I'll Be Watching You (37 page)

I

In preparation for the trial, David Zagaja read many of the books written about Bundy. He didn’t expect to find some sort of groundbreaking revelation; but he was hoping for, at the least, a bit of insight, anything that could help him understand Ned more than he already did. He was closing in on the end of his study when, suddenly, he realized something he had overlooked all along. In one of the books, as Zagaja read it, a sheriff, a “good old boy,” Zagaja called him, goes in to see Bundy after he is caught. “He starts interviewing Bundy,” Zagaja told me, “beginning with something to the effect of, ‘Now, who are you again?’” A tactical move, of course. Because “Bundy explodes,” Zagaja said. “‘How dare you? Don’t you know who I am?’ The entire country had been on edge because of Bundy and his crimes. His image had been plastered all over the media. And in walks this cocky sheriff asking who he is.” The nerve. “It was the biggest deflator for Bundy,” Zagaja added. “That this sheriff walks into the jail and tries to say he doesn’t know who he is.”

While reading that section of the book, Zagaja truly saw Bundy through Ned’s eyes, understood the hero worship. They were alike in what was a common hubristic sense of self. It was all about the individual. Call it narcissism or self-reliance. They both work. But Bundy and Ned had lived lives centered around their crimes. Their crimes defined who they were as human beings—which was to become important to Zagaja as he headed for the homestretch.

II

Ned’s past became part of the trial on January 14, when Judge Espinosa addressed the jury, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to say a few words to you now about the evidence you are about to hear”—which alone made the imminent testimony even more powerful than it probably was, but Espinosa had to say it. She explained the law, adding near the end of her speech, “The evidence is not to be used by you as evidence that the defendant had a propensity to commit the crime with which he is charged in this case, or since he did these things, he must have committed the crime alleged in this case. Such evidence is being admitted,” the judge warned, “solely to show or establish a common
plan
or
scheme
in the commission of criminal acts, the existence of the intent….”

Yeah, OK.

III

Dennis Watson had been employed by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey for the past thirty-two years. He had investigated Karen Osmun’s murder. He had been a witness to the tragedy of Ned’s handiwork. And it had haunted him ever since.

Zagaja was smart to bring in Watson. He could give the jury an image of what Ned had done to a human being. In a metaphorical sense, the prosecution could say:
That man, the one over there with the necktie and sport coat and slacks and perfectly combed hair, the one who refuses to wear glasses because he thinks it makes him look like a serial killer, he strangled a woman, stabbed her, and posed her body. And then, when faced with committing a similar crime, he admitted to both.

Watson cut whatever tension was in the room and replaced it with horrorlike images of a woman who had lost her life to the man sitting center stage. Karen’s name was rarely mentioned—one would have to imagine by design. And when you sat and you closed your eyes as Watson spoke, you could almost see Carmen or Mary Ellen—or God knows who else—struggling for life. “She was lying on her back,” Watson explained. “She was naked from the waist up. On the lower part of her body, she had a pair of jeans, which were secured, zippered, snapped, and there was a belt that was buckled. She had socks and underpants on…. I saw numerous injuries. There were, I believe, six, what appeared to be stab wounds in the center, lower chest area. I noticed two superficial apparent stab wounds in the lower neck area. There were abrasions and bruising on her neck and there were numerous petechial hemorrhages all over her face…. My understanding—and, again, I’m not a medical person—they’re small hemorrhages of the small blood vessels…in the face.” The detective paused for effect. Always a brilliant move. Then the selling point: “They’re indicative of asphyxiation.” He didn’t need to say anything more.

IV

George Recck walked into the courtroom, and under Zagaja’s questioning, he authenticated the letters he and Ned had exchanged. This allowed Zagaja to make the letters part of the court file and available to the jury during deliberations. Zagaja didn’t need any dramatic re-reading of the letters, although he did get as much of them as he could into the record. The letters, of course, would speak for themselves. In his own words, Ned explained to jurors what he had done in the past, what he had learned throughout his incarceration, and what he intended to do in the future. Putting Carmen into the context of the letters, one could argue that Ned had fulfilled a promise to himself to kill again.

