Katie Beers (15 page)

“I think this goes back to what the behavioral analysts were saying and I’m not going to speculate on his motives, his fantasies and why this room was built, but we know that Katie was thrust in this room when there was some noncompliance. I think you are all aware of the sequence of events prior to when she was put in this room. She went to Toys R Us. A video was purchased which he believed was a ruse to get her into his home. There were physical advances. I’m not going to describe them or go into them, but Katie seems to be a tenacious, feisty individual who screamed and hollered and resisted and the result being, by Katie’s account, being thrust into this room.”

Then, someone asked the uneasy question that had to be posed.

How it is possible that you searched that house and didn’t know Katie was right under your feet?

“A suspect in the case is guaranteed certain freedoms.” The answer was long and may have come from a place of deep second-guessing. But he shrugged it off and responded confidently, “We were in that house, initially, the day after her disappearance to search it. That house that Katie was in, the garage, whatever you want to call it, is actually where he lived. We were in there initially and he insisted that any police officers that stay behind go to the front house; his attorneys were adamant. We had no choice but to comply, so we were located in the front house. Right from the get go, Mr. Esposito was obviously our prime suspect. He was the last one seen with her. We saw a video of her in the 7-Eleven shortly before he went to his house and she left behind her pocket book. So we knew that she had been in his room. But what we didn’t know—if she ever made it to Spaceplex. That was the subject of debate, and most seasoned investigators and FBI behavioral analysts who we had group phone calls on motives and psychological theories—right from the get go—felt that a girl from a rough upbringing who had her own change in her pocketbook would not leave that room without her pocketbook. So we all agreed on that, so we were all suspect about what Mr. Esposito had told us.”

Long answers are not the norm at news conferences. Varrone had a purpose. He was taking heat in the papers about the fact that Katie was within the house cops had been all over in top to bottom searches. He seemed to be fighting his own demons about the little girl who now told them she cried for help at the top of her lungs and none of his men heard.
The house, he said, “would have to have been demolished to have found her.

“We kept surveillance of him as best we could. We had detectives deployed on various sides of the block in case he decided to go through the woods. Whenever he went to go anywhere, we followed him and I hope and I think that contributed to his decision not to harm her. I don’t think Mr. Esposito anticipated the response of either the police or the media of him reporting a little girl missing. So I think that contributed. I can only speculate what his plans were—but I can tell you after viewing the room, I don’t think his intentions were very good.

“We didn’t believe any of the family members—any of the cast of characters. We were very tough on them. As quickly as we could, we did polygraphs on them, and we were slowly but surely eliminating all the good guys, and up to the few days prior to us finding Katie, the pressure increased on his immediate family. I think that entered into his final determination to do what he did. I feel strongly that if Mr. Esposito had not come forth, I do not think we ever would have found Katie.”

Dogs, he said, would now be carefully exploring the house and yard looking for bodies.

“We believe he acted alone. It is a slow process, but obviously the lab will evaluate stains, if anyone else was ever down there. It was foul smelling. I don’t like to sensationalize, but it was barbaric. There were things in that room below the house which I think you’ll agree were unbelievable and deplorable.”

Cops propped a diagram up on an easel to the left of the podium. It showed the passageway from John’s office to his underground human vault. A seven foot drop was connected to a five foot horizontal tunnel. Two feet high by twenty-one inches wide. It led to a box within a box. The outer box was six feet wide by six feet high and seven feet long. Detective Joe Monteith pointed to a smaller box where Katie was held most of the time. It was just two feet wide by three feet high, and seven feet long.

A grainy seventeen minute video tape appeared on the giant projection screen as Lieutenant Varrone narrated from the podium. Reporters were salivating to see this. The dungeon had been described as everything from a basement anteroom to a hellhole. As soon as the tape
rolled, it was clear, this was no guest room.

It was a point of view perspective. The camera rolled as cops went through the steps that Esposito had divulged, slowly removing the red J&R Home Improvements caps from the sides of the office stereo cabinet, exposing cup hooks beneath, then slowly unscrewing the hooks, revealing long recessed lag bolts. A shelf slid out and allowed access to more lag bolts. There were four of them, and each one had to be unscrewed in order to slide the cabinet out of the wall.

