I'll Be Watching You (23 page)

I

Ed Bouchard had worked for American Frozen Foods for the past six years. He was the regional sales director, working out of an office in Danbury, Connecticut. Besides its main corporate office in Stratford, American had satellite offices in Danbury, Connecticut; Orlando, Florida; Central New Jersey, and Wethersfield, Connecticut, where Ned worked. The Wethersfield office had fallen on hard times and was on the verge of being closed. Because American had leased the building for the year, Bouchard allowed Ned to use the office, giving him a key and total access. “He was one of the better reps,” Bouchard said later. “He was willing to travel farther than most reps. And his schedule was a lot more flexible than most reps. So he got more than his share of appointments for those attributes.”

All of American’s sales reps submitted their billing on a regular basis. They’d put a package together weekly and either mail it into the main office in Stratford, where Bouchard would pick it up, or drop it off at Bouchard’s office in Danbury. During the third week of October, Ned had called in sick several days in a row. This was out of the norm for Ned. He was a loyal employee who took very little time off. Near the end of the week, on or about October 15, Bouchard received Ned’s sales report, as he normally did, but something was different about the package. Ned had included what Bouchard interpreted, he later said, as a suicide note. Ned asked him to “make sure all” of his “future” payments for sales got sent to his father.
Please try,
he begged Bouchard,
my parents could use
the money.

The letter shocked Bouchard. It seemed desperate and needy. He called Ned’s house to see what was going on.

“Is Ned home?” Bouchard asked Mr. Snelgrove.

“Yeah, he’s sleeping.” It was almost noon.

“Sleeping?” Bouchard sounded stunned and explained the letter. “You better go check on him.”

Mr. Snelgrove went downstairs and returned a few moments later, saying, “I couldn’t wake him.”

“Get him up…. It’s important that you wake him up. I’ll call you back.”

Bouchard waited.

Then called back.

No answer.

He tried again over the next few hours and still couldn’t get hold of anyone.

II

The day Ned was supposed to meet Detective Harry Garcia at the Hartford PD came and went. Garcia waited, but Ned failed to show up or call. St. Pierre and Garcia decided it was time to visit American Frozen Foods and begin looking into Ned’s professional background to see what they could learn about his movements during the past few months. Maybe get a bead on what he had done in the weeks before and after Carmen went missing. Ned himself seemed to be extremely interested in the investigation—suffice it to say he had called the HPD and told Garcia he would be in to answer some questions. Kenney’s patrons were reporting Ned had asked a lot of strange questions after cops started poking around the bar. From experience, curiosity like that told St. Pierre and Garcia that Ned knew something, was maybe hiding something, and wanted to know if the cops had anything on him. Otherwise, why would he even care?

Garcia and St. Pierre took the long drive down to American Frozen Foods in Danbury and hooked up with Bouchard, who explained that Ned was a good employee, who lived in Berlin, about twenty minutes outside Hartford. He’d been working for American for two years. “Hard worker,” Bouchard added. “He keeps very detailed appointment books.”

“What about his past?”

“The owner,” Bouchard explained, “wanted to give Ned a chance after he got out of prison. Ned was a model employee. He had no friends, though, like he was a loner. He complained all the time about not having a girlfriend. He would often speak of ‘getting laid.’ But he had no sex life. Everyone knew it. But he was obsessed with sex.”

Garcia asked if the company knew about Ned’s background in New Jersey.

“Yes, we do,” he said, explaining what had happened with Ned over the past few days. “Ned called and said he’d send any orders he had taken to the main office. He told me not to call him back until later the next day because he’d had a late night at the casino [in Ledyard, Connecticut, near the Rhode Island border].” But when Bouchard got that package in the mail with the alleged suicide note, he said he called.

St. Pierre was curious. “What happened?”

“His father couldn’t wake him up,” Bouchard said.

“Did you ever talk to them?” St. Pierre asked.

Bouchard said he finally got through later that night. He said Ned’s mother told him what happened: “Ned took an overdose of pills.”

But he lived. He was in the hospital.

Garcia and St. Pierre knew from reading Ned’s prior record in New Jersey that when he had been accused of killing Karen Osmun in 1983 (before he admitted to it four years later), he had swallowed a bottle of pills and downed a bottle of iodine when cops started asking questions. It seemed whenever Ned Snelgrove got himself into a jam and police put a bit of pressure on him, he curled up into a ball and tried taking a final exit, and yet he couldn’t seem to complete the job. Odd that a man who could kill a woman with a knife and attack another—nearly killing her, too—couldn’t take his own life.

Bouchard offered to call Ned’s mother. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Sure,” Garcia said.

Bouchard got Mrs. Snelgrove on the phone. Norma said the hospital was moving Ned to the psychiatric ward any day. Beyond that, she didn’t know much else.

