Because You Loved Me (3 page)

With the exception of prisoners in state-issued jumpsuits picking up garbage every once in a while alongside the turnpikes and interstates just beyond town, almost everything about Nashua is steeped in long-established, traditional New England values: the clapboard white churches in front of the town’s many greens, their steeples, like arrowheads, poking into the sky; antique shops; diners and roadside hot-dog carts; cobblestone walkways flanked with oaks and maples gurgling with syrup; and the magnificent covered wooden bridges dotted among the greenery of the entire state.

Located about forty miles north of Boston, the nearest major metropolitan with a population over two hundred thousand, Nashua is the second largest city in New Hampshire (pronounced “New Hamp-shah” by local accent), with a population pushing ninety thousand (the town of Manchester housing the largest with 110,000). “Live free or die” is one of the state’s mottos. Most license plates have the powerful words stamped alongside a silhouette of the Old Man in the Mountain, a Stone Age–looking collection of granite eerily shaped in the profile of a man’s face, which used to hang off the side of Franconia Notch State Park in northern New Hampshire, but to the shock of state park officials, after sitting dormant for over two hundred years, on May 3, 2003, the popular tourist destination let loose and collapsed into a pile of rubble, falling to the base of the mountain.

One would think with Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England, rising 6,288 feet above “mean” sea level, 150 miles north, and Mount Monadnock just on her doorstep, Nashua is also situated in mountainous terrain; but its elevation is surprisingly only 169 feet, simply because the coast—in particular, Hampton Beach, one of the more popular beach resorts in the state—is a mere forty-five miles east, tucked into the lower portion of the state, nearly bordering the upper northeastern nook of Massachusetts.

Despite its large population, considering some towns in New Hampshire boast populaces in the thousands, Nashua is, when you come down to it, like a lot of towns spread throughout upper New England—a postcard, some sort of perfect Colonial-looking village inside a snow globe. On any night, one might bump into a young or old couple frolicking arm in arm down Main Street, crooked in their guiltless walk, her head on his shoulders. Laughing and kissing. Mingling in and out through the quaint little knickknack shops, bakeries and eateries, tossing romantic glances at each other. Kids might be seen riding bikes and licking ice-cream cones melting down the sides of their arms, while trailing two steps behind their parents. Merchants still have bells on their doors that ring upon entrance. Wooden wagons with rust-iron wheels from the Colonial days sit on front lawns. Historic houses with construction-dated signs from the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s are proudly displayed and kept in tact and restored, some claiming their fifteen minutes on the popular PBS show
This Old House,
which often shoots on location in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Skiing is a New Hampshire pastime, a rite of passage, really—as are fishing, sailing and hiking.

Notwithstanding public attitude that crime rates are spiraling out of control throughout the nation, New Hampshire has kept its streets fairly safe: 1.8 murders per every one hundred thousand residents, making it the forty-fourth rated state for murder and forty-sixth overall in violent crime. The one murder that scores of New Hampshire natives old enough to remember can’t seem to shake, however, is that of Derry (a ten-minute drive from Nashua) resident Gregory Smart, whose schoolteacher wife, Pam Smart, was sentenced in 1991 to life in prison for plotting his May 1990 murder. Some locals claim it was the “most publicized murder case in New Hampshire history.” And very well may be. A television movie,
Murder in New Hampshire,
drew huge ratings and, with the help of two nonfiction books, catapulted the case into true-crime infamy. The trial was televised to huge ratings—mainly, most would agree, because of its gaudy details of sex, seduction, manipulation and, of course, murder. Smart, then a beautiful twenty-three-year-old high-school teacher, convinced William “Billy” Flynn, her fifteen-year-old lover and student, to commit the murder with the help of a few high-school chums. Without any reservation for the consequences of their actions, Billy Flynn and his mates waited for Gregory one night and shot him “execution style,” as if his death had been a hired Mafia hit.

On the one hand, New Hampshire has endured high-profile murder, an economic slump and rebirth, along with the same general pitfalls of life in the new millennium, but has managed to keep its charm, elegance and carefree image as one of New England’s most beloved settlements. On the other, what was about to happen on Dumaine Avenue on the night of August 6, 2003, as Jeanne Dominico, Chris McGowan, Nicole Kasinskas and Billy Sullivan’s lives collided inside Jeanne’s small Cape-style home, would change it all.

