Heart of a Killer (7 page)

I worked my way through the crowd into the courthouse, where the security guards seemed to be waiting for me. They guided me to the clerk’s office, and the actual filing took just a few minutes.

The case of
Harrison vs. New Jersey Department of Corrections
was a reality.

That was the good news. The bad news was we had almost no chance of prevailing, and if we did, it almost definitely would not be quick enough. Which meant that we were going to have to be very aggressive on the public relations side of the equation.

I had exactly as much experience dealing with the media as I had with the New Jersey Supreme Court, but I figured that was as good a time as any to learn on the job. I walked out of the court and stopped at the top of the steps, which seemed like a logical place to hold an impromptu news conference.

The assembled reporters threw about five million questions at me, none of which I even tried to answer. Instead I just waited until the din quieted down a little, then raised my arms and said I wanted to make a statement.

“About six weeks ago the president of the United States held a ceremony at the White House, at which he posthumously awarded Captain Timothy Myerson the highest honor he could bestow, the Congressional Medal of Honor. Captain Myerson had fallen on an unexploded munition, so that the seven other men in his command would not themselves be killed.”

The reporters looked confused by what I was saying, as if they had wandered into the wrong movie and couldn’t find an usher.

“Captain Myerson did exactly what Sheryl Harrison wants to do, to give up her own life to save another. But she is not honored at a White House ceremony; instead she is prevented from performing this act of heroism by bureaucrats in the New Jersey State government.

“As a grateful American, I am thankful that heroes like Captain Myerson do not have to check with bureaucrats and politicians before they perform their acts of tremendous generosity and courage. With the lawsuit we are filing today, we will try to give Sheryl Harrison that same freedom.”

With that I declined to take any questions, which didn’t deter them, and they continued to yell them out as I walked away. It took me a while to physically extricate myself from the media mob, but when I was finally and safely in my car, I could reflect on how well it had gone.

Maybe I wasted my time in law school.

About two years ago, Ryan Palmer got the scare of his life.

The fifty-one-year-old periodontist had gone in for his yearly physical, and expected to receive the same clean bill of health he had gotten the last five years.

Instead he got the “C” word.

The good news, according to his doctor, was that it was thyroid cancer, detected early and very, very curable. The bad news, thought Ryan, was that when it comes to cancer there is no such thing as good news.

Having thought that, it came as a relief to him that the oncologist that he saw told him he would not need chemotherapy. The thyroid would be removed surgically, and its loss of function would easily be compensated for by taking pills, which he could do for the rest of what should be a very long life.

Starting three weeks after the surgery, Ryan would get three radiation treatments, spaced a week apart. He was lucky in that his local hospital had just gotten a state-of-the-art radiation machine. It was renowned for its ability to target massive dosages of radiation with incredible precision, eliminating the possibility of damage to any surrounding, totally healthy organs.

Upon receiving the diagnosis, and prior to the surgery, Ryan did the responsible thing and got his affairs in order, as best he could. His wife, Alice, and twelve-year-old twins, Jeremy and Andrew, would be reasonably well taken care of. Ryan had invested well, and also had a $750,000 life insurance policy, with Alice as the beneficiary.

But by the day of the surgery, no one was thinking negative thoughts, not even Ryan. And that optimism proved warranted, as he came through the procedure with flying colors. The surgeon expressed confidence that the entire malignancy was removed, and the biopsy tended to confirm that. The radiation would make extra sure.

Ryan spent three days in the hospital, and was then released. He would rest up for the three weeks, have the radiation, and thus put all of it behind him. He lobbied the radiologist, Dr. Stephen Robbins, to start the treatments early, but Dr. Robbins refused. The original plan was the safest way to proceed.

Alice took Ryan in for his first treatment, just as she had done for the surgery. Dr. Robbins explained that he would be put under a light general anesthesia, and the treatment itself would only take about twenty minutes. Once he awoke and was completely coherent, Alice could take him home.

