I'll Be Watching You (35 page)

I

When Luz and Jackie arrived at the state’s attorney’s office, Zagaja looked as though he had been given a shot of adrenaline. They were inside a room at the courthouse: Zagaja, Rovella, and a uniformed cop. Jackie was nervous. Shaking a bit. Crying. Luz didn’t know what was going on. “You see, Auntie,” Jackie started saying through tears, “you see, you see,” adding quickly, “Now they’re going to put me in jail.”

“What?” Luz said, a belt of confusion whipped across her face.

“I swear to God,” Jackie said, “I didn’t do nothing. Swear to God.”

“Hey,” Luz said, “what’s going on?” She felt betrayed.

“I don’t ever want to see you,” Jackie screamed, “Sonia, or anyone else, ever!”

“David, what’s going on?” Luz asked, looking toward Zagaja.

“Well,” Zagaja said, “she’s under arrest for a parole violation. We have a warrant.”

“Tell her I didn’t know. Tell her. Tell her I didn’t know that, David!”

“I will,” Zagaja said.

“Jackie,” Luz said, “remember when I said on ‘my kids’ lives,’ I meant that. I
didn’t
know.”

In the end, Jackie was OK with things. Zagaja promised to send her to treatment, instead of jail, and everyone was happy. But she had to testify first.

II

Zagaja and Rovella believed that some of the best evidence they had was Ned’s own mileage records. It was that one comment Ned had made to Luisa St. Pierre as he lay in a hospital bed. That bell Ned had rung himself. That one “mistake” he had made in offering up his mileage books. Zagaja and Rovella had spent hundreds of hours studying Ned’s mileage records, matching his mileage up against the gas receipts they uncovered in his basement. They’d hired an outside firm, North Eastern Technical Services (NETS), from Fall River, Massachusetts, to sift through the mountain of records and come up with some sort of way to explain it all in layman terms. (“Those records were important,” Rovella told me later. “When you looked at them, and studied them, it was
so
obvious.”)

Still, you had to know what you were looking for. Zagaja had spent hours creating charts and graphs to illustrate how Ned had tried to cook his books to make it appear as if he couldn’t have traveled to Rhode Island on that weekend Carmen went missing. Ned thought he was smart. He believed he had it all covered. And yet, like the maps he kept in his house, and perhaps allowing Mary Ellen Renard to live, he had made another in a series of mistakes: thinking he was smarter than everyone else. His biggest downfall, after all: his ego. It was all coming back to him now—and although he’d soon try, there was very little he could do to stop it.

III

It was safe to say that Jackie was a mess. She had been booked and was now being housed in the women’s prison in Niantic, Connecticut, where she would stay until she saw a judge and was given a bed at a hospital. In court, facing Ned, Jackie looked fragile and on edge, as if the slightest mention of her mother was going to make her crumble. Zagaja got her arrest record out of the way first, then had Jackie talk about where she lived with Carmen in Hartford at the time her mom went missing and how she had phoned the Hartford PD the following morning. Then, after some discussion between O’Brien and the judge over the time frame, Zagaja established when Jackie had gone to Kenney’s with Miguel, Cutie, and Jeffrey Malave to confront Ned. He had her explain how she was summoned to Kenney’s by a call from the bartender. “And did you end up meeting with this person, you said, Edwin?”

“Yeah,” Jackie said. So far, so good. Jackie was holding her own. She was getting stronger, apparently, as she talked her way through that day when she was frantically searching for her mother, who had been missing, by then, for almost two weeks. And after establishing how they flushed Ned out of Kenney’s and into the side street and, finally, out to his car, Jackie said he ran back into the bar, which seemed awfully suspicious to her. “He took a bill out of his pocket and started running into the bar again and he screamed, ‘Whoever [will] stop those people, I’ll give fifty dollars.’”

“Where were you when you saw that?”

“After him.”

“Were you in the bar, at that point?”

“No. Two people came right away to the door and they block us.”

“What ended up happening then?”

“I tell the guys, ‘I just want to speak with him ’cause my mom was the last person they see with…it was him. And I just want to ask where he left my mother.’”

“And did they let you in?”

“Yeah.”

Jackie described how they sat down with Ned—except Miguel, who was seething and squirrelly and wanted to kick Ned’s butt, so they kept him back. “Can you describe what happened once you sat at the table?” Zagaja asked. “Did you ask him any questions?”

Jackie paused. Recoiled a bit. The memory of it all was getting to her. She was back there that day in her mind, and it was hard. She was no longer telling the story—she was reliving it. “I asked him,” she said, “where he left my mom.”

“And did he respond?”

