I'll Be Watching You (41 page)

I

Today, Ned is in what they call PC (protective custody), housed at the Cheshire Correctional Institution, on a segregated floor away from the general population. He is in an area of the prison that corrals some of the state’s most perverted, violent sexual predators, only because there are inmates throughout the prison system, I’m told, that want to see Ned pay for what he did to Carmen. In fact, one story I heard actually proves how small a community prison can be—especially for a guy with a target on his back. Ned was in Hartford for a court appearance. He was being held at a local prison that houses men coming and going through the system. Ned and several inmates were sitting around a common area watching television. Ned’s case was all the buzz around town. Top story on all the local television news stations. At some point, a story detailing Ned’s case popped up on the overhead television. There was a Puerto Rican guy, a large man, young, facing some serious time for a nonviolent crime, sitting next to Ned. At one point the guy looked at the television, then at Ned, and said, “That’s you!”

Ned’s eyes bulged. He didn’t say anything.

“You killed my cousin Carmen,” the guy raged.

Ned froze. Everyone backed away. And the inmate proceeded to “pummel” Ned into a bloody pulp. “Lumped him up pretty good,” said a source of mine who saw Ned later that day.

“Kicked his ass
real
good,” said an inmate with whom I spoke. “He f ***ing deserved it, too, what he did to that poor Rodriguez girl.”

Among Ned’s jailhouse peers, there is no doubt that he murdered Carmen Rodriguez. In prison, it’s a given that Ned is a hideous serial killer with scores of “kills” under his belt. Indeed, Ned’s aloof bravado gets him nowhere behind bars.

II

I must admit that it felt good to write a serious letter to Ned. To sit down and say what I needed to say, without having to pander, so to speak, to his ego with the hope that he would open up to me. The time for all of that nonsense was behind us. I’ve interviewed many murderers throughout my career. I’ve sat in front of the most despicable human beings whom, I’m convinced, the Devil himself has put on this planet. I’ve been forced to refrain from sharing my personal feelings. I had done this with Ned throughout our correspondence. I needed to stay objective. I needed to play the role of the reporter. And I needed to allow Ned to speak his truth, whatever it might be. But there came a point when I needed to also stop playing devil’s advocate—literally speaking—and hit Ned with the facts of his case, along with those questions no one else would ask him.

In his letter accompanying his “Common Sense” document, Ned had given me a ridiculous explanation regarding several lines he had written to George Recck. For example, Ned told me that
“when I pick up right where I left off”
quote he had written to Recck
refers to [him] returning to the sales career [he] had at Hewlett-Packard before being arrested in 1987.

Ned expected me to believe that the quote had nothing to do with him besting Ted Bundy, or returning to a life of murder so he and Recck could, as Ned himself said and Recck testified to, have more fodder for a book they would someday write together. Instead, Ned expected me to believe that it had to do with him going
back
to New Jersey and once again returning to work at Hewlett.

The fact of the matter is, Ned didn’t do that. Leaving prison, he ran up to Connecticut and moved into a seedy motel room on the Berlin Turnpike, one of those weekly (or hourly) fleabags, next to drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and addicts—and, according to one of my sources, he murdered a prostitute not a month after he was released.

In any event, I began my letter to Ned by stating the obvious:
Well, Ned, since you asked for my opinion, it’s time, perhaps, that we stop this game between us. There’s a theme to your letters,
I wrote,
that I need to point out: I find that you say the same things over and over without offering much proof-positive evidence to support your claims. Just rhetoric, in other words. No substantial
evidence.
Calling someone a liar does not make that person a liar—evidence does. I have yet to see any
evidence
that proves
any
of your claims. I have studied police reports and trials for my entire career (tens of thousands of pages, dozens of cases)…. In none of the papers you’ve sent have I seen any
evidence—
just your “interpretation” of the facts.

Ned’s contention to me had always been that the state never proved its case. That he was convicted on evidence of his past crimes. In Ned’s view, every witness lied, while every piece of evidence was tainted in some respect. In his stack of notes, he goes on and on about Carmen’s murder being totally different from those “two cases” in New Jersey. He is fixated on the notion that he left Karen and Mary Ellen dressed from the waist down, but Carmen’s killer left her panties on, and this alone proves that he could not have been involved.
Carmen Rodriguez,
Ned wrote to me,
is not “naked from the waist up”! She is
completely naked,
except for underwear! How many times throughout the [state’s] brief will the state claim that Carmen Rodriguez’s “circumstances of undress” are identical to the defendant’s New Jersey convictions?

You see, Ned misses a major point here, one that, with a little help, a five-year-old could see clearly. He gives no explanation for the simple fact that most serial killers—himself included—change their behavior, if ever so slightly, each time they kill. Not to mention that Ned admitted he was studying—and learning from—one of the most famous, prolific serial killers of his time. Thus,
to ask me to buy into your idea that there is no pattern, no “signature,”
I wrote in my letter to Ned,
surrounding the three victims…is quite a stretch on your part. This has always been, however, another theme of yours: that Carmen’s murder was “different” from those in NJ. The theory is…that, after studying Ted Bundy, you
changed
your signature….
(I often wondered why this was so hard for Ned to see. He had always given me the impression that he was an intelligent guy. Was he patronizing me?)
Furthermore, to claim that the “pick up right where I left off” quote from the letters you wrote to Recck pertains to you going back to Hewlett is, to use your own term, “laughable.” Come on, Ned, do you expect me to believe that? Do you expect
anyone
to believe that after eleven years in prison…your goal, your dream, was to return to HP? And you didn’t move in with your parents right away (as you told me). You moved into a seedy Berlin Turnpike motel and, according to a source of mine, started killing again right away. You never went back to HP.