Recck sustained questioning from both sides throughout the afternoon and into early evening. In the end, he came across as a believable ex-friend of Ned’s who, at one time, was talking about writing a book with Ned and producing a movie about Ned’s life. Ned listened, perhaps quite alarmed by the words he once wrote—so profoundly eerie and so obviously vile—to a trusted friend, which were now going to be in the hands of a jury deciding his fate.

I

When the state’s attorney’s office called Ned’s former psychiatrist to ask if he’d participate in the trial as a witness, explaining what they believed Ned had done to Carmen, he dropped the phone. He couldn’t believe it. Ned had gotten out of prison and killed again. “I use Ned as a case study for one of my classes,” Ned’s former psychiatrist said over the phone. He was noticeably distraught. Quite upset, in fact, that Ned could have killed again. Still, he said he couldn’t help. He and another psychiatrist who had interviewed Ned when he was incarcerated in New Jersey couldn’t testify for the state. He believed the doctor/patient confidentiality agreement still existed.

But the state had access to those reports. “Ned proclaimed that he was a breast man in those reports,” a source who had access to them later told me, “and intercourse had nothing to do with his desires.” Ned gloated when he explained this fetish to his doctors. And “he was proud of the fact that he was able to get a twenty-year sentence for his crimes in New Jersey and how he had duped the police all those years.”

One of the reasons why Ned was so open and honest with the doctors in New Jersey, my source speculated, was that he knew when he was talking to those psychiatrists, his words would later be protected.

The point was, look at Karen Osmun, look at Mary Ellen Renard, and then look at Carmen Rodriguez: even after they were attacked (or killed), they all had their undergarments on. “[Sexual intercourse] has nothing to do with his motives,” my source added. “Mr. Snelgrove wanted to make sure the [victim’s] top was off—and that was it.”

II

The trial had taken a four-day break. By January 19, Judge Espinosa had her courtroom back on track—and Zagaja made the announcement before the break that his star witness, Mark Pascual, the jailhouse snitch, was next in line.

III

As a prosecutor, Zagaja later explained, you don’t take someone like Mark Pascual, when he comes to you, and “run with him. You have to put him through a number of hoops. Because, as far as we’re concerned, if
we
don’t believe him, a jury’s certainly not going to.” So Zagaja and Rovella, after Pascual came forward, simply let him talk. “There were certain pieces,” Zagaja said, which Pascual brought to the table, “that were never out there.”

“He had information that was only known to the killer and the police,” Rovella added. “That was what really kicked the jury.”

After Pascual came forward, claiming Ned had confessed to him, Rovella sat and listened to hours and hours of telephone conversations Pascual had made from prison to various people. “I listened to find out if he’d ask his girlfriend, ‘Hey, can you send me this article or that article?’” It was O’Brien and Ned’s contention that Pascual had merely read the newspapers and offered up Ned as a sacrifice so he could, in turn, cut a better deal for himself. “But I never heard any of that from those calls I listened to,” Rovella claimed. “Pascual had never asked for any newspaper articles during those calls. Pascual, you see, knew something that could have only come from Ned: taking Carmen to breakfast.”

No one had ever known that until Pascual had come forward.

I

It was an unseasonably warm autumn afternoon the day I drove up to Suffield, Connecticut, to meet with Mark Pascual for the first time at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution. Pascual had answered a letter of mine. I had asked him if there was anything he wanted to add to his testimony and the various statements he had made to police. I didn’t think there was. I had a lot of material on Pascual and believed he was, largely, telling the truth about Ned (whether Ned was being honest with Pascual—well, that’s another story). I had studied his statements and testimony and put them to the test, matching everything up to the newspaper articles written about Ned’s case that Pascual could have had access to. I didn’t find any significance to Ned’s argument that Pascual had used the newspaper articles as a resource. There were too many variables.

