Jane Doe No More (13 page)

Donna’s father was so disturbed by what his daughter had said that he left to go find John, who was at St. Mary’s Catholic School, dropping off their boy at his afternoon kindergarten class. St. Mary’s was across the street from the WPD.

Donna’s father, with John in tow, went from St. Mary’s directly to the WPD to see if they could get to the bottom of what was going on.

John demanded to see Lieutenant Moran.

Moran came down and escorted them upstairs to the third-floor hallway. It was afternoon. People were scurrying about everywhere, coming and going. The place was active and busy.

“What the heck,” John said. “You’re going to arrest Donna?”

“She’s a good daughter. A great person. An incredible wife.” Donna’s father pleaded with Moran. “What are you people trying to do to her?”

“Look,” Moran said calmly. “There
is
a threat of her arrest. John, her story is full of holes.”

One of the forensic officers involved in Donna’s case just happened to walk by while they were standing and talking. John called him over and said, “You hear what they’re doing to Donna?”

He looked at Moran. Then at John: “I’m sorry, John . . . he’s my superior.” The man walked away.

What was going on? Was this some sort of conspiracy? John was dumbfounded, but growing angrier by the minute. What smoking gun information did the WPD have, and why weren’t they telling Donna and John what evidence they were basing such scurrilous accusations on?

As Moran talked through some of the details he had discussed with Donna, John began to understand where the WPD was coming from. It started to make sense. Moran never came out and said it, but John now thought he knew what Moran had hung his entire theory on.

They left and drove back to Donna’s parents’ house.

Donna was still upset, and she didn’t know what to do. There was no way she could make up a story to satisfy Moran and his cronies at the WPD, just so they could close the case and she could keep her kids. Donna was no liar. While John and her father had been at the WPD, she’d made up her mind that she would not succumb to Moran’s intimidation.

“Donna,” John said comfortingly, “is there
anything
you need to tell me about what happened that night?”

As John had listened to Moran, he realized that the implication—suffice it to say there was DNA evidence left behind—was that Donna had had an affair while John was away and felt she was going to get caught, so she made up the entire scenario to cover up the infidelity. The evidence the WPD had was apparently the word of someone who had made the allegation against Donna. But John was not told who that was.

“No, nothing at all.”

John hugged his wife. “I believe you. I just had to ask. This is what they think,” John said. “That you had an affair and you’re making all this up to cover it up.”

Donna was paralyzed by fear. The same people who were supposedly there to protect her from the monster who had entered her life were now against her too, chasing her down. She felt she had no one to turn to. Nobody to lean on, besides her immediate family and friends.

Outside of one tightly knit circle, Donna was alone.

“What do we do?” Donna asked her husband.

It had been two days since the interrogation, and I was still reeling. The rage I felt inside me would be hard to explain. Not only had I suffered the trauma of the rape, but then I had been pumped with antibiotics that made me vomit for hour upon hour till there was nothing left inside me. I had that severe scratch on my cornea, which was very painful and complicated things even more. Then I tried to pick myself up and move on, going back to work, beginning my routine of life. I had given a detailed statement to Detective Lou Cote, and he had never indicated to me that perhaps they did not believe me. I kept calling them inquiring about progress in the case and if lab results had come back and if there was a DNA hit on anyone. Now I realized all that was for naught. My emotional state was so fragile and maybe even broken. My therapist called it “homecoming trauma,” the same suffering Vietnam veterans faced upon coming back home from the war. The people who were supposed to be protecting me were now the same people coming after me.

Not long after the interrogation, Donna’s mother-in-law called retired police superintendent Fred Sullivan, a man the family knew quite well. Mrs. Palomba explained everything. Sullivan told John’s mother he would call the WPD and try to get some answers.

Not long after, Sullivan called Mrs. Palomba back. “They say Donna’s story is full of holes,” Sullivan told her. “That’s about all I can say.”

Sullivan advised her to tell Donna and John to set up a meeting with Lieutenant Moran’s superior, the Vice and Intelligence Division’s captain.

