The Boston Stranglers (30 page)

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Authors: Susan Kelly

BOOK: The Boston Stranglers
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27
The Murder of Patricia Bissette, I
If the wintertime murder of Sophie Clark—young, attractive, black, and sharing an apartment with two friends—was a deviation from the pattern set in the summer of 1962, in which all of the strangling victims had been white, late middle-aged to elderly, and living alone, the slaying of Patricia Bissette just before the end of that year fell into neither category. It borrowed from both: The victim was young, she was white, and she was the sole occupant of her apartment on Park Drive. And there was a new dimension. Patricia's killer had not degraded her corpse. He had instead left her tucked in bed, almost as a mother would her child. Or a lover his mistress.
 
 
Patricia Bissette, twenty-three at the time of her death, was raised in Middlebury, Vermont, by her adoptive mother, Hazel, and her aunt, Ruby Rogers, who ran a gift shop on Main Street. She attended local schools and sang in the choir of the Middlebury Methodist Church. At the high school she was an editor of the student newspaper and of the senior class yearbook. She served as a delegate to the model United Nations assembly held one year at Plymouth State Teachers College in New Hampshire. She was a member of the school chorus and the glee club, and played basketball after school. She was said to be gifted in math, science, and physics, and to have a flair for foreign languages.
After graduation from high school, she attended the University of Vermont for one year, but dropped out in search of wider horizons. She followed her star to airline school in Missouri, and thereafter to New York to work in communications for American Airlines at Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport.
Her stay in New York was not altogether pleasant. She became engaged to a man who worked as a meteorologist at the airport. The engagement was a short one, and ended at Patricia's behest. She nevertheless continued to date the meteorologist even after their breakup; she felt sorry for him even though he was “a pest,” or so she confided to a friend. In late April of 1961 she was involved in an automobile accident in Queens that required brief hospital treatment. It was perhaps this last incident that sealed Patricia's disenchantment with New York. At any rate, she packed up and moved to Boston, a much smaller and ostensibly more manageable city.
In the late fall of 1961 she took a job as secretary and receptionist with an engineering firm on Commonwealth Avenue. For a while she shared an apartment on Newbury Street with another young woman. The July before her death, she moved into 515 Park Drive. The rent for her three-room first-floor apartment was normally $130; Patricia was allowed to pay only $75 in exchange for letting the building's owner, Ada Kotock, and maintenance man Harry Martin use it to conduct rental business.
“Very pleasant and punctual,” her coworkers described her. “A very friendly, very happy girl,” high school friends would recall, “a very thoughtful and intelligent girl.” “Very kind,” Harry Martin said. On January 18, 1963, Hazel Bissette, understandably pained and angered by other, less generous assessments of Patricia's character, would write to Boston Police Detective Lieutenant Edward Sherry: “It is hard for you to believe that she was—Sweet, trusting, gullible, high morals, never would hurt anyone, give her last penny to someone with a hard luck story.”
Dorothy Rancourt, who had worked with Patricia in New York, called her “a sucker for a sob story.”
Patricia was all of those things, and more. It was the
more
that killed her.
At 10:00 on Saturday morning, December 29, Patricia went to work for a while at Engineering Systems, Incorporated. Her boss, company vice-president Jules Rothman, lent her his car so she could do some shopping. At 1:30 that afternoon, he went to Patricia's apartment to retrieve the station wagon. He joined his secretary for a cup of coffee.
Sometime between 3:00 and 5:00
P.M.
, Patricia left her apartment with a sack of dirty clothes. She ran into Christian Van Olst, the janitor for her building and 509 Park Drive. He asked her where she was going. She told him she was going to do her laundry, and inquired whether all the machines in the basement of 509 were busy. Van Olst watched her walk down the alley between the two buildings and enter the basement of 509.
At about 5:30 or 5:45, Patricia was back in her own apartment. Two of her neighbors, Linda Ladinsky and Charlene Adelman, spoke with her briefly when they returned a toaster Linda had borrowed.
From that point on, Patricia's movements became a little more difficult to trace.