“FBI experts say they’ve seen a lot of these hidden rooms, but they have never seen one constructed as meticulously in such an elaborate manner.”

There was dead silence in the auditorium as the video played. Casters were propped under the front of the cabinet to allow it to be slid out. The cabinet was pulled out revealing nothing in the closet but tan carpeting. Neatly done.

“I think we would have difficulty finding this even if he directed us to it. I think you would agree, I don’t think many movie directors could conceive of an idea like this.”

“Now, if you were inquisitive and you rolled back the carpet, you would find padding and the tack board around it, absolutely nothing that would make anyone in the least bit suspicious of anything underneath. Now if you pull up the padding, it reveals duct tape, which is indicative of holding the padding in pace, but you also see a piece of Velcro which suggests something that doesn’t belong. So he has a piece of Velcro on the linoleum floor and a piece on the back of the cabinet so he can lift the floor and the linoleum would be out of the way to expose what follows.”

What followed was beyond belief. The unseen detective in the video lifted the linoleum cutout in the floor and velcroed it to the back of the cabinet, uncovering a cement square cut out of the foundation. Two feet by two feet, with an eyebolt in the center. It took steel cables and barbell discs to pull up the two hundred-pound six-inch thick slab and stabilize it.

“I think you’ll agree it’s just absolutely amazing the amount of thought that went into this and the kind of mind it may reflect”

Below the concrete slab was a plywood cover. With that removed, you could see straight down a deep plywood shaft. The shaft was lined
with two-by-four rungs placed at intervals like a ladder through a series of trap doors. Each door had to be unbolted to open.

“He had a battery operated wrench. No adult, certainly no child, could get through this.”

The final door revealed the plywood prison. The room dropped down thirty inches from the tunnel and was covered with cork squares. It was a mess of candy wrappers, empty soda cans, wires and human excrement.

“She was able to keep the TV on all the time,” said Varrone. “That was her contact with the outside world and that will contribute to her recovery,
if
she is able to psychologically recover from this.”

At the Udall Road strip mall, some merchants jubilantly tore down missing child posters. Others marked the posters with “FOUND” in black letters. Scores of offers for adoption poured in from families across the country. And at Spaceplex in Nesconset, owner Gary Tuzzalo, now feeling vindicated, said he wanted to “throw Katie the birthday party she never had and invite all of Long Island.”
²⁰

A crime scene command post bus became a fixture in front of John’s house and police roped it off with yellow crime scene tape. Neighbors permitted us to enter their back yards, for a fee, to get a view of the converted garage being ripped apart. Crime lab experts hauled off carpet, padding, plywood and the concrete hatch with the eyebolt. People, snapping photos like tourists, flocked from the city and beyond to try to make sense of the bizarre.

“He was just an average, simple, normal guy. He was just a nice guy,” said a young man in a hooded sweatshirt.

One woman with hot pink lips and a perm brought her pre-teen son as a life lesson.

“Just showin’ him the house—pointin’ out the fact there are people around like this. They look normal. They are among us and they are victimizing children. It’s scary.”

A grown mother and her elderly mom came too.

“I can’t tell you what I felt when I saw her rescued,” the younger woman said, pressing her hand to her heart.

“We also feel this little girl should never be returned to that family,” added the older woman.

Another one brought a whole van-load of kids.

“We want them to know it’s not only strangers they have to be afraid of. Even friends!”

The box got hauled away as well. It was pulled out of the ground by a backhoe and dangled on a giant hook like a Playmobile toy. We stood watch over that too. Neighbors gawked from behind the crime scene tape as it was covered in a blue tarp and gingerly lowered onto a flatbed truck and driven out of Bay Shore and into criminal history. It collected dust in the Suffolk Police evidence hanger in Yaphank for years. No jury would ever see it.

Little John put on a tough guy face but couldn’t hide the hurt.