Once again, small-town New England was about to be rocked by a high-profile murder that, when the facts emerged, seemed senseless and inherently evil.

Billy Sullivan and Nicole Kasinskas left Dumaine Avenue in Billy’s black Chevy Cavalier, a car Billy’s mother had signed a $3,000 loan for just a few weeks before, sometime before Jeanne left work to pick up a pizza and head home. At around four o’clock that afternoon, a neighbor saw Billy and Nicole fooling around in the backyard, like two grammar-school kids at recess, playing a touchy-feely, juvenile game of tag.

“I knew it was Billy and Nicole,” recalled the neighbor, “because I heard her calling out for Billy. So I looked over. They were just being kids. Billy was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and these bright white sneakers.”

In youthful glee, Nicole and Billy were lost. Not in a sense of where they were traveling after they left Jeanne’s house, but where their lives were headed. August 6, 2003, was to be their last night together for a long time. Nicole was sure of it. Billy was scheduled to leave for Connecticut the following morning. Nicole had no idea when he was coming back, or if she was going to be allowed to visit him in Connecticut again. At this point in their relationship, they had started referring to each other as “husband and wife.” When Nicole spent the weekend in Connecticut with Billy and his family late into the previous year, they’d taken part in a mock wedding ceremony. “And do you take this woman to be your wife?” one of Billy’s little sisters, playing the part of preacher, jokingly asked.

“I do, I do,” said Billy happily.

After that day, Billy routinely referred to Nicole as his wife. The sound of it made Nicole feel giddy, but also content, safe and, well, loved. Things she claimed to have never experienced in her short life. Feelings and emotions she longed for.

“At that point,” Nicole said later, referring to her state of mind, “I felt as though he was the only one who cared about me.”

Insofar as Nicole was concerned, Billy filled a void. He showered her with a love she had never received from her father. Besides what Jeanne had given Nicole, it was the first time the child felt unconditional love. Every teenager, at some point, goes through a “no one understands me” stage. For Nicole, Billy happened to walk into her life at a time when she was experiencing that uncertainty of adolescence.

But in the reality of the situation, what Billy and Nicole had wasn’t love at all. In truth, during the fifteen months they had dated, they had seen each other in person only four or five times. Here they were, driving around Nashua now on the evening before Billy was to return home, wondering how they were going to get along without each other.

“What are we going to do?” Nicole asked Billy at some point.

Billy just looked at her.

“What?” Nicole wondered.

“You know,” Billy said.

Among other options, they had discussed running away. Vermont maybe. Niagara Falls, in upstate New York. Anywhere but Nashua.

“I don’t know, Billy.”

Chris McGowan wasn’t thinking about anything in particular as he drove home from work on the evening of August 6. It was another Wednesday night in Nashua. Pizza with Jeanne and the kids sounded great. Maybe some television afterward. Then perhaps a board game and walk under the stars before retiring to bed.

The simple life. How Chris loved it—and with Jeanne by his side, the ideal woman in so many ways, he felt what he and Jeanne shared could only grow as time passed. This situation with Billy and Nicole, the one that seemed to be consuming Jeanne over the past few months, escalating only recently, was going to resolve itself. Chris was sure of it. Teen love. Everybody went through it. Even Nicole’s stepsister, twenty-four-year-old Amybeth Kasinskas, viewed Billy (whom she had never met) and Nicole’s love affair in general as nothing more than one of dozens Nicole was going to have throughout her teenage years.

“She told me that she had a boyfriend,” Amybeth later told a local reporter, “I didn’t think too much of it because she’s a teenager, and teenagers have new boyfriends every two weeks.” Moreover, like everyone else, Amybeth adored her stepmother, adding that Jeanne was “a very compassionate person. She always reached out to anybody, no matter what. She took care of her kids…[and] worked herself to the bone.”

“Jeannie was, how can I say it, she was everything to a lot of people,” added Chris. “She lived to help other people. She made
so
many people happy.”

Somewhere near 5:30
P.M
., Chris pulled into his driveway and parked. All he needed to do was run in, rummage through his mail, check his e-mail, throw an overnight bag together and head out to Jeanne’s. For the next two hours, Chris was going to be alone, no one to verify (or back up) his whereabouts.

