Katie Beers (28 page)

The Chief recalled the morning after Katie was first reported missing and John was being grilled.

“I’m listening to the tape, it was eight or nine o’clock in the morning, and we know that imminently we are going to get a phone call from an attorney because his family is aware we have him all night. The attorney will tell us that we are on notice to stop talking to him without
counsel present and we know that’s about to happen. We kinda thought John Esposito was involved. We just weren’t sure how. Initially we thought that he cooperated in her abduction. We actually thought that he participated in some way, perhaps unwittingly because we thought he may be a pedophile. We learned he would take boys, children, to Spaceplex. We envisioned this pedophile hugging onto boys as they played video games and we were disturbed. But we quickly learned from interviewing boys that he was very childlike himself. That he would go and play the games himself. So once we learned that, we figured that guess what? She could have been abducted! In investigations, there are numerous hypotheses that you float and try to confirm. So the other theory was that people knew Esposito and knew his M.O., and the fact that he went to Spaceplex and once he got there, she’d be off on her own and someone who knew them both could just take her, ‘Come with me, Katie.’ And now he’s left holding the bag. So we considered that possibility.

“But I still felt he was involved and I asked him ‘What do you think happened to Katie?’ and I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘I think something
dirty
happened.’ And I thought that was odd. Very, very odd and troubling. And it made me feel even more that she was the victim of some sexual abuse.”

Something dirty. It is an odd thing to say.

“Certainly that was an inappropriate remark to make,” the Chief continued. “My question to him then was, ‘Well why do you think that? What do
you
think happened to her?’ He wouldn’t say. I played into it. ‘Well—she called Linda,’ I said, ‘Does she have
your
telephone number?’ He walked into that. He wanted to show me she trusted him—not knowing where I was going with it—’Yes,’ he said, ‘Katie knows my telephone. She always calls me, and I call her.’ I said, ‘Well John, do you think, if she manages to get to a telephone again that she might try to call you?’ And he said yes, so I had my opening. So I said, ‘Well then, we have to set up on your phone. We have to set up a recorder on your phone because she may call and we will want to trace the call.’ And he had no choice but to say yes. And that became very critical to the investigation because it allowed us to be able to put detectives in with him, in his home, to monitor Esposito, up close.

“They were able to get into that house and feel him out and their
impression was that he was extremely nervous. He wanted them out of there. When they are in the back garage, he became very uneasy—now we know why. They are literally above where Katie is. On the ground level— they are back there. He is just beside himself. But ultimately we hear from his attorney and they say they want us out of the apartment. We explained what we were trying to accomplish. And they said he is shy, he’s nervous, he wants his privacy. By going to the front house, his lawyers argued, you could monitor the phone from there.”

Dominick continued through the thick cache of eight by ten images with meticulous details that were obviously etched in his memory. It was at that moment that it occurred to me. Dominick reminds me of a younger version of my own father. It was his hazel-brown eyes. Like my father’s, they showed deep compassion. He and my father shared the same even tone which conveyed a soft spoken wisdom. There was something familiar to me in the way he steered me though the story with clarity, unspoken moral outrage and humanity.

While I was comforted by his familiar decency, I knew instinctively that his monologue would contain dreadful details. I couldn’t be more right.

“This is the bed where he actually first made his advances on Katie. And here is some more evidence of the disarray and his storage closet is full of games that children would enjoy playing.

“This is also the truck she drove sitting on his lap.” It was an eighty-nine Nissan pickup. I remembered it well.

The next photo was a close-up of the peak of the converted garage where Esposito lived.

