Jane Doe No More (25 page)

Yet Moran then wrote that Donna had “repeatedly stated to numerous investigators that she was unaware of the specifics of any armament . . .” and “felt” her attacker had a “heavy, blunt instrument.”

There were several instances—the 911 call, statements, and other pieces of documentation—supporting the fact that Donna clearly stated she thought her attacker had a gun. She had never said anything about a “heavy, blunt instrument” or if she was certain it was a gun—but that she
thought
it might be a firearm.

To find fault in Donna’s account of what she believed had happened was alarming.

The subject of where Donna fled when she left her house was where Moran focused his attention next. He took issue with Donna’s claiming to have run “to a neighbor’s house” and added that the act was inconsistent with what the victim of a brutal assault
should
have done. Moran wrote how, in order “to maintain accuracy necessary for the proper investigation of this case . . .”—an odd choice of words to begin with—“it should be pointed out that, in fact, Ms. Doe ran half a block down the street and around the corner to the home of a friend/relative . . .” To Moran the red flag was Donna’s running to a neighbor’s house that was actually not
next door
to her house. The idea that she chose the home of someone she knew was another indicator to Moran that she was setting up her story.

The lieutenant went on to explain that this was a “significant” fact, “because through my training and experience, I know that complainants who falsely report a crime tend to make such reports through friends or relatives from whom they can anticipate a sympathetic, non-challenging response.” He called this part of Donna’s statement a “flag,” according to “texts on investigatory principles.”

Further, Moran said Donna was “unarmed, wearing only panties and a tee shirt.” Point in fact: Donna wore a bathrobe, corroborated by several officers on the scene that night and by Cliff Warner, the man whose house she fled to—the first house she spotted with the lights on. Donna reasoned that at a house without the lights on, it would take a lot longer to get someone inside to understand what was happening. Donna was in a state of panic and fear, so she was running on pure adrenaline and not making decisions with a clear state of mind.

“Cliff was somebody I did not know all that well,” Donna later told Maureen Norris, responding to the report. “He’s my husband’s
second
cousin.”

Was Moran tweaking the facts to fit his side of the argument? Was he leaving out important information that did not support his side of the case?

As Moran’s document continued, it brought a few things out into the open. For one, there had been complete agreement among several officers that Donna had falsified her rape claim. From Moran’s perspective, everyone he interviewed—“the first responding officer, the detective on the scene, and the Communications Sergeant”—believed that Donna’s claim of being sexually assaulted fell apart on the foundation of her own admissions. Moran found it odd that Donna armed herself with a knife “only after the police had arrived.” That she “adamantly refused to go to the hospital to be examined . . .” and kept those restraints on her wrist and neck “like stage props . . .” The sergeant she spoke to on the night of the assault—Rinaldi—told Moran, according to Moran’s report, that he “found it odd that, having fled her home in panic, Ms. Doe somehow knew that her phone lines had been ‘cut.’”

Moran placed the onus for the WPD not securing the house or taking photographs on none other than Sergeant James Griffin, a cop Moran claimed “was the crime scene supervisor on the night in question . . . I was not working at the time . . .”

Another important point for Moran, upon which he founded much of his suspicion, revolved around what transpired during the sexual acts Donna had described in her statement. Regarding this facet of the crime, it was clear that Moran never once looked at the accusations by Donna as being truthful, but began with prejudice, looking for holes to support a theory he had developed and would not waver from: “Ms. Doe had reported that, despite several attempts, the perpetrator was unable to achieve an erection and that no penile penetration occurred, that digital fondling/penetration were the extent of the sexual assault.” Moran went on to say that in speaking to the forensic lab, he learned “a large quantity of sperm/semen had been found on the vaginal swab taken as evidence from Ms. Doe . . . When I asked if the presence of sperm/semen could be accounted for in any other manner, such as premature ejaculation, [the lab tech] stated she did not see how the sample could have been obtained unless penile penetration had occurred.”

Every time Moran examined Donna’s statement, he claimed in his report, he found another reason not to believe her, based mostly on that “text” law enforcement used to weed out false rape allegations. He wrote that he had asked Donna to undergo hypnosis under direction from his brother, Captain Moran, not because they wanted to find out what had happened, but because they hoped “Ms. Doe’s subconscious . . . would serve to clear up some inconsistencies and ‘flags’ which continued to mount as the investigation progressed.”

Moran said he was “puzzled . . . that she instead apparently found the suggestion offensive in some way.”

