Lethal Guardian (4 page)

“It was about nine,” Ferguson recalled.

“Do you or anyone you know own a gun?” Turner asked.

“The only person…I know [who] owns a gun is Buzz. He showed it to me twice. I think it’s a twenty-two.”

Turner and Cleary promised they’d be back in a day or two.

On Friday, March 11, Dr. H. Wayne Carver, the chief medical examiner from Farmington, Connecticut, determined that Buzz had been killed by “multiple gunshot wounds to the body.” Five shots in all. The doctor ruled his death, to no one’s surprise, a homicide—one of over two hundred that would pass through the medical examiner’s office by year’s end.

It wasn’t difficult for Dr. Carver to figure out which gunshot killed Buzz: one of the bullets had punctured both of his lungs, heart and aorta. In theory, Buzz had drowned in his own blood. What became an issue later, however, was a debate over how much Buzz had likely suffered. By studying his wounds, one might easily conclude that Buzz didn’t die a quick and painless death.

There was no definitive way to determine the actual order in which the bullets had entered Buzz’s body, which would have, quite convincingly, given the doctor a clearer picture of how much he had suffered, along with where the murderer was standing at the time he fired. So when Dr. Carver sat down to write his report, the best he could do was describe exactly what he found.

The first bullet extracted from Buzz’s body had entered through the soft part of his right ear, which Dr. Carver opined was fired on him “from the front toward the back.” The second wound he examined had originated in “the back of his neck, just to the right of midline,” slightly below the earlobe. It had traveled “from the back of him toward the front, slightly left.” During its trek, the bullet “passed through the bones that stick out of the back of [the] spinal column and support the spinal cord, and fractured them.” Oddly, as it proceeded through his neck, through his tonsils and into the back of his tongue, it went straight through the tongue on a flat line, finally exiting out of the tip of it, loosening two of his bottom teeth and grazing the inside of his lip. The third bullet went “in on the upper right portion of his back…[near] the middle of his shoulder blade and went upward toward his [left] side and toward the front, then went through the shoulder apparatus and ended near the front of the shoulder apparatus,” or his middle, upper back. The fourth entered through “a little graze on the arm, right side…[and] went from the back of his body toward the front, from the right side toward the left. It went through the thick muscular part of the shoulder attachment and came out…in the front of the muscular part of the right side of the chest [but] did not enter the chest cavity.” Number five was, without a doubt, the wound that killed Buzz. It had entered “on the right chest, two inches above the nipple, went from the front of his body toward the back, on the right side toward the left and somewhat downwards, went through both lungs, the heart and the aorta…then ended [its trajectory] toward the back left, lower chest.” It was only one of two bullets the doctor had extracted.

In all likelihood, considering the injuries Buzz sustained, the position of his body when Steven and Christine Roy arrived on the scene, and the fact that the medical examiner extracted only two bullets from his body, the sequence of his injuries could have perhaps happened only one way:

The first shot was likely the one that had struck Buzz’s right ear. When this happened, his natural reflex told him to grab hold of it with his right arm, which exposed the entire back, right side of his body to his killer, allowing the next two bullets to hit him in the shoulder blade area and the armpit area. From there, the next wound was likely in the neck area—the bullet that hit him in the back of the neck and exited out of his tongue. When the bullet pierced his spinal column and cord, it dropped him to the ground almost instantly, perhaps like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The impact of these four wounds and the shock his body suffered from the injuries probably forced it to spin around. As he fell, his body turned a bit, exposing his right side, allowing the next bullet—the fatal bullet—to enter his chest, ricochet off his rib cage, pierce his lungs, aorta and heart. This was obvious from the shape of the bullet: it was frayed and ripped open like a chunk of lead that had been blown apart from the inside out. With the amount of internal bleeding that occurred at this point, and Buzz’s lungs, aorta and heart all punctured, he had likely drowned in his own blood. The only comforting notion about this theory is that Buzz probably didn’t feel anything because he had been paralyzed by the last shot. Nevertheless, even though this all took place in a matter of seconds, he likely felt a great deal of pain as he died and, most certainly, knew what was happening to him. Some say it was possible he could have lived for between five and six minutes after the fatal shot.

