Jane Doe No More (15 page)

Just five years before Donna’s attack, one of the most sensational false rape allegation cases in history began as fifteen-year-old Tawana Brawley went missing one day from her Wappinger, New York, home. Brawley was found behind an apartment complex four days later. She was covered in dog excrement and curled up in the fetal position inside a black plastic garbage bag. Her hair had been partially snipped off. Several racial epithets—including “nigger” and “KKK”—were written on her frail and bruised body. When authorities had the opportunity to speak with the terrified-looking fifteen-year-old, she claimed that six white men—one of whom had a badge and was presumably a cop—had raped her repeatedly in the backwoods of upstate New York. The case heightened racial tensions across America. Not long after Brawley came forward, outspoken African American rights advocate Reverend Al Sharpton took over her case, speaking as an advisor for Brawley and her family. Sharpton made several serious and shocking allegations himself. In one protest, which he staged outside the state building in Albany, New York, to show how disgusted he was with the state’s handling of the Brawley incident, Sharpton linked the treatment of Brawley to that of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying, “We come because twenty years after they mercilessly shot down a man of peace, we still have no justice.” Then Sharpton said that a New York prosecutor, Steven Pagones, “on thirty-three separate occasions . . . kidnapped, abused and raped” Brawley. A year after the accusations of rape and assault had been lodged by Brawley, a grand jury looking into the case concluded that the teenager had invented the entire story with her mother’s help. It turned out that Tawana Brawley “was not the victim of forcible sexual assault,” but a pathological liar. Brawley’s name soon became a punch line, as did Sharpton’s. Brawley’s was one of the most high-profile criminal cases of the 1980s. Police departments nationwide were miffed that a young girl, fueled by her mother’s greed, could invent such a deleterious story with the thought of destroying lives and careers by playing off issues of race.
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Donna Palomba was no Tawana Brawley, although there was a racial footnote to her story: Donna had said her attacker could have had a Jamaican accent, she just wasn’t sure. In any event, it’s possible that the memory of a recent, nationally covered, false rape case still lingered in the air among law enforcement.

Yet Donna had no motive besides the truth. As she sat at home after that strange meeting with Captain Robert Moran and Detective Phil Post, still getting nowhere, Donna wondered what was going to happen next in the saga that had become her life. It was clear she was being blamed, but exactly how had these police officers come to think of her as the type of person to have an affair and then invent such an extravagant plan to cover it up? This thought—the question of her character—bothered Donna perhaps more than anything.

We had been thrown into a world we knew nothing about. This consumed our lives. I went to bed with it and then woke up with it. How was I going to navigate through this foreign field? Should I hire legal counsel? John and I could not turn to anyone in our community. On top of that, I felt protecting my identity—which had not been a problem since the attack up until that point—was all I had left. I was Jane Doe. Imagine. I was just getting used to this new identity, and they were trying to strip me of it. I needed to stay unidentified. My business depended on me being in public, meeting with people. Potential clients would not take kindly to the idea of me being a “liar” who made up false rape allegations. The moment I was arrested under those charges, my name was going to be smeared across the media. I would be finished. I feared that if my name was dragged through the papers as a liar . . . a woman who made up a story, I was going to lose everything.

John and Donna waited for Lieutenant Post to review the tapes and get back to them. It had been ten days since they had met with Captain Moran and Lieutenant Post, and the WPD had not so much as called to check in. The department’s silence was overwhelming. Donna wondered if a sheriff, at any moment, was going to pull up to her door with an arrest warrant and cart her off to jail as the local media followed close behind. Moreover, during those ten days, Donna had repeatedly called the WPD and asked for Captain Moran and Phil Post, but had not received a return call.

Finally, on October 29, Donna got Post on the telephone—this after she had called and left him yet another message.

“Have you listened to the tape?” Donna asked.

“No,” Post said. “I have not.”

Why not?
Donna thought. But instead of verbalizing this thought, she asked a simple question: “What is going on with the case?”

“I can tell you that you have nothing to worry about with Jeff Martinez,” Post said. “We have 99 percent ruled him out. He agreed to take a lie detector and fluid [blood] test.”

“What? Ruled out . . .? But how could you do that so quickly?” They had just told her that DNA testing took weeks, if not months.

“I assure you, Mrs. Palomba, Jeff Martinez did not attack you.”

“Has he taken those tests?”

“No, not yet. Look, he acts a little strange, but you have nothing to worry about with Jeff.”

What are they doing?

“The captain,” Post said before hanging up, “will have some information for you on Monday or Tuesday next week.”

Donna waited. The captain never called on either of those days. On November 5, Donna left Captain Moran a message to call her back as soon as he could. It was one of several messages Donna had left for the captain over the past three days. Why was she getting the runaround? What purpose did not returning calls serve?

“You must be very intuitive,” Captain Moran said as the conversation began. “I was going to call you today.” He seemed condescending, flippant.

“
What
is going on with my case, Captain?”