“He told me in Shell, in the gas station.”

“In the Shell gas station? And did he say anything else?”

“No. Oh, and then [he said] my mother asked him for—for twenty dollar—for twenty dollar, and he was like, ‘Get out the car.’”

“Did he say anything else after that?”

“No.”

“Do you remember if Jeffrey [Malave] said anything about you being her daughter?”

This seemed to spark a memory for Jackie. “That I was pregnant. I was pregnant about that time. [Jeffrey] was like, ‘If you got her mother, just let her go, and, you know, or call the cops if you see her.’ Something like that. And he told me…and he, right there, when Jeffrey tell him that I was her daughter, he looked at me in my eyes”—Jackie started to breathe heavier—“and told me, ‘I’m sorry. That
was
your
mom?
’”

It was all in the way she said it. How Ned had said it: “That
was
your
mom?
” Not,
Carmen is your mother?
Or,
I have no idea where Carmen is.
Instead, Ned had used “was.” How telling that one past-tense verb had become to Jackie.

“Did you take that to mean anything when he said that?”

“Yeah…because he could have say—he could have say, ‘I’m sorry, that’s your mom.’ For me,” Jackie added, crying now, “he killed her already when he told me that.”

“That’s what you understood that to [mean]?”

She couldn’t answer. She was crying too hard. Too piercingly. Sniffling and heavily breathing in and out. “Can we get some tissues?” the judge asked, intervening. “All right. I’m going to excuse the jury for a few minutes.”

As the jury exited the room, the marshal said, “Jacqueline? Jacqueline?” She was losing it. The judge said, “Just stay right there.”

“No, let me go,” Jackie said.

“Have a seat,” the marshal said. “No, no, have a seat,” he said again as Jackie started to get up. “It’s OK. Have a seat.”

“All right,” Judge Espinosa said, “we’re going to take a recess.”

IV

When Ned handed over his mileage records to the police, investigators were certain he was trying to say,
Go ahead, try to catch me.
“When you looked at the day Carmen Rodriguez disappeared,” Jim Rovella commented later, “it’s nothing but scribble.” The writing itself was vastly different from the other days around that
one
date, September 21, 2001—which was the first red flag. “Our task was to take that mileage, which Ned had written out for a few years, and compare it against his appointment logs.”

They had an abundance of material from Ned’s hand that showed where he was and what he did for just about every day he had worked for American Frozen Foods. “The mileage, in addition, is very well done—except for that
one
date of September 21.” What was strange to Rovella was that Ned had kept all of his gas receipts; he hadn’t throw them out or burned them after he killed Carmen. Same as Bundy. (“Didn’t he learn anything from Bundy?” Rovella asked, chuckling at the thought.)

With those gas receipts, the state’s attorney’s office could figure out the gas mileage Ned’s car got, match it up against the mileage he traveled for an allotted time period, see if his record keeping was accurate for, say, a six-month period of time (nowhere near the dates Carmen went missing), and then compare those figures—which were Ned’s—to the day in question.

Thus, when Rovella reviewed all of the evidence Ned left behind, he came up with a rather shocking revelation for Ned’s car: during the week Carmen disappeared, Ned’s car got four miles to the gallon on one day and eighty-nine miles to the gallon on another.

“There was no consistency—but only for that time period.”

Smoking gun or fuzzy math?

All throughout the course of that year—minus that one week in September—Ned’s car got a consistent twenty-nine miles per gallon of gas. Which meant that his record keeping for the week Carmen disappeared had been doctored. Ned thought he had covered himself, but he had, in fact, calculated wrong. In his own hand, he wrote that on September 21, 2001, beginning at 3:43
P.M
., he made a 1-800 call from a pay phone. Then, minutes later, he stopped for fuel at a Mobil station and pumped 10.0006 gallons of fuel into his car. An hour later, he was at a client’s home giving his frozen-food pitch: a 27.7-mile trip from the fuel station to his appointment (per MapQuest). But Ned marked it as forty-three miles. A difference of more than fifteen miles.

He was then on to another appointment not too far away from the first; he logged eight miles.

The actual trip was five. A difference of three.

Then another call from another pay phone; then he logged his trip to Kenney’s in Hartford, which was 18.8 miles from his final appointment of the day, and logged his trip back home to Berlin.

For the entire trip—from his final appointment to Kenney’s to home—Ned logged forty-one miles, but the actual distance was 34.1. A difference of nearly seven miles.

According to Ned’s figures, his total for the day was ninety-two. The actual distance, however, was sixty-seven. Ned was building an alibi for himself.

Mile by mile.

