The Man in the Monster (26 page)

W
hen I told Michael I had been to the Shelleys' house, he was curious about what they had said. I told him about our conversation. I said I'd told them that he didn't rape Leslie. He seemed shocked that I had told them that, but I wouldn't let him backpedal on the admission. “Mr. Shelley even said he had proof on the autopsy report that she had not been raped.”

“That's not what I said,” he argued. “You misunderstood me.”

But I hadn't misunderstood. I knew what the truth was. “I asked you point-blank which story was the truth, and you said the one on the tape—the confession tape.”

The next week, Michael and I talked more about the Shelleys and their feelings. “Mr. Shelley's anger—I can't blame him for not being able to forgive me. I know I caused it all. I forgive Mr. Shelley because when he is angry and says some of the things he says . . .”

“You better be careful how you say things, because saying, ‘I've forgiven Mr. Shelley, but he can't forgive me' is ridiculous. What the hell should
you
forgive Mr. Shelley about?”

He started to cry. Blaming the prosecutor was one thing; blaming the parent of his murder victim was another.

Lera and I corresponded for the next several months and continue to occasionally make contact by mail or phone. Sometimes she wrote to fill in gaps, sometimes just being friendly by sending me a Christmas card or a friendly thinking-of-you kind of note. She also had questions for me about Michael that I answered as best I could.

Immediately after talking to Lera and Ed, I found it difficult to talk with Michael. In one very awkward occurrence during the summer of 2000, I was speaking to Michael on the phone when the other line rang. It was Lera. “I gotta go,” I told him. “I have another call I need to
take. Don't call me back today,” I said, knowing he might try to call back and that I wouldn't be able to handle talking to him after talking to her. Later I explained to him who had been on the phone. “I'm glad you talked to her,” he said. “I hope they're doing okay.” On some level, I think he hoped that my talking to the Shelleys would make them forgive him, but I had no intention of being a go-between, and I already knew that the idea that they would ever forgive him was nonsense. If there was one thing I learned from meeting them, it was that Ed Shelley was never going to forgive Michael Ross—and I didn't see why he should, unless he believed that Michael was sincere in his remorse—and he didn't—or he felt forgiving Michael would help him get past losing Leslie.

Leslie's death had been especially hard on her sisters—her older sister, Robin, and Jennifer, who was only eight at the time. I met Jennifer during another visit to the Shelleys'. As she spoke of Leslie, her eyes welled with tears. “I kept thinking they'd come home. I never thought she was dead until I heard that they had found two bodies. Then I knew it was Leslie.”

Besides reminiscing about Leslie, she also talked about the death penalty. It was clear that Jennifer had no doubts about the fact that Michael should die for what he had done, but she was also angry at the criminal justice system. “I never had a childhood,” she said, sobbing. “It was like the only thing that was important was for Michael Ross to die. Nothing else mattered—every court date, every time the legislature was going to discuss capital punishment. There was hardly any time for anything else.”

Even in college, she couldn't escape her sister's murder. In April 2001, Lera wrote that Jennifer was taking an English class at New England Institute of Technology in Rhode Island. She said the class was “studying . . . the death penalty. Of course she has discussed her
interest in it because her sister was murdered by M. Ross!” She asked that I make copies of anything I had that she could use in writing her paper. She told me that Jennifer was thinking about getting in touch with Michael via the Internet, but “does not know what she would say to him.” She didn't know that death row inmates in Connecticut had no Internet access. The Department of Correction does not want them contacting victims, convicted felons, or going on inappropriate Web sites. Lera said that if Jennifer decided to contact Michael, “it has to be her decision, and I will not try to talk her out of it. I don't know how her dad will feel about it.”

I sent a few articles I had written as well as other background material from the scrapbooks or documents I had collected. Jennifer was determined to tell Michael what he had done to her life. She wanted some answers to questions that had plagued her for almost two decades, so I gave her his address, in case she wanted to write. She did.

She wrote him a short letter, saying that she was writing “to you to let you know how you ruined my life seventeen years ago when you took my sister away from my parents and I. My parents have had to live with emptiness in their lives which can never be filled.” She said she had grown up trying to figure out “why this happened to my family, why my sister had to die at such a young age and why someone like you would still be alive after seventeen years of sitting on death row.” She told him that she was satisfied with the outcomes of the trial “because my sister will forever haunt you. She is the girl who screws up all your lies and excuses you seem to come up with so you can have a new trial or another appeal. I am disgusted with all your excuses and reasons to explain why you killed six young ladies and how sorry you are for the crimes you have committed when you stole a life away from the family and friends of your victims. . . . The lives of the girls you stole away from us will always be remembered and for this reason you will never
have peace in your life and the remorse you say you have will always fall on deaf ears!”

