Kill for Thrill (17 page)

Michael listened intently to the quickly approaching footsteps. Each scrape of leather against pavement brought Leonard Miller one step closer to uncovering their reign of terror. With William Nicholls’s wallet and belongings in the glove box and the .22-caliber pistol they had used to kill Peter Levato and Marlene Sue Newcomer tucked into John Lesko’s waist, it would only be a matter of time before their killing spree was undone. The steady
slip-clap
of Leonard Miller’s strides grew louder. Michael slid his thumb onto the knurled edge of the .38’s hammer. Easing it back, he felt the click of the action as the cylinder rotated into position, chambering a single .38-caliber bullet. Miller’s ample frame walked around the driver’s side of the car and stepped into the doorway, casting a large, looming shadow over the occupants.

Michael’s fingers twitched as he slowly raised the gun. He slowly squeezed the trigger until the roar of 158 grains of lead rocketing from the two-inch gun barrel jolted him backward. As the first bullet entered Leonard Miller’s body, Michael heard John in the passenger seat screaming, “Shoot him again, shoot him again!” Michael choked on the smoke as it filled the cabin. Leonard Miller dropped to one knee on the pavement outside Michael’s door, and Michael squeezed the trigger again, sending a second slug screaming into Leonard as he recoiled from the car door.

Smoke and unburned powder hung in the air outside the car window where Leonard Miller fell backward. Grasping at the police revolver that dangled in the holster by his side, his training took over, and he drew his weapon. Stumbling backward onto the pavement, Leonard began to fire. Squeezing again and again, he sent bullet after bullet in the direction of Michael, John and Ricky. The first struck the side window and sent a shower of glass raining down on them. Michael felt the sting of blood in his eye. Stunned that Leonard had returned fire, he panicked. Michael slammed the car into drive and crushed the gas pedal.

Thick black stripes of rubber appeared under the tires of the Lancia as it accelerated south on Route 66. Leonard continued firing, sending the last of his six bullets into the rear passenger’s side quarter panel of the car as it disappeared down the road. As the taillights rapidly vanished into the darkness, Leonard reholstered his gun and collapsed onto the cold, gray pavement.

The first round had struck Leonard in the abdomen; the second had found its mark in his shoulder. From both pencil-sized holes, growing crimson blobs began to engulf his shirt. As the blood rapidly drained from his body, Leonard began crawling back toward his idling cruiser. Covering the twenty-five feet took every ounce of strength that remained in his 250-pound body. When he reached the open door, he searched for the microphone that he had left lying on the seat.

Once he found it, Leonard wrapped his thick, blood-covered hand around the microphone and depressed the button. “RC-70 to Control. 10-13.” Leonard gasped for breath. “They shot me. They shot me twice…come out to the West Apollo slaughterhouse—” Leonard’s voice trailed off as his body dropped onto the pavement beside his black and white, microphone still clasped in his hand.

Donald Mahan had been working the evening shift in Apollo Borough on January 2. When Leonard arrived for his shift that night, Donny handed over the keys to the car, briefed him on the events of the evening and said goodbye. From there, Donny made the five-minute drive across the Kiskiminetas River to Vandergrift, where he would spend the next eight hours as a Vandergrift police officer. Neither man knew that their goodbyes would be their last.

When Donny Mahan heard Leonard Miller’s call for help, he and his partner, fellow Vandergrift veteran Lou Purificato, knew immediately that Miller’s situation was dire. His speech, garbled and distant, sounded as if he were underwater. When his initial transmission was inaudible, the dispatcher asked him to repeat it, but Leonard’s voice faded away. Mahan and Purificato wasted no time running to Miller’s side. Flying down McKinley Avenue onto Sheridan Road, which ran alongside the river toward Route 66, the two Vandergrift officers took the back route to Apollo and reached Leonard within two minutes of his fateful call for help.

When they arrived, Lou Purificato and Donny Mahan found Leonard barely breathing and lying face down in a pool of blood. Everything around Leonard Miller was covered in blood, and the officers immediately began valiantly trying to save their dying colleague. Most of Leonard’s blood had spilled from his body, and despite their tireless efforts, it was too late. Leonard Miller never regained consciousness, and within moments, Lou Purificato and Donald Mahan were huddled over the lifeless body of their friend and colleague. Silence—cold, crisp and forever—gripped the west end of the Apollo Bridge. The light snow that had begun to fall seemed to hang in the air, as if fearful of touching down on the hallowed ground where Leonard’s lifeless body lay. Instead, it swirled, danced and hovered just above the ground.

Leonard Miller, the only child of Frank and Evelyn Miller, was dead. His lifelong dream, realized for only three short days, had claimed him in the midst of doing what he loved. His sacrifice, felt deeply by the two men who were with him to the last, would ripple throughout the valley for the next twenty-nine years. As the news of Leonard’s death began to spread, the town awoke to a haze of disbelief and sorrow. No words will ever heal the wounds felt by this close-knit community; nor will justice ever truly come for those who knew and loved Leonard Miller. He was gone, and nothing, not even Donald Mahan and Lou Purificato, could bring him back. Michael Travaglia and John Lesko had claimed their fourth victim and disappeared into the night without a trace.