Then Jeff Martinez came up, as Moran explained his role in that end of the investigation, leaving out several specific, significant details. He said he found Jeff to be believable because he did not have a blemish on his record and had worked at the same company and lived in town for a long time. (But apparently Moran did not believe Donna, for whom the same could be said.) In addition, Jeff had been interviewed by Moran over the telephone on the day Donna brought Jeff to the WPD’s attention. Then Jeff “used his lunch hour to come to police headquarters,” Moran wrote, as if he had inconvenienced Jeff, four days later, on October 19, 1993, where Moran and his brother, the captain, sat down and interviewed him.

“He was later asked for a sample of blood and voluntarily responded to the City Health Department, again on his lunch hour,” Moran concluded, “accompanied by his wife. I transported the blood sample to the State of Connecticut Forensic Lab.”

What Moran left out of this portion of his statement was that the WPD had not asked Jeff for a blood sample until December 3, 1993, after the SAO became involved and not until Donna and her attorney had lodged a complaint, demanding an IA investigation.

In reading Moran’s lofty report, you would have to assume that both Robert and Douglas Moran believed Jeff, essentially, after speaking with him and his wife four days after the assault, even after knowing that Donna’s sister had allegedly been the victim herself of Jeff’s sexually aggressive advances.

Jeff said he didn’t do it. The Moran brothers said okay, great. Donna’s a liar. Let’s move on.

My blood was boiling when I read the report. It was filled with lies, and it sickened me. This wasn’t just a strongly worded report; it was an attack on my character, and everything I stood for. I was astounded at the length Moran went to try to discredit me and the incredulous things he wrote. He wasn’t there that night, yet he wrote how I ran out into the night with only a T-shirt and panties. How could he get away with that? There were officers that saw me in my bathrobe, which I never took off. The line about me “wearing the nylons like a stage prop” shook me to my core. I was in such a state of shock when I ran for help that I didn’t even realize the nylons were still attached. Then I am instructed by the officer on the phone not to wash, not to remove anything, and I obey. And this is what I get for following directions?

Donna’s frustration would not stop there. As Moran’s report continued, so did the insults to Donna’s standing and integrity. Next Moran talked about that now-controversial “known, confidential source.”

“I interviewed the source,” Moran wrote, “at his place of business. He told me he had come forward because he hated to see the police waste their energy and manpower, and that he had ‘heard a rumor among family,’ to the effect that Ms. Doe had been engaged in an affair and the oldest of her children had interrupted her and her lover; further, that after putting the child back to sleep, Ms. Doe concocted a false rape complaint in the event that the child remembered and repeated what she had seen, that Ms. Doe waited until the children were sleeping soundly, and that she then cut her telephone line, [ran] to a friend’s house where she could call the police away from the children. This information could not be corroborated. I advised my supervisor, Capt. Moran, of this new twist.”

For Donna this was “a complete lie,” as she later wrote as a note along the margin of the report filed by Moran. The wording Moran chose, it should be noted, was interesting in the context of a police report, especially the phrase “this new twist,” as if Moran was writing for a cop show audience.

Would any cop who had studied the texts of law enforcement as much as Moran stated he had in this report, relay or use as a final nail a “rumor among family” as gospel to condemn a rape victim—especially without checking with the person who had been the source of the rumor? On top of that, what was standard behavior from a victim of a brutal sexual assault? What were the protocols in place by the WPD to handle such a case? Kathy Wilson had not even been consulted during those important hours immediately after the 911 call. Wilson herself would have told Moran that every rape victim experiences different feelings, has a different way of acting. Why hadn’t a female police officer—one who had been at the scene of the alleged crime—been consulted on this immediately?

Further into his report Moran focused on Donna’s interrogation, which he referred to as an interview. He claimed to not want to speak to Maria Cappella about Jeff Martinez, the reason Donna and Maria had gone to the station house that day, because he wanted to maintain a sense of anonymity for Donna and protect her confidentiality of being Jane Doe—as if her sister didn’t know about the sexual assault.

The reason he tape-recorded the interview, Moran wrote, was because policy dictated that whenever a cop interviewed a sexual assault complainant, he was supposed to either have another officer present during that interview or record it. He claimed Donna could not see the wheels of the tape spinning from her point of view sitting at the table, but that he had seen them turning slowly. He thought the recorder was “functioning properly. It was only later, when I went to play the tape back that I found it had apparently failed.”

He blamed himself for the blunder, having placed the microphone switch in the wrong position.

Moran rolled over the fact that he had read Donna her Miranda rights by calling it a stipulation “by the department’s standard operating procedures.”