Obsession (21 page)

Just four days later, a seventeen-year-old girl from the nearby community of Stamford came forward with a claim that she had been assaulted. She provided details strikingly similar to the first case: she was attacked while being driven home from a party. Kelly was charged with both crimes and was scheduled to appear in court on February 18, 1987. But he was
a no-show, marking the beginning of eight years on the run.

From what authorities were able to piece together, though, he led a much more comfortable existence than the average international fugitive. In fact, he seemed to have adjusted nicely to a lifestyle of skiing, sailing, and other sports and even set up housekeeping in Sweden with a pretty, blond girlfriend.

By early 1995, however, with the authorities getting closer and reportedly threatening to arrest his parents if he did not turn himself in, and with his passport about to expire, he turned himself in in Switzerland. From there he was extradited to face the charges in Connecticut. He returned in May to what looked like a hero’s welcome. His parents’ house was decorated with balloons, and he greeted the flock of reporters waiting for him with smiles and waves, commenting, “I’m happy to be back.” As he awaited trial, he spent his time riding his mountain bike around town, going out first with his Swedish girlfriend (rumored to be his fiancée), then, after she left, with a local woman, Amy Molitor, who’d been his girlfriend in high school. It was in her Jeep that the first alleged assault took place. All in all, his life back home was pretty normal, but for the electronic monitor worn around his right ankle to make sure he didn’t violate the 9
P.M
. to 6
A.M
. curfew the court had imposed.

The trial on the first charge took place later that year, and it was ugly. For his defense, Kelly and his parents enlisted the help of Thomas P. Puccio, a high-profile attorney who first entered the public spotlight as the federal prosecutor who won convictions against several congressmen in the Abscam scandal (many remember the videotapes showing corrupt politicians pocketing money). His notoriety grew as he switched sides and successfully defended Claus von Bulow, acquitted of attempting to murder his socialite wife.
With a reputation as someone who hated to lose, Puccio was quoted in a December 1996 profile in the
New York Times
as saying, “There’s the real world and the world of the courtroom. What matters is: What is the government going to prove? Not: What actually happened?” In connection with the Kelly case, he stated, “This is going to be a direct attack on her credibility.” That’s what we’re up against, folks.

Puccio also told a reporter he felt a special bond with Kelly’s parents because his own son had died in an automobile accident while he had been teaching the young man how to drive. Thus, he could clearly empathize with the fear of losing a son. I wonder if he could also empathize with the fear of having a daughter raped and brutalized.

Back to the subject of credibility, Kelly’s explanation for his flight, made to ABC News upon his return to the States, was simply, “I was scared. I ran.”

As promised, Thomas Puccio worked the accuser, attacking her credibility of ten years ago and criticizing her later demeanor in court. He complained about the “dressed to kill” attire and hairstyles of the victim and her family members, which I find interesting coming from a man who certainly made sure his client showed up well-dressed every day with his concerned family and then fiancée in tow. Consider, too, that while Alex Kelly was off windsurfing and skiing and bumming through Europe, his victim grew up, earned a college degree, married, and got a job as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company. Certainly, dressing well and fixing her hair was more in keeping with her career and lifestyle than Kelly’s at the time of the trial.

I don’t want to comment on this particular trial because I wasn’t in the courtroom. But I have been present at enough rape trials to say in general that these
kinds of defense techniques make me sick. And I’m not the only one.

“Very often during deliberations,” Linda Fairstein comments, “you’re all just hanging out together. Nobody else is there but your team and their team, and so you talk. And the usual overture is my opponent coming over and saying, ‘Gee, you know, I was really sorry to do that to her but …’

“And that’s usually the first point at which I lose it. If I know that it’s been a disingenuous and fabricated defense, I will flat out say—sometimes with foul language and sometimes more politely—that I simply don’t accept the apology, don’t believe it, and don’t respect it. I have sat there for two hours asking, ‘How do you do that to another human being who has already been victimized?’ To this day, I have not had a satisfactory response from anybody who’s ever said anything other than, ‘He’s entitled to a good defense.’ That still, to me, doesn’t mean a
dishonest
defense. And I don’t understand on a human level how you do that in a public forum to another human being.”