“I just want her home,” he told a semi-circle of reporters huddled around him in the bitter cold.

They’re not letting Katie home because they say Marilyn neglected her, John. How do you feel about that?

“It’s Sal. He’s a lying, two faced, fat slob. It’s not true. She should be returned. She is a good mother.”

Did you get to see Katie at all?

“Didn’t get to see her at all. All’s I heard is she’s fine and she looks fine from the papers.”

The red and yellow KISS emblem on his black baseball cap hung over his impossibly blue eyes. Little John was growing media savvy.

“I’ll talk at the press conference,” he said, leaving frustrated reporters behind as he walked toward a waiting limousine. Talk show hosts were clamoring to cash in on the national obsession and mocking the Beers and Inghilleris became afternoon television sport. Montel Williams’ producer offered Marilyn legal funding to get Katie back. Geraldo was pitching Linda. Sal appeared on
Inside Edition
and The Maury Povich show erupted into an audience assault on Marilyn’s character. Sally Jesse Rafael,
Prime Time
and the morning talk shows were circling. Meanwhile John Beers escorted his grandmother Helen into a waiting stretch limo that seemed ludicrously out of place on Mill Drive in Mastic Beach. They were whisked to a chopper and delivered to the set of the
Phil Donahue
Show
in Manhattan. As the limousine pulled away, it passed a home on the block where a white sheet hung crookedly from tacks pushed into the vinyl shingles. “Welcome Home Katie,” was handwritten in multicolored bubble letters.

For Katie, this would never be home again.

My story on the evening news that night went like this:

With one bizarre mystery solved, police are now digging through John Esposito’s home to see what other surprises they may unearth here. So far they say they have found photographs and video tapes of children, but won’t comment on their nature. Police dogs, meanwhile, are sniffing for bodies because police say they believe the underground vault where Katie Beers was kept was not built for her alone.

The lead detective in the case suggests Esposito had a method to his madness.

“He works slowly, he gains their confidence, and he showers them with gifts to include their families,” Detective Lieutenant Dominick Varrone said.

But while law enforcement paints a picture of a monster, Esposito’s attorney says Katie Beers owes him her life.

“Without the cooperation of Mr. Esposito, this child possibly never would’ve been found,” Andrew Siben, John Esposito’s attorney said.

Prosecutors dismissed the notion that Esposito did anyone a favor.

“Mr. Esposito is being charged with taking her and abducting her against her will. For whatever reasons and I can’t go into them now, he held her for over two weeks. At this particular time, I think that really speaks for itself,” William Ferris, the Prosecutor, said.

The man who held Katie Beers for sixteen days is now himself being held on half a million dollars bail. According to police he had built an elaborate prison for his captive. Ten year old Katie was at times bound to a wall by a chain around her neck, handcuffed and able to see police searching for her through closed-circuit TV. Soundproof walls kept police from hearing her. The room lay beneath a bookcase. Police had to unbolt the bookcase, roll up the carpet and lift a two hundred pound slab of concrete to uncover the crawl space that led to the tiny cell where Katie was kept. This man, the head of Suffolk’s Big Brother Organization, rejected Esposito as a member and warned Katie’s mother years ago that he fit the profile of a child molester.

“I happened to have had a little more knowledge about his background and I didn’t think that this was a random incident. I knew that
somebody had to be involved that knew her. Most children are abducted by people they know,” Paul Freedman, Suffolk Big Brothers, said.

Esposito’s neighbors say he was a mystery to them before the arrest and even more so now.

“Just to see him coming home and late at night having that across the street, it’s just weird.”

Make you frightened?

“Yeah, it does. Exactly.”

Meanwhile, a criminal behavior expert with the FBI is now studying Esposito’s secret cell and he says it’s reminiscent of the movie The Silence of the Lambs, only in some ways worse.

“This is a much higher level of sophistication as far as being able to conceal it and I tell you what, if somebody told you that room was in there and you went in to look for it, I’d put money on the line that none of you or I would be able to find that unless you almost tore that house apart. It is concealed so well,”Clint Van Zandt, FBI, said.