I'll Be Watching You (36 page)

I

Ned and I wrote to each other for about eight months. In some of those letters, Ned goes into great detail while explaining how the state failed to produce the appropriate amount of
evidence
to convict him. To say that Ned is obsessive-compulsive does not truly describe him accurately. One day, he sent me a package. It contained trial transcripts, autopsy reports, police reports, and other documents associated with his case. In between each page of official documentation was a note from Ned to me explaining why certain pieces of evidence submitted during trial were inaccurate, fabricated, or irrelevant. Ned had separated each set of the documents with a vanilla card—with more exposition and instruction—
look here, read this, you won’t believe this
—on the cards. He was certain the Connecticut Department of Corrections was
going to make sure,
he wrote,
you don’t get my story told.
The key to this line is, “my story.”

I had explained to Ned that I wanted to understand his
side
of the Rodriguez matter. Fair and balanced, I promised, stealing that overused phrase.

He told me I had a
blockbuster bestseller
on my hands
if
I was to
expose the dishonest prosecutor [David Zagaja], the flagrantly biased judge [Carmen Espinosa], and the many witness statements that [didn’t] make sense when held up to the light….
Everyone, he seemed to suggest, was lying, all brought together by an overzealous, power-hungry prosecutor who had gathered them all together to frame Ned and punish him for his previous crimes in New Jersey. He was certain of it.

In his letters to me, Ned carries on and on about witness statements and lies and the cover-up afterward. He talks about how the state had it in for him from the beginning of his trial, solely because of his prior crimes. He had gotten out of prison early, he seethed many times, and they were making him now pay for that early release. In a letter dated June 13, 2007, Ned talked about the medical examiner’s report from Rhode Island and how it failed to explain the many different ways in which Carmen
could have
been murdered. Ned was upset with the fact that his lawyer failed to ask the medical examiner important questions regarding how Carmen
could have
been murdered. According to his letter, Ned is somehow under the impression that medical examiners in the real world are like Cyril Wecht or Michael Baden and each case is a cable news program panel discussion. He believes that the medical examiner, in his or her report, should speculate and talk about the different ways a victim
could have
been killed—if, for example, the manner of death isn’t obvious (as in Carmen’s case). What’s important about this letter is the various ways in which Ned describes to me
how
Carmen could have been murdered. In and of themselves, some of Ned’s answers—beyond the norm—are chilling. I had to ask myself:
Is he telling me how he murdered this woman? Is he telling me
how
he killed other females several investigators and profilers I have spoken to claimed he has?

Ned’s list:

Electrocution


Drowning


Forced starvation as a result of being held captive


Forced dehydration as a result of being held captive


Hard blow to the temple (no skull damage)


Heart attack brought on by external traumatic event


Hard blow to the chest


Suffocation with pillow

If I thought this was strange, his next letter was even more shocking.

I

When Donald O’Brien returned to his oral argument in front of Judge Espinosa regarding allowing those letters and the Bundy movie, and the Styrofoam heads and the kitchen sink that Zagaja wanted to present to the jury, he said, rather somberly, “In terms of similarities between the crimes, Your Honor, Karen Osmun was the former girlfriend of Mr. Snelgrove. Ms. Renard he met that night at a bar. And Carmen Rodriguez he knew from Kenney’s, as he knew other women from Kenney’s.”

And that was Zagaja’s point exactly: Ned had, in fact, honed his craft. He had gotten to
know
his victim. In choosing Carmen, in getting to
know
her personally, Ned thought he was choosing the
perfect
victim. The victim no one would miss. The victim Bundy had taught him to choose. But, of course, Ned had no idea members of Carmen’s family would be combing the streets that night, looking for her.

“In Karen Osmun’s case,” O’Brien argued, “he followed her home. [In] Renard’s case, he followed
her
home, and, in this instance, Carmen Rodriguez, she
asked
for a ride.”