St. Pierre and Garcia knew once Ned was moved into the psych ward, he’d be off-limits. They had to get over there immediately.

“What did Ned have for appointments on September twenty-second?” Garcia asked.

“Let me see,” Bouchard said, taking out Ned’s book. “He had only one appointment that day. Cromwell. One o’clock.”

Leaving American Frozen Foods, Garcia and St. Pierre headed to New Britain General Hospital.

III

Ned looked fine, lying in bed, machines buzzing and beeping around him. The pills he had swallowed hadn’t done much. St. Pierre noticed the tremendous growth on the side of his neck she had heard so much about over the course of talking to patrons at Kenney’s. It was unmistakable; it was like he had swallowed a cantaloupe and had gotten it lodged on the side of his neck.

“I’m getting it removed while I’m here,” Ned said of the growth.

St. Pierre explained why she and Garcia were there. Did Ned know Carmen Rodriguez? Had he seen her since she was reported missing? Why had he called the Hartford PD the other day and made an appointment, only to break it? Why had he tried to commit suicide again after the police put a bit of pressure on him?

Ned answered no to all of St. Pierre’s initial questions, adding that he had a tendency for depression, was prone to it, and when he felt strained, he considered death to be his only option to take away the pain of being accused of something he
didn’t
do.

Right,
St. Pierre thought, asking, “You saw Carmen in the bar that night?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I saw her. I played a great deal of pool that night. I danced with her a few times.”

“You left together?”

“Well, yes. When I explained that I was leaving, she asked me for a ride home.”

“Where’d you take her?”

“When we got into the car, she asked me for money…. She told me about her new boyfriend.”

“That’s it?”

“I was upset that she had asked me for money. I kicked her out of my car on the corner of Capitol Avenue and Broad Street at the Shell station.”

St. Pierre could sense something odd about Ned. “As smart as he claimed to be, he was fairly stupid,” she said later. “He had set up a pattern of behavior with these suicides, which made us that much more suspicious.” It was the same scenario—just nearly twenty years later.

“What else can you tell us about that night?”

“Well,” Ned said, “I drove her to that gas station and dropped her off.”

Which was it?
thought St. Pierre.
Did you drop her off at home or the gas station?
Ned had said she asked him for a ride home.

“They are talking about putting me in the psychiatric ward here,” Ned said.

After Ned refused to say anything more about that night, St. Pierre and Garcia left, with a promise to return.

I

A few days after that first interview with Ned in the hospital, St. Pierre went back with another colleague, Detective Jerry Bilbo. They wanted to find out if Ned had been moved to the psych ward.

The security guard looked it up and said, “No, in fact, he’s in the same room.”

“Will you speak to us?” St. Pierre asked after entering Ned’s room moments later.

“Sure,” he said. “Come in.”

Ned was eating lunch. He seemed a bit more relaxed. St. Pierre wanted to focus on the “route” Ned had taken when he left Kenney’s.

“South on Lawrence Street,” Ned said, wiping his mouth with a napkin, “then left (east) on Russ, left (north) again on Broad, where I pushed her out of the car at the corner of Capitol and Broad Streets.”

Ned’s history came up. “Tell me about your girlfriend in New Jersey?” St. Pierre asked. “What’s her name?”

Ned answered immediately, St. Pierre recorded in her report of the conversation. “Karen Osmun. She was killed in New Brunswick…. I served time in jail for Karen’s homicide and the rape and assault of another girl.” (“His demeanor was very calm,” St. Pierre remembered.) It was odd he never said, “I killed her.” But instead said, “She was killed.”

“Will you sign a consent form allowing us to search your car?”

“Sure,” Ned volunteered. (
He appeared very matter-of-fact about the killing,
St. Pierre wrote in her report. That seemed strange to her. She felt the fact that Ned claimed Carmen had asked for a ride home was suspect in and of itself, telling me, “If you’re familiar with that area, who in the hell would want a ride for a half a block? It just didn’t make any sense to us. On top of that, where Ned said he dropped her off was in the opposite direction of her apartment.”)

St. Pierre knew Ned was lying. He was cocky, willing to dish out these stories of that night and allow them to search his car without batting an eye. (“I kept telling myself as he spoke to us,” St. Pierre told me, “go ahead, keep on talking, keep on lying. You see, lies are just as good as the truth when you’re investigating someone.”)

As St. Pierre and Garcia were walking out of Ned’s room with a signed consent form to search his car, Ned stopped St. Pierre, saying, “Hey.”

“Yeah?” She turned.

“I didn’t kill Carmen Rodriguez. I can prove where I was that night.”

“Oh, you can,” she said, walking back toward him. “How is that?”

“I have all of my mileage receipts from my job. My gas receipts.”