Why? Because he needed to make room for a trip to Hopkinton, Rhode Island, Zagaja showed with charts and graphs and through testimony. The plan was always to dump the body out of state, Zagaja suggested. That’s the one thing Ned had learned from Bundy: dump the body in another jurisdiction because it is almost impossible—if you do it properly—for authorities to track it back to its original location.

I

Jackie composed herself, collected her thoughts, and was able to continue. Zagaja asked her a few more questions and then handed his witness over to O’Brien, who proceeded to do the only thing he could: drag out the statements Jackie had given to police and begin to peck away, hoping to catch her on dates, times, names, or certain situations that conflicted with her direct testimony.

But none did.

Jackie had forgotten a few things, but her story had stayed the same for the past four years. She had no reason to lie. She didn’t know that much—other than that one word: “was.” That
was
your mother?

O’Brien challenged the statement. “And isn’t it a fact that Mr…. that you explained who you were [to Ned], right? And then Mr. Snelgrove said, ‘I’m sorry. Listen, I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything, anything I can tell you.’ Isn’t
that
what he said?”

Jackie wasn’t about to be bullied. Not now. Not after what she had been through in life since her mother had been murdered. “He
said,
” Jackie spoke up, “‘I’m sorry. That
was
your
mom?
’”

“Did you, um…did you tell that to the police—”

“Yeah.”

“The next day?”

“Yeah.”

After a few more questions, Jackie was excused.

II

On the morning of January 12, Ned stood outside the courtroom in the inmate holding area. Several marshals surrounded him. He was dressed in a state-issued pumpkin-orange jumpsuit. His legs were shackled at the ankles. His hands chained to his waist. He was livid. The jury wasn’t going to be in the courtroom today. When the subject of those letters Ned had written to George Recck—and, more to the point of the hearing, the eleven-page sentencing letter Ned had written to the judge in New Jersey back in 1988—came up, O’Brien and Ned argued relevancy. Of course, allowing the letters into trial would alert the jury to Ned’s prior crimes and show intent. A pattern. They spoke of what Ned wanted to do upon his release. But that wasn’t what made Ned so mad. He wouldn’t show himself to the judge until he could change, he said. He didn’t want to present himself in court in prison attire. He thought it made him look guilty.

When the judge asked where Ned was, O’Brien said, “Your Honor, apparently Mr. Snelgrove wants to change into the clothing that he’s been wearing.” Sport jacket, button-down shirt, necktie, slacks. The salesman’s uniform.

“He doesn’t have to, there’s no jury here.”

“I know that. But his position is that he would like to. So if the court would accommodate him.”

The judge was fed up with Ned, his accusations, demands, and outbursts. This was just one more way for Ned to try and control the proceedings. “We’re going to start,” Espinosa said. “
What
is the difference?”

“I guess there’s a feeling of because he’s in a prison uniform that the judge may be swayed by that. Some—I—there’s some element of, perhaps, truth to that.”

“Well, this court won’t be swayed. I’ve seen hundreds of defendants in prison uniforms.” A few laughs rang out.

“But that’s his position, Your Honor…”

“Well, fine.”

“…that’s all I’m doing is reporting it.”

The judge paused. Leaned forward. Paused again. “OK. Denied.” Gavel.

Bring him in.

III

Zagaja addressed the judge first, explaining his position regarding the letters and how important they were to proving Ned’s motive, saying at one point, “It’s the state’s opinion that there is no better substitute to indicate the defendant’s intent than the sentencing letter.” That eleven-page manifesto Ned had penned to the judge. “It describes what he wanted to do upon attacking and killing Karen Osmun,” Zagaja explained, “and what he wanted to do when he strangled and stabbed Mary Ellen Renard. Often-times we are presented in a somewhat routine or normal situation where the state moves to present prior crimes to prove intent or motive…. Rather than having the need for an inference, the sentencing letter lays out, in plain terms, what the defendant’s
intent
was, what his motive was…. He describes, in detail, the engaging in the strangling process—how, by strangling, he had great difficulty in causing the death of both individuals, describing how it’s not an easy task to do with your bare hands.” For Zagaja, that letter proved Ned had
learned
his lesson in strangulation and went on to other sure means of killing.

As Zagaja read excerpts of the letters into the record, those in the courtroom sat in utter silence—shock and awe, actually—as Ned’s pen described, in graphic detail, how he strangled Karen and attempted to kill Mary Ellen by strangulation, and because killing a woman with his bare hands wasn’t so easy, he was forced, instead, to stab both women.

The judge wasn’t entirely convinced, however. “So you want to,” she asked Zagaja, “you want to, like, virtually, try those other two cases?”

