The Man in the Monster (20 page)

1987

It took almost three years for Michael Ross's first trial to commence. In that time, Michael had been examined and reexamined by all five expert psychiatric witnesses on both sides in preparation for their evaluations and testimony. The first phase of the trial dealt with guilt. Michael did not deny that he had committed the crimes, so the defense psychiatric witnesses had to convince the jury that Michael's sexual sadism made it impossible for him to control his compulsive need to rape and kill. If they succeeded, Michael would be found not guilty because of mental disease or defect. Even if the jury were not convinced, the psychiatrists would have a second chance during the penalty phase to convince jurors that Michael's sexual sadism was real. If jurors found there was mitigation because of the mental illness, he would not be eligible for the death penalty. The prosecution had to convince them that his mental illness was a ruse and that he killed to cover up his rapes. During the penalty phase, they also had to prove aggravation—that his crimes were cruel and heinous.

The defense psychiatrists were Michael's most frequent visitors at the jail, and even though the purpose of their visits was evaluation rather than therapy, Michael found the sessions helpful. His father and sisters had come at first, but after a while, only his father visited. He
made sure that his mother was not on his visitor's list and was adamant that he have no contact with her. “She sent a card once in a while, pretending to be the dutiful mother, but I just threw them away, sometimes without even opening them.”

Before the trial began, the defense raised the issue of where Leslie Shelley and April Brunais had been murdered. In 1986, there was a closed hearing held in response to a defense motion to dismiss those charges because the murders had been committed in the Arcadia woods of Rhode Island, not Connecticut. This was extremely important because Rhode Island did not have a death penalty and because the Leslie Shelley murder was the one that Michael had told psychiatrist Howard Zonana “would hang me” during his psychological evaluation in 1985. Did he kill Leslie because of his sexual sadism or did he kill her to cover up his rape and murder of her friend April Brunais? Even the doctors could not answer that question. If committing a rape and murder satisfied his sexual sadism, it would explain the first rape/murder but not necessarily the second. After killing April, he would have been relieved and no longer overcome with sexual rage, but then he would have been faced with the fact that he was placing a dead girl, naked from the waist down, in the front seat of his car and having a live one tied up in the trunk. Also significant was the fact that in his original confession, Michael said he didn't rape Leslie Shelley. Was her murder committed just to silence her?

The closed hearing in Judge Seymour Hendel's chambers was Michael's “proof” that there was a “faked crime scene” concocted by Malchik. Michael claimed that at the time of his arrest, he told Malchik that the murders had taken place in Rhode Island, but that fact had never ended up in any report or confession. Michael said he didn't bring it up again because Malchik had convinced him that he did not want to face another trial in another state. Why Malchik ignored the
crime scene was unclear. He said he didn't have time during the initial investigation because it was more important to locate all the bodies. The danger was that Michael would change his mind and not cooperate. Without the bodies, the state didn't have a case. That made sense as the reason why he didn't go immediately, but it didn't make sense that in the two years between the arrest and the suppression hearing, Malchik had never attempted to find the actual murder scene.

The question at the hearing was whether the state police had ignored Michael's directions to the crime scene because they didn't want the double murder to be tried in Rhode Island or whether Michael had made the Rhode Island location up after the fact. The prosecution team suggested that when Michael found out that a double murder was almost by definition especially cruel and heinous and would result in a death sentence, he concocted the story about the Rhode Island crime scene as a ruse.

At the suppression hearing, prosecutor Bob Satti produced a report written by Malchik only weeks before the hearing—two years after Michael's arrest—containing what Malchik said were Michael's directions to the crime scene. Malchik said they were inadvertently left out of the written and taped statements taken two years earlier, but Michael insisted he never gave them. Those directions, Satti contended, would place the crime scene within Connecticut, not a mile or so down the road in Rhode Island.

The defense produced strips of cloth, found in a secluded area in the woods, just over the border into Rhode Island, that purportedly matched a slipcover from Michael's apartment and a ligature found around the neck of one of the girls. The defense lawyers were also able to show that on the taped statement Michael had offered to take officers to the crime scene three times, despite Malchik's memory to the contrary.

Near the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Hendel lambasted the
prosecutor and the police on the court record. Hendel screamed at the prosecutor and threw a map at the investigator. Convinced that he had been lied to, he roared, “Gentleman, there is no question in my mind this happened in Rhode Island. There is absolutely not one scintilla of doubt it happened in Rhode Island. I disbelieve the testimony of both officers, Malchik and Officer Griffin [Malchik's partner].” He accused the two officers of lying for no reason other than keeping Rhode Island officials out of the case. He said he was glad that it was a closed hearing and a sealed record. However he warned that the whole matter “bothers me greatly” and that “at some point this record will become open when this case is over. Let the chips fall where they may.”

Three years later, however, when Judge Hendel unsealed the record, he said, “With the benefit of hindsight, I realized that the officers made a judgment call at the time based on information which was available to them, that it wasn't important to go to the site of the killings, since they were looking to secure corroboration of the defendant's confession and they felt that by going to the place where the bodies were, they would get that corroboration.” He had reflected on the matter, he said, and changed his views on their testimony. “I do believe that they testified truthfully during the hearing.” Malchik said that Hendel changed his mind because he believed Michael was a liar; Michael pointed to the hearing to prove that Malchik and Satti were liars and that the system was stacked against him. In a just system, he contended, those two murders would not have been tried in Connecticut, and Satti and Malchik would have been exposed for corruption.