If there was one thing about Ned Snelgrove, when it came to keeping mileage records and gas receipts for his job as a traveling salesman, he took on the task as if his life depended on it. He was methodical about keeping records. He had stacks of notebooks at home with all of his mileage written out in chronological order.

“Where are they?” St. Pierre asked.

“I can give it to you,” Ned said. He was smiling. It was as if he had pulled one over on everyone. (He was almost gloating, St. Pierre later added.)

“Where can I get it?”

“My dad will give it to you—he made copies. I’ve already called him.”

“OK, then, we’ll go and get them.”

Several thoughts occurred to St. Pierre as she left the hospital. Driving back to her office, she couldn’t help but think,
This guy is either really stupid or
really
smart.
Then again, why would he ring that mileage bell if it didn’t mean anything? He wanted the Hartford PD to focus on his mileage. Why would he divulge such information if it wasn’t important? St. Pierre was leaving when he had summoned her back into the room. He was offering evidence. Undeniably, she now knew, an important piece of the puzzle.

I

Ed Bouchard called Ned in the hospital the day after St. Pierre and Garcia interviewed him. Bouchard had seen the newspapers. He knew of Ned’s prior arrest record. He wanted to know what was going on. “How are you? Listen, there were two detectives here—they came to see me about you.”

Ned sounded groggy. “Yes, I know,” he said. “They were already here.”

“What about the girl, Ned? Do you know anything about her?”

Ned paused. “I don’t even
know
her,” he said. “She’s just some girl I gave a ride to.”

II

St. Pierre understood that catching killers was a science. There was good luck and persistent gumshoe police work involved as you tracked down new leads and followed up on old ones; but putting away a murderer required essentially patience and tenacity. She was sure Ned had had something to do with Carmen’s disappearance. She knew the mileage Ned had mentioned while in the hospital played into that crime somehow, but as ASA David Zagaja later explained, “We were all scratching our heads as to what it meant. The significance of the mileage receipts was that Ned had
offered
them to us. Why was he doing this? It’s a troubling clue to us. It tells us that he used his car in some way to take her, deposit her…but we don’t have any answers.”

III

Carmen’s family was painfully going through the process of accepting the fact that Carmen was likely never coming home. As much as they didn’t want to admit Carmen was dead, there was nothing to convince them otherwise. And with Ned being so evasive, if not cocky and playing games with police, it only made matters worse. Jackie had her baby and slipped into a world of numbing her feelings with alcohol. It was hard for the family to keep track of her anymore. Luz had taken Jackie’s child by this point.

As ASA, David Zagaja had worked with St. Pierre on too many homicides to recall. On any given week, Zagaja was up to his neck in violent crimes of all sorts. Yet, having St. Pierre on the job was comforting: “Luisa,” Zagaja later said, “is pretty determined. When she locks her focus on something, she follows it.”

When St. Pierre got back to her office after speaking with Ned, she called Zagaja, who, after graduating from the University of Connecticut School of Law, had studied Spanish at the University of Valencia, in Spain. If a case was going to be built against Ned, Zagaja would have to get involved. Search warrants were going to have to be written up and signed. In addition, St. Pierre generally ran her theories by Zagaja. They were good friends, colleagues, and supported each other. If Luisa’s instinct was wrong, Zagaja wasn’t afraid to let her know she was wasting her time.

“This guy killed this girl,” St. Pierre came right out and told Zagaja during that first call. She just “had a feeling,” she later said.

When St. Pierre heard from Ned’s boss at American Frozen Foods that he had killed a female in New Jersey, and then Ned himself admitted to it—seemingly without equivocation—St. Pierre considered the chances to be almost nil that Ned had simply dropped Carmen off at a gas station and she disappeared into thin air. “When we spoke to his boss and he told us, and then Ned said the same thing,” St. Pierre said, “I thought, ‘Oh, Jesus, this guy is dangerous, he did it.’”

For Zagaja, all he would later say was “Ned’s prior history was a clue,” adding, with a laugh, “Let’s leave it at that.”

As St. Pierre spoke to Zagaja, Ned’s entire arrest record was just coming off the wire. When they went through it, they couldn’t believe, number one, that he was out of prison, and, number two, that he had simply turned his violent behavior off like a switch. Here was a third female in Ned’s life who was victimized—a third female, in fact, he had met at a bar or in some social setting. He had been out of prison for two years. It wasn’t,
Did he grab Carmen and do something with her?
It became,
How many more were there?

After reviewing Ned’s history, learning of the eleven-page letter he wrote to the judge upon his sentencing in 1988, whereby Ned had described killing Karen Osmun in graphic detail, Zagaja made the determination that probable cause existed. It was time to draft up a search warrant for Ned’s car—and maybe even his home.