Because You Loved Me (23 page)

If only Billy could have kept his trap shut, he might have had a chance to argue his case with some validity. But he couldn’t, of course. Thus, as the daffodils and tulips poked their pointed hats out of the ground during spring 2004, Billy became his own worst enemy. The urge to engage in some sort of relationship with the opposite sex and use that affair as a means to further his agenda completely superseded any rational thought of the potential consequences. Possibly so, the man simply couldn’t help himself. Nor could he grasp confinement or the legal system: other people telling him what to do and when to do it. Billy needed desperately to interact with the outside world. And it mattered little—or he was just too damned ignorant and narcissistic to see it for himself—that this unknown weakness, this uncontainable longing to control and manipulate people, was to catch up with him sooner or later and reveal his true nature.

Since Billy and Nicole had been arrested, they’d had no contact. As far as Billy saw it, Nicole had sold him out when she dropped a dime. Word was Nicole had been talking about a deal with the AG’s office to save herself life behind bars, which was going to ultimately involve her testifying against Billy.

Something Billy couldn’t let happen.

Framing his next move, when Billy heard of Nicole’s willingness to turn on him, it just so happened that a new puppet fell into his lap.

Tina Bell
was a fashionable, perfectly shaped fifteen-year-old girl with womanly features. She lived with her parents in Manchester. Tina admitted later she didn’t have a great relationship with her mom and dad and had “never really gotten along” with them.

“My parents and I just never clicked. I had a pretty rough upbringing. I had both of my parents at home, but it was a pretty rough time.”

For that reason, or the fact that school wasn’t stimulating her any longer, Tina spent much of her free time at her friend Danielle’s house. Danielle was a bit older. She was out of school. Although Tina and Danielle fought at times, Tina said Danielle was her “rock,” the one person she could trust without question.

As it happened, Danielle was dating a guy who had been in the county clinker for a time. He called Danielle’s apartment every chance he had. Sometimes Danielle was at work and Tina took the call. She liked the guy—not in a romantic way—but wanted to be there for him when Danielle couldn’t be.

“Friends do that; they help each other.”

Tina was happy to do it.

“I’m tired of this cellie of mine talking to me,” the man told Tina one night as they chitchatted. “He goes on and on. I’m getting bored with it all.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Can you talk to him? I kinda feel bad for the guy. He’s got no one to talk to.”

Billy was in jail awaiting trial, driving his cellmate crazy with stories of his life. The guy, sick of it all, had told Billy about Tina. She’d be a great sounding board. And a great way to get Billy off his back.

Tina was at a point in her life when she needed someone to step in and, as she put it, “treat her with respect.” Not judge her. Not question the way she dressed, whom she spoke to, or why she chose to pierce different parts of her face. The guy she had just separated from was “very abusive,” she claimed.

“He used to beat me.”

She felt confined, afraid to go out with anyone for fear of the unknown.

Billy was being held at Hillsborough County Jail, on Valley Street in Manchester, just down the way from where Tina now lived with Danielle. He was awaiting pretrial hearings. Confined, with little chance of bail, Tina viewed him as harmless: a man behind bars she could talk to, but wouldn’t have to get involved with. Save for Billy’s aunt, who lived in Rhode Island, he wasn’t entertaining many visitors. His mother, Pat, showed up when she could, but wasn’t regular. Billy’s cellie, Danielle’s boyfriend, felt sorry for him.

As for Tina, Billy was perfect. He was locked up. He couldn’t hurt her.

Or so she thought.

“He was somebody I could talk to and not have to worry about in a threatening way,” recalled Tina. She had no idea then why Billy was in prison.

“OK,” Tina told Danielle’s boyfriend during the call, “tell him to write to me.”

Tina wrote down Billy’s name on a piece of paper and forgot about him.

That night, Danielle’s boyfriend explained to Billy he had spoken to Tina. He told Billy what she looked like. Tina was a knockout. Boys—men, actually—lined up to date her.

“Write to her,” he suggested, handing Tina’s address and telephone number to Billy.

