Bad Girls (45 page)

Brian Boetz was helpful in responding to my queries in a timely fashion and I thank him for that. Mike Burns, mostly, as well. Boetz and Burns were sincere in their responses to me. I appreciate that. Both believe in justice and that they did the right thing here—and who says they didn’t.

I would not have heard of this story or written this book if it had not been for my good friend Chip Selby. A freelance television producer by day, Chip told me about this story, took some photos, and was a great source early on. I want to extend a big thanks to Chip for turning me on to this great true-crime tale. And perhaps, most important, M2 Pictures researcher Joanne Taylor, who originally found this story. This one hovered under everyone’s radar, but Joanne plucked it out. For that, I am thankful to her.

I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to everyone at Investigation Discovery and Beyond Productions involved in making
Dark Minds
the best (nonfiction) crime show on television: Andrew “Fazz” Farrell, Alex Barry, Colette “Coco” Sandstedt, John Mavety, Peter Heap, Mark Middis, Toby Prior, Peter Coleman, Derek Ichilcik, Jared “Jars” Transfield, Jo Telfer, Claire Westerman, Milena Gozzo, Cameron Power, Katie Ryerson, Inneke Smit, Pele Hehea, Jeremy Peek, Jeremy Adair, Geri Berman, Nadine Terens, Samantha Hertz, Lale Teoman, Hayden Anderson, Savino (from Onyx Sound Lab in Manchester, CT), David O’Brien, Ra-ey Saleh, Nathan Brand, Rebecca Clare, Anthony Toy, Mark Wheeler, Mandy Chapman, Jenny O’shea, Jen Longhurst, Anita Bezjak, Geoff Fitzpatrick, John Luscombe, Debbie Gottschalk, Eugenie Vink, Sucheta Sachdev, Sara Kozak, Kevin Bennett, Jane Latman, and Henry Schleiff.

As you can see, it takes an army to make a television show.

I also need to extend my deepest gratitude to the families of my
Dark Minds
road crew, as well as my own, for allowing us to take the time we need on the road to shoot
Dark Minds
. It’s a lot of time away from home and I realize the sacrifice all of you make on my behalf, especially the children: India, Ivo and April—and, of course, our spouses, Bates and Regina.

Cara at Inspirations—thanks.

Lastly, my publisher, Laurie Parkin, and the entire team at Kensington Publishing Corp., all of whom continue to believe in me and make great things possible. I want to extend a big, huge thanks to all of you. Likewise, I need to thank Kensington CEO Steve Zacharius, editorial director Audrey LeFehr, and Karen Auerbach, publicity director. My longtime editor, Michaela Hamilton, has been an instrumental part of my career for well over a decade now, and also a great friend. We’ve done nearly twenty books together and Michaela’s passion for what I do continues to grow with each book. I am indebted and thankful, not to mention amazed by, Michaela’s desire to see me succeed. There is a ton of work that goes on behind the scenes of each book, and I want to point out to the Kensington team that I realize how hard you all work on my behalf—and I’m very grateful for that.

Keep reading to enjoy an exclusive preview of M. William Phelps’s next true-crime book!

Obsessed

Coming from Pinnacle Books in 2014

CHAPTER 1

S
USAN RAYMUNDO WAS
used to her daughter calling her Florida winter home at least twice a day. Anna Lisa was good that way. She liked to stay in touch with her parents, even if it was just to say hello.

“She was a very thoughtful daughter,” Anna’s father, Renato, later said. “She was a perfect daughter . . . an excellent human being.”

Smart too: Anna Lisa held degrees from Harvard and Columbia.

On November 8, 2002, Susan, a retired pediatrician, was at a local hospital near her Florida home with her mother, who was undergoing a routine procedure. When she returned to the house, Susan noticed the light on the answering machine blinking.

Tossing her keys on the counter, putting her handbag down, Susan hit the button and listened. She knew who it was.

Anna . . .

“Hi, Mom and Dad. I just want you to know what’s going on. I know you’re busy with Grandma, but I’ll talk to you sometime.”

It was 10:34
A.M
., Susan noticed, when the message came in.

After she got herself situated, Susan called Anna Lisa back. The line rang several times, but there was no answer.