Jennifer told me that she would like to hear back from Michael, so I relayed the message. He was hesitant to write, but when I told him it was important to Jennifer, he complied. He ended up sending the letter to me, and I forwarded it to her, because inmates are not allowed to have direct contact with their victims or their families. Because I had a request from Jennifer to communicate with him, I didn't feel I was abetting him in skirting the rule.

He said that he was writing only because I had made it clear that she wanted and expected a response to her letter. “If I have been wrongly informed, please destroy this letter right now, for I have absolutely no desire to invade your privacy.” Knowing that he could not say anything to change her opinion of him, he wrote, “I offer no excuses, because there are none. I murdered your sister. She did not deserve to die. She did nothing to provoke me to kill her, and you and your family did not deserve the ordeal that you have been through.” He said he had tried to explain his mental illness for many years, but he did not mean it as an excuse for what he did. “I do not care if I am executed; in fact, part of me longs for the sweet release of death. . . . I tried to accept full and complete responsibility and I did my best to get the judge to accept a stipulation agreement which would have compelled the court to sentence me to death without dragging everyone through a second penalty phase . . . and I regret that I failed your family and all of the families in that regard.” He reiterated his wish that he could undo the pain he had caused and said that every time he closed his eyes, he could see her mother, because he was haunted by “the unfathomable emptiness of her eyes. It is as if I can see straight into her soul and it is full of nothing but pain, pain that is there solely because of me.” During the trial, he said he forced himself to look at Mrs. Shelley every day because he didn't
want to insult her or any other family member by avoiding eye contact as he had in the first trial. “Every day I looked into those dark empty eyes and hated myself.”

He said he was sorry that he could not make amends to them. “And I am sorry that you will never be able to accept the remorse that I do feel as being genuine, and that my words here—as inadequate as they are—‘will always fall on deaf ears.'”

MAY 2004–JANUARY 2005

“I'm not surprised. It's what I expected,” Michael said when he called me to tell me that the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld his six death sentences in May 2004, four years and a month after the jury's verdict and almost two decades since his arrest. Despite his protestations, Michael was upset, more by the reasoning than the outcome. “They said that even though I'm mentally ill, it had nothing to do with the crime. That is the most idiotic thing I ever heard. If it weren't for my mental illness, I would never have hurt anyone.”

Because of his reaction to the decision and his enthusiasm about his lawyers' opinion that he had winnable appeals issues, I thought that Michael would go forward with his appeals after all. For one thing, Bob Satti had died. Satti's tactics had been a big part of his reason to forgo another trial. Even if a court eventually ordered a third penalty trial, that would be years away. Why stop the process when there was a chance that a court might order a life sentence?

He had been depressed in the winter of 2002 because he had broken up with his current girlfriend, Susan from Oklahoma, the summer before. Susan had found his
Walking with Michael
newsletter on the Internet and written to him, and their correspondence soon blossomed into a romantic relationship while Michael was waiting to be sentenced for
Paula Perrera's murder in New York. But it did not take long before she became overwhelmed by his neediness and cut off the relationship on his birthday in July 2002. The following February he attempted suicide a second time, but once again he was discovered and the state of Connecticut nursed him back to health. By the time the decision came down, Michael seemed better. So I was shocked and confused when he called me in July to report that he had fired his lawyers and stopped his appeals. I challenged him on his decision.

“What's wrong with allowing the appeals to go forward?”

He said he didn't care if he had good issues. He had made up his mind ten years earlier and he wasn't going to change it.

“You've changed your mind several times in the last ten years,” I reminded him.

“I'm not changing my mind; it's done. I don't want there to be a ‘Ross III,'” he said with a mix of sadness and anger, referring to a third penalty hearing. “I owe it to the families. I can't risk another trial. You know that's what would happen.” He was adamant but with a note of self-pity.

“I don't get you. I don't understand why you want to throw away your life,” I said.

“Life? You call this a life? I live in an eight by ten cell, hermetically sealed in a tomb. I go out for rec a couple of times a week in a dog run. I have to put up with the idiots here. The other day, Cobb [another death row inmate] left me a little love note calling me Satan and signing it ‘Jesus.' I'll send it to you. The guards treat me like crap—like a worthless piece of shit. You call this a friggin' life?”

