Jane Doe No More (7 page)

Throughout the morning of September 11, a Saturday, people stopped by the house as word spread among family members about what had happened. For the kids, shielded from the violent crime, it was like Christmas—all the family gathered around, doughnuts, coffee, sweets, people talking. The only thing missing was the festive spirits. Donna’s brother-in-law went over to her house and installed new deadbolt locks on the front and back doors at some point that morning.

Around noon the drugs Donna had taken at the hospital began to affect her. She was vomiting violently, hour after miserable hour, her mother there beside her, holding Donna’s hair back as she spent most of her time staring into the toilet. “I could not keep anything down.” It was a combination of the morning-after pill and the antibiotics. Donna spent the day in the bathroom. After the vomiting stopped, she decided the family needed to get together and talk about how she was going to break the news to John.

Throughout that day, WPD Detective George Lescadre popped in to Donna’s mother’s house to see how Donna was doing. George wasn’t officially involved in the investigation. He explained, however, that he had gone over to Donna’s house earlier that Saturday morning to have a look around. That first time he stepped inside Donna’s mother’s house and said hello, it appeared to George as though someone had died. Donna’s mother, father, and sister were devastated; they had a look of deathly despair. George picked up on this immense feeling of hopelessness coming from everyone but Donna.

“It looks like somebody died around here,” George said to his friend. “Donna, you are going to be okay.”

“I know . . . I know, George,” Donna said. “I’ll be fine. You have to talk to them.”

George was encouraging and reassuring, telling everyone that in time everything would be fine. He also had no reason not to believe that his colleagues at the WPD were doing everything they could to find Donna’s attacker.

That Sunday evening John made it back to Connecticut and drove directly home from the airport. Donna had spoken to him briefly over the phone before he left Colorado, not telling him anything about what had happened, doing her best to hide her emotions. But there was no hiding from it any longer. John was in town.

The first thing Donna’s husband noticed were the new deadbolts on the doors; he couldn’t get into his own house without knocking. Walking in, putting down his luggage, John worked his way into the kitchen, where everyone was gathered, and he knew immediately that something was wrong. Donna sat at the kitchen table. She wore sunglasses to cover her eyes. That sense of desolation, which George Lescadre had picked up on earlier, infused the air.

“What’s going on here?” John asked. He looked around the room. It was odd to John that George Lescadre was there. The police? Family? Donna sitting at the table wearing sunglasses.

“We’re all fine, John,” Donna began. “But we had a break-in . . .”

“What . . . when?” John looked around at everyone for an answer. “What happened?”

“Friday night. I didn’t tell you because you were away and it didn’t make sense. The kids are fine. I’m okay, John.”

“What did he want?”

Silence.

“What happened, Donna?”

Donna hesitated, then explained. “I was raped, John.”

John turned and stormed out of the room. He was angry and confused and mumbling to himself. “I cannot believe this . . . the first time I am away and this happens . . . what the hell!” It was clear he was mad
at himself
. “How could this happen?”

It was important that John process the information in his own way. Donna knew him well enough to understand that he would need time to accept what had happened and return to being the husband he had always been.

“Throughout this time,” Donna said later, remembering that Sunday evening when her husband returned and she broke the news to him, “we believe a major investigation is going on behind the scenes. I am confident that I will heal quickly, emotionally and physically. I am grateful to be alive and feel as though God has spared my life for some reason.”

There was Donna’s gratitude, again, and her knowledge that she would heal. And that John would too. The family would go on and maybe be stronger. Part of that healing, however, included getting Donna’s attacker off the street so he could not harm another woman. This concern became a major focus for Donna—the welfare of other women. If this guy had attacked her so brutally, in a way that appeared so calculated and planned, how many other women had he done the same to?

A couple days passed before Donna and John headed down to the WPD so Donna could find out where the investigation was. She had not heard a word from the WPD, but she remembered that the officers on the scene had requested she provide a voluntary statement. There was never any question in her mind that she was going to do exactly what the police had asked her to. Donna had waited the extra days because she needed to see several doctors in the wake of her attack and get rechecked and retested. She also needed to regain her strength and composure. She wanted to feel comfortable and have a somewhat clear head before sitting down and talking about what had happened to her that night.