I can tell you more,
Pascual wrote in that first letter to me.

Reading, I wondered,
More? What
more
could he possibly add?
Reading further, I found the answer:
More bodies,
Pascual suggested, promising to tell me where, when, and how many.

I was interested, to say the least. So I drove up to the prison and signed in.

I

Dr. Henry Lee walked into the courtroom during the afternoon of January 19 to inject a bit of adrenaline and celebrity into a trial that was, honestly, dragging on. For many, Lee was easy to recognize. He’d starred in several shows on Court TV over the years and was a regular pundit on any number of networks when a major crime story broke. He had also testified during several high-profile murder trials throughout his career, O.J. and the like. He was pleasant and kind and walked with authority and confidence.

After going through what was a long list of esteemed credentials, Lee began to talk about his main course of study and present occupation—the reason so many law enforcement agencies around the world seek him: crime scene reconstruction. “Last year around October, November,” Lee said, “I receive a request from state’s attorney’s office to conduct a reconstruction. I received original crime scene photographs, autopsy pictures, and initial crime scene investigative report. Also, I received some evidence, the plastic bags and ropes and tapes….”

Zagaja had Lee go through and identify several secondary crime-scene photographs. Lee talked about leaves and foliage and the time of the year, working his way into a discussion of Carmen’s body. How she was found. What the scene had told him. “When I exam all those materials, first thing I found [was] the body was original had ropes tied to the body. When I examined the rope—it actually have six group of the rope—based on the description provided to me, some are tied on the wrist, some are tied around the ankle, some tied around the body, I was able to measure each piece of rope, look at the knot, look at the ending.” As Lee spoke, it was hard to understand him. His English was not so clear. Still, it didn’t prevent jurors from understanding the facts as Lee explained them. It just took a little bit more time and patience. Lee talked about the length of the ropes. How Carmen’s body was tied up in a fetal position. “When you do that,” he suggested, “which means the body rigor haven’t set yet. If the person becomes stiffing, very difficult to tie like that,” he added, waving his hands in the air to emphasize his point, “which shows the body still fresh, was tied up.” Carmen was murdered and tied up almost simultaneously. Very little time had elapsed in between (a subtle, however vital, point Mark Pascual would soon back up).

“Then you have a white plastic bag. The white plastic bag is smaller, the black plastic bag is forty-four inches long, so the white plastic bag was put in first and you staple—staple some of the bag together. I notice a list…a dozen of staple holes. Because I wasn’t the first one exam, some of the staple already removed from bag for tool mark analysis, but I was able to look at staple hole, it’s over a dozen little holes…. Then some more ropes was tied and made like a handle, like material so, of course, they have black bags. Five white bags, four black bags. Black bags was put lower the body, top the body, middle, then have three-quarter-inch of plastic tape was taped the bag together.”

Methodical. Well-planned.

“Approximately about fourteen inches long, those pieces, put in, joined the bag together. It’s a very elaborated long process. Also have a handle of the rope, not bond over rope, it’s almost two hundred ninety inches long all wrapped together. So the total length of rope, in this case, approximately sixty feet long. That’s a lot of ropes. A lot of—you’re marking a lot of knot, cutting. So this case, basically, takes a little while to complete all those tasks.”

“Based on [your] observations,” Zagaja asked, “do you make any other conclusions as to the extent to which the body was wrapped and stapled and taped?”

Lee’s answers were a good foundation upon which Mark Pascual’s testimony would stand. Lee was putting a professional spin on it all, thus setting the stage, if you will, for Pascual to come in and tell the jury
how
Carmen was murdered. “Yes,” Lee said. “When I look at the material need to complete a task, you need white plastic bag, you need black plastic bag, you need almost sixty feet ropes, you need Scotch tapes, you need some sharp instrument, could be knife or scissor, to cut the rope, [and] then you need staple, you need a vehicle to transport.”