It was odd, Susan supposed, because her daughter worked from home. She was there all the time, especially during the day, during the week. Susan and her husband had purchased the Connecticut condo for Anna Lisa, closing the deal on March 15, 2000.

I’ll try again later,
Susan told herself, perhaps sensing—if only in a subtle, mother’s intuition way—that something was amiss.

CHAPTER 2

T
HE WOMAN SOUNDED FRANTIC.
She was in a terrible hurry. Inhaling and exhaling heavily, as if out of breath. Yet, strangely enough, she cleared her throat before speaking for the first time.

“Yes, hello,” she said after the Stamford, Connecticut, 911 police dispatcher beckoned the caller to speak up. “Yes . . . the guy . . . the . . . He attacked my neighbor.”

“You mean someone attacked your neighbor?” dispatch asked as the caller blew two deeply dramatic breaths into the phone receiver:
Whoosh, whoosh.

“Yes, yes . . . ,” the caller said sheepishly.

“When did this happen?” dispatch asked.

It sounded as if the caller said: “I saw a guy go into the apartment at One-Two-Six Harbor View. . . .”

Dispatch noted the address. Then: “One twenty-six Harbor View—”

But the caller corrected her angrily, yelling over the dispatcher’s voice: “One twenty-
three
Harbor View!”

“Okay,” dispatch said. “Don’t yell, because I cannot understand you.”

Almost in tears now, the seemingly frantic caller spoke over dispatch: “One twenty-
three
Harbor View.”

“Listen to me . . . one-two-three Harbor View . . . what is your friend’s name?”

“I don’t know her name, but she’s my neighbor and she lives in apartment one-oh-five.”

“She lives in apartment one-oh-five?”

“Right! And the guy was in there, and he . . .”

“He what?”

“He
attacked
her.”

“Okay, can you tell me what the guy looks like?”

“I just don’t know. I heard yelling. I heard yelling.”

There was a clicking sound next.

“Hello?” dispatch said. “Hello? Hello?”

The line was dead. The call, in its entirety, lasted about one minute, thirty seconds.

He had just finished eating lunch. It was near 12:30 in the afternoon, November 8, 2002, a Friday. The weather was rather mild for this time of the year near the Connecticut shoreline, the temperature ranging from 46 to 57 degrees Fahrenheit. The air was dry and sharp; a slight breeze of winds, around six miles per hour, rolled off the Atlantic Ocean. The sun was bright. There was a waxing crescent moon (7/8 full) out, nearly visible in the luminous blue skies. By all accounts, a picture-perfect late fall day in one of Connecticut’s more prominent, seaside communities.

The cop drove a marked police car. He was dressed in full uniform. The area that twenty-two-year-veteran officer David Sileo patrolled was indeed exclusive. Officers called it “District Three.” Stamford had seen a sharp economic resurgence, its downtown area revitalized and energized with excitement and shoppers and business. The bubble all around them might have been bursting, but Stamford was hopping. This region where Sileo was headed was known to locals as “Cove/Shippan,” located just south of Interstate 95, in between Cummings Park and Cove Island Park.

Yachts. Fishing and houseboats. Money, status, and exclusivity.

Sitting in an inlet, a cove, southwest of West Beach, just across the waterway from Dyke Park, was 123 Harbor Drive. People walked dogs down here. Docked their massive sailboats and Bayliners and Sea Rays and cruise liners. Men and women jogged in their expensive sweat suits, earbuds booming, minding their own business. Families had picnics and tossed Frisbees. They lay out in the sun. Stamford, Connecticut, by and large, is a wealthy region of this small state of 3,500,000 residents; it is the sister to the more select, more expensive Greenwich. By big-city standards, Stamford boasts a small population of about 120,000. Median income holds steady at $75,000. Taxes are high. The streets are clean. Crime rates in certain areas are low. Housing prices not too shabby. Stamford is often named one of the top ten places to live in the country.

Officer Sileo was dispatched to 123 Harbor View Drive, unit 105, specifically, after a rather strange 911 call had come in minutes before, whereby an anonymous woman had maintained that a neighbor of hers—someone she apparently knew—was being attacked by a man.

When Sileo arrived, another officer was just pulling up behind him to the same scene. They agreed to knock on the door. See what the hell was going on inside the condo.

The unit at 105 Harbor Drive sat on top of a three-car garage. A visitor would have to walk up several steps to the front door.