Alex Kelly’s victim had been a sixteen-year-old virgin at the time of the assault, hadn’t known him before that night, but needed a ride. Before the basketball game and at the party afterward, kids had been playing “quarters,” a drinking game involving pitching quarters into glasses of beer. Puccio tried to use this to his client’s advantage, asserting that the victim might have been drunk, but prosecutor Bruce Hudock brought in seven witnesses to testify that she was not intoxicated. The defense also tried arguing that the sex had been consensual. In the end, after five days of deliberation, the jury of six (split evenly between male and female jurors) deadlocked, with four ready to convict and two holdouts, resulting in a hung jury. Not willing to give up, Hudock boldly tried the case again the next summer before moving on to the second
case against Kelly. This time, Hudock won a conviction after eight and a half hours of deliberation. Kelly was sentenced to the maximum of twenty years, suspended after sixteen served, and was fined $10,000. At the time of this writing, the trial on the second rape charge had not yet begun.

Immediately after his disappearance, people following the well-publicized case tried to interpret his flight. Was this a sure sign of guilt or was he truly a frightened teenager—high school student and champion wrestler—terrified of getting in trouble for something he didn’t do? As in the Chambers case, Alex Kelly appeared to be a “preppie” kid from a well-off family. How—and why—could he be responsible for something as horrible as rape?

In fact, the two offenders had much in common. Like Chambers, Kelly’s background was not quite as pristine as it seemed. Although he grew up in a wealthy community, his family didn’t truly fit in: his father was a plumber and his mother worked as a travel agent. They did well with real estate investments but did not enjoy the standard of living of many in Darien, leaving Kelly trying to keep up in wealthy circles. Also like Chambers, and like many of the rapists I’ve described, Kelly committed a series of other lesser crimes before and after the rape. As early as 1983, he was burglarizing homes in his neighborhood with friends. Following an arrest in May of 1984, he was charged with nine counts of burglary and turned in his accomplices. Sentenced to thirty-five months, he ended up serving just sixty-eight days in the Bridge-port Correctional Facility before later returning to high school, ostensibly rehabilitated. The next year, back in school and reportedly doing well, Kelly was arrested again, for a fight after a hockey game. Then came the rape accusations in 1986.

Just as Kelly’s pattern of criminal behavior started
early, there was a pattern of denial or ignored accountability. What I find particularly appalling is that in this case rather than intervene to try to alter their son’s behavior, when Kelly’s parents learned of trouble, their response was to bail him out. Even if they believed him innocent, how could they in good conscience stand by as he fled the country rather than face the charges? And even if they did not know about his intentions or help him flee, photos have been published of Kelly, his Swedish girlfriend, and his father on vacation in Europe, and of his parents visiting the girlfriend’s parents in their home.

Some in the Darien community forgive the Kellys, feeling sorry for the hardworking parents who have—in their eyes—tried to do the best for their family. Besides, they’ve already lost one son. In 1991, Alex’s older brother, Chris, died of a drug overdose. I can feel sympathy for their loss but find rather incredible Joe Kelly’s assertion that his son “was one brave kid to do what he did—right or wrong.” When criticized that he and his wife possibly aided their son’s escape, warning him in Sweden that authorities were getting close, Joe challenged one accuser to say he’d turn his own son in, given the same set of circumstances.

In an incident in the summer of 1996 Kelly—wearing his electronic monitor—caused a scene in a local bar. After insisting to some women that he hadn’t committed rape ten years earlier, he harassed them with obscene words and gestures until police were called. According to that police report, “Kelly was thoroughly uncooperative and appeared to be alcohol-impaired.”

