Judge Hicks said he’d take it under consideration.

  On June 27, Hicks opened the day’s proceedings by allowing the jury to see the videotaped interview Billy gave on the night of the murder.

  As the videotape began, Billy left the courtroom.

  The video was a huge score for Will Delker and Kirsten Wilson. It showed a man coming to terms with a crime he had committed. It explained, in direct detail, how the murder, although Billy said it wasn’t planned, took place, and how bad he felt about it afterward. In addition, he was able to articulate the entire scenario, which spoke to his sanity at the time.

  Over the next few days, the state brought in several experts to expl
ain the forensic evidence and describe how Jeanne actually died. At times, testimony was explicit and sobering for those who knew Jeanne.

  Dr. Jennie Duval, deputy state medical examiner, testified how the stab wounds Jeanne sustained proved that she “died slowly, after a long struggle.” In total, there weren’t forty wounds, as originally thought, but Duval counted “between forty-eight and fifty-three,” along with several “cuts,” which ranged in significance from “tiny superficial marks to deep,” penetrating lesions. Remarkably, Duval said, there were twenty-eight stab wounds on or near Jeanne’s neck and face. In Jeanne’s chest, mostly above her heart, Duval said there were an additional twenty-five wounds, many of which pierced “deep” into her body.

  Quite extraordinarily, only one stab had hit “a vital organ.”

  Jeanne’s left lung.

  The wound that ultimately killed her.

  “Stab wounds tend to close themselves to a point, and minimize the bleeding,” Duval explained. Because of this, she added, “no major arteries were severed,” which meant Billy could have continued to stab Jeanne “for a long time” without actually killing her.

  “All these wounds are being inflicted, but none of them are causing immediate incapacitation.”

  Duval suggested Jeanne, even though she was being stabbed repeatedly, fought for her life. She wanted to live.

  But Billy never let up.

  CHAPTER 75

  Some later suggested Nicole Kasinskas had a proclivity for ghosts and the “darker” side of life—that perhaps she was “into” things of a supernatural designation. It was likely just a fad some kids go through, wherein they read creepy books and watch scary shows on television that play directly into their fantasies and beliefs in the afterlife. Was it true that Nicole dreamed of making contact with evil spirits and used that power in her life?