Carmen’s killer had planned her murder like packing for a vacation.

“And one additional thing,” Lee smartly noted, “is the tape and the bag—our fingerprint examiner report to me they did not find
any
fingerprint…. There couple reasons. Maybe aging too long? Maybe some other reasons, such as wearing glove without leave any fingerprint? Especially if a Scotch tape, adhesive side, usually if somebody finger touch, we usually see a couple ridges, maybe not enough to compare, but he did not find
anything.
Maybe it’s a suggestion somebody wearing a glove or avoid to leave fingerprint. So all of those, in totality, this case, preparation work and the actually manipulation tying the body, putting in the bag, it’s a very elaborated activity.”

The guy might have been hard to understand, but he was a pro.

II

After several hours of discussion regarding what Mark Pascual could say, and what Mark Pascual couldn’t say, he was brought into the courtroom. No doubt Pascual was Zagaja’s most explosive witness of the trial, thus far. He looked uncomfortable and nervous while sitting in the witness stand across from his old cellie. It was clear that turning state’s evidence wasn’t one of Pascual’s favorite things to do. He would forever be branded a snitch. Rat. Not necessarily the cloud you wanted hanging over your head when you were spending the rest of your natural life in prison.

Zagaja started with money questions: “You’re presently incarcerated?”

“Yes, I am.”

Bond? One million. He then had Pascual explain why. “Murder for hire.” But Pascual told jurors he wasn’t trading testimony for a lighter sentence, but that he, of course, knew it might help him in the long run. Which all sounded good. But the bottom line was: Mark Pascual had cashed in. Why else would he take such a risk but to hope for a lighter sentence?

Zagaja soon worked his way into how he and Ned met. When. Where. What they talked about.

Carmie…
Ned called her, Pascual said. That’s how Pascual referred to Carmen.

“Could you relate…what he told you happened?”

“Yeah. He said he was at, um, Kenney’s Bar in Hartford. And when he walked in, he saw her sitting there and he went up to her and asked her if he could buy her a drink and she said yes.” This statement didn’t gel with what other witnesses had reported: they said Ned was sitting in a booth when Carmen walked in and sat down next to him. “And then,” Pascual continued, “he asked her if they—if [she] wanted to dance and she said, ‘Yes.’ So they danced and they drank for the greater part of the night. And then when it was time for them to leave, she said she’d like to have a ride home, and he said, ‘How would you like to go to breakfast?’ And she said, ‘OK.’…And they went to have breakfast at a place he said wasn’t too far from his home in Cromwell….”

During an interview with police on April 30, 2003, Pascual claimed Ned had explained to him that as he strangled Carmen, Ned had his first orgasm that night. Afterward, because Carmen was still making “noises,” Ned told him, he “stapled her mouth shut.”

This was likely untrue. Insofar as there was no evidence—other than a newspaper article—of Carmen’s mouth ever being stapled shut. But then Carmen’s body was decomposed to a point where the medical examiner could not have explored whether her mouth was stapled shut or not.

III

One day in early spring 2007, I checked my PO box and found ten newspaper articles Ned had sent me inside a package of other documents. In his note attached to the package, Ned spoke of Mark Pascual as nothing more than a murderer looking to cut a better deal for himself. Ned said Pascual had “patched together” from newspaper articles the story he told police and, subsequently, the jury. Ned cited several references from those articles, which he believed juxtaposed perfectly with Pascual’s “story.” He highlighted the most obvious phrases he claimed Pascual had lifted from those articles. Sentences such as:
Stuffed in a plastic bag…Kenney’s Restaurant on Capitol Avenue…Saw Snelgrove dancing with Rodriguez at the bar…Strangling girls and carrying the limp body onto a bed.
And so on.