On Sunday morning, December 30, between 10:00 and 11:00, Harry Martin knocked on the door of Patricia's apartment. When he got no response, he unlocked the door. The apartment was dark, so he switched on the light in the entry hall. He used the telephone to call Ada Kotock and discuss with her some business concerning another apartment building in Allston. They talked for perhaps five minutes. Then Martin went into the kitchen, again turning on the light, to see if Patricia had left any mail there for him or Mrs. Kotock. He noticed that the bedroom door was open, and also that one of the beds was piled with boxes. He later claimed not to have seen any sign of Patricia herself.
That day a woman who lived at 500 Park Drive thought she heard screaming sometime between 3:00 and 4:00
P.M
. She thought nothing of it until the following day when she learned that Patricia had been found murdered at 515 Park Drive.
A waitress at the lunch counter of a local drugstore claimed that she'd seen Patricia having a snack at 4:30 on Sunday afternoon. She was accompanied by a dark-skinned man who spoke heavily accented English and whose manner toward the young woman was extremely possessive.
At about 7:30
A.M
. on Monday, December 31, Jules Rothman arrived at 515 Park Drive to pick up Patricia and drive her to work. He knocked at her door; she didn't answer. After a few moments, he left. When he got to his office, he called Patricia. Her telephone went unanswered. An hour or so passed with no word from the secretary who was usually so reliable. Rothman, now very worried, returned to the apartment. With the help of Christian Van Olst, he climbed a stepladder to a front window, removed a screen, raised the unlocked window, and entered Patricia's living room, knocking over the Christmas tree in the process. He found the young woman dead in her bed and called the police.
The autopsy, performed by Michael Luongo, resulted in these findings:
The body of the deceased lay flat in bed covered by bedding. About the neck was a ligature composed of several garments . . . The bedroom atmosphere was very cold. There was full rigor mortis. The body was clothed only in a blue and red print housecoat which was pushed up above the breasts together with an imitation leather [leopard?] skin pajama top which was also pushed up about the breasts. The right hand and wrist lay compressed under the right buttock ... In the mouth is a moderate amount of blood-tinged mucus and froth. Similar material is present in the nose . . . In the anterior surface of the right leg over the shin is a linear area of brownish-black soiling without injury, measuring six inches in length . . . There is no injury of the external genitalia. There is a moderate amount of mucoid secretion within the vagina. Several smears of this material [were] made and found to be loaded with spermatozoa ... The ligature, which tightly encircles the neck, is composed of four articles . . . 1) white blouse, knotted 3x anteriorly, 2) single stocking, 3) 2 nylon stockings.
Although there was no injury to Patricia's vagina, there was a slight one to her rectum. She was at least one month pregnant.
One thing that became clear almost immediately on the last day of 1962 was that fifty-three-year-old Jules Rothman, married and the father of two grown sons, and twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bissette had been something considerably more intimate than employer and employee. The Boston cop who interrogated Rothman got right to the point:
Q: How long have you been seeing her socially?
A: Probably about, we were good friends, let's see, for about March, since January she was my secretary.
Q: How long has she been employed?
A: A year and four months.
Q: How long have you been lovers?
A: We weren't lovers, exactly, we were, let's see, I would say January or February of this year.
Q: Almost from the beginning?
A: Yes.
A: Have you stayed overnight at Newbury Street or on Park Drive with her?
A: No.
Q: You visited many times at her apartment?
A: Just when she asked me to come over. She trusts people.
Q: Do you know of any other man having intercourse with her?
A: No.
Q: How often did you go to her apartment?
A: Maybe once a week or so.
Q: Do you personally know any other fellows that were going with her or having intercourse with her?
A: We never discussed it but there was a John, he is from Vermont but he is away for the weekend. I met him at the party. We were invited to a Christmas party and she told me about him and she may have had others but we never talked about people.
The detective asked Rothman if Patricia had dated anyone else at Engineering Systems.
A: She is friendly with Sheldon Kurtzer. She tells me she was out with him but never overnight.
Once somebody took her home at 3
A.M
., a salesman, and once she was out with Jim.
Q: What is his last name?