“This is the gable. If you look real close, and we didn’t find this till after Katie was found, there is a video camera lens secreted in the back of the gable vent. Without a light you would never see it—it was darkness. He actually has the video camera secreted in the attic, so that when he is down in the bunker he would be able to observe anyone approaching the house. So when Katie was first held—she was able to see the detectives the night she was reported missing. The next morning, they actually went with him to his apartment and this is the day she actually observed the detectives approach and she was banging and screaming at the top of her lungs because she knew there were detectives in the house. The detectives
never heard a thing, but interestingly enough, John Esposito relayed to us later that, when he was with the detectives, he could faintly hear her screams for help, so he was very nervous. He was talking most of the time and trying to obscure the sounds.

“After we found Katie, we went down there and actually put a detective—put one in the bunker —shut everything up the way Esposito did and, if you made a lot of noise, you could faintly hear the sounds.”

I could sense the Chief had regrets.

“This is the downstairs of the garage apartment outside the office, the living room area, and it’s noteworthy how much neater this is.”

“What do you make of that?”
I managed to get a question in. “It’s a cover, a set up. The bedroom has all the junk food, the Nintendo games, partially because this is how he lived but also because he continually entertained numerous boys—they played guitar, video games, ate snacks and therefore the room is a mess. Now, what I like to tell investigators is that this is the little bar area that is obscuring the entrance to the underground bunker. Notice how neat everything is and, you know,” he paused and sighed, “is that a clue that we missed?”

He answered his own question.

“Another clue,” he moved on, “her coat. Her coat is found in his truck and we were bothered by the fact that in the winter time a little girl would leave her coat in the car. But then we come to know that Spaceplex is quite warm with all the video games, and he says she left her coat in the car because it’s so hot in there. And those of us who have kids know that, and I had a daughter that age and can relate to that fact, and I had been in Spaceplex and know that it is hot in there. I could understand that. Of course her coat, the reason her coat and her hat are in the car is because he wants to remove evidence from his apartment and make it look like Spaceplex is actually where she is missing from—so he is planting his own evidence—these were props to dupe us into believing she was with him in Spaceplex—trying to support his own story that that’s where she was actually abducted from. We know he put her coat back in the car and that she never made it to Spaceplex. We didn’t know it at the time. This is what he does to try to point us in the direction of Spaceplex.”

He was now shuffling through the photos quickly, like a giant deck of laminated cards.

Then, from out of the dusty box Dominick pulled a small handwritten note. He blew off the film and explained that it was that note that was found in a book in Katie’s room in the Inghilleri house. It was located, not by his team of detectives, he reminded me, but by a psychic that was brought into the case by Linda to get a “vibe.”

“I was a little disturbed that my detectives didn’t find it,” he confessed softly as he read aloud words I vaguely remembered.

“
To Aunt Linda—I love you. You are my favorite person in the world. But I am stuck in the middle of you and Marilyn. I love you both. But I love you more than Marilyn and I have a lot of good memories to share but you got to understand I am only ten years old and it’s very hard for me to decide who I want to live with because I have lived with you both.

Love always,

Katherine
“We now know and believe it to be authentic.”

Dominick explained that the hand-scrawled note created an investigative dilemma. If it were real, it actually supported the theory that Katie may have run away. Maybe, though, people who were aware of the horrible situation in which she lived and the fact she was like a Cinderella child to the Inghilleris—and that she might be being abused— staged the abduction.

“That complicated things for us as investigators,” he said.

“The other thing we found disturbing were the lips and the keying in on the lips,” he said as he pointed to the left side of the note, where there was an image of an oversized crayoned red mouth.

“You know,” he said gravely, “that could be indicative of a sex abuse victim because how many children—or how many pictures from a nine-year-old would you see such large lips? Interestingly, when we went through a lot of the video tape that Esposito kept of boys and children over the years, he would zoom in on the mouths of the young boys. And knowing now what we know about him, it’s obvious why. He had an oral fixation.