John and Donna decided that John would call to demand a meeting. They needed to know what evidence the WPD had against Donna and confront it. Maybe there was a major misunderstanding that Lieutenant Moran had taken completely out of context. Or maybe he had what anyone would consider a good reason to accuse Donna. It would not, however, excuse his behavior during the interrogation, but the shining of a spotlight in Donna’s face and interrogating her like a terrorist could be dealt with at a later time. What Donna and John needed to do was get the WPD back to investigating her case. There was, after all, a rapist running around the community.

John called the captain—Captain Robert Moran—the lieutenant’s own brother.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Something’s Missing

John spoke to Captain Robert Moran, Lieutenant Douglas Moran’s brother, and the captain, as John would later recall, “reluctantly” agreed to meet with them, while again repeating what his brother had said about “holes” in Donna’s story.

It was the morning of Monday, October 18, when John and Donna arrived at the WPD. Donna had barely been able to sleep or eat since Douglas Moran had interrogated her. Her world had become what she later described as an “unsafe” place.

My healing, for which I was working hard, came to an abrupt halt. I had considered the police station a safe place, where good people who could help me resided. My bedroom used to be a comforting place to unwind and relax and sleep and read and play with the kids. Both of these places were now horrifying for me to even think about. They had become danger zones. Just seeing a police car drive by gave me such a profound sense of pain and fear that I was losing control of myself and those emotions I had spent so much time over the past several weeks coming to grips with. I was constantly praying now . . . and even that was losing its power.

Greeting John and Donna at the WPD’s entrance was another lieutenant, Harold P. Post, whom people called Phil. He was there, along with Captain Robert Moran, to hear what Donna and John had to say. The Palombas had heard that Phil Post was part of Lieutenant Moran’s team investigating the case. Post had been with the WPD since 1973. When John and Donna met him that day, Post was with the Vice and Intelligence Division. He seemed pleasant and quiet and didn’t say much.

After they sat down in Captain Moran’s office, John turned to the captain and said, “Thank you for meeting with us.” Then he jumped right into it: “I . . . I don’t know if you’re aware of the line of [questioning when] . . . my wife came in Friday. I’m sure you’re aware of the case and what’s going on.”

Donna interrupted, saying, “I can tell him myself, John. Do you have the tape of the interview between me and Lieutenant Moran?”

Captain Moran seemed unemotional, difficult to read, and monotone. Moran was the head of the WPD’s Vice unit and his brother Douglas Moran’s boss. He had assigned Douglas to Donna’s case. A University of Connecticut graduate, he had wispy white hair, parted to one side, with noticeable strands of black, a pale complexion, and big tortoiseshell glasses. He wore a white shirt, dark tie, blue slacks, and a stoic gaze of indifference. Moran had been on the Waterbury force since 1970: He had started like everyone else, as a patrol officer, moved on to patrol sergeant, then became a sergeant in the Detective Bureau (1981–84), a lieutenant (1984–86) in that same division, and finally captain of Vice and Intelligence. According to Moran, when asked later under oath, he had not a blemish to his record.

The tape, Donna knew, would tell its own story. It was futile for her to try to explain the degrading way in which Lieutenant Moran had spoken to her and the trauma she had endured while being subjected to his accusations. She had seen Douglas Moran record the interrogation. If they all could just sit and listen to the tape, Captain Moran would see that his brother had taken things too far by threatening to have Donna arrested.

“Did you listen to [the tape] at all?” John asked.

Captain Moran said, “No.”

“Can we listen to it together?” Donna said.

“No,” Moran snapped. “No.”

John said he would appreciate it if they
could
play the tape. “I’m totally disgusted by what [Lieutenant Moran] said. My wife, I know where she is at all times because I worry about, you know the way things are today, and I worry about where she is and I know where she is and she’s out with business and stuff at times.” John was getting himself worked up already. He wanted to clearly make the point that he trusted his wife, had no reason not to, and was appalled that she would be accused of stepping out on him and then making up a story to cover up an affair. Furthermore, hadn’t anyone from the WPD conducted a background check on Donna and John? Had they interviewed friends, family, people from her past? How could she be judged without a dogged investigation of her character?