“Thanks, man.” Billy held it out in front of himself like a winning lottery check. “I’ll write her a letter right now.”

A lifeline to the outside world. It was something Billy had missed since being locked up. Here was a chance to connect with freedom.

A few days later, Tina received a letter from Billy. Initially Billy kept his letters simple, introducing himself and focusing on Tina’s likes and dislikes. He knew the game, and understood how to work his way into a vulnerable girl’s heart.

“He asked me normal stuff, like what I like to do,” Tina said later.

Tina responded to Billy’s first letter by answering his questions as best she could. She felt bad for Billy and the predicament he faced. As far as she knew, as the weeks went by and they grew closer and more intimate through letters and telephone calls, Billy said he was being wrongly accused of a crime he didn’t commit. Tina felt for him. She was sure the justice system had not only railroaded Billy, but in the end was going to let him down.

More than that, Tina honestly believed then—and later, despite what Billy had done to her—that he never had a chance in life because of the way he was brought up. Billy talked candidly about his upbringing. He wrote page after page (some letters fifteen to twenty pages long) about his life. It bothered him immensely, for example, that his father had not been an influential part of raising him. Here he was now in jail facing murder charges. He greatly needed a male role model to shake some sense into him. If there had ever been a time in his life when he needed a dad most, Billy explained to Tina, it was now.

“He didn’t know where his father was,” recalled Tina. “And that bothered him. He told me that his mother was an alcoholic.”

Tina sat on her bed and read Billy’s letters for hours at a time. It was as though Billy had known her all her life. The things he said made Tina melt: she believed someone
truly
understood her for the first time.

“He was strong on his opinions of alcohol and drugs. He was very against it. Usually, someone that is nineteen years old doesn’t have a problem with someone their own age having a beer or something. Just having fun. Experimenting, you know. But Billy did. Whenever I would write about anything like that, he would set me straight.”

His strong personality became one reason—among a growing list—why Tina respected Billy. He seemed more in touch with how he felt than any of the guys she had dated. If one can believe it, Tina saw Billy as more balanced than the others. A gentleman. Smart. A thinker. He wasn’t chasing a rebellious opinion about life like some mixed-up kid. Billy was straightforward, direct and—Tina was thoroughly convinced—honest to the core.

While Tina admired Billy for his strong opinions, as she got to know him better, it seemed odd to her when he went off on tangents in his letters, discussing personal issues. She thought it was noble of Billy to care so much about the lives alcohol and drugs had destroyed, and, based on the conversations they had and the letters he wrote, she believed that his childhood had set the stage for how he turned out. She even felt Billy was desperately trying to right a wrong. That much was obvious, so she wanted to learn more about him.

“It really hurt him growing up and seeing that…and he was trying to do better than what his parents had done to him.”

Billy was, of course, relieved he had finally found a release—someone he could unleash his inventory on, albeit an inventory he was partly making up as he went along.

Within weeks, Tina got a letter every few days, which she began to take comfort in. When she expressed how much she enjoyed hearing from him, Billy turned it up and wrote every day. And by the time the first month of their correspondence passed, Tina was reading five-, ten-and twenty-page letters every day there was mail. It became a part-time job just keeping up with them.

The focus wasn’t always on Billy, Tina was quick to point out. He spent a considerable amount of time asking Tina about her life. At the time, she believed he cared deeply about her beliefs, thoughts and goals.

But the letters and telephone calls soon grew cold for Billy. He wanted a face to go along with the emotional connection they had made. It meant a lot to him. Here he and Tina were dishing all of their personal and family secrets and they had never met in person or even seen what each other looked like. Although she felt a bit uneasy about going in just yet to visit him, not to mention the jail allowed only family members, Tina sent Billy a photograph. With Tina’s long locks of auburn (almost red) hair, large Bette Davis eyes and round baby face, she personified the innocence Billy had perhaps been so attracted to in Nicole. They looked nothing alike, but in many ways were identical.