A: I don't know his last name. This John is the one she has been going out with lately. She has been going out to Route One, in Dedham.
The detective asked about Patricia's attitude toward sex.
Q: Was she an easy girl to have intercourse with?
A: Yes, that is the trouble with her.
Q: Was she a pushover?
A: Yes, she was. She came from New York and she must have had some love affair. It wasn't till she went to this apartment. [Rothman presumably was referring here to the onset of his involvement with Patricia.]
Q: In other words, she didn't say no?
A: No, not to me.
The detective raised the issue of Patricia's pregnancy.
Q: You knew there was something wrong with her?
A: She told me she missed her period.
Q: When did she tell you this?
A: About a month ago.
Q: And she told you you were responsible?
A: No, she didn't say that.
Q: What did you do about it?
A: I got in touch with a friend of mine.
Q: What is his name?
A: John Price, who had a similar situation once and I saw him Friday night.
Q: What Friday night?
A: This Friday night.
Q: That was December 28th?
A: Yes.
Q: What time did you see him Friday night?
A: I had an appointment at the Smith House with him.
Q: What is his name?
A: John Price.
Q: Where does he live?
A: Peabody.
Q: What is his address?
A: I got his card here.
Q: “John Price, Camden Associates, 8 Irving Street, Salem.” What conversation did you have with him?
A: There were two phone calls and I didn't disclose Pat's name or anything. He had a problem about a year and a half ago and he sort of confided in me, somebody got in trouble and I said to John, “I know somebody who is in trouble like that.” And I said, “John, I think you can help this party out.” And he told me what he would do if he had to do it over again.
Rothman told the detective that Price had given him some information about a private hospital or convent in Buffalo, New York, that took in pregnant unmarried women, cared for them throughout the gestation period and delivery, and then arranged for the infant to be adopted.
Q: What did [Patricia] say [about this proposal]?
A: She would disappear to Buffalo and she would write a book.
Q: Did it bother you very much that Patricia had been made pregnant by you?
A: Yes, I don't know if it was by me.
Q: Did you tell your wife?
A: No.
Q: Did you tell your sons?
A: No.
Q: You must have told somebody, did you tell your [business] partner?
A: No.
John Price was the only person who was aware of the situation, Rothman claimed. Patricia had wanted it kept “confident.”
Rothman told the detective that he had gone to Patricia's apartment that Friday evening and passed on the information Price had given him. He left there, he said, around 10:00.
The detective began to play hardball.
Q: [Price] had an abortion performed.
A: Yes.
Q: And you wanted the name of the abortionist.
A: No, I wanted advice, I wanted to help [Patricia] out.
Q: Did you discuss abortion with him, about his advice on having an abortion performed?
A: I asked him what he would do if he had a girl who was single, that was in that kind of trouble, I didn't say it was me because I wasn't sure. And he said if he had to do it again, he has a place out in Buffalo, New York, and they would take care of this girl and would adopt the child.
As Rothman grew more nervous, he grew more evasive and less coherent.
Q: Did you ask him if he knew where you could have an abortion performed on a girl?
A: I don't think I put it that way, maybe you can put it that way. I said, “A girl is in trouble, what would you do?” I didn't ask him about an abortion, if he knew a doctor.
Q: Did you ask him if he knew a doctor?
A: That's right, true, I would say that was the same thing. And he had told me that he knew a doctor but he told me that the problem that he was involved in and he had done in this way. And I said, “What is it?” And he had to go to his place of business and come back and he called up a place in Buffalo and talk [sic] to a sister and he wrote it down on a piece of paper.
Q: Where is that paper?
A: Patricia has it. I gave it to her Friday night.
Q: What I am getting at now is you asked him if he knew a doctor who would perform an abortion?
A: I asked him, I told him about the trouble, I didn't say it that way, I guess it meant the same thing. I didn't ask him that way, I asked him what he would do.
Q: Did you ask him if he knew a doctor?
A: I never asked him that question. He called up a place in Buffalo and he wrote it down on a piece of paper and if the girl went there for two months she would be incognito and the child would be adopted.

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