Having been inside Northern, I understood. Yet Michael Ross had committed horrendous crimes and damaged many lives. He took up a lot of my time, energy, and money, but he'd become a fixture in my life, a constant. It was in the months that followed that I really
understood the extent and depth of our friendship. It had been years since I regarded my role as simply a reporter covering a story, but I never had tried to tell him what to do. When he asked my opinion or my advice—usually about legal matters—I was always straight with him. Now he had started what U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia likes to call “the machinery of death”—and I had no idea where the off button was.

When he called on August 19, I knew something was wrong. I could barely hear Michael say hello.

“What's the matter now?”

“I can't be buried in Brooklyn,” he sobbed, explaining that Tammy Williams's grandmother didn't want him buried in the same place that her husband was buried, nor did she want him to have a funeral Mass in St. John's, her parish church. “I just wanted to go home. . . . I asked if we could have it there, out of courtesy. I didn't think that anyone would have a problem. No one else had a problem.” He said that maybe he could have the Mass at the Benedictine Grange, the home of Father John Giuliani (the priest who succeeded Father John Gilmartin as Michael's spiritual adviser). “It's supposed to be a beautiful place,” he said.

“Why don't you just get buried on the farm?” I asked. “You always wanted to go back to the farm.”

“We don't even own the farm anymore,” he explained. Uncertainty agitated Michael. He wanted control of his death, his funeral Mass, and his burial, and now he could control none of them.

On October 7, Michael went to court and told Judge Patrick Clifford that he had dropped his appeals. The judge set an execution date of January 26, 2005. Now his death was not just a theoretical possibility; it had a date attached. Within a few days, Michael was transferred across the parking lot from death row in Northern to Osborn
Correctional Institution, the location of the execution chamber. When Michael finally called me, he sobbed throughout the conversation. He told me that he was emotional because in the afternoon he had made arrangements to be cremated. “It was hard. It makes it very real, and it hurts.”

“Are you having second thoughts?” I asked

“No, I'm not going to change my mind. You know that. Just because I'm getting emotional doesn't mean I'm going to change my mind.” Then he said something that startled me. “I'm not going to trust the feelings that I'm having now because I know that for ten years I've had one goal and that was to get this over with. I can't trust my feelings now. I have to stick with what I decided because I was sure of it for so long. Every time I let my emotions take over, I make a mistake. I'm going through with this.”

 • • • 

W
hen Michael called on December 4, he was tearful again. He sounded more depressed every day.

“What's wrong now?” I asked.

“Have you been following what they're doing?”

“What? Who?”

“The public defenders filed motions.” Michael proceeded to read me parts of the motions. He was angry that the public defenders were trying to stop the execution, but he was livid that they alleged he was not competent to make the decision to drop his appeals. It was an unusual and perhaps desperate move, because they no longer represented Michael.

“Michael, they aren't saying you're incompetent. They are saying your decision to accept death is due to your mental illness.” I tried to tell him, but he wasn't listening to me.

“This is ridiculous. I'm really scared that they're going to take me across the way.” Michael was petrified that he would be sent back to Northern. “Why won't they just let me go? No court will call me incompetent,” he said bitterly, choking up as he spoke.

I didn't want to argue with him, but I did want him to understand what the public defenders were thinking. “You said you'd been having second thoughts but that you didn't want to trust your emotions because you had made the decision ten years ago, and you weren't going to change your mind because of emotions. That's enough to say you're not competent.” I knew he would be ticked off at me for suggesting that his emotional state made him incompetent, but at that point I had to be sure I spoke my mind. I was surprised that he almost agreed with me.

“I do have mixed feelings,” he admitted, adding what he would repeat a million times. “But I believe I'm doing something for a reason, a principle. I've thought about this for a long time. . . . What right does any public defender have to interfere with what I'm doing? I'm pissed.” He was bitter. “They'll get me another month or six months and call it a victory, but it won't be a victory for me. Don't they understand that? Don't
you
understand that?” I did, and as long as he wouldn't change his mind and fight, he was right.

To Michael's way of thinking, there were two problems about the lawsuit. For the public defenders to call him incompetent—even if based on his mental illness, not his mental capacity—was an affront. “I'm not some friggin' moron,” he said over and over. He had also written in one of his journals, “My mind is all I have left. Even though the monster resides there, I am still proud of my mind. My mind is what keeps me sane. It is my only companion, my only true friend that I can completely trust.”