Billy wrote to different young girls all over New England while incarcerated, yet none sustained his attention more than Tina. From almost the first moment Billy and Tina started communicating, Billy pushed it along at a rapid pace, just as his relationship with Nicole had. He essentially forced himself on Tina. Taking a friendship and turning it into profound emotional commitment, simply by asking personal questions and relating facts about his life, he told Tina he had never opened up to anyone else. He understood Tina’s vulnerability—that she was at odds with her mom and dad and lived away from home. Through his own source of pain, Billy made Tina feel important and necessary; in theory, he took on the role of her guardian.

From a clinical perspective, a pattern emerged. Billy met young girls, threw all sorts of compliments and affection their way, told them what they wanted to hear and then began to manipulate and shape them into what he wanted. Billy must have known that if Tina Bell was hanging around with a girl who dated a guy in jail, well, she was as fragile as a bubble.

All he needed to do now was find her weaknesses.

Tina Bell had no idea she was falling in love with a cold-blooded murderer—a man who had admitted beating his girlfriend’s mother with a baseball bat before stabbing her to death. Nor had she any indication that what Billy was about to ask her to do might land her in a jail cell next to Nicole. Although they hadn’t yet met in person, Tina and Billy’s relationship, after Billy got a glimpse of Tina from the photographs she sent, was in high gear as the first anniversary of Jeanne’s death approached. Tina was now referring to Billy as “sweetie,” signing her letters, “Love you, baby.”

Exactly what Billy wanted.

Tina was not a sheltered adolescent by any means. Although she was young, she had street smarts. As Billy worked his charm, she conducted her own research online and learned all she could about the charges her new boyfriend faced. In his early letters, Billy repeatedly claimed he was innocent.

Tina believed him.

“He said he was set up by the police and Nicole.”

Nicole, Billy said, had been two-timing him and committed the murder with her “other boyfriend.” He’d had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

“I’m innocent,” Billy wrote one day. He explained that his trial was going to bear out the truth. “Just wait and see.”

Tina was infatuated, and began to develop stronger, more intimate feelings as each day passed. She wanted to help Billy. Believed he deserved better.

“I’m being set up,” continued Billy, laying it on with the absolute poise of a predator. “I’m getting out of here soon.”

From that day forward, Billy initiated an intense effort to keep Tina preoccupied, dropping subtle hints of what his case involved, but only from his position. He explained how his attorneys had visited him one day and brought “good news.” He was going to write out the “details” in a letter, he said, but “I won’t bore you now.”

“He told me he was innocent…. We started making these plans. He told me he wanted to get married.”

As they began discussing their future, Billy compared Tina to his mother, saying, “You have a lot of the same qualities…. Family,” he insisted, was the “most important” part of his life. He worried about Pat because he couldn’t get hold of her. He sensed something was wrong. It was “abnormal” for her not to be around when he called.

Be it the chaotic childhood Billy had been exposed to, or an absolute, calculated, conscious effort, if there was one thing Billy Sullivan mastered in his short life, it was an innate ability for inexplicably convincing young girls to trust him. His daily letters soon turned into nightly collect telephone calls to Tina’s house (she had been moving back and forth, between Danielle’s and her parents’). She was under the impression, she later admitted, that her parents’ telephone bill was not to be charged for the calls, so she didn’t worry about it.

In what seemed to have the earmarks of a repeat performance, the first telephone bill Tina got into trouble for with her parents was in the neighborhood of $500. A tongue-lashing by Mom and Dad did nothing to curb Tina’s desire to continue the relationship. She now wanted to meet Billy face-to-face, sit next to him and feel that energy and passion he so elegantly displayed in his writing.

“I love you,” Billy wrote before presenting his feelings in the form of adolescent poetry, which only heightened Tina’s fascination with him. Tina had come from an abusive relationship and Billy seemed to take every thought and feeling she had into the context of his writing. In one breath, he commended Tina for her strong virtues, positive outlook on life and utter refusal to allow her past to pave the way of her future. But then, perhaps in an uncontrolled purge of self-indulgence, Billy used his confinement as a means to draw sympathy.

“Why does the world play tricks on me?” he asked.