In truth, that was what
Ned
had claimed. No one knew for certain if Carmen had asked Ned for a ride, or if Ned forced her into his car. He had been seen leaving the bar with Carmen. Beyond that, anything was possible. He’d allegedly tried to grab Christina Mallon outside Kenney’s weeks before Carmen disappeared. Who’s to say Ned didn’t convince Carmen to walk outside with him and when (and if) she refused to get into his car, he forced her.

“…The medical examiner kind of left it open that you can’t rule out various factors,” O’Brien argued. “You can’t rule out strangling, it could have been strangling and stabbing. But you also can’t rule out a number of other factors, electrocution being one, suffocation, those factors, any other causes of death….” O’Brien then began to lay out how far apart each murder was, trying to explain that there was no pattern. “In terms of remoteness, Your Honor, this occurred—’83 was the killing of Osmun, I believe, ’87 was the attempted murder of Renard. So we’re…we’re twenty-two years post the killing of Osmun, and, at the current time we are, we’re twenty years post, let me see, eighteen, eighteen years post on Osmun and Renard—”

Sitting, shaking his head, watching his attorney struggle to do simple addition, Ned couldn’t take it. He blurted out: “Eighteen.”
Eighteen years,
for crying out loud.

II

Connecticut case law had a long history regarding the admissibility of prior misconduct evidence. It was “well established,” Judge Espinosa explained as she began to hand down her decision on the morning of January 13. “All right,” she said pleasantly, confidently, “the court has reviewed the arguments of counsel, the relevant case law…. The court rules as follows…. Evidence of prior acts of misconduct, because of its prejudicial nature, is
inadmissible
to show that the defendant is guilty of a subsequent crime. However, evidence of acts of misconduct are
admissible
for the purpose of proving many things—such as, intent, identity, motive, a common scheme, or a system of criminal activity.” And this was Zagaja’s main point: Ned had provided a blueprint for future behavior that was relevant to not only the murder of Carmen Rodriguez, but how he had chosen Carmen as his victim. “To be admissible,” Espinosa continued, “such evidence must also be relevant and material.” She explained that the eleven-page letter written by Ned “is relevant and material to the issues of intent, motive, and knowledge. It is relevant to prove what the defendant’s intent was on September 21, 2001, when he left Kenney’s restaurant with Carmen Rodriguez. It is also relevant to the issue of the defendant’s motive for killing Carmen Rodriguez that night. The defendant admits, in this letter, that he has a longtime compulsion to kill women for sexual gratification by rendering women helpless and posing their bodies in seductive poses. He admits getting pleasure and sexual arousal when he kills rather than by having sex with his victims.” Ned shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing as Espinosa continued, saying, “Accordingly, the defendant’s letters…the court finds that evidence of these two prior acts of misconduct are relevant and material to the issues of intent, motive, common scheme, and identity. All three women were friendly with the defendant and had a speaking relationship with him, they all interacted with him socially.” But, “…at this time, the court will
not
allow the testimony of Mary Ellen Renard. The court finds that the prejudicial effect of her live testimony, at this time, would outweigh its probative value…. The letters to George Recck. The court finds that the letters…are relevant to the issues of establishing a course of criminal activity culminating in the murder of Carmen Rodriguez, as well as to the issues of common scheme, intent, and motive.”

Zagaja wanted to pump his fist in the air. He wanted to stand up and say thank you. Yell and scream. But, of course, he sat and took it all in. He hadn’t won yet.

On the other hand, Ned looked as though he had been told he had terminal cancer.

“The court further finds…that these letters to George Recck describe the defendant’s compulsion to kill and were consistent with the statements to the sentencing judge. They are relevant to show the development and progression of his compulsion to kill, how he learned from his mistakes, how he learned from Ted Bundy’s mistakes, all of which culminated in the murder of Carmen Rodriguez….”

As for the movie
The Deliberate Stranger,
the judge said she had watched the movie the previous night. She believed—and rightly so—that the “prejudice of showing it to the jury outweighs its probative value.”