The officer who had arrived as Sileo pulled up knocked on the screen door. With no answer, he opened it and knocked on the interior door, looking in all directions to see if anyone was around.

When no one answered, the patrol officer tried the handle.

It was unlocked.

Sileo watched as his colleague opened the door “a few inches,” took a quick peek inside, and then yelled, “Stamford Police . . . is anyone home?”

No response. It was eerily quiet. Especially for a domestic, which was called into 911.

Pushing the door fully open, Sileo’s colleague spied a ghastly sight, which immediately prompted him to draw his weapon.

Officer Sileo hurried up behind, hand on his sidearm. They made eye contact and agreed to enter the condo slowly, barrels of their weapons leading the way.

CHAPTER 3

I
N SEPTEMBER 2000, NELSON SESSLER WAS
hired by Stamford-based Purdue Pharma, a major player in the pharmaceutical world of developing medications. Purdue Pharma boasts of being the industry leader in pain management. For Sessler, who held a doctorate in pharmacy from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Purdue was the ideal company to work for. He could pursue his passion for researching and developing new medications, and ultimately carve out a career that he could excel in and, at the same rate, be proud of the work he was doing.

At thirty-five years old, Sessler had hit his prime. He was a good-looking man, tall and handsome. He took care of himself, working out and working hard. Purdue was one of those companies so big, with an employee list of so many diverse individuals, cliques kicked up within the group an employee worked for. Sessler had no trouble making friends. And in December 2000, merely months after he started with the company, he met and started dating a fellow employee, thirty-two-year-old Anna Lisa Raymundo. Anna Lisa was bright and from a family of well-educated high achievers working within the medical field. Filipino by descent, Anna Lisa had beautifully dark, shiny skin, eyes to match, a cheerful demeanor, and a smile so large it was hard not to like the woman and feel her magnetic charm the moment she was introduced. With a master’s in public health, Anna Lisa had been working at Purdue for several years. She liked Nelson Sessler the moment she met him. They hit it off.

Nelson shared an apartment in town with several men, about three miles away from Anna Lisa’s Harbor Drive unit. By November 2002, however, as their relationship had hit its stride, going from its highest and lowest points, Nelson had been spending most of his time over at Anna Lisa’s condo.

“Five to seven [days],” Sessler said later. “The majority of the week.”

In February 2002, Anna Lisa left Purdue Pharma and went to work for a New Jersey company, Farmacia. There was a time when Anna Lisa was actually commuting back and forth to New Jersey from her Stamford condo, spending four hours per day on the road. By November, though, Anna Lisa had worked it out with Farmacia that she would work from home and head into the office for meetings on an as-needed basis.

Nelson Sessler was the first to admit later on that by November 2002 his relationship with Anna Lisa had nearly run its course. They had hit a stride, sure, but it was more or less lined with complacency as he, anyway, was simply going through the motions. As long as Nelson had known Anna Lisa, he had not given up his room at the apartment across town he shared with three other men. And that alone said something about how he felt.

There was that feeling of going through the motions with Anna Lisa and, well, this secret Nelson had been keeping from Anna: He was sneaking around, sleeping with one of his coworkers at Purdue Pharma, a rather elegant, highly intelligent, dark-skinned woman, born in Iran, who had long, flowing, curly tar black hair. Nelson had met her at the local bar that the Purdue Pharma employees hung out at in town. Nelson had been having a fling with the thirty-two-year-old woman since the summer of 2001, almost a year by then. Their relationship was hot and cold. Nelson couldn’t really see his concubine too often because, he later explained, she “had a handicapped brother—a mentally challenged or retarded brother that she took care of, and elderly parents, and volleyball. And that those three items took up most of her weekends. . . .”

So, for Nelson and his lover, they could only see each other sporadically, at various times during the week, in the evenings. This worked out well when Anna Lisa was going down to New Jersey to work; but the affair had become more difficult to contain as soon as Anna started working from home. Nelson would have to make excuses.

He’d have to lie.

CHAPTER 4

J
UST BEYOND THE DOOR
inside that Harbor Drive condo that Stamford police officers had been summoned to on the afternoon of November 2, 2002, Officer Sileo and his colleague immediately entered through the unlocked front door and stumbled onto a ghastly sight.