He feared what was next for him, “facing life” behind bars. However, it didn’t matter, he said, because he now had Tina to lean on and support him. Anything was possible because “God” had once again placed an “angel” in “my” life.

Age made no difference to Billy. It didn’t matter that Tina was fifteen and he was nineteen. Neither, he said, did the distance between them. When he was released, they’d find a way to work out how to see each other, he promised, regardless of what her parents or anyone else thought.

Tina expressed interest in any court dates Billy had, so she could sit in the courtroom and show her unyielding support for him. He told her he’d definitely let her know when and where.

On August 2, 2004, Billy pressed the relationship to another level. He asked Tina about her sexual desires, her fantasies.

“What are you good at?” she wrote back innocently, meaning building things, drawing, poetry.

Billy took the question as an invitation to explain how well he performed in the bedroom. Then, “Let’s plan our wedding.”

Tina went along with it and referred to herself after that day as “Tina Sullivan.” They set a date for August 1 the following year, only because Billy said he didn’t know when, exactly, he’d be getting out of jail. But it would be “soon,” he assured.

Tina was itching to go up to the prison and meet the man she had, by her own admission, fallen madly in love with. Billy explained how his aunt in Rhode Island could help.

“Use a different name,” he encouraged. “She’ll pick you up.”

If Tina did that, Billy was going to lie to his mother and tell her he had lost his next visit “so she won’t be here.” He didn’t want Tina and his mother to run into each other.

In almost the same set of words he had written to Nicole two years prior, Billy explained next how he hoped Tina wouldn’t be shocked by his expressions of love.

“It may seem sudden, but time is time, love is an emotion…”

He felt bad about saying he loved Tina, then thanked her for sending him money and telephone cards, explaining how good it made him feel when his mother and sisters sent him cash.

“I supported them and in here they support me.”

Without mentioning her by name, Billy talked about his “longest relationship,” for which he dated “May 13, 2002, to August 6, 2003,” the day, of course, he murdered Jeanne. Love, he went on, was an “untouchable and unbreakable” bond that “only gets stronger.” He warned Tina that if she was going to get involved in his life, she’d have to agree with his plans for the future, once he was vindicated and released from prison. Kids and marriage, Billy suggested, were on the top of his list of priorities.

“Passionate nights, not f- - - fests.” A career. College. And, most important, he wanted to “take care of [his] mom because she’s sick….” Quite ironically, he didn’t see the predicament he was in as all that bad, adding, “If it weren’t for [my mother], I would be in real trouble.”

Tina Bell was smitten. Like a GI’s girlfriend, she lapped up every word Billy wrote and believed, unquestionably, she had found the love of her life.

Billy got into an argument with a fellow inmate one afternoon. He was upset about it, he wrote to Tina that night. He questioned their relationship. He was convinced Tina was playing mind games with him. The inmate had started something churning in Billy’s mind, and now he was confused about where they stood as partners.

“Ninety-nine percent of all females outside,” the inmate said to Billy in the chow hall, “with a husband or boyfriend inside, cheat on their men.”

“The f- - - they do,” Billy shot back. “That’s a stereotype. All girls are not like that.”

“You’ll see, man. You ain’t been here long enough to know better.”

Billy’s letter was full of insecurity and gratuitous speculation. It might be the case in other relationships, he had convinced himself, but not with him and Tina.

“It’s forever,” he reluctantly asked of their romance. “Right?”

Tina had been writing and telling Billy how much better her life had been since she met him. She had a focus now, if not purpose, on living a healthier lifestyle. She promised Billy she wasn’t going to dabble with alcohol anymore. She was proud of herself for refusing it at a friend’s party earlier that week.

“I will never break your heart, Tina,” Billy told her on the telephone that night. He said the “only tears” she’d ever cry would be “happy ones.”

“I love you, too, Billy. My God, do I love you.”

“Get hold of my aunt so you can come up here and see me.”

“I will. Yes. Tomorrow.”

With the incident apparently behind them, Billy and Tina decided to get back on track. After all, they had a life together to plan.