Jane Doe No More (44 page)

That scream alerted Ray Harrington and Art Kranick, both of whom had just reached their vehicles. It was such a deep, guttural cry for help, so naturally terrifying, that both men knew it was no prank.

“In fact,” Harrington later said, “something was badly wrong.”

Lindsey began to fight, squirming and trying desperately to get out of the man’s hold. He had one arm around her shoulder, the other arm around her waist, and was aggressively trying to pull Lindsey into his van. At the same time, he was trying to cover her mouth and grab at her breasts.

Lindsey, because she was bigger and stronger than most kids her age, having worked out and run all her life, was able to wiggle out of his grasp. She fell into the driver’s seat of her car, butt first.

Now she was in the perfect position to use her powerful legs as a defense.

The man, disturbed by Lindsey’s sudden break from his grasp, lunged after her. Smartly, Lindsey used her feet to kick him away—as she continued to scream for help.

For now, Lindsey had won the battle with what had turned out to be a real monster emerging from the dusk of Halloween night.

CHAPTER
THIRTY
-
ONE

Festering Anger

The months following chief of police Neil O’Leary’s revelation that John Regan had snuck into the Palombas home and sexually assaulted Donna, she later explained, were filled with “anxiety, stress, and an immense sense of fear that he would come after me, my husband, or one of my children. Moreover, I also worried that John would go after Rocky and do something we would all regret. John was so angry with his former friend.”

Seeing Regan inside the courtroom during the pretrial hearing had convinced John that hurting Rocky probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But that feeling of vindication seeing him begin to answer for his crimes in a court of law did not last long.

As the weeks passed after the pretrial proceedings, Donna had never seen her husband so distressed and consumed with anger.

I no longer had to wonder who had raped me, but at the same time, I dreaded what would happen if Regan decided to come after me. Meanwhile, my daughter was away at college in that quaint upstate town of Saratoga Springs, New York. Our belief was that she had been far enough away from the mess back home and thus free from any of the concerns we faced back in the Waterbury region with Regan free on bond. Even better, she’d headed off to Paris to study abroad during the fall 2005. During that entire time while Regan awaited trial (it had been just about a year since the DNA had hit on Regan), he continued to proclaim his innocence. Neighbors reported seeing him tossing a football with his kids. He attended local sporting events and dined out at local restaurants with his family. He was going about his life as if he was an innocent man being wrongly accused.

For the past year, Donna and John had gone over it so many times. There was irrefutable DNA evidence against Rocky that he had committed one rape and charges pending that he had attacked a coworker. Yet, in Donna’s opinion, because the Regan family “had money, he had been released on that $350,000
cash
bond and allowed to roam free.”

As the rage in John ebbed and flowed, Donna prayed “every night and every morning” that he would not take matters into his own hands, but wondered sometimes what he was thinking.

“I have dreams of killing Rocky,” John confided in Donna one day.

“Your faith, John,” Donna kept reminding him. “If you do anything, all you would be doing is making things worse for all of us.” All those years they had waited for justice would be for naught. Wasted.

What John didn’t tell Donna was that he
had
made a choice to kill Rocky. He had thought about it seriously, long, and hard. It was time. John had even disclosed this to his best friend.

“You know, I
have
to kill him,” John said one night while out walking.

“Johnny, you cannot do that.”

“I don’t have a choice,” John said.

John’s friend looked at him. “Well, look, if that’s your decision, I’m gonna tell the police that I was in on it too.”

“No, no . . .” John said. “You cannot do that.”

John walked away from that conversation beginning to think that killing Rocky would only “hurt those I really care about.”

Was it the right thing to do?

As John weighed the ramifications on his life and soul that a decision to kill a man would cause, Rocky was making matters easier for John to finally let go.

CHAPTER
THIRTY
-
TWO

Caught in the Act

Several people heading out to their cars in the parking lot of Saratoga Springs High School—students, teachers, and coaches—heard seventeen-year-old Lindsey Ferguson screaming for her life.

And then the most bizarre thing happened. He let her go. And Lindsey was now sitting in her car, scared, shaking, crying, not knowing what had just taken place.

“My adrenaline was absolutely pumping and pumping . . .” Lindsey recalled later.

Lindsey’s attacker started to shut her car door on her leg, which she didn’t even realize was still sticking out of the car. Staring at her, not having much luck closing the door, he spoke what were, although Lindsey did not know then, familiar words to the women he had attacked previously: “Don’t tell anyone about this!”

By this time Ray Harrington was running toward Lindsey’s car, yelling at John Regan to stop what he was doing.

“You . . . hey . . . what are you doing?”