At 4:50 a.m., the harsh, shrill ringing of his telephone startled Tom Tridico awake. For veteran investigators such as Tridico, a 5:00 a.m. phone call is neither unexpected nor unusual. The call that Tom received this morning was both. In the career of a police officer, few phone calls are dreaded more. The news of the murder of a fellow officer strikes both deep and hard—in part because not only has a comrade made the ultimate sacrifice, but also because, in some small way, it serves as a cold reminder of one’s own mortality. After gathering the details and hanging up the phone, Tom numbly dressed and headed out to the scene.

The freezing drive—made even colder by its purpose—from Tom’s home in Greensburg to the outskirts of Apollo took him forty-five minutes. On the seat beside him lay a photo of Michael Travaglia. When he arrived at the scene, the cluster of firefighters, EMS personnel and police officers was surreal. He struggled to focus and knew that as tough as what he was about to do was, he owed it to Leonard Miller.

As he stepped from his unmarked car and walked toward the group, he saw the lifeless body of fellow officer Leonard Miller. Trooper Robert Luniewski was one of the stunned crowd huddled around Leonard’s body. Tom recognized him immediately and approached. He put aside his own grief and fears and began the most difficult investigation of his career.

Tom walked the scene with Bob Luniewski, making notes and directing Trooper Marshall to photograph this and mark that for reference. In his mind, he was working any other murder, just like the two hundred cases he had worked before—methodical, clinical and professional. In his heart, he was dying.

Tom sketched the location of the tire tracks in his notebook, and a sharp glint from something lying in the roadway caught his eye. He walked over to where the tracks began. As he bent down, the light from the dozen or so police cars that encircled the scene danced and flashed off several shards of broken glass lying in the highway.

Tom called Trooper Rick Marshall over. As crime scene photographer, Tom had worked with Rick hundreds of times before. Without a word from Tom, Marshall raised his bulky Speed Graphic to his eye and snapped some pictures. The flashes popped, shooting milky blue light out one hundred yards in all directions, and Tom blinked his eyes. No matter how many times he did this, he always forgot about the flashes.

After Rick took two pictures, Tom placed a brown paper evidence bag beside the glass, and, instinctively, Rick took several steps back to get a wider shot. Tom appreciated working with Rick. Rick understood the fundamentals of crime scene photography, and Tom couldn’t remember a single time that he had to remind him to get wide, medium and close-up photos of his evidence. Rick was a good trooper.

When Rick nodded to Tom, he knew that it was safe for the crime scene unit to begin collecting the shards of glass and he moved on. A theory began to emerge, and he mulled it over in his head as he began walking toward Leonard’s body. Tom had consciously avoided this since he had arrived, but he knew that his investigation wouldn’t be complete until he examined Leonard. Tom Tridico was nothing if not complete.

When Tom knelt beside Leonard’s body, every fiber of his two-hundredpound, middle-aged frame ached. Lying on the cold, hard pavement was one of his own. Separating Leonard Miller, fallen police officer, gunned down in cold blood, from Leonard Miller, the first homicide victim of 1980, was almost impossible. But Tom Tridico knew that there would be no closure for Leonard if he didn’t make that separation. Tom swallowed hard, placed his emotions in a tiny box, slid them high onto a shelf and closed the door. Tom was ready to examine Leonard’s body.

Tom suspected that the glass on the highway was from the suspect’s car. If that were the case, it had probably come from a gunfight between Leonard and his assailant. Tom gingerly unholstered Leonard’s service revolver. The blue steel Smith & Wesson was ice cold. Tom scratched a tiny mark on the cylinder to later identify its location and then slid the thumb catch. He gently flicked his wrist and popped the cylinder out. Six tiny dimples stared back at him. Tom smiled slightly. Leonard had not gone quietly into the night. Tom flipped the cylinder closed and then glanced over his shoulder. Rick’s slight nod told him everything he needed to know, and Tom handed the revolver off to the crime scene technicians for processing.

The tiny holes in Leonard’s body were almost invisible. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the massive pool of blood surrounding Leonard, one might almost miss them. It had always amazed Tom how much carnage two tiny holes no bigger than a number two pencil could make. The hole in Leonard’s abdomen would probably prove to be the fatal shot, but Tom knew that was the medical examiner’s call. He glanced at the silver shield lying on Leonard’s chest. Tom Tridico locked the closet door of his emotions and then stood up.

Tom scanned the scene. He had photographed, sketched and begun collecting what little evidence there was. Not much left to do here, he thought. As he stood there in the growing light of dawn, a fine dusting of snowflakes began to float down from the sky. Without a word, Tom walked to his car. He grabbed a blanket from his trunk and clumsily unfolded it. As he walked toward Leonard’s body, the anger in his stomach began to creep up into the back of his throat. When he reached Leonard, he gently draped the blanket over him. He pretended it was to protect the scene.

Tom hesitated, inhaled deeply to force the bile back down into his stomach and made a silent promise to Leonard. After a moment of standing there in desolate isolation, a fellow investigator gently tapped his shoulder. He had discovered two possible witnesses to the shooting. Tom’s moment of silence was over.