On Monday I had doctors’ appointments, follow-up visits. We went down to the WPD on Tuesday to just reiterate everything we could, to make certain that they had every detail from us. I wanted to make certain I wasn’t leaving out anything that might be important. I had gone over the night of the rape in my head again and again. I needed to relay that information to the WPD. John wanted to give them a layout of our house and talk about how my attacker might have gotten in without breaking in. It was hard to fathom, you know . . . that I had been attacked and raped like this. I was still trying to get my head around what was a surreal situation, and accept it. I was thirty-six years old. I had two children. A wonderful husband. A nice home. We both had great jobs. Our world had been shattered overnight, just like that. I thought this was the beginning to a road of healing and forgiveness and justice. Yet that was all about to change as I learned what was happening behind the scenes with the WPD.

Detective Lou Cote greeted Donna and John as they walked into the WPD. The Waterbury Police had been formed under the supervision of Samuel Warren on July 28, 1853. Warren was the department’s first police chief, overseeing twenty-five men on the force at that time. The department went through a multitude of changes throughout the century-plus leading up to the early 1980s, when it began to put its resources into fighting the drug war, which had hit Waterbury hard. By 1990, however, the focus was on computers and how they could help crime fighting efforts. According to its website, the WPD used its first desktop computer “network” in 1990, “allowing for local criminal history record checks, active arrest warrant checks, and the booking of prisoners.” Computers were a major aid in criminal cases such as Donna’s. They allowed for repeat offenders, for example, to be easily recorded and tracked. “Prior to this time,” the department website continued, “police officers working the booking desk would have to record the name of each arrestee, go to the Records Division, and manually check paper-based files to determine if the arrestee had a prior criminal history. The police officer would then have to travel to the second floor and manually check the files of the Detective Bureau to determine if the arrestee had any outstanding local warrants.”

Of greater importance to what would transpire in Donna’s case over the next decade, in February 1992, after what was a long fight inside the Connecticut Supreme Court, was a ruling handed down concerning the “rank of Detective” within the WPD. Before the Supreme Court ruling, becoming a detective was “a promotion and not an assignment.” After the ruling a candidate would be required to take “a competitive civil service examination.” As far back as 1902, the gold badge position had been something of an assignment by the superintendent. Thus, “a dispute over the issue ensued between the Board of Police Commissioners and the Superintendent, who wished to maintain the position as an assignment, and the Civil Service Commission and the Police Union, who wished the position to become a permanent rank requiring competitive civil service examinations.”

The year 1993, leading up to the day of Donna’s attack, had been a busy one for the WPD, with gang-related warfare breaking out in the streets. The major problem was a rift between rival Hispanic gangs, the Latin Kings and the Los Solidos. The WPD had formed a new tactical unit on May 26, 1993, the Gang Task Force.

What did all this mean for Donna Palomba as she and her husband walked into the WPD on September 14, 1993? First, the WPD was certainly able and capable of an investigation such as the one Donna assumed had been initiated moments after her 911 call reporting the home invasion. Furthermore, the experience and technology within the Detective Bureau of the WPD should have been sufficient to solve Donna’s case.

It was 3:20 p.m. when Donna and John sat down with Detective Lou Cote inside the WPD. Cote came across as friendly, but also a bit indifferent. He didn’t discuss one theory in any more depth than another. He was there to collect information, Donna believed, so that the investigation could move forward. Cote did not mention if the WPD had any suspects or if there was a search ongoing. Cote simply sat Donna down and asked her to give a thorough account of what had happened, beginning when she had arrived home that night.

Donna explained the attack in as much detail as she could. Some of the more revealing sections of the account would give detectives plenty of information to go on—clues, in other words, to help them begin looking for a possible suspect or suspects.

I was laying [
sic
] on my stomach and I looked toward the door of my bedroom and I saw the shadow of a body coming into my room and turning toward me. At that point I saw his image lurching toward me, and his head was covered with what appeared to be some type of black mask or something, and he jumped on top of me.