In a certain commendable way, one could say Chris McGowan had lived a rather private life up until the day he met Jeanne Dominico. Chris never married. Until Jeanne walked into his life, he embodied the term “bachelor” at a time when the word seemed to be one more forgotten piece of 1970s nostalgia. Cupid hadn’t hit Chris. Jeanne had been a blessing, yes. But Chris admitted his love life up until the day he met Jeanne was plagued by shortcomings, lies and the unpredictable, which hardened his awareness and trust of the opposite sex.

During the mid-1980s, shortly after Chris returned to Nashua following some years in New Jersey working for his uncle, he met a woman who seemed to be, as he later described, “the one.” She was outgoing, pretty, quiet, but at the same time a little reserved, which Chris wrote off as shyness. He said he knew she had an ex-husband and two children, and that the state had taken her children from her, but he never pushed the issue. They had been dating for years. He figured he knew everything there was to know about the woman, and if there was something, in his words, “big” she needed to discuss, she would have told him by that point in their relationship.

On New Year’s Eve, four years to the day they had started dating, the woman began talking about her life before she met Chris. At first, Chris felt as if she was opening up. He viewed the talk as intimacy. A few days before, he had gone out and spent “upwards of two thousand dollars on jewelry and gifts” for the woman to “celebrate [their] relationship,” he said.

“It was not like we were gonna get married,” recalled Chris, “but we were headed in that direction.”

The gifts were a celebration of his love for the woman. But he also wanted to nudge her into understanding that he was serious about the relationship. He was showing affection, admiration. Diamonds, he knew, were a way to accomplish that task.

After Chris gave the woman the gifts, she turned to him and said, “This is so nice of you, Chris. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He felt good about being able to make her happy.

“Listen,” she said, “there’s something I need to tell you….”

Chris was puzzled. “What’s up?”

“Well, you know I have two sons, right?”

“Yeah…and—”

“Well, to be honest, I also have a daughter as well.”

Chris sat back. Now he was entirely confused. “I expected at that moment her daughter to walk in the door or something. It was so strange.” He felt he was being set up in some way, like there was this enormous family secret he had been part of but had not known, and the woman was finally letting him in on it.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” said Chris. “What are you talking about?”

“My ex-husband and I,” she said, “we kind of spent some time in prison.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.
“You ‘kind of’ spent some time in prison?” asked Chris. “For what?”

“Manslaughter.”

“You waited four years and you tell me this now?” Chris said as he got up and walked toward the door. “You’re incredible.”

With one hand on the doorknob, Chris stared at the woman.

“Do you still want to go out?” she asked.

Chris put his head in hands. Then, “It’s gonna take some time for me to decipher this.”

With that, he left her apartment and never saw the woman again.

After freshening up, Chris grabbed some clean clothes and packed them into a bag. According to what he later said, it was pushing 7:00
P.M
. by that point, so he decided to telephone Jeanne to see if there was something she needed. (Chris McGowan’s telephone records later backed up the time of the call.)

Six rings later, Chris hung up the telephone.
She’s probably putting the dog out or taking him for a walk.

It wasn’t unlike Jeanne not to answer her telephone. Jeanne wasn’t one to sit still; she favored doing things constantly to keep herself busy, as opposed to hanging around the house waiting for the kids to come home. Stay busy, Jeanne always said. Stay active. Stay focused. “Healthy heart, healthy mind.”

Jeanne’s only son, Drew, was at a friend’s house. According to a note left on the kitchen counter, Billy and Nicole were at Leda Lanes, a local bowling alley, playing pool. “Jeanne, don’t 4 get!!…We will probably also go to Bruster’s (an ice cream shop about a quarter mile from Jeanne’s house) (Nicole’s idea)…,” Billy wrote, signing the note for the both of them.

As a postscript to the brief note, Billy said if Jeanne needed to find the two of them, she should call his cell phone. He thanked Jeanne “4 the ice cream” in the freezer and signed, “Love, Billy & Nicole. PS: Have Chris come over for a Pictionary rematch.”

Like Billy and Nicole’s absence from the house, the note wasn’t out of the ordinary. Nicole was good about telling Jeanne where she and Billy (or one of her other friends) went off to. “Jeanne always knew where her children were,” noted Chris later, “and what time they were coming home.”