And in September of that year—while presumably on his best behavior prior to trial—Kelly got himself into more trouble with the law. Driving home with girlfriend Amy Molitor one night, trying to make curfew, he was clocked at exceeding the speed limit in a 30 mph zone by 25 mph. When police tried to stop
him, he reportedly sped off, wrecking Molitor’s sports car and leaving her injured at the scene. When police found him at home, he denied any involvement in the accident but turned himself in a couple of days later when police issued a warrant for his arrest. He pleaded not guilty to charges of evading responsibility in a serious accident, interfering with an officer, and speeding. According to the police report, officers “detected a strong odor of alcoholic beverage on Kelly’s breath.” The police officer also noted that Kelly—whose girlfriend was left bleeding, with broken ribs, upside down in a flipped car—appeared unmoved as he denied knowledge of the accident.

If you think back to my earlier description of the type of rapists who can be rehabilitated, a key factor was whether they took responsibility for their actions and were genuinely remorseful. Following his conviction in connection with the first rape charge, as he was led off in handcuffs, sobbing, Kelly cried out, “I’m not guilty! I’m not guilty! I’m not guilty!” He looked over to the jury and pleaded, “God, I didn’t do this. Why are you doing this to me?” It sounds a lot like Robert Chambers playing the victim in Jennifer Levin’s murder, and it also sounds like Ronnie Shelton blaming his victim or her husband for his sexual assault.

At Kelly’s sentencing, defense attorney Puccio argued for leniency, painting a picture of Kelly’s life as “eight years of fear, deprivation of a normal life.” Excuse me? Somehow this doesn’t square with Kelly’s own words in letters he sent his parents from Europe, stating, “I would like to live like this forever.” It wasn’t until his sentencing that Kelly said he was sorry for what happened, but even then he couched it in terms that were comfortable to him, terms that made it sound as if it were a misunderstanding, rather than a brutal rape: “I never meant to hurt her …. I realize
now that I did hurt her. I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do to take the pain away from her.”

The woman who brought the case against him sounded much more responsible and courageous as she came forward for the first time in public following the conviction. Adrienne Bak Ortolano said all that she’d gone through over the past decade and more, seeking justice, would be worth it if her case helped other women come forward: “The most important thing to me is that people know that I’m not ashamed of who I am. I am a rape survivor. I don’t have anything to hide.” Ms. Ortolano is the real hero of his entire tragic episode, and all of us in law enforcement ought to be proud of her and grateful for her resolute bravery.

The other hero, of course, is the prosecution team that worked so diligently to get a guy like Alex Kelly off the street. There’s an emotional toll to this kind of work, too, and I have nothing but admiration for people like Linda Fairstein who can fight the good fight year in and year out. And she’s had many cases to try hi the years since she sought justice for Jennifer Levin.

But after all the work and all the emotional commitment, after all of the involvement with Jennifer’s family and friends, what does Fairstein take away from that tragic case?

“The vision for me is Jennifer being after Robert that night, leaving the bar with him at four or four-thirty in the morning, walking with him from Second Avenue, to Third … Lex … Park … Madison … Fifth. And what I keep wanting as I relive it is getting to the corner of Eighty-sixth and Fifth and putting her in a taxi and getting her safely home. ‘Don’t go into the park with him!’ I hear myself saying.

“It’s the classic situation. And by this I don’t mean I’m blaming the victim, which was done more than
enough by the defense. But she was playing with fire. He was so intoxicated and angry that night—I don’t know to what extent she knew that—but under any circumstances, I couldn’t imagine what had transpired between them being a pleasant, loving experience.”

There must have been so many warning signs that night.

“For me, despite the fact that we made clear it was a murder in the context of consensual sex, the Chambers case is very much part of the acquaintance-rape problem. The fact that seventy percent or more of this kind of crime happens between individuals who know each other surprises a lot of people. The lesson is how to make judgments about the people you think you know. Because mistakes in judgment that we make can lead to being victimized—fatally, in some cases.”

Alex Kelly’s victims, too, made a simple judgment call—out of naÏveté, driven by the need to get home so they wouldn’t get in trouble with their parents—that turned out to be the wrong call. They figured, as many of us do, that someone invited to a party by our friends, or even our friends’ friends, must be okay. It happens to older, more experienced, and less trusting people every day: the forty-six-year-old woman whose car breaks down and a familiar face from the neighborhood offers her a ride; the fifty-eight-year-old who lets the deliveryman in to use the phone.