This startled Regan. He looked at Harrington.

“Who are you?” Harrington yelled as he made it to the van and Lindsey’s car.

“It doesn’t matter,” Regan shouted angrily.

“The hell it doesn’t,” Harrington said.

Harrington flipped out his cell and called 911 just as Regan ran around to the front of his vehicle, hopped in, and took off.

As he did, Harrington read the license plate number to the 911 dispatcher on the other end of the line.

Lindsey was now in total shock, surrounded by several friends who had jumped inside the car to console and protect her.

“Lindsey, are you okay?” asked a friend.

Lindsey realized for the first time that she had escaped the clutches of a madman who had tried to take her away from family and friends.

“I had a hard time believing that this had just happened to me.”

Now Harrington was running after Regan’s van—at one time right alongside it—as Regan slowly drove out of the parking lot, hoping, obviously, that he would blend in with any traffic and not bring further attention to himself. Although Regan was a twice-accused sexual deviant, he acted as if he had done nothing wrong.

“As if he might be able to drive out of the parking lot slowly so nobody would notice him,” Harrington later said.

Coach Art Kranick was in his car as Regan drove out of the parking lot and onto the street. Kranick followed close behind Regan, talking on his cell phone to the local Saratoga Springs Police Department (SSPD).

Those around Lindsey asked what had happened.

“I don’t know . . .” was all Lindsey could say.

As teachers and students tended to Lindsey, Kranick chased Regan and eventually caught up to him, at one time even exchanging words with Regan as they drove.

This time, John “Rocky” Regan was caught in the act of trying to abduct a woman for his twisted sexual pleasure. But the sexually driven abduction attempt, as the rest of the evening would reveal, was only half of it. What Regan had in mind for Lindsey was far different from what he had done to Donna or his coworker. Apparently, rape and kidnapping were not the only crimes Regan was thinking about committing on this night.

CHAPTER
THIRTY
-
THREE

No Escape

The chase came to an end. Coach Art Kranick had caused so much commotion and disruption in Regan’s getaway plan that Regan actually pulled over to the side of the road not far from the school and got out of his van.

“What the hell do
you
want?” Regan screamed at Kranick.

“What do you mean, what do
I
want? You just attacked a girl in the high school parking lot!”

“You’re crazy,” Regan shouted, tossing his hands in the air as if to shoo Kranick away.

Without saying anything more, Regan hopped back into his van and sped off.

Kranick followed close behind, not allowing Regan out of his sight.

About a mile down the road, Regan pulled over again and got out of his vehicle. This time, however, Saratoga Springs police also arrived on the scene, following Kranick’s lead from his continued connection via cell phone.

Police immediately approached Regan, who became “hostile, combative and very angry,” said the prosecutor who would soon be involved in the case.

“How
dare
any of you question me about what I was doing?” Regan snapped.

“What were you doing in the parking lot?” a cop asked.

“I was making cell phone calls. I startled the girl. Nothing more.”

At the same time, police had arrived at the school parking lot and began questioning Lindsey Ferguson. After hearing her story, it was decided that she would be taken to where Regan was being detained to see if she could identify him. From there, she could go down to the police station and file a formal report. This way Regan could be held in custody.

Lindsey was driven by the area where Regan was being questioned by police officers. She sat in the backseat of a nondescript car with tinted windows. There was no way he could have seen her as they drove by.

Looking at him, “I felt nauseous and sick to my stomach. Immediately, I felt so disgusted looking at him. I knew for certain—right away—it was him.”

Regan told police he was in the area—so far away from home—working on a house, and that he worked for a roofing/construction company back in Connecticut and had traveled to the region for a job and additional sales-related projects.

Meanwhile, the impact of the situation had hit Lindsey. She was sitting inside the SSPD station, trying to collect herself as best she could, thinking . . .
This is not a joke. This guy was seriously trying to abduct me. This is something that you hear about on television.

Everyone was at the police station: Lindsey, her friends, her parents, coaches, teachers. Everyone who had been there in the parking lot identified Regan as the guy who had tried to abduct Lindsey.

Lindsey noticed that her eye bothered her. She thought it might have been her contacts, but didn’t say anything about it.

“Lindsey,” someone from school, a teacher, said, pointing to Lindsey’s thigh.

She looked down.

In the struggle, Regan had—as he had with Donna—gone after Lindsey’s eyes and scratched one of her contacts out. It was now stuck to her leg.

“I don’t even remember him touching my eyes.”

As District Attorney Jim Murphy became involved, a new part of John Regan’s criminal life became apparent, proving just how lucky Lindsey was to have fought for her life and escaped.