When I first started reporting on the case, in 1995, Michael was obsessed with the idea of exposing this cover-up. After reading the hearing transcript, I could understand his frustration with the system. It seemed that the judge believed that Malchik had lied about the directions that Michael had given him in order to “prove” that the murders happened in Connecticut. I wondered why the judge had changed his
mind. It could have been because Michael was telling every journalist who would listen about the “faked crime scene.” I decided to try to follow both sets of directions. I found that Michael's directions, which had been given when he sat in a jail cell, took me to the exact place where the defense said the murders took place, but Malchik's directions made absolutely no sense. They did not lead to a secluded area where someone could have raped and murdered two girls. Just to be sure, I repeated the experiment, this time with someone else driving and me reading the two sets of directions. We came up with identical results.

 • • • 

T
he 1987 trial lasted almost six months. None of Michael's family sat through the proceedings, but his father and sisters did testify during the penalty phase, primarily in the hope that describing Michael's childhood would influence the jury to spare his life. Ed and Lera Shelley were among the victims' families who faithfully attended every day, along with the Baribeaults and the Roodes. Lera could not sit in the courtroom because witnesses are not allowed to hear other witnesses' testimony; instead she sat in the hallway conducting her own vigil while Ed sat inside the crowded courtroom.

With Bob Satti at the helm, the courtroom was filled with theatrics and emotion. During his closing argument, Satti even got down on his knees and reenacted one of the murders. The state's case was clear and simple—Michael Ross was a rapist who murdered to cover up his crimes. Each of the crimes was carefully documented using testimony from grieving family members and the investigating officers, as well as Michael's confessions and the gruesome pictures of crime scenes and autopsies.

What was missing was any psychiatric testimony from the prosecution to prove that Michael was not mentally ill. Satti had deliberately kept Dr. Miller's letter, admitting that he thought Michael was mentally
ill, from the defense until the guilt phase was almost over. When Dr. Miller took the stand, Satti deliberately didn't ask him any questions about Michael Ross's mental illness because he didn't want the jury to know that his witness agreed with the defense's contention that Michael's illness was real and a mitigating factor that would preclude death. He asked him only general questions about sexual sadism, nothing about Michael's pathology. This prevented the defense from questioning Miller about his evaluation of Michael in cross-examination because cross is limited to the topics discussed in direct examination.

In contrast, defense had to prove that Michael's mental illness was real. Because of his mental illness, his lawyers argued, he should either be found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect or be convicted of manslaughter because he suffered from extreme emotional distress. Dr. Cegalis and Dr. Borden were the chief witnesses for the defense. In trying to sum up his several days of testimony, Dr. Borden told the jury that Michael had a borderline personality disorder, which the DSM-IV defines as “a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.” He said that the borderline personality “feels like a helpless, weak little child” who has a lot of rage inside. What people with this disorder hate in themselves, they find in someone else. “If they hate their weakness, they will attack, as in Michael Ross's case, what appears weak.” He also said that Michael was a sexual sadist, that he had a sadistic personality disorder (then a new diagnosis in the DSM-III but no longer recognized as a diagnosis), which was the “ultimate extreme of sadism. . . . It's a homicidal maniac” who has “an intense drive to death, to kill, that is . . . a primitive, brutal death drive.” In effect, he was telling the jury that Michael's sexual sadism was so extreme that it went well beyond the DSM guidelines. He not only got pleasure from sadistic
behavior, but also did not achieve sexual release until he had murdered his victims.

It's important to understand that not only was the jury hearing about new pathologies at the time, but also that the term
serial killer
was new to many people in 1987. After all, it didn't enter the lexicon until the mid-1980s. Perhaps that's one reason why the Bridgeport jury didn't believe the psychiatric testimony. Or perhaps it was because Michael Ross looked too “normal.” He smiled and joked with his attorneys. “I wasn't foaming at the mouth,” Michael explained to me.

Whatever their reason, it took the jury less than eighty-seven minutes to decide that Michael Ross was guilty and less than a day to decide that his penalty should be death. Judge G. Sarsfield Ford set an execution date of thirty days after his sentencing—July 4, 1987, the same day that Ed and Lera Shelley had buried their daughter three years earlier.

During the trial, Michael wrote to Ann Cole, one of the few people he considered a friend. His letters explain how he perceived his first trial—and himself. He was scared and confused and full of self-loathing. He was lonely, but, perhaps most important, even during his first trial he was ready to give up and accept execution.

After sitting through eight days of psychiatric testimony, Michael was distraught from listening to psychiatrists tell the world what he both hoped for and feared the most—that he was mentally ill. Although he wanted to know why he had committed the murders, he did not want anyone to say he was a sexual sadist—at least not at that point—because of his cultural belief that mental illness was a weakness and an excuse for bad behavior. How could he now use it as an excuse? On the other hand, if he wasn't suffering from a psychiatric disorder, he was nothing more than a cold-blooded killer. While the court was recessed over the Memorial Day holiday, he spent his time writing to Ann to
thank her for her support because his family wouldn't attend the trial. “They would be too ashamed to come to court. They once told me that if they did come to court, it would be a slap in the face of the victims' families. I always thought it ironic that they had more concern for the victims' families than for me.”

He poured out his feelings to her. “I have to keep up my damn facade. I'm beginning to hate that outward face. I'm a lie, a phony. The person who I thought I was doesn't exist. I've lived with the lie so long that I don't really know who or what I am. I'm also afraid of who I really am.” It was clear that listening to Dr. Borden was excruciatingly painful, and he wrote that he didn't “like the glimpses [Dr.] Borden has given me, but how can I deny them? He has no reason to lie but I have every reason not to want to believe him.” He was of two minds. He wanted to prove that he was not responsible for what he had done because of his illness, but he didn't
want
to be a sexual sadist, because that disorder disgusted him.