Because You Loved Me (28 page)

Looking quite dapper in a shiny gray suit over a standard white shirt and striped tie, Richard Monteith stood up from his seat next to Billy and walked toward the jury. Monteith, a bit shorter than Billy, addressed jurors in a calm manner, explaining the facts (as he and Garrity saw them) of the case. Monteith, like his partner, believed Billy was insane. And the facts, he argued, supported this contention.

Not drama. Speculation. Or armchair analysis.

Evidence!

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Monteith began, “it’s true in this case that a horrific crime occurred, an ugly, ugly crime.” He let those words hang for a moment. A person giving a speech, one who knew when to pause, expressed authority and confidence. Monteith certainly seemed as if he knew the power of contention. “And we’re not disputing that. It’s a sad, sad case. But this case is going to be about insanity, mental illness and mental disorders.”

From there, Monteith went through and explained the many hospital stays Billy endured throughout his young life. Then he walked jurors through the long list of medications Billy had been on.

Later, he stated, “He did hit Jeanne Dominico, and he did stab her and stab her. Sadly, that does support our case here…but this crime is nothing but a product of his mental illness. We have to take William Sullivan as he is: Billy is not normal. He is still ill.”

After a brief period of silence to collect his thoughts, Monteith broke down the charges against Billy.

“The crime was nothing but a product of his mental illness. Nobody, not in his position, would do this. Nobody would do this. Billy is not guilty by
means
of insanity. He had suffered these illnesses. This crime was a
product
of those illnesses.”

It was a strong statement. Important points, which the jury could accept, perhaps, on some level.

The first few witnesses after opening statements were a mirror image of the pretrial hearings. Kurt Gautier explained what he found when he answered the 911 call Chris McGowan made minutes after finding Jeanne’s lifeless body.

On June 22, the second “official” day of testimony, Chris took the stand, allowing Will Delker and Kirsten Wilson their first opportunity to develop a bond between their case, Jeanne Dominico and the jury, through Chris’s emotionally wrought words.

Same as he had during the pretrial hearings, the judge afforded Billy the opportunity to leave the courtroom anytime he felt he couldn’t handle himself. All Billy had to do was raise his hand. He would then be escorted from the courtroom by a guard, while his trial continued without him. Billy’s lawyers had indicated to Judge Hicks before proceedings began that Billy was unstable. He might act out. A defendant does not have to be present for his or her trial. If he chooses to depart, however, the judge instructs jurors that such an exodus should not play a role in the defendant’s guilt or innocence, and jurors are not to draw any type of conclusion from such behavior.

If Billy left, jurors, as much as they said it wouldn’t affect their decison, would undoubtedly view it as a weakness. Jurors take
everything
into account—even that of which they are instructed not to. Whether he realized it, Billy ran the risk of alienating himself from jurors if he chose to walk out of the courtroom.

Judge Hicks once again approved Garrity and Monteith’s request to be able to have Billy removed from the courtroom at any time he felt he couldn’t control himself. All he had to do, the judge said, was raise his hand and signal one of the guards, who would then escort him out of the room as the trial continued.

With that out of the way, the trial resumed as Billy listened to Chris sit and describe the remnants of the crime scene after he arrived to find Jeanne on the kitchen floor. Within the first day of trial proceedings, the jury heard how a simple man, spending the best years of his life with the woman of his dreams, had it all stripped away from him in an instant.

Sitting and staring, looking comfortable in his role as a defendant, Billy didn’t flinch. He seemed unhindered by the man he had spent a few days with that week in August and considered a “great role model and father figure” for the girl he had loved. Chris had written Billy off entirely. He had spent little time thinking about him over the past two years.

“Why waste my time?”

At various portions throughout Chris’s testimony, he stopped. It was as if no time had passed. While describing the moment he realized Jeanne was possibly dead, Chris broke down.

“I knelt down next to her and I started calling. I called out her name,” Chris said before telling jurors he shook Jeanne after getting no initial response. Realizing Jeanne was unconscious, Chris explained, he “noticed she was lying in a puddle of fresh blood.”

That’s when he called 911.

After the 911 operator told him to check for “signs of life,” Chris testified, “I put my hand on her back, and I didn’t feel anything. I was just too shaken. There was no way I could have felt a pulse.”

As Chris cried, having trouble controlling his emotions, Judge Hicks motioned for a break.

Billy, fidgeting with anything he could find on the table in front of him, raised his hand. He needed to leave.

Then he quickly changed his mind for some reason.

The judge asked his attorneys if there was a problem.

“I want to be here,” Billy said stoically, with little feeling, “but I can’t handle it.”

After a short break, Chris resumed his place on the witness stand and explained how he met police at Jeanne’s door.

“As I was on the 911 call and I heard the sirens, I knelt down next to Jeanne…brushed the hair away from the side of her face to kiss her on the cheek, told her I loved her and then noticed her eyes were wide open and blank…. That’s when I knew she was gone.”