Next to each highlight, Ned had made notes for me. For example, underneath
American Frozen Foods,
Ned wrote,
the meat guy,
quoting Pascual from the witness stand, insinuating that Pascual knew Ned sold meats only because he had read “American Frozen Foods” in the newspaper. Underneath the newspaper quote
preoccupied with sex,
Ned believed this was the passage that sparked Pascual to take a leap from “preoccupied with sex” to “as Snelgrove strangled the girl to death, he related that he had an orgasm.”

The newspaper had printed Ned’s address. Ned’s note to me next to that quote said,
Close to the Berlin Fairgrounds….
He believed Pascual had put together that entire scenario of Ned taking Carmen to the Berlin Fairgrounds based on where Ned lived. Many later told me that Pascual is not that smart. Interviewing him myself, I’d have to agree.

The newspaper read:
He’d stripped her to the waist…half-naked….

From Ned:
[Pascual said I] took off her shirt and posed her….

The package Ned sent goes on and on with many of these same references. At best, Ned is obsessed with the fact, many close to the case later insisted, that the prosecution
failed
to prove he killed Carmen Rodriguez, but instead they were able to get a conviction based on his prior bad acts. At worst, Ned accused the CSP and David Zagaja of fabricating evidence (and police reports), along with making false claims in order to convict him. At one point, Ned talks to me about the warrants and affidavits prepared against him before his arrest. He asked me why Pascual’s name is never mentioned in any of them. Answering himself, he said the statements by Pascual to police were
put together and back-dated by Detective [Stavros] Mellekas….
In other words, Ned wants me to believe Mellekas fabricated reports and notes and put his career on the line to help convict Ned.

Ned fails to mention the simple fact that Mark Pascual was a confidential informant (CI). His information was extremely fragile, sensitive. If inmates knew he was a “rat,” Mark Pascual’s safety would be jeopardized. Still, in all the pages of documents Ned sent, along with his letters and notes, not once does he show me
any
evidence pertaining to his innocence—instead, he carries on and on about how the prosecution failed to
prove
he killed Carmen and how Zagaja and his posse of law enforcement prepped Pascual, wrote reports that were untrue, and propped Pascual up like a puppet to convict him.

IV

On the witness stand, Mark Pascual continued to tell his story, relating to the jury what Ned had admitted to him, saying at one point, “[Ned told me he and Carmen] then had breakfast and after they had breakfast he asked her if [she] wanted to take a ride and get to know each other. And she said, ‘OK.’ So he took her not far from where the diner was. He said it was a place where he used to hang out when he was younger, the back side of Berlin Fairgrounds. And he stopped the car and he made a move on her and she got out of the car and ran. So he said that he got out—he stopped—shut the car off, and ran after her and jumped on her and choked her.” At which time, Carmen stopped breathing. (Luz Rodriguez and her family members gasped. The courtroom went silent.) “Her body went limp,” Pascual continued. “And, at that point, he went back to his car and got a tarp, and a bag and went back to where she was and rolled her body onto the tarp, and she started to come to, and…as she was coming to, she bit him on the wrist and he got really upset with that, and he just killed her right there by strangling her.”

Which was it? Pascual had said months earlier that Ned used a pair of scissors and stabbed Carmen to death. (Pascual told me he was certain that Ned used a pair of scissors. “I don’t [know] how that got all screwed up. He told me scissors. Definitely scissors.”)

Zagaja didn’t go there, however. Instead, he stuck to Pascual’s narrative, asking, “And did he say what he did after he killed her?”

“He said he taped up her arms and her legs and he took her top off and he posed her body in certain sexual positions…. After that, he basically stuffed her in some garbage bags and took her to some place in Rhode Island and dumped her off.”

“Did he say anything about that area in Rhode Island?”

“All he said was that he had some customers up there, where he worked, and he used to drive around there while he was waiting for them to get home from work, so he knew the area.”

“Did he tell you the specific location in Rhode Island?”

“No, he did not.”