O’Brien and Ned brightened up.

“I don’t want to
try
the cases. In fact, I believe they become somewhat nonissues because he admits to all the conduct in the sentencing letter. Let me, then, point out specifically what I wish to offer—Mary Ellen Renard coming in, really, just going through her deposition, describing how she met the defendant…going home, and describing the incident that took place with her being strangled by him, the actual strangulation, her passing out, being carried to a bed, finding, at that point, when she regained consciousness, that her top was removed and that she had been stabbed…. She’s not going to testify about the other components of the investigation. As far as Karen Osmun’s homicide, what I’m most interested in getting out before the jury is the similarly situated position of Ms. Osmun.”

Ned sat in his state-issued jumper, while Zagaja, a man Ned loathed more than any other human being at the present moment, kept pushing his head farther and farther underwater—and Ned wasn’t able to do anything to stop him. There wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t realize what a brutal, evil, woman-hating man Ned was—a man without so much as an ounce of compassion for human life. No conscience whatsoever.

Zagaja argued his case for including the letters, while the judge peppered him with questions. Zagaja explained: “I would ask the court to consider the sentencing letter and consider what the defendant wishes to do, what his pleasure is when he engages in this conduct—and nowhere does his conduct involve having sex or sexual intercourse with his victim. This is where, in the state’s opinion, the situation of Carmen Rodriguez falls in line with the two previous incidents. There were certain analyses done on the vaginal smears and swabs of Ms. Rodriguez, with no semen being found…. In the state’s opinion, they represent a progression of conduct and that’s really where the defendant’s letters to George Recck come into play, and they’re the utmost relevance, the packaging of the body, the disposal of the body at a remote location.”

A collective gasp. For the first time, Ned’s previous crimes were aired in vivid practicality. If nothing else, Zagaja was able to get the stories out there for the public to hear.

Zagaja cited case after case where a similar ruling had been made. While he was at it, Zagaja asked if he could get the actual Styrofoam heads in, too. Previous discussion and testimony had been based on photos of the heads. Showing those actual props to the jury would be dramatic. “…The state would point, specifically, to the neck areas where a grid formation is actually drawn with an
X
in the center of the neck, which, in my opinion, is right at the Adam’s apple, a perfect space for accomplishing a strangulation. And I think these were actually practice tools for the defendant or tools for his own arousal in the event that a woman was not sought at that time.”

Ned turned red-faced. He pulled O’Brien close to him and whispered. Zagaja continued, “Also, Your Honor, although this has not been submitted yet, there was a disclaimer on one exhibit of various serial killers—”

The judge seemed confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Various serial killers being reported upon in the
Hartford Courant,
” Zagaja explained, “and the title of the whole story was ‘Why They Kill.’” It was research. A killer and his reading list. Zagaja wanted Ned’s reading choices made part of the trial, adding, “That was also found in the basement area near the defendant’s couch…. And there’s an additional article, ‘Changes Must Be Made to Control Sexual Offenders, Reduce Risk,’ found within that package of literature.”

“May I see that? Is there a date on this?”

Ned said something to O’Brien.

“What about the movie that you—” the judge started to say.

“Yes,” Zagaja said, unable to control his excitement, “…I would offer the movie
The Deliberate Stranger,
that of being a story about Ted Bundy. And the reason I’m offering it is because the specific movie is cited by the defendant as he speaks and criticizes or critiques himself and Mr. Bundy for his conduct and whatever, in his opinion, was done right and was done wrong…. And that’s how it impacted his comments relative to keeping receipts, as Mr. Bundy did, and that he would never do that….”

O’Brien argued that none of it had anything to do with the content of Ned’s character. It was a smoke screen. A railroad. A clever way to try Ned for his previous crimes. “Your Honor, I would submit that introducing what Mr. Zagaja would like to offer that we could all go home, at that point, because there would be no need for additional evidence. What it is, in effect, is a substitute for a
lack
of evidence. The introduction of this extremely inflammatory material as to what happened in the ’80s in my client’s life no doubt would prejudice, severely prejudice, the jury, and they would think, well, of course he must have done
this
crime. If he did that in the ’80s he must have—he must have done this….”

“Well,” said the judge, “if you say that, then doesn’t that mean that the probative value outweighs the prejudice?”

Zagaja liked what he was hearing. “Well,” O’Brien said, “in the sense that it’s a substitute for lack of evidence. There isn’t any evidence other than the fact that Mr. Snelgrove was last seen with Carmen Rodriguez. If that is the case, then every person that Mr. Snelgrove was seen with, given that alone, if that person is murdered, then there’s no need to have any evidence in the case.”