Because he was sleeping, Ryan didn’t get a chance to see the large piece of machinery that would dispense the radiation. It was just as well; it could be rather intimidating. And it would certainly have been hard to believe that even with the most advanced computers ever made controlling it, it could be so precise.

Everything went as planned, and Ryan was home five hours after arriving at the hospital. Dr. Robbins had told him to expect to be tired for a couple of days, but Ryan didn’t feel that way at all. He wished that he could go back the next two days for treatments two and three, but he knew better than to waste his time trying to convince Dr. Robbins to speed up the schedule.

One week later, Alice took Ryan to the hospital for the second treatment. This time, once he was taken back to the room to be prepped, she left to run some errands, planning to be back well before the time she was supposed to.

Ryan was put under anesthesia, and brought into the radiology room. He was positioned under the machine, in the same manner as the first time. The technician directed the computers to correctly position it, and then monitored them as the radiation was delivered. Dr. Robbins, though he really had no role to play at this point, watched over the technician’s shoulder.

The computer display indicated that the radiation was being effectively delivered to the target area, and it took almost four minutes for them to come to the horrific realization that it was not.

In fact, the radiation was being directed more than six inches from the correct spot, to an area near the bottom of Ryan’s brain. It wouldn’t be until much later that day, long after Ryan’s body was taken away for an autopsy, that they also learned that the radiation had been delivered at more than seven times the directed strength. It had charcoal-broiled his brain.

Within weeks, the grief-stricken Alice had hired a lawyer, and the hospital, as well as Dr. Robbins and the company that manufactured the machine, had all quietly consented to a very large settlement. Ryan’s family would be wealthy, but it was small consolation to them for his loss.

The life insurance company paid off the $750,000 to Alice, as well as the $1.5 million policy to Daniel Shaw, whom Ryan had never met nor heard of.

If one wants to hire a murderer, prisons are a great place to start. Especially maximum security prisons; when mining for murderers that’s pretty much the mother lode.

The key is to find someone with expertise and experience; MIT has the engineers, Vegas the gamblers, Manhattan the great pizza makers. But if a headhunter is looking to hire a literal “headhunter,” a maximum security prison is the place.

If you throw a dart in a maximum security prison, you’ll most likely hit a murderer, though that would probably not be the wisest thing to do. Ray Hennessey didn’t have to throw a dart; all he had to do was put out the word that $100,000 was up for grabs.

The fact that the killers in prison by definition had previously gotten caught meant nothing to Hennessey. Whether his hired killer was apprehended after killing Sheryl Harrison was of no concern to him, and likely wouldn’t be to the killer either.

New Jersey’s lack of a death penalty was the reason for that. Many of the convicted murderers were already put away for the rest of their natural lives. So since they couldn’t be put to death, or sent away for any longer than they already were, why would another conviction be of concern?

Money always talked, even behind the prison walls. Not only could it buy perks on the inside, many of these people had families on the outside, and being able to provide them with substantial cash was very appealing.

So once Hennessey put the word out that he was looking for someone on the inside to kill Sheryl Harrison, he had a wide array of possibilities to choose from. Since it was a women’s prison, they were all women, which was not something that Hennessey was used to.

The person he chose came highly recommended both for her ruthlessness and for her discretion. Even though Hennessey’s identity remained a secret from her, if she were caught she would still reveal nothing about the facts behind her hiring.

But none of that mattered. He had arranged for Sheryl Harrison to be murdered. It was to take place in the prison laundry, where she worked, but on the appointed day she didn’t show up for her shift. The killer made inquiries, and learned that she had been moved to suicide watch.

That meant that she would be isolated from the other prisoners and carefully guarded twenty-four hours a day, with constant camera surveillance. Under those circumstances, she simply could not be gotten to, not even by someone willing to reveal their identity for the chance to make the kill.

The word was passed to Hennessey by his hired killer, who could not accomplish the job because of the suicide watch.