Nonetheless, Zagaja could not have asked for a better judgment.

Ned’s hatred for the process grew as he sat and boiled. He believed without a doubt that the judge was now entirely against him. He kept quiet, but promised himself that before the trial was over, there would come a time when the judge truly got an earful. It was just a matter of when the proper time for such an outburst would present itself.

I

The admission of the letters essentially sealed Ned’s fate: he was finished. He knew it. O’Brien knew it. And Zagaja knew it. No matter what else the state had, the jury would see, in Ned’s own words, the callous sociopath and remorseless killer he had been in the past. They
would
judge him on his previous acts—exactly what he was afraid of. He had killed before and had promised to kill again.

Guilty!

II

And so David Zagaja began his parade of witnesses to talk about the letters and Ned’s previous crimes—and the noose, as each witness stood, raised his or her hand, and testified, got tighter and tighter around Ned’s neck. No matter what he said or what he did now, he was a convicted murderer. He couldn’t escape his past. His past, in effect, had become his future. His present.

Hartford PD detective Timothy Shaw testified how he logged all of the evidence—there wasn’t much—from Ned’s car. What was significant about Ned’s car was not what investigators found, but what they
didn’t
find. DNA is ironclad science, some might contend. Finding DNA or trace evidence—a cigarette butt, hair, saliva, anything that can tie or trace back to a person being in one place at some point—inside a car is generally a way for a prosecutor to say,
She was in his car. We have the DNA to prove it.
What does one do, however, when one finds nothing? Not once piece of trace evidence to prove Carmen Rodriguez was in Ned’s car. Well, for starters, he points out the most important fact gleaned from such a find: Ned admitted Carmen had taken a ride with him. With her nest of long and flowing hair, it would almost be impossible for her
not
to have left one hair in Ned’s car. From Zagaja’s perspective, this meant that Ned had swept that car clean. Totally wiped it down from bumper to bumper. “There will be much said about the lack of forensic evidence,” Zagaja explained to jurors, “the lack of scientific evidence. And in a very eerie sense, we have to give Ned credit for that…. It’s not for a lack of testing or a lack of want or a lack of analysis…. Based on the state of decomposition of the body, the late time in its detection, this is the
evolution
of a killer. And we, unfortunately, have to give him credit for that. It’s a sick statement, because I don’t mean ‘credit’ in the sense of ‘you did a good job.’”

III

CSP detective Thomas Murray testified about items the CSP found when they served a search warrant on the Snelgrove property. Addressing the jury under Zagaja’s questioning, Murray said he and his colleagues seized maps. Several staple guns. Ropes. Notebooks of Ned’s mileage. Gas receipts. And inside the Snelgrove garage were several coils of rope hanging from several hooks, all of which were accounted for—except one.

Next, Maria Warner, a scientist for the State of Connecticut, Department of Public Safety, Forensic Science Laboratory, was asked about a hair found on one of the staplers in Ned’s basement bedroom. Could it be Carmen’s? “And on any of the staplers submitted,” Zagaja said, “were you able to identify anything attributable to any person?”

“Yes.”

“And what was that?”

“On one of the staplers…there was…a human Caucasian pubic hair.”

“And by that point, had you received known samples from Edwin Snelgrove and Carmen Rodriguez?”

“Yes.”

“And did you engage in a comparison of those items?”

“Yes. I did a microscopic comparison [and] they were dissimilar to Carmen Rodriguez, and the hair was similar to that sample sent in from Edwin Snelgrove.” In other words, one of Ned’s pubic hairs was found on his stapler. No one ventured to ask why.

Filling up the rest of the day were more cops and more testimony describing searches and warrants and seizures. And then it was on to the next day, when Warner returned briefly to explain a very important fact for Zagaja: there had been no seminal fluid found on or near Carmen Rodriguez. Sexual intercourse or rape were, apparently, not part of the motivation behind Carmen’s murder.