What was clearly evident from the beginning was that Buzz’s killer was one of the best shots many of the ED-MCS detectives had ever seen. It had been dark, Buzz was moving toward his killer when he was shot. Still, his killer had managed to strike him five times with a .38-caliber revolver. As Reggie Wardell and John Turner later put it, most cops aren’t capable of such accuracy.

Factoring this efficiency didn’t mean Buzz had been killed by a professional. It hadn’t been a clean job, like a mob hit, for example. Buzz’s killer most probably was a person full of rage or resentment. Perhaps he was someone who had never killed before, but had just snapped. Buzz had gotten out of his car, walked a few feet and was mowed down in a fury of gunfire. From all the evidence collected, there had been every reason to believe that very little thought had been put into the murder—especially considering where it took place.

Dr. Carver also found several abrasions on Buzz’s lower torso: “He had one on the upper body and several on his leg.”

There was no way to prove it, and Dr. Carver disagreed, but it was possible the killer had run Buzz over as he lay helpless, bleeding, suffocating on his own blood. Reggie Wardell was present during the autopsy. Cops often take part in autopsies because they can ask questions as they come up during the procedure. The ED-MCS had always emphasized the importance of its cops being at autopsies.

Wardell had taken Buzz’s clothes and laid them out on a gurney near his body to take photographs. “I remember seeing clothing on Buzz’s body that indicated debris or markings,” Wardell recalled. “I personally had the impression then that he was run over.”

Buzz’s blood had been screened for everything: cocaine, heroin, alcohol. The only drug Dr. Carol Fletterick, a toxicologist, found was caffeine.

In Buzz’s front pocket, investigators found one Bic lighter, his “yellow metal” wedding band and $5.62.

Christine and Steven Roy had spent better nights in their marriage. When all was said and done, they had been at the crime scene for nearly four hours. By midnight, March 11, they had arrived back home flustered and confused at the thought of having witnessed a murder.

Christine still wasn’t sure of the make and model of the vehicle she’d spied leaving the scene. She wanted to help the cops, of course, but for the life of her, she just couldn’t remember what model car it was.

As she made her way to work the following day, Christine kept her eyes open for a car similar to the one she had seen. She knew she would recognize it if she ever saw it again. For some reason, the taillights stuck out. They were different, she thought. Larger. More pronounced.
Nissan,
she told herself while driving.
It was definitely a Nissan.

Later that morning, at about 11:30, John Turner and Reggie Wardell showed up at Christine’s work unannounced to ask her a few follow-up questions. They had a book of photos: every type of vehicle imaginable.

Maybe she could pick out the vehicle in a lineup?

Taking her time, Christine looked at each vehicle carefully, as if she were scouring a book of mug shots looking for a perp. One of the ideas investigators had during that first twenty-four-hour period was:
find the car, find the killer.

“I know the taillights went all the way across the back of the car,” Christine said as she browsed through the book. But she still wasn’t sure.

For about an hour, Christine scanned every car in the book, but she still couldn’t pin down a positive identification.

“I just don’t see the car, sorry.”

“Here’s my card,” Turner said. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

Later that afternoon, as Christine made her way through traffic on Interstate 84 on her way home from work, she spotted a car on the highway that immediately looked familiar. It was, as she had first thought, a Nissan Pulsar. The taillights, like on the car she had seen, went across the back of the entire car. It was definitely the same type of vehicle.

When she got home, she phoned Turner. He was gone, so she left him a voice mail message: “I figured it out,” Christine said with some excitement in her voice. “It was a Nissan Pulsar…. Call me back, please.”

To her surprise, nobody from the Connecticut State Police ever returned her call. In fact, she wouldn’t hear back from them again for
seven
years.

As it turned out, as Turner and Wardell began to examine Buzz’s life further, they had no reason to think that Christine Roy could be much help—for they were concentrating now on a number of suspects, one of whom they were certain killed Buzz.