The room sat in silence. Chris sobbed.

Will Delker and Kirsten Wilson had a clear-cut strategy: present the evidence in a narrative that outlined how the case evolved. By simply presenting the facts, they believed, Billy’s culpability and admission would speak for itself.

Next up was Detective Brian Battaglia, who showed the jury the videotaped footage he took of Jeanne’s house—inside and out—on the night of the murder. For the first time, the jury juxtaposed images of the crime scene with Chris’s testimony. The blood. The obvious struggle. The broken coffee table. Jeanne herself lying there dead on the kitchen floor. It was eerie and shocking, depicting a scene of intense violence.

As Battalglia explained the videotape, snapping on latex gloves, he took out each piece of evidence collected that night and allowed jurors to make an actual physical connection with, among other items, the knives, baseball bat, bloody socks and T-shirt.

On this, the first week of Billy Sullivan’s trial—amid what was a catharsis of grief—Jeanne’s friends, family, coworkers and Chris McGowan were able to find some solace in the fact that Billy—and Nicole—were finally being held accountable. Jenn Veilleux had known Jeanne for twelve years and considered her a great friend. Sitting in the courtroom, watching the trial, Jenn was appalled by the way in which Billy Sullivan carried himself much of the time. In her opinion, his actions showed little respect for the due process of law and justice, for Jeanne or for anyone who held a memory of honor and respect that Jeanne deserved. Billy seemed to be mocking the entire process. Jenn was there every day. She’d made a deal with herself to see it through—all of it. She’d sit and watch Billy nervously pick at his face, stare at a pen or pencil or whisper something to his lawyers. And it bothered her.

Jenn had met Jeanne during the summer of 1991. Jenn was outside, sitting in the pool area of the condominium complex in Nashua where she lived.

“I was
really
pregnant and relaxing.”

As she sat with her hands folded across her big belly, checking people out underneath her sunglasses, she watched a “dark-haired woman with two kids” going about her day in a gingerly fashion. What at first was a quick glance turned into Jenn “observing” this woman all day, perhaps hoping to learn a few motherly tricks by watching her. As the woman tended to her kids’ needs, Jenn couldn’t help but think,
What a wonderful mother: kind, firm and genuinely full of love for her children.
Jenn could tell by the way the woman smiled, how she’d put her hand on her child’s shoulder and explained the dangers of running on the pool deck. “No diving,” she’d said more than once, but in a gentle way that made the kids want to listen. Just the type of mother, Jenn thought, she only hoped to be one day.

As the day came to an end, Jenn approached the woman.

“How are you?” she said. “My name is Jennifer.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Jeanne. This is Drew”—she put her arm around his shoulder and hugged him—“and this is Nicole.”

“What do you do for a living?” asked Jenn out of curiosity.

“I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

“I’ve been watching you all day. Admiring your parenting style.”

Jeanne was never one to accept praise. Being nice was so much a part of her nature that it wasn’t supposed to come with a reward, nor had she expected it to. She’d much rather shower someone else with admiration.

In any event, Jeanne said, “Thank you.”

“Would you be interested,” offered Jenn, “in babysitting for me part-time? I’m a teacher. So, the hours are regular and you’ll have summers and school vacations off.”

“Maybe,” Jeanne said. She was being honest. It seemed like a lot. Her plate was already full.

So, the two women made plans to meet at Jeanne’s house the following day. Jenn wanted to check it out. See where her child was going to spend his or her day.

“My first impression of the house,” recalled Jenn, “was that it was old and decorated frugally.” Jenn noticed Jeanne didn’t have a “lot of material things…but the house was immaculately clean, orderly and organized.” She could sense a feeling of pride Jeanne took in what little she had, “and the time and love she put into the house to make it a home.”

She respected that about Jeanne—a person able to make do with what she had, instead of complaining about the things she didn’t.

Sometime after Jenn’s daughter, Emilee, was born, Jenn dropped her off at Jeanne’s with her older sister for the day. Jenn wanted to “check” things out “more closely,” she admitted, because “one has to be sure.” She figured her older daughter could report back to her. If the day went well, Jeanne was hired.

Quite comfortable in her choice of character, Jenn observed, “I was right. Jeanne was an awesome person, one I would want to help me raise Emilee.”

As time went on, it became evident to Jenn that Emilee was “special.” The child wasn’t talking. She seemed “different.”

This did not particularly scare Jeanne, however. Jenn believed it made Jeanne love Emilee more and pay particular attention to her.

Exactly what the child needed.

“I would drop Emilee off, and Nicole and Drew would be waiting for her and they would watch TV together and play. Jeanne would call me at work to fill me in on Emilee’s firsts.”