Sheryl Harrison, the inmate who wanted to die, could not be killed.

Terry Aimonetti was cooking, which had lately become a delicate balancing act.

Terry was one of those instinctively great cooks. No matter what was lying around in the refrigerator, she could make a uniquely wonderful meal out of it. She was an artist, and she generally loved practicing her art.

But she had been trying to balance two conflicting needs, and it was a struggle. Karen’s appetite had waned; the weaker she became the less interest she had in eating. Since she had always loved Terry’s cooking, it fell to Karen’s grandmother to make special dishes that would overcome her lack of appetite and get her to eat.

But also as Karen became more ill, her doctors kept making her diet progressively more strict. No spices, no seasonings, nothing that Terry ordinarily used to work her magic. With so few weapons at her disposal, making something that Karen would be anxious to eat became a near impossible task, but that didn’t stop Terry from tackling it head on.

Terry had been cooking for almost an hour, making a whole wheat pasta with a sauce that Terry’s own mother would have scorned as belonging in an old age home. But it was as good as it was going to get, and Terry had called out to Karen to sit down at the table.

She called three times, but Karen didn’t answer. This was not terribly unusual, as Karen had been sleeping during the day a great deal, and had a teenager’s immunity to sleep disturbances.

“Karen?” Terry kept calling, with increasing loudness as she walked to her room. She was by then starting to worry, moving more quickly as she approached.

Karen’s door was open, but she was not there. The door to the bathroom off her room was closed, and Terry moved toward it. She thought she could hear water running, so she called out, “Karen? Karen, sweetheart, are you okay?”

There was no response, so Terry called again, louder and more insistent. Still no answer, so Terry opened the door. “Karen, I’m sorry, I…”

Karen was on the floor, facedown, blood coming from the top of her head. Terry screamed and went to her, fearing the worst. She slowly turned her so that she could see her face, and she saw the blood coming from a cut, which was actually just above her eye.

But she was breathing, and starting to open her eyes groggily. She said something, so low and muffled that Terry couldn’t make it out.

“It’s okay, baby … you’re going to be okay,” Terry said, then took a folded towel and placed it gently between Karen’s head and the cold floor. She pressed another towel lightly to the cut, but it had mostly stopped bleeding by then.

Terry ran into the bedroom, grabbed the phone, and called 911, asking that an ambulance be sent. Within ten minutes the emergency medical people were in the house and putting Karen onto a stretcher, for the trip to the hospital.

Terry drove with her in the back of the ambulance. Karen was awake and coherent, but she was scared, and Terry tried to console her. “You must have slipped on the wet floor,” Terry said, but they both knew better.

Karen was taken to the emergency room, but admitted to the hospital as a patient. It was not because of the cut, but because of her condition. Her heart was weakening at an alarming rate, and it was felt that she would be better off in the hospital, where she could be monitored and cared for.

Stress was something that her doctors wanted her to have none of, so it was decided, at least for the time being, that the furor surrounding her mother would be kept from her. This was not as easy as it sounded; it meant that she could only watch television when supervised, and could not take phone calls from her friends.

Terry was having a difficult time. The horror of watching her granddaughter go through this, coupled with the nightmare going on with Sheryl, was enough stress for ten people, and it was weighing heavily on Terry.

But life had never been easy for her, and it had made her a remarkably strong woman. She was going to get through this, no matter which direction it went, and she was going to be there for her family.

And the part that made this particularly unbearable, and so terribly, terribly unfair, was the secret that she had promised never to reveal.

Uncle Reggie called me at seven o’clock in the morning. I was sleeping, having been up until 1:00
A.M.
the previous night doing media interviews over the phone. When they say that cable news is a 24/7 operation, they mean it literally.

“He’ll see you at eight-thirty behind the tennis courts at Eastside Park in Paterson,” was the opening Reggie used instead of “hello.” “And he said if you bring any reporters, he’ll cut your tongue out.”