“We’ve interviewed people you know and people you don’t know,” Moran said. “Basically, Mrs. Palomba, the case is at a standstill.”

Donna could not believe this.
Standstill?
How could it be at a standstill if the blood work from Jeff Martinez, for one, had not been collected yet?

“Captain, what do you mean?” Donna asked.

“This brings us back to your children.”

“The children were asleep, Captain. I saw them. The officers at my house there afterward witnessed the children sound asleep. They never woke up.”

“It is totally up to you and your husband. If you don’t want us to interview them, that’s fine. I’ll wait to hear back from you on that.”

Donna was thinking about what the WPD had done to her. Now Moran expected her and John to consider putting their children in the same hands. What could a five- and seven-year-old, sound asleep through the entire ordeal, tell them?

“What about Jeff?” Donna asked.

“Oh, the glass guy,” Moran said sarcastically, almost with a laugh. “I don’t have the specifics, but I can tell you that he has been thoroughly investigated and ruled out.”

“Have you listened to the tape?”

“No.”

That was all Donna needed to hear. “Okay, fine . . .” she said and hung up.

Donna drove to her church and sat with the pastor of her parish. She needed advice about what to do. After hearing her out, the priest said, “You need to hire yourself a lawyer.”

She then sought the advice of the principal from her children’s Catholic school, who told her the same thing. Every family member she and John turned to advised them to obtain legal counsel so they at least had an advocate working on their side. Right now, they had no one.

Donna didn’t know it, but something else was happening behind the scenes at the WPD. According to a report filed by Lieutenant Douglas Moran on October 21, 1993, that tape of the interrogation he had conducted with Donna on October 15 did not exist.

“On this date,” Lieutenant Moran wrote, “it was discovered that . . . [the] tape recordings of interviews . . . with Donna Palomba . . . had not been recorded as first thought due to a switch on the tape recorder having been set in the wrong position.”

Donna would find it to be an incredulous turn of events when she heard about it. She remembered Moran turning the tape over and the actual wheels on the tape recorder spinning as she sat and watched. How could the tape not exist?

Another major piece of evidence in Donna’s case came through on November 2, but she had not been told about it. The results of the sexual assault kit came back from the Department of Public Safety Forensic Science Laboratory in Meriden, Connecticut. Lead criminalist Mary Beth Raffin signed the report, along with lead criminalist Beryl Novitch. The results were, if nothing else, clear that the evidence left behind at the crime scene told a very concrete and alarming story.

Spermatozoa—semen—was confirmed on all the vaginal swabs taken from Donna that night at Waterbury Hospital. Tests for the presence of acid phosphatase, an enzyme found in the kidneys, semen, and prostate gland, were positive on these tests, also indicating that Donna’s attacker had left behind his DNA in the form of sperm. It was not mere speculation any longer; there was plenty of DNA.

Several tests conducted for the presence of amylase (saliva) were positive; yet there was no semen found in any of the saliva samples (including Donna’s), an important factor, again backing up the fact that Donna never claimed to have been forced to perform oral sex. Her narrative of what had happened, the evidence seemed to be bearing out, was lining up.

Additionally, pubic hair had been found on several of the items submitted for testing. There was no blood found underneath Donna’s fingernails, which would have been evident had she scratched her attacker (she had never claimed to). Semen was also found on swabs taken from the T-shirt Donna had been wearing and also on her labia majora (the outer lips on both sides of the vaginal opening). There was no semen found on the panty hose used to bind Donna’s eyes, mouth, and hands, but human hair (Caucasian) had been uncovered on those same items. The report indicated—again backing up Donna’s version of the night—that Donna’s panties had been cut “along the back crotch seam area, from one leg opening to the other leg opening.” There were “very small white stains noted on the inside of the crotch near the cut”—stains proven to be semen. There was additional pubic hair (Caucasian) found on the panties. On the back of the T-shirt, additional semen was found along with (Caucasian) human head hairs. There was no semen found on the pillows taken from Donna’s bedroom. On the sheet covering Donna’s bed, several areas contained samples of semen.

If one were to look at this evidence objectively and piece together a scenario—to re-create the crime scene—it would be consistent with the story Donna Palomba gave to police on the night she was attacked (and two days later), save for one detail: The results proved that her attacker was a white male, while Donna had said, but was not sure, that her attacker might have had a Jamaican accent. The evidence also proved that Donna’s attacker had prematurely ejaculated as he was cutting her panties (just as she had said in her statement), thus spraying semen over the back of Donna’s T-shirt, her panties, the bedsheet, and possibly himself, including his hands. He tried to penetrate Donna with his penis (without an erection) and then entered her with his fingers, which would explain how she ended up with semen on her labia majora and minora (inside vaginal walls). The evidence supported Donna’s account nearly 100 percent.

But the WPD officers investigating Donna’s case did not view this evidence in that manner. In fact, every indication was that no investigator working the case was even considering looking at the available evidence and matching it up to Donna’s story. Because even a rookie crime-scene tech and first-year detective could have pieced together Donna’s story and corroborated it with the available physical evidence.