Just the thrill of telling Jenn that Emilee walked or crawled for the first time brought tears to Jeanne. In a way, she felt bad about experiencing it without Jenn; but Jeanne was pleased nonetheless to share the happiness of being a parent, so she’d call Jenn, sometimes three or four times a day, and, in detail, explain anything new Emilee did.

As Emilee grew, Jenn started taking her to specialists, but no one could tell her what the problem was.

“Emilee is a lot smarter than she appears,” Jeanne suggested one day. “She can do more than she lets on.”

Jenn was pleasantly shocked that Jeanne had taken such a gentle approach to caring for Emilee. By now, Jenn viewed Jeanne as part of her—especially Emilee’s—extended family.

“Emilee thinks she is the queen,” Jeanne told Jenn one day. “Make her do more and she will show all of us!”

Jeanne had confidence in the child. She sensed the child was holding back. It was Jeanne’s instinct as a care-giver, a parent. Jenn could tell by just being around her and watching her with the kids.

When doctors failed to determine a diagnosis, Jenn and Jeanne referred to what Emilee had as the “Queen Bee Syndrome,” because it fit her.

When it came time for Emilee to attend school, Jeanne was in as much of a state of panic as Jenn and her husband. By the time she was three years old, Emilee could “barely walk and could not talk….”

Jeanne was concerned for Emilee as she prepared to stretch out into the world on her own. Jeanne was worried Emilee wouldn’t have the same opportunities most other kids did. And she knew she couldn’t depend on the school system to be there for her.

Sometime before Emilee’s first day of school, Jeanne sat Jenn down and said, “I’ve made a decision.”

“What’s that?” Jenn asked.

“I want to go to school with Emilee. I cannot allow her to go it alone.”

The following day, Jeanne applied to the Nashua School district to be Emilee’s full-time paraprofessional. To everyone’s delight, she got the job.

So, on Emilee’s first day of school, Jeanne placed Emilee on the bus with her knapsack, then jumped into her own car, sign language books in hand, and off to school she went, where she stayed with Emilee every day until the second grade.

As Jenn sat in the courtroom, staring at the back of Billy’s head, she couldn’t help but recall those memories of Jeanne. It all came back to her in waves. Like many extended victims of crime, Jenn wondered why good people were taken away from their friends and family. Jeanne had given Emilee a life. She had made such an impact on so many other lives. And here sat some punk-ass kid, scratching his head, picking at his pimples, on trial for brutally murdering her. Where was the balance in life? How was any of it fair?

“Jeanne was a very proud woman. She had nothing monetary, [but] she gave herself to everyone—her time, love, soul or just a smile. She never complained about anything. Even when things were at their worst.”

It was the simple things, Jenn insisted, Jeanne had done for people that hadn’t allowed anyone to forget her—and perhaps nobody wanted to. That person, though, was somehow pushed to the side during Billy’s trial in lieu of the state’s burden to focus on evidence. And Jenn, like all of Jeanne’s friends and family, wanted to make the point later that Jeanne was fervent and empathetic where all people were concerned. For example, Jenn’s mother was in the throes of fighting cancer during that week Billy and Nicole took Jeanne’s life. Jeanne had been at odds with Nicole all week, yet she took the time to call Jenn and say that she was there for her and Emilee, even if she hadn’t been a part of their lives on a regular basis for quite some time. She also wrote Jenn a poem of encouragement and hope, then stopped by the house.

“We were just chatting and she started to tell me some facts she had learned, and she started to ask me questions,” recalled Jenn.

Jenn was dealing with a flood of grief, guilt and doubt. Jeanne picked up on it.

“Do you know how many gallons of water it takes to flush a toilet?” Jeanne asked as they sat.

“What?”

Jenn was surprised by the question.

“Or how ’bout this? How many gallons does it take to wash a load of clothes?”

“Huh?”

Jeanne was laughing as she posed the questions.

“No,” Jenn said after a while.

“Well, Jenn, I think it takes thirteen to wash a load of clothes and two to flush the toilet.”

“Jeanne, why do you know these things?”

“The pump in my well broke one time and I had to lug water from the neighbor’s house.”

And that was the essence of who Jeanne Dominico was; she did not have the money to get her well fixed, she told Jenn, until she received her tax refund.

“Let me give you some money, Jeanne,” offered Jenn.

Jeanne never asked for a loan. The point of the story to Jenn was that Jeanne in no way complained about her situation, regardless how bad it was; she instead looked for solutions to her problems without worrying about the negative aspects associated with them.

The trial, Billy Sullivan and Nicole, Jenn was convinced, were things Jeanne could have found a way to deal with. Although the person Jeanne was had not been mentioned that often during court proceedings, Jeanne was in Jenn’s heart the entire time. And Jenn wasn’t going anywhere until she saw it through—until she was able to sit and hear jurors send Billy Sullivan to prison for the rest of his life.