I explained to Ned that I needed to ask him several questions in order to give him the opportunity to respond, adding,
I think it’s only fair, since I’ve been interviewing you (through our correspondence) now for several months.

My questions: 1.) Explain what you mean by “responding to questions” posed by George Recck?…Certainly you don’t expect me to believe that everything you wrote to Recck was a response to a question he asked. I feel your were gloating, bragging, etc. 2.) Where do you think your thoughts of harming women and posing their bodies come from? You said it was there since the second and third grade. Explain that for me a bit more. 3.) One of my…sources tells me that you told him/her that you’re a breast man—which makes sense, seeing how your victims were attacked and left exposed from the waist up. How do [you] explain this behavior? Where is it rooted? Were you ever sexually abused? Why is it, you think, that in your mind you equate this type of violence with sexual gratification? 4.) How many other women—if any—have you murdered or harmed? Sources I’ve spoken to (many different sources, mind you) claim the number could be five, six, even ten more? Would you like to go on record as being one of the most prolific serial killers in the Northeast? Or do you deny all of this? 5.) A final statement from you: what is it you’d like to say? Give me a direct quote that you want printed—a sort of statement from Ned Snelgrove to all of his critics. 6.) Why did you never put me on your visitors or phone list?

In closing, I asked Ned not to
take offense to any of these questions. As a journalist I needed to ask them.
I was obligated.
Finally, you asked if I am “dumbfounded” that a prosecutor (in your words, the prosecutor in your case) could lie? No prosecutor lied in this case, Ned. I’ve studied all the data. I’ve spent a long time reviewing all of the documents and statements and interviewed scores of people connected to the case. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that you’re going to get someone to believe that there was a conspiracy against you. It’s simply not true…. If I don’t hear from you [within two weeks], I’ll consider your silence a refusal to respond to my questions.

III

I heard from Ned on October 29, 2007, a short while after the two weeks I had given him to respond. He was in rare form. I had put it all on the table and, to be honest, never expected to hear from Ned again. But he is a control freak and has to, of course, have the last word. His trial proved that.

In any event, Ned went on for twelve pages, explaining to me why I was wrong and he was right. He accused me of not reading any of his previous letters or notes. He said I had “rambled.” He called me “angry.” He claimed to have answered all of my questions at some point or another throughout our correspondence.
Thank you for your bizarre, disturbing, not-supported-by-the-facts letter!
he wrote.
C’mon now, admit [it]! As a professional writer, that’s got to be the most Hunter S. Thompson-like piece you’ve ever put together, am I right?

He carries on, never once addressing my questions directly, nor dismissing the idea that he killed other women. Instead, he pigeonholes me into the same box he put Judge Espinosa, David Zagaja, and anyone else who doesn’t agree with him: we’re all liars and cheaters out to get him.

In my previous letter, I asked Ned for a direct quote.
I will give you,
he wrote back,
the “direct quote that you want printed.”…However, the quote makes your research look pretty shoddy
—funny that Ned thinks he knows, without reading my book, what type of research I put into it—
so I think I know what to expect—two things I can easily predict: 1) You will print it neither accurately nor in its entirety, and 2) you will never acknowledge that I caught you in a trap of your own words.

Whatever the heck that all means is beyond me. What I can and will do is offer this final quote from Ned up to you—the reader—here on its own page in Ned’s own handwriting.

Note the little boxes: “Beginning of quote, end of quote.” Pure Ned. Here he is with his irrational theories at work. To say that because he never shared any information about unsolved crimes with George Recck makes him innocent of any additional murders is, in and of itself, impractical and narcissistic. Bundy would have never done anything like that—and neither would Ned. Still, here is but a brief glimpse into the mind of a killer who actually believes he can wipe away a lifetime of psychological issues with women in a few words.

I

There’s no doubt that we learn something new from each book. We gain an understanding of yet another layer of society that, thankfully so, not too many of us come in contact with on a daily basis. In authoring eight true-crime books now, I had gotten to a rather complacent point in my career: where I thought I had seen and heard everything.

Not true. I had yet to meet a killer like Edwin Fales Snelgrove. I firmly believe that there are at least four more bodies in Ned’s past—bodies of women killed in the same manner as Karen Osmun and Carmen Rodriguez, left in towns where Ned had been on a business trip, a business call, or, like Hartford and Kenney’s, he had traveled to in order to exclusively seek out new murder victims. These are open cases that should not be made public right now.

“Ned is one of the scariest killers in recent history”—I heard this time and again. From cops. From lawyers. From profilers. Even from people who were close to Ned. And here’s the thing: no one has heard of the guy outside of the law enforcement community and those in Connecticut who followed the case. It’s not as though Edwin Snelgrove is a household name, like Manson, Dahmer, and especially Ned’s mentor, Bundy.

Part of Ned, I feel, relishes the fact that he’s killed more women, and those family members of the missing go through misery each day, unable to put their loved ones to rest. Another part of Ned, I am convinced, believes that he is an innocent man who was framed for killing Carmen Rodriguez, sick to his stomach that Zagaja and his crew did not
prove
their case.

Either way, Ned is where he belongs.

II

The scores of recorded interviews, thousands of pages of documents, police reports, witness statements, depositions, trial testimony, autopsy reports, and other documents, along with anonymous sources inside and outside the system, and letters from the killer and his cell mates and several others involved personally in this case, allowed me to add a depth of reporting to this book I rarely get a chance to explore.