The second problem was the timing. He felt that they had waited
until the eleventh hour to make sure that the execution would be delayed. “They could have done this last summer when I fired them,” he said. By waiting until December, he charged, they were making it impossible for the issue to be resolved before the January 26 execution date. That meant that the execution would be on hold until his competency was resolved, which also meant uncertainty for Michael. He had planned on taking the last month or so to try to prepare himself spiritually for the execution, but instead he was full of the anxiety of uncertainty. I wondered if he was afraid on some level that the delay would give him time to change his mind, but I didn't want to suggest it, because it would probably make him dig in his heels even deeper.

As soon as I answered the phone on November 13, I could hear that Michael was very distraught, which was becoming the norm. “I have only seventy-four more days of this,” he cried. Although his words made it sound as if he were looking forward to the execution, his tone made it clear that he was afraid. “At least it's only seventy-four more days of this crap.”

“What crap? I thought you said they were treating you better at Osborn.”

“It's all the friggin' rules. I'm depressed that every time I leave my cell I have two guards with me. When the deacon comes, we have to do communion through the bars. Even the legal visits have been through the glass,” he said, sobbing. “Twenty years of following the rules means nothing. They treat me like friggin' Danny Webb.” (Webb was another death row inmate, who had threatened to “take out” a few guards on his execution day.) “I have to accept it, but I don't have to like it. But it really pisses me off. Guards are running around the unit as if I'm Genghis Khan.”

Michael's mood greatly improved after Sister Helen Prejean, author of
Dead Man Walking
,
visited him in November. “I think we really
connected. She said she would be here for me. I don't know if she meant that she would be with me inside or outside protesting. I need to clarify what she meant.” Either way, Michael thought things were looking up. He had called at his usual time—6:00
A.M
. on a Saturday, knowing I'd be up to take his call. He was excited and wanted me to be excited about meeting Sister Helen. Then he paused. “By the way, before I forget, I assume you'll be there on January 26.”

He had intimated over the years that he might ask me to be there—maybe he even assumed I would—but he had never asked me directly or demanded my commitment. I took a deep breath, trying to fight the panic. “Can I think about it?” I asked. The sudden reality of Michael's execution was daunting.

“You
don't
have to come. There will be others there. I don't need you there. I just thought you'd want to be there so you could write about it.”

“Michael, it's not that I wouldn't come if it was important to you. I have two problems. One is that I feel as if my presence would mean I condone capital punishment. I don't want to give your execution or any execution my imprimatur. The second is that . . . I don't know if I can handle it.”

“You
don't
have to come,” he said convincingly.

“I know, but I want to think about it.”

I didn't sleep well for the next week, trying to decide what to do. Ultimately, I knew that if there actually was going to be an execution, I would be there. I owed it to him. I had started out wanting to understand his decision to accept death; now I had to see it through. Ten years of telephone calls couldn't end without a final good-bye, but I still held tight to the hope that somehow it wouldn't ever come to that. Within a week, I told him I'd be one of his witnesses.

On November 28, he called to say, “It's been a hard week. I could
hardly make it through Thanksgiving,” sounding as if he were going to cry.

I paused, realizing that it would probably be his last Thanksgiving. “Because it would be your last one?” I asked gingerly, in part because
I
had a hard time not only choosing my words, but also saying them out loud.

“No, because I think of Mrs. Stavinsky waiting for her daughter to come home and having to go identify the body. I can't deal with it anymore,” he said, crying.

Michael felt ashamed of what he had done and the pain he had caused, but he also wanted sympathy. If he had been upset about the fact that it might be his last Thanksgiving, I would have tried to comfort him, but I just couldn't bring myself to let him off the hook for Robin's death because I knew what it had done to the Stavinsky family. He was not going to get sympathy for Mrs. Stavinsky's tears. That was her pain, not his.

 • • • 

S
oon he started calling me every day, sometimes two or three times a day. Mostly he just wanted to complain about the public defenders' lawsuits to stop the execution—and eventually a few that his father filed, including one that alleged that he was incompetent and narcissistic. “Now I'm really getting upset. By him doing this, he's putting a bull's-eye on my back,” he complained. “He once told me that he couldn't stand being in prison and would rather be executed. How can he go and argue against me?”

“Maybe it's because he loves you. He doesn't want to lose you.”

“I know. I know, but it gets to me.” Soon it seemed to Michael that everyone was in court trying to stop the execution. His sister Donna filed a suit. Some of the men on death row protested the scheduled execution by filing suit, arguing that the method of execution was cruel and unusual punishment. Then Connecticut doctors filed a suit claiming
that the death penalty as administered in Connecticut was cruel and unusual. According to the doctors' suit, the method of execution that the state used was illegal for veterinarians to use to euthanize animals, so it shouldn't be performed on humans.