Soon after checking his e-mail, Chris pushed himself away from his desk and decided to buzz Jeanne at home one more time. It was a few minutes after seven.

But she still wasn’t answering.

She’s probably busy cleaning up,
thought Chris.
No big deal.

When Chris reached his car, he picked up his cell phone, which was sitting on the front seat, where he had left it. It was 7:15
P.M
., he knew, after looking at the LCD time display on the phone. He was hoping to see a message from Jeanne. But, instead, Billy’s number was staring back at him.

Nicole?

Indeed, it was Nicole; she had called five minutes before, at 7:10
P.M
.

Odd,
thought Chris. Nicole calling him.

“I had always told Nicole,” said Chris, “that it was important to leave brief, short and sweet voice mails. I don’t like long, drawn-out messages, and she knew it. Although, it wasn’t unusual for her to leave a detailed message; however, I always told her not to be so winded. That is the only reason why I saved that particular voice mail.”

For whatever reason, Nicole’s message was tedious to the point of rambling. Instead of being pithy, as Chris had explained to her more times than he could recall, Nicole began, “Chris…I was unable to reach anyone at home. I just tried calling the house. My mom’s not home yet. It’s getting late. I figured she’d be with you. Just wanted to let you guys know me and Billy will be late for dinner.” As if Chris didn’t know, Nicole added, “It’s Billy’s last day here…. He’s going back to Connecticut tomorrow….” She was calm, recalled Chris. Not one imperfection or stumble in her sweet teenage voice. Chris could even hear Billy in the background telling Nicole to let Chris know where they’d be and how long they’d be out.

“Give him my number,” Chris heard Billy shout.

Then Nicole spoke again: “It’s getting kind of late”—according to Chris, Nicole sounded “cool as a cucumber” here as she spoke—“so we are just wondering if she (mom) was with you. We really don’t know when we’ll be back. Call us on Billy’s cell phone if you need me.”

Sitting in his car listening to Nicole’s voice mail didn’t affect Chris one way or another. It was typical Nicole speak. She had always been good about telling Jeanne where she was and when she’d be home. Obviously, she couldn’t reach Jeanne and figured she’d call Chris and fill him in so he could relay the message to Jeanne when he saw her. Nicole was good like that. It wasn’t until Billy entered the picture that she’d started to fall back on communicating with Jeanne regularly, and even then it was spare. Still, Chris accepted that Billy and Nicole were kids, and tried to explain to Jeanne more than once that it was in their nature to break the rules.

“He’ll be gone soon, Jeannie,” Chris told Jeanne earlier that week. “Let them have their fun. It’s almost over. She’ll find another boy soon enough.”

Jeanne couldn’t keep watch over Nicole 24/7. She knew that. She had to trust her on some level. Nicole’s relationship with Billy, as far as Jeanne saw it, was going to fizzle soon enough. Nicole had her junior year of high school ahead of her. She needed to redeploy her mind back to schoolwork. If Billy loved her the way he said he did, he was going to wait until she graduated. No two ways about it.

Before pulling out of his driveway, Chris saved the voice mail and decided to phone Jeanne once more.
Maybe she wants a bottle of wine?

Once again, no answer. But Chris wasn’t alarmed by Jeanne’s sudden absence from the house. “I truly thought that she was just busy. Drew was always going somewhere, doing something. It occurred to me that Jeannie was perhaps dropping him off at a friend’s, or taking him out somewhere in town.”

She could also be across the street or at a neighbor’s house next door talking. Maybe she took off to the store.

The road to Jeanne’s was an autopilot drive for Chris—one he had traveled so many times throughout the past three years he couldn’t count. His car, he jokingly said, drove
him
there; he didn’t have to think about where he was going.

Closer to the house, Chris stopped at a 7-Eleven convenience store located directly in back of Jeanne’s house. He picked up a bottle of soda. It took him approximately four minutes to walk into the store and get back to his car. More out of habit than any other reason, he picked up his cell phone one more time to check if Jeanne had called.

She hadn’t.

Chris looked out across the street from the 7-Eleven.
Huh?
From the parking lot, he could see Jeanne’s car parked in her driveway.

She was definitely home.