“There are two types of pedophiles—there is the preferential pedophile where he or she prefers young children. They relate better to children—their goal in life is to cultivate relationships with children and that’s what John Esposito was. And there are many more situational pedophiles—these are pedophiles that do not have this inherent desire to be with children but because of a situation they are in, they take advantage of that. Sal Inghilleri is the perfect example of that. He is in a situation— he has a wife who had a leg amputated—was incapacitated—you can only guess as to what their sexual activity was, and Katie was at his disposal. He utilized Katie to engage in sex acts on him.”

Dominick’s voice slightly cracked as he said, “So how horrible is it that a nine-year-old child would have both classes of pedophiles in her life? That is very unusual—and very, very unfortunate.”

My mind returned to the image of the predator smelling the scent of unprotected young prey. Then, I wondered aloud if, ironically, Katie was helped by her numbness. Perhaps she could cope with the kidnapping and the repeated sexual abuse while in captivity because she had learned at an early age how to shut off the hurt? As abhorrent as the sexual abuse was that she endured, in a way, maybe it equipped her for the second predator, who also had a nose for an unattended vulnerable child.

Dominick nodded, “That’s exactly right. It certainly contributed to her survival and we don’t think that many children could have endured sixteen, seventeen days underground with the sensory deprivation and the sexual attacks regularly. But because of her upbringing, the sexual experiences, the abuse, and street smarts and toughness, she was much more advanced than the normal nine-year-old, and we believe that contributed to her survival.”

Dominick then reached into the dusty box and pulled out a sheet of paper. “This is something...”

He looked down through reading glasses.

“As I said: something happened to me. I find it very hard to write everything. It started when I was between five and ten years of age. At that age I was always afraid of everything. I don’t even remember Mommy or Daddy ever kissing or holding each other. I remember they were always fighting. I remember Mommy never slept with Daddy. I don’t even remember them sleeping together until I was about twelve years old.
Mommy always slept with me. I was very young. I think it was early in the morning I remember being touched. I think I was touched a lot while I was asleep. I know it’s hard to believe, however, around five years ago I asked Mommy if anything ever happened when I was young. She looked at me and wept but didn’t say. I think she wanted to but couldn’t. She told me God is punishing me for what she did. I don’t know why she picked me instead of Ronnie—maybe because I was always afraid. She knew I wouldn’t say anything. I think Daddy knew what was happening. I remember he was always mad at me. I hope you understand why I was so angry and odd. I want you to know I still loved Mommy. I think she needed someone and I was there.”

Dominick dropped the letter and looked up. “It was written by John Esposito. So this is kind of an admission that he was abused. We find that that’s not unusual for pedophiles. You find that most pedophiles were abused themselves.”

I had suspected that John was probably abused himself, but the letter was a rare mea culpa. As a news reporter, I’ve overdosed on the lethal consequences of bad decisions, selfish acts and ruthless crimes. I conduct daily door-knocks at the homes of people who have a penchant for dishing out pain to others, who deliberately cause harm, or unwittingly hurt and then fail to own up to their mistakes. I am invited into living rooms and bear witness to the pain of those whose lives are scarred, altered or taken for no apparent reason. Survivors, sentenced to an indeterminate term of grief, speak of their unyielding suffering yet perpetrators, even when there is nothing left to lose, often remain stoic. I have sat attentively at the sentencing of killers longing for a moment of elucidation that never materializes. Every so often, there are brief, faint words read from a crumpled script on jailhouse legal paper, but they are rarely words that explain
why
harm was done. These courthouse apologies are rarely proportionate to the enormity of the crime committed and often leave victims feeling victimized yet again. Explanations can be found only in textbooks: Psychopaths harm, the experts say, because they don’t feel empathy
³⁴
, and pedophiles abuse because they were abused
³⁵
. But until this moment, I had never been convinced.

If Katie could apparently recover from childhood sexual abuse, why couldn’t John Esposito? Two abused souls and one recovers but the
other perpetuates the cycle of abuse. What is the difference?

“You don’t know to what extent the letter he wrote is self-serving,” Dominick, more pragmatist than psychologist, brought me back to the moment, and right back to the photos.