During the early-morning hours of March 11, someone by the name of
Victor Page,
a local kid who’d had his share of troubles with the law in the past, had phoned the state police. Without identifying himself, Page told a trooper how on the night of the murder, at about 7:30, he’d watched two cars exit I-95 near Exit 72 and pull over to the side of the road. One, Page said, was a Firebird with Maine license plates. The other was a ’78 or ’82 Impala or Caprice, two tone in color, maybe maroon or silver.

It had no license plate.

During the day, Turner and Wardell tried tracking Page down, but they couldn’t find him.

What they didn’t know, however, was that Victor Page owned a blue Nissan.

Detectives spread out. From the interview Marty Graham and Mike Foley had conducted with Kim Clinton, several names emerged that could lead to the profile of a possible killer. There were several people Buzz knew who had, at one time or another, said some pretty nasty things about him. There were several more to whom Buzz had owed money. There were others who had even threatened him on occasion.

Every last threat and altercation Buzz had gotten into had to be taken seriously—no matter who had made it. There was even a state trooper who had had words with Buzz sometime before his murder. Dee Clinton told detectives she thought for sure the trooper had tracked Buzz down and murdered him. She also said that Buzz had had problems with crack and alcohol in the past but had gone into detox and licked both problems. Perhaps he was back on dope and had burned a dealer?

Both matters had to be considered.

Rob Ferguson was another person who had to be looked at more closely. Buzz and Rob had been friends, true. But also enemies. They had worked together. Drank together. Hung out together.

On the night of March 10, Rob had stopped by Buzz and Kim’s apartment in East Lyme. He’d already confessed to that. When he arrived, he said, he was looking for Buzz. Kim was at home preparing the kids for bed. It wasn’t, Kim later remembered, a typical conversation: “Where’s Buzz? When is he going to be home?” Instead, Rob seemed worried, nervous, Kim stated. He had a beer in his hand, and there was someone in the car waiting for him.

“Someone with a Pontiac Firebird with Maine plates,” Rob told Kim, “was shot twice on the Rocky Neck connector.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Kippy told me. I was at the Lyme Tavern.”

“What?”

Rob took a pull from his beer. Then, “You should call the East Lyme Police Department and find out what’s going on.”

“I will.”

“Call me when you find out anything.”

The conversation had taken about five minutes. But ten minutes later, Rob phoned Kim and asked if she had heard anything.

Kim said she hadn’t.

When detectives interviewed Rob a second and third time, he admitted to having been involved in an insurance scam with Buzz. Buzz had smashed into Rob’s car, and they had agreed to split the insurance money. Then he told another detective that Charlie Snyder had called the shop and threatened Buzz. When Reggie Wardell interviewed Rob, he asked him straight out, “Did you kill Buzz?”

“No!” Rob shot back.

“Were you involved in any way?”

“No, damn it! I wasn’t.”

“Do you know who might have been?”

“No.”

Detective Paul Poissant, another detective from the ED-MCS, tracked down twenty-seven-year-old Kevin Myers, an unemployed mechanic who had known Buzz fairly well. The purpose of the interview was to find out what the relationship between Myers and Buzz had been like. Rob Ferguson had given Myers’s name to detectives. Myers was part of the crowd. He, Rob and Buzz had been pretty tight at one time.

Myers said he had known Buzz for about four years and had worked for him on occasion, up until about three weeks ago.

“Buzz had always paid me on time, if not early,” Myers said.

Poissant asked him about Buzz’s friends.

“There’s some people around town who owe Buzz money for car work.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“About two days ago, over the phone. The last time I saw him was about three weeks ago, the day I stopped working for him.”

Myers knew that Buzz had been murdered before Poissant told him. Although the story had been plastered all over the area newspapers and local television, Poissant was still curious as to how Myers had found out.

“I saw his father this morning. He told me.”

Myers further explained that he knew of no drug use history of Buzz’s. But more than that, Myers had just recently been fired from Blonders for stealing and using cocaine. Charlie Snyder, himself a reformed addict, had little tolerance for drug users.

“What else can you tell me, Kevin?”

“I know that he was having problems with his father-in-law.”

There it was again—another indication that Buzz and Dick Carpenter had an ongoing spat that Buzz had been telling people about.